The epic Guadalcanal campaign lasted six months, from 7 August 1942 to 9 February 1943. It featured seven major naval battles, a score or more large-scale battles ashore, the almost daily cut and thrust of aerial clashes, and dozens of encounters between ships and planes. The long struggle remains without peer in military history for heavy, sustained combat in all three dimensions—land, sea, and air. Japan and the United States battled at even odds, resulting in a see-saw campaign with first one antagonist and then the other gaining the upper hand.
With no other major U.S. effort on any other front competing for attention, Guadalcanal riveted the American public. The country's oscillating fortunes sent its senior leaders soaring into unwarranted optimism at the opening stages only to plummet into despair as the specter of a catastrophic American defeat rose before them. Guadalcanal carried strategic and psychological implications far beyond the immediate issue of who would prevail on the obscure island.
Admiral Ernest J. King, the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Fleet, willed the campaign into existence. He aimed to exploit the great June 1942 victory at Midway and block further Japanese advances down through the South Pacific threatening the lines of communication to Australia and New Zealand. King foresaw earlier than others that the United States could generate the resources to support an offensive in the Pacific even within the context of a fundamental commitment to the Allies' "Germany first" strategy. That offensive would deny Japan a respite in which to fortify her newly won Pacific frontier.
Radio intelligence warned of Japanese intentions to build an airbase on Guadalcanal, one of the southern Solomon Islands near the equator, northeast of Australia. Jungle-covered Guadalcanal is 90 miles long, but it featured a grassy northern coastal plain suitable for an airfield. King convinced General George C. Marshall, the Chief of Staff of the U.S Army, to authorize on 2 July 1942 a three-step campaign plan ultimately aimed at seizing Rabaul, the main Japanese bastion in the South Pacific. The first step was the seizure of Guadalcanal—Operation Watchtower.
King catapulted the effort at astonishing speed. Sea, land, and air forces hastily assembled from the West Coast, Hawaii, Australia, and New Zealand. The landing force was the 1st Marine Division under Major General Alexander Archer Vandegrift. The division's ranks contained few men of long service but overflowed with post-Pearl Harbor enlistees, overwhelmingly teenagers. King had assured the Marines that Vandegrift's neophyte division would have six months for desperately needed training before commitment to combat. Instead, Vandegrift found himself preparing for the first American offensive of the war within three weeks of arrival in New Zealand. There was no time for proper intelligence-gathering, planning was chaotic, and a much-needed landing rehearsal in the Fiji Islands proved nearly useless because of unanticipated reefs. One officer would ruefully comment that experienced logistical planners later in the war would have pronounced the Guadalcanal operation as impossible.
Despite all the handicaps, fortune initially showered favor on the enterprise. Cloud cover masked the task forces' approach from Japanese search planes. Consequently, the 1st Marine Division achieved complete strategic and tactical surprise when it landed on Guadalcanal and the nearby islands of Tulagi and Gavutu-Tanambogo on 7 August 1942. After stiff fights, Tulagi and Gavutu-Tanambogo were secured on 8 August. That same day the main Marine contingent on Guadalcanal occupied the unfinished airfield after very light enemy resistance. Most of the island's Japanese garrison were Korean laborers who fled the coastal plain, near Lunga Point, after the preliminary naval bombardment.
Then, however, the tide of fortune dramatically reversed. Vice Admiral Gunichi Mikawa, commander of the Japanese 8th Fleet at Rabaul, daringly led a pick-up task force of cruisers and a destroyer down to the waters off Savo Island, just off the northwestern coast of Guadalcanal. Early on 9 August, Mikawa inflicted the worst defeat at sea the U.S. Navy ever sustained, sinking three American and one Australian cruiser while sustaining trifling damage in return. The calamity plus the withdrawal of the covering carrier task force compelled Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner, the amphibious force commander, to pull back his transports and their escorts that same afternoon.
Thus began one of the greatest chapters in the illustrious history of the U.S. Marine Corps. Vandegrift's now-isolated Marines formed a position along the coast with short inland extensions around Lunga Point. Within that enclave rested the airfield site they soon completed and named Henderson Field after a Marine flier killed at Midway. Facing a dreadful shortage of equipment and supplies, Vandegrift immediately placed the garrison on a two-meal-a-day schedule. Unchallenged Japanese aviators and sailors began a program of day and night bombing and bombardment.
Certain that the United States could not mount a major Pacific offensive before 1943, top Japanese officers easily convinced themselves that the American adventure was limited, perhaps only a raid. Accordingly, they first dispatched a reinforced battalion task force under Colonel Kiyoano Ichiki to retake the airfield. While Japanese destroyers transported Ichiki and his men to a location east of the American position, the first U.S. planes reached the island on 20 August. These were two Marine squadrons, one of fighters and one of dive bombers. Their appearance tremendously boosted Marine morale for they tangibly signified intent to support the garrison. More important, the planes, and the ultimately scores more to follow, provided the means to strike back against Japanese air supremacy.
Ignoring a vulnerable open inland flank, Ichiki launched his command into a frantic frontal charge during the night of 20-21 August. The attack fell at the mouth of a feature known as the Tenaru River to the defenders, who comprised mainly elements of the 2d Battalion, 1st Marines (including Private Robert Leckie). The tidal watercourse with a conspicuous sandbar was actually Alligator Creek. In accordance with the traditions and doctrine of the Imperial Japanese Army, Ichiki mainly relied on swords, bayonets, and raw courage rather than firepower to break through the Marine position. The Japanese believed that American morale would collapse once a penetration was achieved. The tactics had worked all too well so far against the Allies. But the green Marines not only stood firm, the next day they trapped and nearly annihilated Ichiki's command.
The Battle of the Tenaru was arguably the most fateful small battle of the Pacific war. In the aftermath of the action, Marines and Navy corpsmen attempted to capture and treat the surviving wounded Japanese. The stunned Americans, from Vandegrift on down, discovered that the Japanese not only attempted to kill themselves rather than accept surrender but also sought to kill their would-be Good Samaritans. From that moment the Marines learned the Japanese not only were not taking prisoners (as an earlier patrol action had warned), but that they would not surrender. The lesson resonated throughout the American armed forces and set the savage code for the whole Pacific war.
On 24 August, American and Japanese carriers clashed in the Battle of the Eastern Solomons. Although the fleet carrier USS Enterprise (CV-6) was damaged, the Americans under Vice Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher sank the light carrier Ryujo and got much the better of the exchange in aircraft and particularly aircrews. The action also defeated a Japanese reinforcement attempt.
With these battles in late August, the campaign took on a novel cast: a change of sea control every 12 hours, creating a mutual siege. By day, American planes on Guadalcanal countered repeated Japanese bombing raids, protected a trickle of supply ships that kept the Marines barely supplied and fed, and denied the enemy the chance to use slow cargo ships to reinforce its forces on Guadalcanal. By night, the Imperial Japanese Navy ruled the waters off Guadalcanal. Swift destroyers and occasionally cruisers the Americans dubbed the "Tokyo Express" sprinted down the "Slot" (New Georgia Sound) to deliver men and supplies to Guadalcanal and customarily to bombard the American positions. But the Japanese did not linger till daylight lest they fall prey to U.S. airpower that gradually included Navy, Marine, and Army Air Forces squadrons. This hodgepodge of air units became the "Cactus Air Force" (Cactus was the code name for Guadalcanal) and marked the first truly joint service operations in American military history.
Still underestimating the number of Americans ashore, the Japanese renewed their effort to recapture Guadalcanal's airfield in September with Major General Kiyotaki Kawaguchi's 35th Brigade. Kawaguchi proved the most astute Japanese soldier to fight on Guadalcanal. He cast a plan around a deep inland flanking march he calculated would permit him to launch an attack on the undefended southern perimeter of the American position and capture the vital airfield. When he devised his plan, it offered excellent prospects. Based on a prescient analysis of Kawaguchi's intentions from patrol encounters, Vandegrift deployed the 1st Marine Raider Battalion under Lieutenant Colonel Merritt A. Edson, reinforced by the depleted 1st Marine Parachute Battalion, on a ridge offering an obvious avenue of approach from the south.
On two successive nights between 12 and 14 September, Kawaguchi struck. On the second night, he came within a hair's breadth of victory. But inspired by Edson and bolstered by devastating artillery fire, the Marines barely held what became known as Edson's Ridge. Having sustained devastating casualties, Kawaguchi led his starving survivors on a terrible forced march to the west, where the Japanese now intended to mount their main effort.
The Japanese, having failed with a battalion in August and a brigade in September, extended their pattern of piecemeal commitment by planning an October attack by a division. But this time Emperor Hirohito's army and navy commanders planned a coordinated effort. The Japanese Navy's airmen in the Solomons mounted repeated raids to quell American airpower on Guadalcanal, as nightly runs deposited soldiers of the 2nd "Sendai" Division on Guadalcanal. On the night of 11-12 October, an American cruiser-destroyer task force won a victory over a similar Japanese force at the Battle of Cape Esperance. But about 48 hours later, after the U.S. Army's 164th Infantry Regiment reached Guadalcanal, two Japanese battleships pummeled Henderson Field with nearly 1,000 huge shells. It was the most intense single bombardment American forces have ever faced.
Although the Marines endured scores of other nights on the receiving end of imperial navy gunfire, they ever after referred to this one as "The Bombardment." It reduced American airpower on Guadalcanal to near impotence. The Japanese were able to anchor a five-ship convoy off the island in broad daylight and unload the vessels before the gaze of the American defenders.
The Bombardment, followed by the arrival of the convoy, unnerved top civilian and uniformed officials in Washington. Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox could not give reporters a definitive assurance that Guadalcanal would be held. Facing the prospect of defeat, Washington leaders authorized the release of more extensive and far darker information about the situation. The New York Times published an editorial that amounted to a eulogy for the Americans on the island: "Guadalcanal: the name will not die out of the memories of this generation. It will endure with honor." But Admiral Chester Nimitz, the Pacific Fleet's Commander-in-Chief, met the crisis by replacing failing Vice Admiral Robert L. Ghormley as South Pacific commander with the aggressive Vice Admiral William F. Halsey Jr.
Fortunately, the one place where dark doubts gained no hold was the place where it counted the most: Guadalcanal. By this point, Vandegrift had installed a full perimeter around the airfield, but he and his staff projected that the most likely Japanese move was a thrust near the coast across the Matanikau River, west of the main position. From there the Japanese could mass artillery to neutralize the now-multiple American airfields. Their loss would result in forfeiting the ability to resupply U.S. forces on the island. American defeat on Guadalcanal then would be inevitable.
The senior Japanese officer then on Guadalcanal, 17th Army commander Lieutenant General Harukichi Hyakutake, and his staff perceived things differently. They believed an attack near the coast would turn into a firepower match they could not win because of the American stranglehold on their logistics. Accordingly, Hyakutake authorized part of his forces to engage American attention along the Matanikau while the Sendai Division, one of the most illustrious in the Imperial Japanese Army, conducted a stealthy march through the jungle south of the American perimeter and then staged a surprise attack on a thinly defended sector.
The Sendai soldiers, however, found themselves on a nightmare trek that delayed and disorganized them. A miscommunication about a postponement of the main attack led to a premature feinting thrust along the Matanikau that was crushed by Marine infantry and artillery. Nevertheless, the Japanese diversion worked to the extent that the Marine command was shifting units to meet it until dusk fell on 24 October. South of the airfields, Lieutenant Colonel Lewis "Chesty" Puller's 1st Battalion, 7th Marines held a sector that was originally prepared for a regiment. Although in theory the Sendai Division had nine infantry battalions to send against Puller's one, the disorganized Japanese only managed to send parts of three battalions forward. Puller's men, reinforced by the Army's 2nd Battalion, 164th Infantry just managed to contain the attack. During the night, Sergeant John Basilone earned the Medal of Honor for the pivotal role his machine-gun section played in halting the Japanese. The attackers tried again the next night, but Puller's Marines, reinforced with Army troops, again held.
No sooner was the Battle of Henderson Field over than two American carriers took on four Japanese counterparts at the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands. Tactically, the Americans lost. The USS Hornet (CV-8) and a destroyer were sunk. While no Japanese ships went down, two carriers were damaged and imperial navy air groups sustained more losses than at Midway. Both sides now had only one operational carrier.
After three failures on land, the Japanese paused to ponder whether to quit Guadalcanal. Convinced that they had inflicted far more damage on the American fleet in the carrier battle, and drawn on by monitored American media accounts of the perilous situation on Guadalcanal, the Japanese chose to try again. They scaled up the October effort to include more air attacks, a battleship bombardment, and a large, 11-ship convoy to not only land reinforcements but also to make good the accumulated supply deficit.
Soon after taking command in the South Pacific, Halsey had said to Vandegrift, "I promise you everything I've got." Now the admiral made good on that pledge. As the opposing fleets headed into battle with the outcome of the campaign at stake, tension at the White House reached a level only surpassed during the war on the eve of the D-Day invasion of Europe. In the early hours of 13 November, a sacrificial fight by an outgunned American cruiser-destroyer task force thwarted the battleship bombardment. Two American admirals, Daniel Callaghan and Norman Scott, were killed. The next day, American planes from Guadalcanal and the Enterprise pummeled the Japanese convoy, leaving just four cargo ships still on course for Guadalcanal as darkness fell. That night off Savo Island, Rear Admiral Willis A. Lee's task force composed of the battleships Washington (BB-56) and South Dakota (BB-57) and four destroyers met a Japanese force that included a battleship, four cruisers, and nine destroyers. Although three of the four American destroyers were sunk and the South Dakota was knocked out of the action, Lee coolly won the battle. As one Japanese officer said, it was "the fork in the road."
In December Tokyo first contemplated yet another offensive, but by the end of the month, the Emperor himself sanctioned the decision to withdraw. Rendered ineffective because of malaria and exhaustion as much as combat losses, the 1st Marine Division had begun leaving the island in early December. The remaining American forces, the 2nd Marine Division and the Army Americal and 25th Infantry divisions, launched a cautious advance to clear the island in January. Nothing so became the Japanese conduct of the campaign as their departure. They cleverly concealed their plans. Sacrificial action by some soldiers permitted 10,643 emaciated, exhausted, and barely mobile survivors of the 17th Army to be whisked away by Japanese destroyers over three nights in February.
Guadalcanal cost the U.S. Navy 25 warships and the Imperial Japanese Navy 24. The air campaign claimed 683 Japanese and 615 American aircraft. A total of 7,100 Americans died (1,769 Soldiers and Marines, 420 Airmen of all services, and 4,911 Sailors). The toll for Japan reached 29,883, including 25,600 ground forces, about 1,200 airmen, and 3,083 sailors.
It's hard to overstate the strategic significance of Guadalcanal. The Battle of Midway checked the Japanese offensive in the Central Pacific ultimately aimed at seizing the Hawaiian Islands and reaching a negotiated peace. The destruction of the four best Japanese fleet carriers constituted the first irreversible defeat suffered by the Axis powers in the war. After Midway, however, the Japanese remained on the offensive in the South Pacific, and therefore Guadalcanal represented the true change in strategic posture. It inflicted devastating losses from which the Japanese Navy's air arm never recovered. But still more was in balance.
In the spring of 1942, the Axis powers held in their grasp the possibility of a Japanese naval advance across the Indian Ocean meeting a German land thrust down through the Middle East. This combination would sever the Western Allies' last link with China, likely driving it from the war, and would strike a devastating blow to British participation in the war by collapsing its positions in India and the Middle East. The twin drives would further block the principal route for Lend-Lease war material supplies to the Soviet Union. By defeating the Japanese at Midway and keeping them tied down at Guadalcanal, the United States forestalled this last realistic hope for an Axis victory in the war.
Yet another dimension to Guadalcanal elevates it over Midway. The greatest American novelist of World War II, James Jones, set The Thin Red Line, his autobiographical work of Pacific combat, on Guadalcanal because, as he explained, "what Guadalcanal meant to my generation was a very special thing." Jones was referring to the fundamental and hugely visceral question of whether his generation could meet and defeat the soldiers of the Axis powers who exalted themselves as the master warrior races. Americans regarded Guadalcanal at the first valid response to that question, and the Marines and Soldiers who fought on Guadalcanal demonstrated to their contemporaries and the American public that the answer was yes.