GUADALCANAL: FIRST MAJOR U.S. LAND OFFENSIVE AGAINST JAPAN
Guadalcanal, Southern Solomon Islands • August 7, 1942
On this date in 1942 some 11,000 Marines of the 1st Marine Division assaulted the northcentral beaches of Guadalcanal, the largest of the nearly 1,000 tropical islands in the Solomon Islands chain (see map below). Guadalcanal’s 2,000 Japanese defenders were caught by complete surprise. The amphibious Marine assault, supported by strong air and naval support, kicked off the first major land offensive by Allied forces against Imperial Japan since that country’s sneak attack on U.S. and British military and territorial interests on December 7 and 8, 1941, which triggered World War II in the Pacific. The Guadalcanal landings were the opening phase of Operation Watchtower and were intended to deny the Japanese use of south Solomon Islands from which the enemy could interdict supply and communication routes between the U.S. and its Pacific allies Australia and New Zealand, as well as be a U.S. springboard to seize other Pacific islands to the north, eventually reaching the Japanese Home Islands themselves.
On August 9 the Japanese airstrip on Gaudalcanal, Lunga Field, fell to U.S. Marines, who renamed the mostly finished airstrip Henderson Field. That same day Japanese cruisers and destroyers delivered a gut punch to their American and Australian naval counterparts, sinking three of their cruisers and crippling a fourth while suffering negligible losses in a half-hour nighttime duel off Savo Island (see map again). As for Henderson Field, it quickly became the center of gravity in the 6‑month Battle of Gaudalcanal. The tenacious Rear Adm. Tanaka Raizō, arguably the most gifted destroyer captain in the Pacific War, employed a squadron of Japanese surface ships and subs—the so-called “Toyko Express”—to ferry tens of thousands of enemy troops and tons of vital supplies to Guadalcanal over the following months.
Between mid-August 1942 and late-January 1943, U.S. and Japanese combatants engaged in three major land battles, several large naval battles (the majority of which were nighttime actions), and almost daily aerial battles. The first major land battle occurred on September 13–14, 1942. U.S. Marine Corps Col. Merritt Edson led 800 Marines of the 1st Raider Battalion and a handful of Marine paratroopers in one of the most intense defenses of Henderson Field after they were attacked by a Japanese force more than three times their size. The Battle of Edson’s Ridge (Lunga Ridge) helped cement the reputation of the Raiders in Marine lore and earned Edson the Medal of Honor, the country’s foremost military decoration.
In early November 1942 the Japanese attempted once again to retake Guadalcanal’s airfield and expel the interlopers. Learning of the Japanese reinforcement effort, U.S. aircraft and warships moved to prevent 7,000 enemy troops and their equipment from reaching the island and their warships from getting close enough to bombard Henderson Field. The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal (November 12–15, 1942) turned back Japan’s last major attempt to dislodge Allied forces from Guadalcanal and Tulagi and adjacent islands, the latter former Japanese naval and seaplane bases off Ngella Sule (Florida). Though several thousand infantrymen reached the island and the airstrip was shelled, the 4‑day clash was a strategic victory for the U.S. and its allies and decisive in shifting the Guadalcanal campaign in their favor.
In December 1942 the enemy on Guadalcanal had become a spent force, and Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo abandoned efforts to reclaim the contested island for Emperor Hirohito. The last naval engagement, the Battle of Rennell Island (January 29–30, 1943), turned into a Japanese victory in that a U.S. task force was compelled to retreat from the South Solomon area. In the absence of a U.S. Navy presence, the Japanese successfully evacuated 10,652 troops from Guadalcanal. By February 8, 1943, almost exactly 6 months after the initial U.S. landings on Guadalcanal and neighboring islands, the Southern Solomons were at last firmly in Allied hands.
Guadalcanal: Allied Turning Point in the Pacific War
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Above: Routes of Allied amphibious forces for landings on Guadalcanal and Tulagi, August 7, 1942. Tulagi and environs were home to Japanese naval and seaplane bases, Guadalcanal to a landing strip large enough to accommodate 100 Japanese fighter and bomber aircraft. Guadalcanal Island is the largest island within the Solomon Islands chain. The double, parallel islands chain stretches over 600 miles/966 km northwest to southeast and is roughly 500 miles/805 km east of the large island of Papua New Guinea and 1,100 miles/1,770 km northeast of the Australian landmass. At 90 miles/145 km long on a northwest-southeast axis and an average of 25 miles/40 km wide, Guadalcanal is a forbidding terrain of mountains and dormant volcanoes up to 7,600 ft/488 m high, steep ravines and deep streams, mangrove swamps, and a generally even coastline with no natural harbors. Nasty critters, including crocodiles, populate the island. The three-dimensional Guadalcanal campaign (land-sea-air) stretched both adversaries to the breaking point. The storied battle for the island lasted 6 months, involved nearly 1 million men, and stopped Japanese expansion in the Southwest and Central Pacific.
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Left: Escorted by a task force that included three carriers, 11,000 men from the 1st Marine Division, under the command of Maj. Gen. Alexander Vandegrift, stormed ashore on Guadalcanal’s northern beaches on August 7, 1942, exactly 8 months from the date Pearl Harbor, Hawaii was bombed. On October 13 the first Army unit, the 164th Infantry from the Americal Division, came ashore to reinforce the Marines. (Up till then, U.S. Army troops were chiefly funneled to Europe.) The Allies overwhelmed the outnumbered Japanese defenders, who had occupied the islands since mid-1942, and captured nearby Tulagi and Florida islands as well as the unfinished airfield at Lunga Point. Powerful U.S. and Australian warships and transports supported the landings.
Right: Aerial view of Lunga Field (future home of Henderson Field), Guadalcanal, July 1942, under construction since July 6 by a mixed labor force of Japanese and conscripted Koreans. The Marines’ landing at Lunga Point was to capture the dirt-and-gravel airstrip before it could become operational. After capturing it, American forces went on to complete it, turning it over to the so-called “Cactus Air Force,” a motley collection of Marine, U.S. Army Air Forces, and U.S. Navy aviators. Henderson Field, named for a Marine pilot who perished while leading a bombing run at the Battle of Midway (June 4–7, 1942), was abandoned after the war, but it reopened in 1969 as a modernized civilian airport capable of accommodating large jets.
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Left: Japanese reinforcements load onto a destroyer for the “ant run,” as Japanese soldiers called the naval dash down the “Slot” (New Georgia Sound) to Guadalcanal in 1942. The “Tokyo Express” was the name given by Allied forces to fast Japanese ships (mainly destroyers but also submarines) that used the cover of darkness to deliver personnel, artillery, ammunition, food, and other supplies and equipment to enemy forces operating in and around New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.
Right: Fresh troops from the 2nd Marine Raider Division during a halt on Guadalcanal, November 1942. Allied ground strength, primarily American, came to 60,000 (roughly one-third Marines, little less than two-thirds Army troops, and hundreds of Seabees) vs. 36,200 for the Japanese army and navy. During the 6‑month campaign, the Japanese suffered 31,000 dead and 1,000 captured out of 36,200 ground combatants. U.S. tallied 7,100 dead, several thousand deaths attributed to malaria and other tropical diseases. Japanese records list an unknown number of Americans captured, fates mostly unknown. Australian deaths were 85. Solomon Islander deaths are unknown. U.S. wounded amounted to more than 7,789. The U.S. Navy lost 29 ships, including 2 fleet carriers (Wasp and Hornet), 6 heavy cruisers, 2 light cruisers, and 17 destroyers. Lost also were 615 aircraft. Japanese ships lost were 38; aircraft losses were 683.
HBO Presentation: Inside the Battle of Guadalcanal
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