The landing on Tarakan

On the morning of 1 May 1945, at around 8 a.m., American amphibious tractors carrying Australian infantry began to run ashore on the south-western coast of Tarakan, a small, swampy island lying a few kilometres off the east coast of Borneo. The landing had been preceded by weeks of air raids and naval bombardment. So began the Battle of Tarakan, the first stage of the Australian operations on Borneo, code-named Oboe. The assault was made by the 26th Brigade Group of the Australian 9th Division, reinforced by American and Dutch units; support came from ships of the US Navy and the Royal Australian Navy and from Australian and American aircraft.

Put most simply, Australian troops landed on the island of Tarakan off Borneo. It need only be added that nearly a thousand American and Dutch soldiers went ashore alongside the Australians, and that the whole operation was possible only thanks to the American fleet.

The landing went more smoothly than expected, but the struggle for the island proved long and costly. The Japanese garrison, though small, withdrew to the wooded hills of the interior and held out there for seven weeks. The airfield – the main reason for the whole operation – was so badly wrecked that it was brought into use only at the end of June, too late to play the part intended for it.

An island of oil

Tarakan is a triangle some 24 kilometres long. In 1945 almost its entire coast was covered with mangroves and swamps, while the centre of the island consisted of steep, densely wooded hills rising little more than 30 metres. The main settlement was the town of Tarakan, less than two kilometres inland; on the shore, at Lingkas, were the jetties for tankers. North-west of the town lay the airfield, and beyond it two oilfields – Sesanip and the larger Djoeata.

Before the war the island belonged to the Dutch East Indies and was an important oil-producing centre: in 1941 its wells yielded some 80,000 barrels a month. For that reason it was among the first targets of the Japanese drive south. During the Japanese invasion of Borneo the Japanese landed on Tarakan on 11 January 1942 and after two days of fighting forced the small Dutch garrison to surrender; some of the prisoners were murdered. The Dutch had managed to wreck the wells, but Japanese engineers quickly rebuilt them, and by early 1944 output had reached about 350,000 barrels a month, more than before the war. Tarakan was part of a wider campaign in which Japan seized the sources of raw materials for which it had, in essence, gone to war.

For the island’s roughly five thousand inhabitants the occupation was a harsh experience. The large garrison caused food shortages and malnutrition. The Japanese brought in some 600 labourers from Java, who were brutally treated, and around 300 Javanese women, lured by promises of office or tailoring work, were forced into prostitution.

In 1944 Tarakan’s value to Japan fell sharply. The last Japanese tanker left the island in July 1944; afterwards Allied air raids destroyed the production facilities and storage tanks, while air-laid mines and air and naval patrols cut the island off from shipping. In early 1945 the Japanese withdrew one of their two infantry battalions to Balikpapan.

The Oboe plan

At the end of February 1945 General Douglas MacArthur, commander of the Allied South West Pacific Area, put forward plans for landings in the southern Philippines and on Borneo. He entrusted the Philippine operations (code-named Victor) to American troops – the landing on Palawan was one of them – and the Borneo operations (Oboe) to the Australians. MacArthur justified them by the recovery of oilfields and ports, the restoration of Dutch administration in the East Indies and the strengthening of Allied prestige in the region; the American forces thus freed were to be sent against Japan.

The Australian government had long been pressing for its I Corps – two experienced divisions of the volunteer Second Australian Imperial Force, idle since early 1944 – to take part in an operation that would strengthen the country’s hand at future peace negotiations. There was a growing feeling in Australia that its army had been sidelined. On 5 March MacArthur informed Prime Minister John Curtin of the plan. Senior Australian officers doubted the value of the operation; Curtin refused to release the 6th Division for it, which MacArthur had wanted to use on Java.

The original plan envisaged three landings on the east coast of Borneo – Oboe 1 on Tarakan, Oboe 2 at Balikpapan and Oboe 3 at Banjarmasin – followed by a landing on Java. The American Joint Chiefs of Staff did not approve the Java operation, so Oboe 3 was dropped as well; Oboe 6, in the Brunei area, was added instead. In the end Tarakan was set for 1 May, the area of Brunei Bay and Labuan for 10 June, and Balikpapan for 1 July. The whole was directed by the commander of I Corps, Lieutenant General Leslie Morshead, the former defender of Tobruk.

The main objective of the Tarakan landing was the airfield. Once repaired, it was to provide fighter cover for the subsequent landings at Brunei, on Labuan and at Balikpapan. A secondary aim was to restore oil production for the Allied forces in the region. The planners expected a quick fight for the airfield and the town: according to the plan, a fighter wing was to be based there by the sixth day after the landing, and the 26th Brigade was to leave the island on 21 May. Fighting in the interior was scarcely foreseen at all.

The opposing forces

The core of the landing force was the 26th Brigade Group under Brigadier David Whitehead – nearly 12,000 soldiers, and with the air, naval and supply units more than 15,000 men. The 26th Brigade belonged to the 9th Division, which had fought at Tobruk, at El Alamein and at Lae. Its three infantry battalions (the 2/23rd, 2/24th and 2/48th) were supported by a pioneer battalion and a commando squadron fighting as infantry, a field artillery regiment with 24 guns, a squadron of Matilda tanks, engineers and numerous rear-echelon units. Large ground units of the Royal Australian Air Force, which were to rebuild the airfield, were attached to the brigade.

Nearly a thousand American and Dutch troops also took part in the landing. The Americans manned the landing craft and the LVT amphibious tractors, and Seabees units sailed aboard the landing ships. The Dutch provided an infantry company made up of Ambonese under Dutch officers, together with a civil administration detachment that was to take over the running of the island. The ships came from the US Seventh Fleet and the Australian navy, the aircraft from the Australian First Tactical Air Force and the US Thirteenth Air Force.

The Japanese garrison numbered about 2,200 men. The most important army unit was Major Tadao Tokoi’s 455th Independent Infantry Battalion – a second-rate garrison formation without heavy weapons or transport, numbering, according to various sources, from about 740 to just under 900 men. The navy had some 980 men on the island under Commander Kaoru Kaharu, mostly from the 2nd Naval Garrison Force; around 350 Japanese civilian oil workers were also earmarked for combat. Relations between the army and the navy were poor. In line with Japanese doctrine of the time, the defenders did not intend to hold the beaches to the last, but prepared mutually supporting positions in the hills of the interior.

Preparations and Sadau

The Japanese knew what was coming. In April the island’s commander received a radio warning of an imminent attack, and on 15 April the manager of the fuel depot was ordered to destroy the wells. This made little difference: the defenders had been building fortifications and laying mines for months, and the concentration of large Allied forces on Morotai could not be hidden. From 12 to 29 April Australian and American aircraft bombed Tarakan and other Japanese bases in the region, destroying every aircraft in the area. In the final days the raids concentrated on the beach area at Lingkas and the oil tanks there, which, it was feared, the defenders might set alight and release onto the attackers. The inhabitants fled inland; at least 100 civilians were killed or wounded.

The invasion convoy – some 150 warships and transports – sailed from Morotai on 27 April. That same day American minesweepers and destroyers appeared off Tarakan and by 1 May had cleared the approaches of mines, most of them laid earlier by Allied aircraft. At night motor torpedo boats shelled the beaches to stop the Japanese repairing the obstacles.

On 30 April Australian commandos and an artillery battery landed unopposed on the islet of Sadau, less than a kilometre off Tarakan’s west coast. It was the first Australian landing on non-Australian territory in the Pacific since the end of 1941 – the earlier fighting in New Guinea had taken place in territory administered by Australia. The only loss was the American destroyer USS Jenkins, damaged by a mine. On the same day, under Japanese fire and with support from the guns on Sadau, ships and aircraft, eight parties of engineers cleared the obstacles of wire, stakes and rails that stretched more than 100 metres out from the beach – without loss, although heavy casualties had been expected.

The landing of 1 May

At dawn on 1 May, after a heavy naval and air bombardment, two battalions went ashore at around 8 a.m. The 2/23rd Battalion landed on the southern flank, in deep mud, and took several Japanese positions in the hills around Lingkas. The 2/48th Battalion had an easier landing on the northern sector; it quickly seized the bunkers behind the beach and the fuel tanks, and by evening stood on the hills west of the town. From 9.20 a.m. the third battalion, the 2/24th, came ashore. By evening the beachhead was about 2.6 kilometres wide and up to 1.8 kilometres deep. Losses on the first day were lower than expected: 11 killed and 35 wounded. The light resistance was attributed to the bombardment, which had forced the defenders to abandon strong fortifications at Lingkas.

The beach itself proved the problem. Vehicles bogged down in the soft mud, and seven LST landing ships ran aground and were refloated only on 13 May. A jam built up on the narrow strip of firm ground, made worse by the landing of large numbers of air force vehicles; the field guns went into action only in the afternoon. During the night Japanese snipers roamed the beachhead.

Over the following days the brigade advanced east towards the town of Tarakan and north towards the airfield. Resistance grew with every kilometre. A night attack on the airfield on 2 May was delayed by powerful demolition charges set off by the Japanese; it was taken only on 5 May. In the first week some 7,000 Indonesian refugees, often sick and exhausted, crossed into the Australian lines – far more than the Dutch administration detachment had anticipated. Despite the destruction and the victims of the bombing, most of the inhabitants greeted the Australians as liberators, and hundreds of them later worked as carriers and labourers. On 8 May the island was visited by the Commander-in-Chief of the Australian Military Forces, General Thomas Blamey, who instructed Whitehead to clear the rest of the island methodically and without haste.

The battle for the hills

The capture of the airfield did not settle matters. Some 1,700 Japanese had dug in on the hills of the central and northern parts of the island, in positions protected by mines and booby traps. Each had to be taken by the infantry, so the Australians, anxious to limit their losses, made liberal use of artillery and air power. In the jungle, on the swamps and on the steep slopes the tanks could usually move only along roads and tracks, so they seldom led the advance; rather, they supported it with their fire.

The heaviest fighting in the south-east of the island fell to the pioneer battalion. From 10 May it was held up in front of a hill named “Helen” in the plans, defended by about 200 Japanese. On 12 May Corporal John Mackey captured three machine-gun posts there and was killed; he was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross. At “Helen” heavy B-24 Liberator bombers were used for the first time in direct support of the infantry, and immediately after their raid P-38 Lightning fighters dropped napalm; from then on this combination became the Australians’ favourite form of support. The Japanese abandoned the hill on 14 May, and on 16 May the pioneers reached the east coast. The Dutch company, meanwhile, occupied the rest of the south of the island without much resistance.

The fighting in the hills of the centre of the island went on throughout May and for most of June. On 14 June the surviving Japanese abandoned their last positions and withdrew northwards. Radio Tokyo announced the fall of Tarakan on 15 June, the last organised resistance was met on 19 June, and Whitehead declared the island secure on 21 June. Scattered groups of increasingly hungry Japanese soldiers remained in hiding until August; some 300 of them surrendered only after Japan’s capitulation.

The airfield that came too late

Meanwhile the RAAF engineers were trying to get the airfield working. The runway, cratered by bombs before the landing and built on waterlogged ground, proved much harder to repair than had been assumed: instead of a week, the work took eight weeks. The airfield opened only on 28 June – too late to support the landings at Brunei and on Labuan on 10 June – and the aircraft based there took part only in the operations at Balikpapan. The badly damaged oilfields, too, began producing oil again only after the war.

Historians put Australian losses at about 225 killed and 669 wounded; some tallies, which include later patrols, give more than 250 dead. According to Australian figures the Japanese lost about 1,540 killed, and 252 were taken prisoner before 15 August. These losses were markedly higher than in the other Borneo operations – probably because the island’s garrison, unlike those in North Borneo and at Balikpapan, had nowhere to retreat to.

Assessment and significance

The American naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison judged the landing a very well executed operation that achieved its aims at small cost. The harsher verdict, however, prevails. The Australian official historian Gavin Long wrote that the results achieved did not justify the cost of the Tarakan operation. The main objective – the airfield – was not achieved in time, chiefly because the air force planners had misjudged the condition of the runway.

The dispute, indeed, concerns the whole Borneo campaign. Critics, including some Australian generals of the time, saw it as a pointless “sideshow” in which soldiers were dying at a moment when the outcome of the war was being decided elsewhere. Its defenders point out that in 1945 no one knew when the war would end, and that the invasion of Japan and the liberation of the rest of the Dutch East Indies were planned for 1946.

Tarakan opened the last major campaign of the Australian Army in the Second World War. On 10 June the rest of the 9th Division landed in the Brunei Bay area and on Labuan, and on 1 July the 7th Division landed at Balikpapan, in the last major Allied amphibious landing of the war. While the Australians were storming the hills of Tarakan, the war with Germany was coming to an end in Europe; in the Pacific the fighting went on for more than three months longer. The 26th Brigade remained on the island as an occupation force until the end of 1945.