- 101 - Pacific War - Invasion of Treasury Islands, October 24-31, 1943

Last time we spoke about the defense of Finschhafen. Finschhafen was a enormous staging camp for the allies now. The Japanese could not sit idly by allowing such a strategic location to be in allied hands. General Katagiri launched a major counter offensive, kicked off with signal fires from Sattelberg. He sent a force of raiders to try and neutralise some heavy allied artillery, but it ended in failure. Having not neutralised their big guns, the rest of the counter offensive fell to pieces.  The Japanese would officially report 422 killed, 662 wounded. For the Australians they had 228 casualties of which 49 were dead. With the counter offensive done with, the allies now would go back on the offensive. The next large target was going to be the stronghold of sattelberg, but the Japanese were not going to make it easy on the allies. But today we are going to be jumping into some new places. This episode is the invasion of the treasury islands Welcome to the Pacific War Podcast Week by Week, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945.  For quite some time now we have been focusing on the New Guinea campaign, such as the offensives against Finschhafen and the Ramu valley. Today we are going to enter a new phase of the Pacific War. With the incoming invasions of the Gilbert and Marshall islands, the Northern Solomons and Western New Britain, General Douglas MacArthur and Admirals Hasley and Nimitz were going to turn up the heat. Admiral Halsey had just seized Vila, Barakoma, Munda and Rendova, gaining their valuable airfields for the forces of General Twinings AirSols to utilise. Within the central Solomons, Bougainville was finally within range of allied land-based aircraft. Lae, Salamaua and Finschhafen were taken, thus Operation Cartwheel would begin a new phase. Back in July, plans were formed for General Vandegrifts 1st Marine Amphibious corps to seize airfields sites at Buin and Kahili, the important Japanese anchorage at Tonolei Harbor, and the Faisi and Ballale islands in the neighboring Shortlands. That same month, the 43rd and 37th divisions were involved in the New Georgia campaign. Of the 5 divisions remaining under his control, Admiral Halsey planned to use the fresh and unblooded 3rd Marine division and the Army’s 25th division for the invasion. He sought to keep the 2nd marine division and 3rd new zealand division in training for the conquest of Rabaul. Yet things had changed. Because of the intense resistance on New Georgia, the 25th division had to be committed. Then the decision to strike Makin and Tarawa in the Gilbert islands removed the 2nd marine division from Hasley’s south pacific area. These changes ultimately dictated he would need a substitution, and it was to be the 37th division, whom had suffered 1100 casualties on New Georgia already. Nevertheless the 37th was in better condition than the 25th. The 3rd marine divisions task went unchanged. Major General Allen Turnage’s 3rd Marine division was going to spearhead the invasion of Bougainville, with a launch date set for September. On top of this Halsey had received some reports indicating the Japanese were heavily reinforcing the Shortland Islands. He decided to bypass them and hit the Treasury island and Choiseul. It is also possible Halsey sought to perform these acti