The Mike Stone Show; Music, Stories and Conversations
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The Mike Stone Show; Music, Stories and Conversations
James Campbell and the Untold Story of the Ghost Mountain Boys
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Step into history with this powerful conversation featuring bestselling author James Campbell. Together, we uncover the remarkable story of the Ghost Mountain Boys — young Americans thrust into unimaginable conditions who discovered courage they never knew they had. From behind-the-scenes stories and historical insights to moments of humor, humanity, and heroism, this podcast conversation goes beyond the pages of the book to reveal the men, memories, and legacy that still inspire today. If you love great storytelling and unforgettable conversations, this is one episode you won’t want to miss.
This is Mark for the Mike Stone Show. Music, Stories, and Conversations. Mike's special guest today isn't just an author. He's an explorer, storyteller, historian, and adventurer who has spent years going where most people only dream of going. From the frozen wilderness of Alaska to the rugged mountains and jungles of Papua New Guinea. He has chased stories in some of the most remote places on Earth. Many know him for his powerful book, The Ghost Mountain Boys. The remarkable story of American soldiers who endured one of the harshest campaigns of World War II in New Guinea. A story of courage, sacrifice, and survival that history nearly forgot. He didn't just research it, he retraced parts of that very journey himself. He's also the author of books including The Final Frontiersman, Braving It, The Color of War, and many other works that bring forgotten people, wild places, and extraordinary human experiences to life. So settle in because this conversation is going to take us from mountain trails to battlefields, from adventure to history, and maybe teach us a little something about endurance along the way. The conversation with James Campbell starts right now.
SPEAKER_00Today on the Mike Stone Show, we welcome award-winning author, journalist, and adventurer James Campbell. James is an award-winning author of five nonfiction books and numerous magazine articles for Outside Magazine, National Geographic Adventure, Men's Journal, and many others. Now, James Campbell has spent much of his life traveling to some of the most remote and dangerous places on Earth in search of extraordinary human stories. He has crossed the rugged jungles of Pawpaw, New Guinea, retracing the footsteps of World War II soldiers. He's lived among Alaska's last hunter-trapper gatherers in the Arctic, sailed across Micronesia with ancient star navigators, explored Central and South America documenting the work of legendary Jaguar conservationist Alan Robinowitz. And he's even scuba dived in marine biologist with marine biologist in the waters of Cuba. He is also the acclaimed author of the Ghost Mountain Boys, the powerful true story of the 32nd Red Army Era Division and the 126th Infantry Regiment during World War II. And that brutal journey across the Owen Stanley Mountains to the Japanese beachhead of Buna and Gona. Mr. James Campbell, welcome to the Mike Stone Show. Just a brief little uh introduction and my story. My father was a member of the Ghost Mountain Boys, a member of the 32nd Division, I believe the 126th Infantry. I don't know which of the ones, A, E, or whatever. I know he served with Mr. Herman Butcher, Captain Herman Butcher, and I will uh get with that name a little bit later as we go through the uh conversation here.
SPEAKER_02Well, there's a there's a plaque today honoring Herman Butcher at Boona.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's wonderful. Jane, before we discuss the great, great book, uh wonderful book, The Ghost Mountain Boys, I'd like to maybe tell our listeners a little bit about uh your background and where you grew up and how you became such a great adventurer and a storyteller.
SPEAKER_02I grew up in rural Wisconsin and um grew up with a dad, you know, who lived through the depression and grew up, you know, on a on a virtually a subsistence farm in Wisconsin. But my dad was a great storyteller, and my dad also loved the outdoors. So I grew up in the outdoors, hunting and fishing and camping. And at some point, I'm told I walked down the stairs one day and informed my mom and dad that I would be a great adventurer and explorer and a writer all together. You know, they kind of laughed it off. And but at some point, it, you know, it's it's what I was determined to pursue. You know, I read all the great books about the Alaskan explorers and the African explorers and the ex exploration of the Amazon, and I was determined to be one of those guys. You know, I don't think I ever quite achieved that, but I have gone to, you know, very remote places, and it's, you know, one of the one of the kind of the guiding passions of my life is going to some of the last intact ecosystems on the planet and often writing about people that that I've admired, whether they're conservationists or hunter-trappers or soldiers, you know, walking across the jungles of Papua New Guinea.
SPEAKER_00Oh my. And I I just have to tell you, the adventures you've been on, and that's you tell me where you got your adventures, Spirit. It came maybe from your family and the reading that you did there. But I don't know, our listeners understand you you have been in some of the most remote places in the world. And as you said, that was uh part of what you really wanted to do and your passion.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and people always ask about my wife, you know, and she's an adventurer too. Uh in fact, we went to, of all places, for uh at least a portion of our honeymoon to Papua New Guinea. And she got malaria there and was terribly sick. But um, she's accompanied me on you know, my many of my adventures across the you know American West. We have three daughters, and as you know, I've taken my daughters on a number of different adventures. But yeah, I love Papua New Guinea. It's that's one of the my lifelong passions in Alaska. And as you mentioned, I sailed across the Pacific with some of the world's last star navigators, and that was probably the most terrifying trip of my life. We got caught in a hurricane in a in a sailing boat, and um I had a sat phone with me and was punching in the coordinates to my wife just in case, just in case we were lost. So she could perhaps perhaps send out, you know, some kind of some kind of rescue ship or something. But that was a terrifying one. I thought I thought I was a goner there.
SPEAKER_00So good to have a supportive family and all your wife and your three daughters, and all of you seem to have that sort of uh Sammy Adventures experience. So that has to be comforting to you to know that you're not in this by yourself. You have a lot of support.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I have a lot of I have a lot of moral support too, which is really important. We have a little hobby farm or did while the girls were growing up here in Wisconsin, you know, and it's a pretty quiet pastoral place, a beautiful place to raise three daughters, but certainly not remote, and uh there's an element of wildness, but not the kind of wildness that that I seek out across the world. But it's a it was a great or is a great place, you know, to raise a family.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no doubt you gotta have some place to come and have a little respite, a little time off from all your journeys.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's that's for sure. You gotta recuperate.
SPEAKER_00So, James, what attracts you to these stories about survival, endurance, and uh extraordinary human courage? Uh that that's the essence of what you're writing about, really.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it is. I I guess I've always admired people who who push the limits, whether whether they're or or who are forced, you know, to to ask more of themselves than we normally have to ask of ourselves. Certainly the soldiers who marched across the Yowan Stanley Mountains in Papua New Guinea and lost a third of their body weight before they went into battle didn't want to be there. In fact, it was the it was the last place in the world they wanted to be. It took an extraordinary amount of courage just for them to keep going. But my cousin, um, my first cousin lives in the middle of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which is 19.5 million acres. And, you know, he's the real courageous one. He went up there in 1975 and raised a family uh 100 miles from the nearest neighbor and 200 miles from the nearest town, raised three girls out there. So I went up to Arctic Alaska and lived with them off and on to tell the story of their lives. So I document that and I'm kind of of an observer, but I do consider myself to be kind of a boots on the ground author. So if I'm gonna be writing about um someone, I want to participate in their lives. It's always meant a lot to me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I did read uh your book, I believe, Braving It. Is that what documents your trip with your daughter up there with uh your first cousin?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, I wrote my first book was called The Final Frontiersman, was about my cousin and his family. And that book was made into a Discovery Channel series, which I'm sure uh some of your listeners have watched. It's called The Last Alaskans, and that's no longer on TV, but you can still still watch episodes on Discovery Channel. But um, that was my first book, and then uh Ghost Mountain Boys, which you mentioned, was my second one. And then my daughter and I, we had three experiences up in Alaska that I documented for the book, Braving It. We went up in the summer uh and built a cabin with my cousin in the middle of the Arctic, then we went up in the middle of winter to hunt and trap with him and his wife. And our last adventure was a backpacking trip over the Brooks Range. We backpacked over the Brooks Range and then built a canoe and canoed out to the to the Arctic Ocean. And she was 15 at the time, so it was a uh life-changing experience for her, I think she would probably admit that. And a life exchange, life-changing experience for me in many ways, too.
SPEAKER_00Oh, no doubt. And you just briefly skimmed over the canoe trip, but I have read a little bit about that. Your daughter was up in front trying to tell you how to how to guide it. And that's uh that was a what river was that, uh, James, that that y'all went down.
SPEAKER_02Uh we were on the Hula Hula River, which is normally a class two, class three river, which we we we trained a bunch, by the way, for the trip. But um, we arrived and it was one of the rainiest and coldest summers in the Arctic. You know, in the Alaskan Arctic, it can be 85 degrees, but we had a really cold summer, and it it also happened to be one of the buggiest summers in Alaska history. And um, so all the forces were working, were working against us. It was cold, and the river was, you know, class class two to class three plus. And yeah, initially my daughter Aiden, you know, was the bow, the bowman or the bow person. And I was screaming at her, you know, from the back of the river, you know, pedal left, paddle right, you know, it's well, I was screaming a bunch of you know, a bunch of commands to her and a bunch of instructions. And finally, at uh about four days down the river, she took me aside and she said, Dad, you have to cut it out. She said, You're destroying my confidence. I have to be able to pick our route, and you have to be able to trust me. And she was 15 at the time. So that was a real kind of that was a real moment, a real experience for me. I had to trust my 15-year-old daughter to make the right paddling calls as we're paddling down this river out to the Arctic Ocean. And she did a marvelous job. And I mean, it was occasionally quite frightening, but we made it. And as you probably know, we ultimately made it to a barrier island on the Arctic Ocean where we were trapped on the island for five days with a polar bear.
SPEAKER_00Unbelievable. And you pass on to Aiden that I am entirely impressed with what she did at a 15-year-old. I mean, and of course, you as a parent having to let go a little bit. I've I've got uh two children, six grandchildren now, and trying to let go and let them sort of uh find out from their own selves, that's that's gonna be hard to do.
SPEAKER_02One of the hardest things to do in life, yeah. Everything, everything in me was kind of fighting against it. But I realized that in in order for her to blossom and in order for her to kind of um collect the confidence that she needed or that we needed to get out the Arctic to the Arctic Ocean, I had to sit back and let her make the calls and the decisions. And she didn't always make the right ones, but and who would, but we you know, we made it. And um that that it was it was quite a quite an experience.
SPEAKER_00Unbelievable. I encourage everybody to get the book, uh Braven It, if you want to uh find out the real experience that Aidan and James had on that adventure. Uh, you said, James, you physically walking in the ground and experiencing the terrain, that's very important for you, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it is. You know, as I mentioned, I consider cut myself a boots on the ground author. So I I think that if I'm going to capture the the authenticity and the kind of verisimilitude, that um in order to do that, I have to, you know, I have to experience what the people I'm writing about experience. That that's that's really meaningful to me. And I know that, for instance, when I was writing The Ghost Mountain Boys, when they realized that I walked in their path, walked in their footsteps, that was that was really important for them too. And you know, it's something that I find thrilling. Um, obviously, when I walked across Papua New Guinea, it took us 27 days. And the thing I always point out is that when we finished, we got to celebrate and drink a beer. And the, you know, the Ghost Mountain boys went went across the mountains and lost a third of their body weight to dysentery and whatever else. And they walked right into the, you know, right into the front, up and down in the 11-mile front. The Japanese had built these interconnecting bunkers and they went directly into war. So I never try to equate what I did with what they did, although I tried as hard as I could to experience what they might have experienced. And I did, I did get malaria, not until I got home. And in fact, three members of our trip um got malaria on that adventure.
SPEAKER_00Unbelievable, unbelievable uh adventure. And we'll talk, uh, we're about to get into uh the depth in the heart of the Ghost Mountain Boys here, but a lot of preparation must go into your research, and part of that is you're actually going to the location. But how long does it take you to prepare for research and trying to like write the book for the Ghost Mountain Boys?
SPEAKER_02Well, geez, the book Ghost Mountain Boys was probably 10 years, more than that, 10, 15 years in the making. In 1989, my brother and I, my brother had just finished college, and we wanted, we grew up on National Geographic documentaries, and you know, we were we nursed all these notions of adventure, and we decided that we were going to take a young man's adventure, and we were gonna either go build a raft and float down the Amazon or go to Papua New Guinea, and we chose Papua New Guinea. So he had just graduated from college, as I said, so I quit my job and said, I'm leaving, I'm leaving for Papua New Guinea. So we went to Papua New Guinea and we climbed mountains and we, you know, canoed rivers, and it was really, it was a powerful, powerful experience. But I realized for the first time, and this was in 1989, that all the men I was saluting, you know, who marched in the parades that I grew up watching when I was a kid, and I knew that I knew that they had fought in a place called New Guinea, but I knew nothing about the the battle. You know, my dad told me a little bit about it, but you know, as I was a kid and it really didn't sink in. And then I realized when I was there for the first time that I was in, you know, the country where these men had fought. And it is an imposing, imposing country. It is swamp and jungle and mountains, you know, just the mountains go straight up and straight down. I was a little bit ashamed of myself that I didn't know more about what those men had gone through. And and I vowed I'd vowed that I'd return to Papua New Guinea. In the meantime, I did a little bit of research. And then, as I mentioned, I convinced my wife as part of a seven-month honeymoon, we sold everything we had, and we um we took off, backpacked pretty much around Southeast Asia and Australia and New Zealand, and then ultimately Papua New Guinea. And I realized then for the first time there was a story about these men who had marched across the mountains. And I was I was writing at the time, and I thought, oh my gosh, this is just an incredible story that I'd never heard about. And so I came back and I started researching, and very slowly I started to meet some of the men who who had fought, who had crossed the mountains and fought in that battle. I attended a um 32nd Division Old Timers gathering at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin, where all these guys got together and they listened to bad polka music and drank beer and told jokes and, you know, and had the time of their lives. And mostly it was jokes, but occasionally they talked about how terrible it was. I always think of what James Bradley said in Flags of Our Father. He said, and as you mentioned in the introduction, they came home and they got on with living. You know, they they they didn't talk about it. And in fact, so many of them that I talked with said this is the first time I've ever talked about this, and they didn't talk about it with their families. Occasionally they talked about it to when they got together, but largely they did not talk about it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that was that was my experience with my father. As I said, we finally got him in the last couple of years of his life. That's interesting, James, how you came about that. I mean, you were there and you said there's a story here. I need I need to get this story out. And I love it, it just wasn't something you saw in the paper. You were actually there and felt it and saw some of the uh things they had to endure and and then went on. So a lot of background. You said 15 years probably of research and trying to do that.
SPEAKER_02It was a labor of love.
SPEAKER_00Well, let me tell you, from my heart, I'm so thankful that you put that down, and the world needed to hear that story. And why why do you believe the story of the Ghost Mountain Boys remained largely unknown, you know, compared to other big campaigns, you know, we know about in World War II?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, largely, well, because first of all, we had the Europe first mentality, you know, we were we we were fighting in Europe against against against the Germans, and the Pacific was kind of overlooked, and certainly Papua New Guinea was overlooked because it was, you know, overshadowed in the press by Guadacanal. And uh when MacArthur fled Corregidor, uh, he had no notion that he was going to go to New Guinea, and he considered New Guinea kind of a backwater theater. All he wanted to do was get out of New Guinea and get back to the Philippines as quickly as he could. So the American public knew virtually nothing about what was going on in Papua New Guinea. Um, as I mentioned, MacArthur, it was not somewhere MacArthur wanted to be. He wanted to heroically return to the Philippines, which obviously he eventually did. He wanted to get New Guinea over as quickly as he possibly could. And consequently, as I write in my book, a lot of young men died.
SPEAKER_00The place there in New Guinea, people unfamiliar. I don't know that we can even begin to describe the Owen Stanley Mountains, New Guinea itself, and what a difficult, you know, and hostile environment. And it's been said by historians, probably one of the worst environments to try to go over and try to be in the battle as well. And uh that was your experience that you found out firsthand.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, MacArthur's chief engineering officer called it the ultimate nightmare country. He said that they would experience or face challenges without precedent in American military history on the island of New Guinea. And they did. First of all, the men of the 32nd Division, your father, they were sent to New Guinea and they were kid, they were considered the guinea pigs of the South Pacific. So they were sent there largely with World War I uniforms, World War I uh weaponry, no malaria, um prophylactions. And um so many of them came down with dysentery and malaria and scrub typhus and berry berry, all these terrible, terrible diseases. Once they got to the battlefield, they called it a knife fight out of the Stone Age. One of the famous Australian war historians called it one of the most merciless and most primeval battles in history. So these men didn't have any notion of what they were getting into. And I don't think MacArthur had any notion, even after being, you know, in the Philippines on the Bataan Peninsula, which is rugged, rugged country, uh, but not as rugged as Papua New Guinea. And I don't think that he was prepared for uh what his soldiers were about to confront.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. What do you think was the uh strategic importance of Buna and Gona? There was a northern part of uh the tail end of New Guinea. Uh why was it so important for them to uh reach there and and take that beachhead?
SPEAKER_02Well, they were gonna initially they were gonna try to take that beachhead, and then the Japanese did march um across also across the Owen Stanley Mountains on something called the Kokoda Track, where they eventually met the Australians who were brought back from North Africa to help defend New Guinea. But their goal was to take Port Moresby, to take that great harbor, you know, and then have access to not only that harbor, have access to airfields from which they could bomb Australia and also not only bomb Australia, but all but interrupt the supply line, the 8,000 mile supply line that ran from the west coast of the United States to Australia. So they considered essential, but ultimately the Japanese they came to a ridge called Yoruba Ridge, just short of Port Moresby. In fact, they were looking down on the harbor when the Australians, and they were fighting about 50 miles to the north of the Ghost Mountain Boys, and the Australians in what is, you know, the great battle, you know, the great battle as far, if you're an Australian, this is the heroic battle of their nation, is when they pushed the bat Japanese back on the Kokoda track to the Buna, Gona, and Santa Nanda front, which was the beachhead that they landed at. And these were elite Japanese forces. And the 32nd Division, for instance, that some of whom went over the Owen Stanley Mountains, walked over, some who were eventually flown over, were not cracked troop. They were not trained for jungle warfare. In fact, they trained in Louisiana, as you probably know, at Camp Livingston for modern mechanized mobile warfare. Uh, they had no idea that they were going to Papua New Guinea.
SPEAKER_00James, I love the way the terrain and what you talked about, and have we've tried to explain it. I don't know if it can be explained in words, but it it it becomes a character in your book. Man, you're in your book uh there it reads like a novel. And I want to get into some of the characters there in the book, but the the terrain obviously was a big, big part of uh of what you wrote about and how you described uh the whole situation about that cruel, cruel march. I think 800 men started out on that, am I correct?
SPEAKER_02Eventually over a th just over a thousand men. Yeah, they Bob Hartman. I don't know if you remember the quote from Bob Hartman. Um he said, if I owned New Guinea and I owned hell, I would I would live in hell and rent out New Guinea. And he was a he was a real character, and I, you know, had the great privilege of meeting him. But yeah, the y you cannot imagine the kind of country they were walking through without being there. I mean, they walked through jungles, through swamps, and then into the mountains. Initially, you know, the foothills, then they got into the mountains and they were going up over 10,500 foot mountains. They were, you know, moving out of the valleys where it was sweltering, you know, it was 95 degrees with 95% humidity. And then they got up into the mountains and they were nearly freezing. You know, they were icy rains up in the mountains, and by then they'd already pitched most of the stuff that might keep them warm because they were trying, you know, they were trying to lighten their loads. They barely made it over. And one thing I should say is that the Papua Naginians ultimately chose to help the American soldiers. They realized they did kind of a uh a calculation and they realized that the Japanese were treating them quite brutally. So many of them helped the American soldiers. And something I talk about to this day is that without the Papua New Guinea carriers and some of the scouts that guided them over the mountains, I don't think the Ghost Mountain boys would have made it over those mountains. Certainly MacArthur had no idea, you know, that he was sending, you know, men nearly to their death when he ordered them to march across the mountains. But the Papua-Naguinians cannot be thanked enough for their role in that battle.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that was really my next question was about how valuable those carriers were. And I I believe that when you went on your treks there and uh over the Owen Stanley, that you also had some guides and some carriers that helped y'all along.
SPEAKER_02Oh, we did, yeah. So the first time I I went over in 2004 and 2005 to find out if there was any trail left. And I ultimately discovered that, yes, the people told me that, you know, many of those villages, they're completely removed from, you know, the modern world. They might have a kerosene lantern if they're lucky. But some of them are, you know, a 10-day walk, at least 10 days in our time, maybe five days in theirs, but a 10-day walk from the nearest road. They had a huge role in guiding the soldiers over. And in 2006, I went back after kind of assembling a small team and realizing that I could patch together a bunch of trails and get over the mountains. So we went with a very small team in Australia and who'd been living in Papua New Guinea for a long time, who had a lot of jungle experience, and he kind of led us over the mountains along with villagers that we picked up along the way. But it was an absolutely exhausting trip, definitely one of the hardest of my life. First day I fell down the mountain, I tore the ACL in my knee, and then I eventually got out of the jungle, got back to Port Moresby, got painkillers, and was helicoptered back out and continued. But um, it was definitely one of the hardest things I've ever done. And and then in 2018, I'm very proud to say that I brought our middle daughter, who was 15 at the time, she walked it with me for 23 days. So it became, you know, kind of a family, kind of a family experience.
SPEAKER_00What a great story, and what a great thing for your family to be a part of. And you spoke, you spoke about the uh the lack of proper equipment. These soldiers coming from the National Guard, my father, of course, was from Louisiana, and I guess he got put in that as an attachment. Or and I remember my father telling me they came in, of course, he had never been out of North Louisiana. Now he had a little advantage. He was a trapper. He had he'd walk 18 miles a day trapping uh in the hills of North Louisiana. So he was a very good shape, but he had never been 30 miles from his home. And of course, talked about going to San Francisco and leaving out there and coming to Adelaide. And they trained there, uh, finally trained, but they didn't have the uniforms were the wrong die and uh the equipment and supplies, they just didn't have enough. No way were they ready going through what they had to go through.
SPEAKER_02No, in fact, there's a quote um from my book that I that I still remember. One of the men who walked over, he said, all who were alive were so near death. In the beginning, we were all young, healthy GIs, eager to conquer the world. In a matter of weeks, long before we met the enemy force, all of us had been transformed into ghosts of our former selves. They had cellulitis, they had crotch rot, they had uh trench foot, many of them, many of them had dysenterum, many of them had malaria, they had dengue fever, and uh they were marching over some of the most formidable country in the world. And again, I, you know, not to overemphasize it, but you have to see it to believe it. You know, the Ghost Mountain Trail or the Kappa Kappa Trail, once you get into the mountains, it goes straight up and straight down. There, there, there are no um US, you know, there are no Net National Park District switch switch uh switchbacks, service uh switchbacks. Yeah, it just goes straight up and straight down.
SPEAKER_00And I think I've read where you said a lot of this has not changed in 40 or 50, 60 years. It still remains somewhat a wilderness.
SPEAKER_02Much of it remains a wilderness. Um, in fact, I I have an Australian partner. We're trying to bring educational supplies and medicines into the valley because people there are still dying of infections from uh from a cut, or women are still dying during childbirth, way, way more than they should. So we brought in a health clinic and two health officials for the first time they've ever had it. So uh, and a vaccination program for the people. So we're still I'm trying to stay involved as much as I can in, you know, in the Papua New Guinea that I love.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's wonderful. And uh I I know you may have been one of the first to come and and try to uh help the help those natives out. My father did get a hold of some pictures there, and uh these were true native. I mean, the Papua New Guinness, uh, they they did live on a subsistence life. They just lived right off the land, really.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, they live a subsistent way of life. I mean, they have gardens and that's where they get their food. And uh they're very there's very little protein. There are now wild pigs, so they'll go and they'll try to kill wild pigs. Yeah, what they they eat, what they grow in those villages. They really have they don't have access to markets, or they have the access to the markets requires days and days of walking. And many of them live like you know their ancestors have for hundreds of years. I I I don't want to use the word primitive, but it is, it's remote, but they're wonderful people. They're some of the most wonderful people I've ever encountered in my life, and they also happen to be physical specimens. Um, they they can walk up and down those mountains twice as fast as we can, even after a year of training.
SPEAKER_00And I noticed a lot of them. Uh, I did see a little clip of your documentary. They're barefooted, they don't have any shoes on.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, no shoes. And they probably have uh two inches of callus, you know, callus feet. Unbelievable. Up and down those mountains, and yeah, I remember remember one time I was carrying my backpack and I was struggling up this mountain, and this old woman was walking right next to me with a string bag and a tump line around her head, and it was loaded with sweet potatoes. And she asked me about as fast as fast as a car on the inner on the interstate.
SPEAKER_03Oh my god.
SPEAKER_02And and I had trained for a year for that trip. And, you know, they're just really amazing people. They showed a ton of kindness and generosity to the soldiers, and they've showed a ton of kindness and generosity to me. And so I'm trying to, you know, I'm trying to pay pay it back.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. That was evident in your book, too, about uh how the uh natives and the people there really uh uh had a lot of affection for the Americans. They were treated right by the Americans, and they did not have a lot of affection for the enemy, I don't think, because maybe the way they were treated there. But uh they did have a lot to say about the American, and still I understand they still talk about it when they sit around their fires or whatever they do and still talk about the Americans coming in.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's really an amazing thing. You know, they're a storytelling culture. You so they don't they don't have books, they don't have TV, they don't have radio, they don't have phones. So what they do is they they sit around the fires at night and they perpetuate these stories. And you can imagine how earth-shaking that would have been in you know the early 1940s when they're living their lives in their jungle, and then the war comes to their island, and then these men are walking across the mountains. Yeah, it was the most significant thing that uh probably ever happened in Papua New Guinea. So they still tell those, they still tell those stories. In fact, the the little kids in the villages still know those stories of the U.S. soldiers coming through the villages in 1942, you know, in 1943, and it's really a a remarkable thing. It's a remarkable thing to to sit there and try to make out what they're saying and listen to those stories, or at least just participate in the experience.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you mentioned some of the soldiers, and I'll tell you, you did a fantastic job with the the characters, the people, the real people in in the book. It reads like a novel. And uh some of your people there that uh that really touched me in a very deep way. Uh, I mean, you brought out all their humanity, you know, as you you talked about the letters, letters they sent home and some of the things they put in their journals. But a few of these people just stuck out, and especially the one that hit me probably the most was the medic there, Simon uh Womanhaven or Woman. Womanhoven. Yeah. That uh boy, that uh I just encourage everybody, please get the book, Ghost Mountain Boys. It reads just like a novel, and you'll be so enthralled by the real people who did the impossible, really. But that guy, unbelievable. Uh Alfred uh Minindrop, I believe, uh was uh a character there, a person there. And uh Gus Bailey, you know, Jim Boyce. Yeah, all these people, I'm sure you there's there's a lot more in there. And every one of these, you brought out their humanity, you brought out who they really were as a person. You could feel their connection with their families and what they were going through. It uh it just I tell you, it makes you want to cry, really. And I probably cried several times reading your book because of the humanity of it and what they were going through and how they uh responded and how they so wanted to be at home, but they knew they had to be where they were.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, yeah. Well, you you just got excuse me. I apologize.
SPEAKER_00No, no, no, no. No, I I understand. Hey, I I did the same thing myself, Jane.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I still still get emotional.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_02Uh yeah, um a lot of those men be you know became very dear to me.
SPEAKER_00You take your time, my friend. I tell you, I probably I had to put the book down several times uh because it just it was just too much. You know, thinking about my father and and uh what he I bet yeah, it was it was almost it was almost too much at times for me to to try to come to grips with. But yeah again, I don't know how I'm gonna tell you any more different, but if you hadn't written this book, I've gained so much out of it. I have a family that has gained so much out of it because they didn't know, and I obviously six grandchildren, they have no idea about what that was about. So you bringing that to life, I mean, I think it's a divine uh you given a divine gift uh that you gave to a lot of people, especially to people who have had had people involved, but even if you didn't have anybody involved, surely, surely people, you can understand the uh what this is all about and the sacrifices that were made. We just had Memorial Day. I mean the tremendous sacrifices uh you just can't describe the sacrifice that these people went through. And people like my father didn't ever talk about it. We would have a army show on TV, and he would not say a word. He would just get up and go to his bedroom. Oh my. He didn't say turn it off, he didn't say, y'all get out of here. He didn't say anything. He just got up and left. And I never knew why until, as I said, finally, uh, you know, I've always was interested in maybe his what he did over there, but I never got into it that much. I was a young kid just trying to live my life. We came back home, and he came back home and tried to make a great life and a great family. And and he did. Great provider.
SPEAKER_02And he did. Well, good good for him. Not not all of them were able to do that. You know, it it that I mean that's just such a powerful, powerful and common experience. I I I mean, many of those men, you know, grew grew very, very dear to me and dear to my family. So, but it it was so common that they didn't talk about it. And I remember when they first started talking about it with me, sometimes I'd get a call from one of the soldiers' why, you know, a wife of one of the soldiers, and she'd say, you know, so-and-so is having horrible nightmares. He can't sleep at night. We might have to stop doing that. And then the the next day, the soldier would call me back and he would say, you know, I can't stop doing this. We this is cathartic. This is the first time I've ever talked about it in my life, and I need to get it, you know, I need to get it out before I die. And um, you know, the last thing I wanted to do was bring bring pain to these men who'd always who had already suffered so much physical and emotional and you know, pain, but they insisted, you know, uh on on telling the stories because it was cleansing for them, you know. They they'd never talked about it before. And so often, your experience, you know, so many of the family members never ever heard those stories, and the ones that did later in life, I you know, they considered themselves lucky.
SPEAKER_00Oh I consider be very blessed that I was able to finally get him to open up and it was but you know, reading that the book uh Bloody Buna. And as I said, it it was very difficult for him. It was it was hard for him to listen to any any of that. But I'm so glad that uh that I did that. I'm so glad that I've tried to uh honor what he did and what he sacrificed over there because he didn't lose his life, but it was ultimate, and it affected him. I woke up many times with him having a bad dream. Oh, yeah. And that would happen, that happened quite a bit. You know, he would just scream out.
SPEAKER_02And uh do you know if he ever had a malaria attacks after coming home?
SPEAKER_00I do not know. I know he was wounded. Uh he had a bad wound in his leg. I don't I think it I think he did, I think he did have uh uh maybe some some of those. I I wish I would have uh talked about that more about some because they almost had to come away with uh uh some of those diseases, I would think.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean to you till that late in life, some men, you know, had the skin on their feet and legs would slough off. Um many of them had recurrent malaria because if the the what happens is the parasite resides in the liver, and if you don't if you don't kill the parasite, then you get recurrent malaria attacks. And many of the men had them for decades um until until that was finally treated. But of course, you know, the memories were the toughest. And um, you know, though those were tough for you know, those were tough for the men to live with. I yeah, I had the great, great privilege of getting to know almost a hundred of them. And um, yeah, many of them became many of them became my dear friends.
SPEAKER_00Wonderful. I I don't know how many are left. I think they used they used to have a reunion. They called my father one time from Wisconsin.
SPEAKER_02Oh, they did. Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_00And uh he was not able to attend. But uh, I don't know if there's there can't be a whole lot of them left at this point.
SPEAKER_02No, there I the the the last one that I knew passed away two years ago. And unfortunately, you know, with the passing of those men, the the Red Arrow group that used to, you know, perpetuate the memory of that war and also sponsor the get-togethers ceased to exist. So that's we we've lost something really special.
SPEAKER_00No doubt. Yeah, I would certainly like to know if you ever hear of any kind of uh family reunion with the uh division. I would certainly like to know about that and try to try to make that. And one uh the person though that my father uh he just went on and on about Captain Herman Butcher. He served with him. I way I understood it, my father was a a frontal scout, and uh Hermann Butcher had a few men that they would go out and and uh be ahead of the other regiment. But can you tell us much about I know Hermann Butcher was a German by uh birth?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, he was j German born and he left uh Germany um uh and he was bound uh uh for Sydney, Australia. And eventually in the 30s, he came he came to San Fran he came to San Francisco and um he went off to to Spain lured by the Civil War, where he um in enlisted with the International Brigade, and he spent two years there fighting with the Loyalists and rose to the rank of captain, and then he returned to San Francisco, and I think he worked um, if I recall, as a cabinet maker. And I think he was probably living a quiet life until Pearl Harbor. And the day after Pearl Harbor, he enlisted. And less than a month later, um he reported to Camp Robert in California. But Herman Botcher was legendary, as you know. And if your father, if your father fought with them, as you said, your father was a forward scout because Herman Butcher was ahead of the rest of the 32nd. Um, as I said, there's still a plaque to him. I mean, there is a plaque to him at Buna. And he, Herman Bocher, is the first one who to break through the Japanese line and make it to the beachhead. In the first one, I don't know if your father was there with him. I imagine he was, but there were very few men, maybe a dozen men that broke through the Japanese line and held a position on the beachhead, and eventually the rest of the 32nd Division followed their course to the beachhead and for the first time, you know, broke broke the Japanese hold on you know, on that battle front.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, so well described in your book as well, the final battles there. And you know what, uh James, also you you did a great job in speaking of the Japanese, and they went through torture in hell themselves. The commander there, Hori, I believe, is that uh how you pronounce his name?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, Hori, right.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and uh you know you brought the humanity out, even in the fierce, fierce enemy, the Japanese, but they suffered as well.
SPEAKER_02Well, thank you. I also wanted to tell the the Japanese story, and I guess as much as the 32nd Division suffered, the Japanese may have suffered more. They were eating horses, they were eating snakes, they were doing anything they could to stay alive, they had no food, as they were retreating on the Kokoda track back to the beachhead, having unsuccessfully made an effort to get to Port Moresby, and they were to utter starvation for them, might point out, and I don't mean mean to be ghoulish, but you know, they resorted to um cannibalism. I found the war journals of a number at the National Archives of Japanese, some of the Japanese soldiers that fought on the Kokoda track in in Papua New Guinea and at Buna Gona and San Ananda. And, you know, they you know, of course, they're normal people. They're they're fighting a war, but they have loved ones behind, they have children behind, you know, and some of those journals were, you know, were quite beautiful.
SPEAKER_00I guess such a fierce and determined uh the beachhead there at Buna and Gona. I mean, that was I don't know how long the uh battle lasted. I forgot in your book, but tell us about how a fierce battle there when when they did the 32nd reached Buna and Gona. As you said, they came in there. Herman Botcher was the first to to get in there, but that was just unbelievable. Like you said, hand to hand, it was uh terrible.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, as they said, they called it a knife fight out of the Stone Age. So we had no destroyers, we had no howitzer, they had no destroyers, no shelling the Japanese positions, no tanks, not until late, late in the battle, no howitzers. So they resorted to Civil War tactics, you know, fixed bayonets, and they would charge the Japanese position. And the Japanese had been there since July, so or actually late June. So they had a chance to fortify their position on the beachhead. So up and down this 11-mile front, they had these reinforced and interconnected bunkers, and we had nothing to take them out. So we resorted to, you know, as I said, the Civil War tactics, to attacking them with fixed bayonets. And they also occupied the only high ground on the beach. The rest was swamps. So our men, our 30, you know, our red arrow men, you know, they fought, and that's where they died in the in those swamps. And, you know, way, way too many of them died. And General MacArthur eventually relieved General Um Edwin Forrest Harding, who he thought was not pushing the battle hard enough, and sent in General Robert Eichelberger, and he said, take Buna, or you might remember that, or don't come back alive.
SPEAKER_00I believe that said it all. MacArthur made a promise to get back to the Philippines, and this was the first place that he had to start right there. But I guess uh no, what what do you think the lesson is about maybe leadership, uh the successes or the failures of that whole campaign? There had to be some lessons learned, or sh and I believe MacArthur himself learned a lot of lessons from that campaign.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, he did. And as you probably know, I'm I'm not easy on MacArthur. I feel that um, and as a matter of fact, General Robert Eichelberger was not very easy on MacArthur. He wrote in his memoirs later, the great hero went home without seeing Buno before, during, or after the fight, while permitting press articles from his GHQ to say he was leading his troops in battle. So MacArthur stayed, remained in Port Moresby. He never ever visited the front. So he was never there to motivate his men, he never saw what they were going through. So I consequently, I think he sent a lot of men to their deaths because he didn't know what they were up against. But, you know, to his credit, he did learn something at Buna. And he said that never ever again would he fight that kind of battle. And later on in the New Guinea campaign, he used the U.S. Army Air Corps to bomb the supply lines of the Japanese, as he later wrote in his memoirs, let the troops let them rot on the vine. So he he never would do that full frontal assault again that he did at Buna, and you know, which was not a good strategy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. My father also fought Lady, and he said it was a completely different uh type of uh battle there. Uh so I so I guess uh MacArthur did learn a lot, but I think it was a couple of more places my father fought after Buna and Gono. He went on in you know into the Philippines and Lady Gulf and uh those campaigns there. James, you know you put a lot of your life into the 32nd Division and the 126th Infantry. Uh so what do you what do you believe is really the maybe the legacy of the Ghost Mountain Boys?
SPEAKER_02Oh my gosh. That's a tough one. Well, I think that well, Guadacanal, you know, as I said, happened at the same time. And of course, Guadacanal was capturing was capturing the headlines, you know, and Guadacanal got, you know, only nine percent of the of the supplies in the war made it to the Pacific. Everything was being sent, you know, to Europe. So the men who fought in the Pacific suffered mightily, but no one suffered more mightily than the people who were fighting on like your father, who were fighting on the island of New Guinea. It was, you know, an extraordinary example of courage and perseverance, you know, and um geez, I guess just you know, love for one another, you know, they fought for their brothers.
SPEAKER_00You hear that so much in your book about the reasons why they had to come to grips with what they were going through, and it was because of the guy the next to you and because of the family back home. And yeah, that was the motivating factor that but man, uh, by the time they got to Buna and Gona, these soldiers were unbelievably not fit to do what they had to do. And I don't act of God or heroic things that they did. It's just uh unbelievable. And thank you for capturing that.
SPEAKER_02Well, thank you. I want to say one more thing about MacArthur. I I didn't do justice to that quote, but he said at the war's end, and he said privately, MacArthur was resolved never again to force a head-on collision of the bloody grinding type. And he said there would be no more boon.
SPEAKER_00Well, I have to tell you, and my my father almost worshipped the man, and I, you know, that that was the way he thought about him. And after I read uh your book, read uh several, I you know, I knew the reality of it. He was human, as you said. Uh it sounds like he he came uh through and and learned and uh never again, never again.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, and and consequently he saved lives later on in the war. There's no question about it. He definitely learned from his experience at Buno.
SPEAKER_00Well, this has been a great, great time. I've so enjoyed talking with you about this. It means a lot. I appreciate it. But uh, what motivates you to continue chasing these difficult stories and these remote adventures, you know, after all this time, you probably got some things planned uh in the future.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I guess I do. Uh well, as I said, there's nothing I love more in the world than going to remote places and tracking down amazing stories of fortitude and courage. And um, you know, fortunately, I'm I'm still still largely healthy and I have a supportive family and a very supportive wife. So it's something I hope I can, you know, continue to do until until I can't do it anymore. And I don't I don't know when that might be, but you know, I've been I've been blessed with physical health and a wonderful family, and um I hope to be able to keep it up.
SPEAKER_00Well, I so hope you're able to go for a long, long, long time. Looking back, uh, which one of your books or projects you think changed you personally the most?
SPEAKER_02Oh my gosh, that is that is just so, so difficult to answer. Um well, I just I think that probably the Ghost Mountain boys. I mean, here we hardly young men. They were almost still boys, you know. They were 17, 18, 19, 20-year-old young men in the prime of their lives with dreams and uh hopes. Um, and the war comes, and then they're sent to a place like New Guinea. And again, it was the last place in the world they wanted to be, but they just they showed such extraordinary courage, you know, just a courage above and beyond. It's just I marvel at what they were able to accomplish and marvel at the men, you know, uh at the men they later became.
SPEAKER_00Well, I'd so love the way you came about that story too. You know, when you you and your brother went over there and and you said, hey, there's there's something that needs to be told. And it took you a long time to try to digest that and research it and get all of it out. But you knew you knew, I guess, there's something you had to do really was tell the story of the ghost mountain boys.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, I did, and I I thank you for the interview and for your passion for the story. And obviously, it was it was a very personal story for you, and I certainly appreciate that.
SPEAKER_00Well, James, anything else we may have left out here in in our discussion? Uh, again, uh what a wonderful, wonderful conversation with you, and uh so look forward to it, and I'm so so happy that you were able to cut out some time to uh to do it.
SPEAKER_02You know, it's been one of the great pleasures of my life. It's as you obviously as you noted, it's it's hard for me to talk about. The book was published in 2008, and I still have a tough time talking about it. Um, you know, a lot of the a lot of those men became my dear friends.
SPEAKER_00That just shows your heart. It really shows your heart about where you are, and you uh have put uh your heart and soul into every adventure that you have. But I want you to know from uh this little Louisiana guy here and uh my family, we have so treasured your book and what you brought to uh let us know about our loved one, and it meant so much to all of us.
SPEAKER_02Well, that means a lot to me, too.
SPEAKER_03I I really appreciate that.
SPEAKER_01As we wrap up Mike's conversation today with the author, James Campbell, we remember that the story of the Ghost Mountain Boys is more than a chapter in history. It's a testament to courage, sacrifice, and the unbreakable spirit of ordinary men asked to do extraordinary things. The men of the 32nd Red Arrow Division climbed impossible mountains, endured unimaginable hardship, and left footprints not only across the jungles of New Guinea, but across generations. To those heroes, we offer our gratitude, and to all listening today, may we never forget that freedom has always had a price, and brave men were willing to pay it. Until next time, thank you for listening, and thank you to the Ghost Mountain Boys.