Goodenough Island - Headquarters Alamo Force

Headquarters Alamo Force
The headquarters of the U.S. 6th Army "Alamo Force" was situated here from 1943.

Goodenough Island
In most histories of the Pacific War, Goodenough Island barely merits a footnote.

Located in the D’Entrecasteux Islands, a chain of volcanic islands off the southeast coast of what is now Papua New Guinea, Goodenough was used by the First Marine Division as its forward staging area for the December 26, 1943 landing at Cape Gloucester.

The Marines made use of their temporary headquarters between October and December 1943, building a base north of the settlement that is now Bolubolu—toward Vivigani. There’s not much left of the American presence in either village these days.

According to Captain Nikolai Stevenson, commander of C Company, 1st battalion, First Marines, it took 18 days in an old Liberty ship to sail from Melbourne, Australia to Goodenough (with a brief stop in Milne Bay).

Perhaps Goodenough’s better claim to fame was that it was the location of the only meeting of the war between two four-star generals, George Marshall and Douglas MacArthur. According to historian James Duffy, the purpose of the meeting between the two generals was not to agree strategy in the Pacific but to send a message to President Franklin Roosevelt that neither military man would brook his political meddling in their operations, and Roosevelt was a known meddler.

Getting to Goodenough is not an easy proposition as it has no regular plane or ferry service. There are banana boats that make the treacherous crossing (depending on the weather) from the mainland. But not all make it across. One way to get there is on one of the sailboats that take charter parties around the Pacific, of which one of the best is Gavin Prescott's SV Chemistry, although his main base is in the Solomons.

Any passing yacht or boat attracts the attention of nearby villagers, who paddle out to stare or trade goods, a barter world anthropologist Margaret Mead well described.

Anyone visiting Goodenough should ask to meet Thomas Frank (shown in one picture), a local teacher and member of the United Church in Wagifa, and a friend of the author.

Richard Wheeler’s A Special Valor: The U.S. Marines and the Pacific War has an excellent chapter on the campaign for New Britain, of which the stop at Goodenough was a prelude.

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Source

• Text: Matthew Stevenson + Kaj Metz
• Photos: Matthew Stevenson
• Pacific Wrecks