The 38th Division had taken Hong Kong, the 48th had taken Manila, then both had stormed into the Dutch East Indies, sweeping through Borneo and on to Java. They were quickly sent to the fight, the 38th arriving first, and Army planners smiled to note that the 38th Division, with only two regiments landed on the main island, had nonetheless taken Nandi and pushed south to Queen’s Road, driving the two Fiji Brigades before them as they expected. Then they met the Americans.
In this instance, it was the 23rd Pacifica Division, certainly every bit as raw and untested as any of the US divisions shipped so hastily to the Pacific Theater. Yet Alexander ‘Sandy’ Patch had his entire outfit, the last regiment shipping in from Tonga, and he had a mission—eliminate all Japanese forces operating in the Fiji Island Group. Before he could do that, he had to show the enemy who was boss on Viti Levu, and used the sheer mass of the force he had in hand to halt the Japanese advance, which was exactly what he did.
The Japanese reacted by first claiming the 38th Division was lacking its third regiment, and pressed the Navy to deliver. In their eyes, it was the lack of transport shipping, and ill-coordinated maneuvers by the Navy that were the root of the problem. Once ashore, however, there could be no further excuses. The 38th was indeed stopped at the line of the Singatana River, and then, when the Marines had pushed the Sakaguchi Detachment in the north to the point of near collapse, considerable forces had to be withdrawn from the south and sent by rail to hold the line just east of Tavua.
It was clear that more forces were required, and when the Navy finally delivered the 48th Division, the heroes of Manila relieved the remainder of the 38th Division, and took over defense of the south, but considerable amounts of ground had been yielded in the process. The Americans, with troops closer at hand in New Zealand, Tonga, and Samoa, and a good harbor at Suva Bay, had simply been able to deliver more forces to the island at a critical time to tip the balance in their favor. By the time the whole of the 48th Division was on the island, the Japanese defensive line had been established at Momi Bay on the southwest coast. There they dug in, receiving much needed supplies and waiting for their artillery to be delivered in the final convoys of late December. Now it was time to fight again.
Strategically, the Japanese only controlled about a third of the island as 1943 dawned. The last month of 1942 had seen the US relieve the 1st Marine Division with the 25th “Tropic Lightning” Division from Pago Pago, and it was now holding the line against General Sano’s 38th, about 10 kilometers east of the airfield and port at Tavua in the north. From there, roads led south into the highlands, where the Japanese had found a valuable resource in the gold mine near Vatukoula, and the General had a full battalion working there to pull whatever they could from the mine and stockpile it at the west coast ports for shipment to Japan. The newly arrived 48th Division held the western third of the island, and those ports were at Lautoka, Nandi, and the smaller landing facilities at Momi Bay.
General Shuichi Miyazaki, Chief of Staff for 17th Army, had come ashore personally to direct the landings, with his HQ at Lautoka. He reported directly to the Army Commander, General Harukichi Hyakutake in Rabaul. Midway between Tavua and Nandi, Lautoka was connected to both of those sites by the single rail line on the island, a real advantage that the Japanese now possessed in being able to shift forces back and forth from one front to another. The limited rolling stock was therefore a prime target for US planes based at Suva, and many duels were fought over those thin steel rails, with Japanese planes flying from the main field at Nandi. That air duel was a prelude to the ground action that would soon follow, for with the carriers absent, both sides had been relying on land based air power to try and wrest control of the airspace from each other.
The Japanese had a small field at Tavua, and a better one at M’ba (pronounced ‘Emba’), some miles to the east. Then their main field was at Nandi, where Late December had seen the arrival of better planes and pilots. Rear Admiral Sadayoshi Yamada was leading the Japanese 5th Air Attack Force at far off Noumea on New Caledonia. That was where the Japanese based most of their long-range bombers, but being 825 miles to Suva, the distance to Fiji strained and limited their operations. For this reason, the Japanese were now looking at the New Hebrides as better sites to bring in their G3M Rikko bombers, (the Nell), and the reliable G4M Hamaki, which meant Leaf Roll, due to the shape of the plane’s rounded fuselage. The allies simply called it the Betty. Efate was only 660 miles from Suva Bay, a much easier ride for those bombers.
On the main Fiji Group island of Viti Levu, the Japanese now had some of their very best aviators in the Tainan Kokutai Group. That unit was flush with many of Japan’s top aces, Hiroyoshi Nishizawa with 36 kills and many more assists that pushed his total to 87, Saburō Sakai with 28, (though Sakai himself claimed 64). Toshio Ōta got 34 enemy planes, and Junichi Sasai, Japan’s ‘Flying Tiger,’ had 27 kills. By late December, eighteen more Zeroes had come with them to relieve the cumbersome A5M Claude fighters that had been slowly outclassed as the Marine squadrons arrived near Suva. More fighters were moving down the Solomons to Tulagi, intending to continue on to Fiji.
For their part, the Americans had decided they would not try to rely on the airfield near Suva, and looked to the big island northwest, Vanua Levu, where a big effort had been made to build air bases the last three months of 1942. There were new fields at Bua on the western end of that island, at Lambasa in the center, at Savu Savu in the south, and Natewa in the east. Fields were also thrown up at Katherine Bay on the small Rambi Island, and at Matei on the larger Taveuni Island. Some were just small “dispersal” fields where planes could deploy or land if the main fields were hit too hard by the enemy, and they were mostly waiting to receive their planes to flesh out the squadrons building up in the region. But collectively, they provided that unsinkable aircraft carrier on station 24/7, and a means of contesting or controlling the air space over Fiji.
In the old history, the initial buildup of planes on Guadalcanal’s Henderson Field had been called the “Cactus Air Force” because of the Allied code word “Cactus” for that island. In this history, the code name for Fiji was “Fantan,” and so the early Allied air command over the islands was now simply “Fantan Force.”
Conditions on Fiji were far superior to those the Marine aviators faced on Guadalcanal. There they lived in muddy tents in a Coconut plantation they came to call “Mosquito Grove.” Fantan Force enjoyed far more plush accommodations in Suva, where the off-duty pilots could even get berthings at the Grand Pacific Hotel overlooking the stunning beaches. In addition to the main airfield at Nasouri near Suva, the Seabees had also hammered out a new field to the north where 1st Marine Division had been using Viti Levu Bay as its logistical base. Lighters and local steamers would come and go there with supplies, and so a field was built near Korovou south of the bay to provide rapid air cover. That, if anything, was the Henderson Field for the Marines on this island, a more wild and undeveloped region, with more Spartan conditions.
The Japanese had those three good airfields to the west, and so every day, just after noon, the main US fields would be visited by the enemy, and little fighter duels would be fought over the eastern end of the island. If the fields got hit particularly hard, Marine flyers would make it a point of honor to go in and hit the Japanese back, bombing and strafing for a little payback.