by Daniel Wrinn
On sunset the next day, the Japanese tried again, this time with more artillery fire and more tanks in the fray. But again, a 37mm gun knocked out the lead tank and discouraged the attack. On October 22, the enemy paused, waiting for General Maruyama’s force to get inland. The 23rd was planned as the day of the main Japanese assault. They dropped a heavy rain of artillery and mortar fire on Marine positions near the Matanikau River mouth. At dusk, nine 18 ton medium tanks clanked out of the trees onto the river sandbar. Eight of them were peppered by the 37mm. One tank made it across the river, a Marine blasted its track off with a grenade, and a 75mm half-track was destroyed in the ocean surf. The remaining enemy infantry was annihilated by Marine artillery fire. Hundreds of Japanese casualties and three more tanks were destroyed. A later inland thrust further upstream was beaten back. The coastal attack did nothing to General Maruyama’s island offensive. This caused Vandegrift to move one battalion, the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, into the four-thousand-yard gap between the Matanikau perimeter and position. This move proved helpful since one of General Maruyama’s attacks was headed directly to this area.
Although patrols had encountered no Japanese south or east of the jungle perimeter up to the 24th, these attempts had alerted everyone. General Maruyama was satisfied his men had struggled to gain the appropriate assault positions after delaying the attack for thirty-three days. He began his assault on October 24, but the Marines were waiting. An observer spotted an enemy officer surveying Edson’s Ridge on the 24th. Scout snipers reported smoke from rice fires rising from the valley two miles south of “Chesty” Puller’s positions. Six battalions of the Japanese Sendai Division were poised to attack. Near midnight, the first elements of the enemy hit and bypassed a platoon-sized outpost forward of Puller’s barbed wire entanglements. Puller’s men waited, straining to see through the dark night in the driving rain. When the Japanese charged out of the jungle attacking Puller’s area near the ridge in the flat ground to the east, the Marines reacted with everything they had. They called in artillery, fired mortars, and relied heavily on crossing fields of machine gun fire to cut down enemy infantrymen. Japanese mortars, artillery, and other supporting armaments were thrown back along the Maruyama Trail. They had proved too much of a burden for the infantrymen to carry.
This drove a wedge into the Marine lines. But everything straightened out with repeated counterattacks. Puller realized his battalion was being hit by a strong Japanese force capable of repeated attacks. He requested reinforcements. The Army’s 3rd Battalion, 164th Infantry, was ordered to move forward. Men slipped and slid in the rain as they trudged a mile south along Edson’s Ridge. Puller met Colonel Robert Hall at the head of the column, and they walked down the length of the Marine lines peeling off Army squads one at a time to feed into the lines. The enemy attacked again throughout the night. Marines and soldiers fought back together.
By 0330, the Army battalion was completely assimilated into the 1/7 Marines’ lines, and the enemy attacks were getting weaker. The Americans returned fire. They used flanking fire from machine guns and the 37mm guns remaining in the positions held by the 2nd Battalion and 164th Infantry on Puller’s left. Near dawn, General Maruyama pulled his men back to regroup and prepare to attack again.
At daylight, Puller and Hall reordered the lines. They put the 2nd Battalion and the 164th into their own positions on Puller’s left flank. The driving rains had turned Henderson Field into a quagmire. This grounded the Cactus Air Force flyers. Japanese planes used this “free ride” to bomb Marine positions. Enemy artillery fire continued along with a pair of Japanese destroyers adding in on the bombardment until they got too close to shore. The 3rd defense Battalion’s 5-inch guns repelled them. As the sun rose, the runways dried and afternoon enemy attacks were now met by the Cactus Air Force fighters—who downed twenty-two Japanese planes with only a loss of three.
As night came on again, General Maruyama tried more of the same with the same result. The Marine/Army lines held, and the Japanese were cut down in droves by rifle, mortar, machine gun, 37mm, and artillery fire from the west. The Japanese mounted three attacks on positions held by the 2/7 Marines. The enemy broke through the positions held by Company F. Still, a counter-attack led by the battalion’s XO drove off the Japanese again at daylight. The American positions were secured, and the enemy had retreated. They would not return. The Imperial Japanese offensive using the Sendai Division was defeated.
Over thirty-five hundred Imperial Japanese troops died during these attacks. General Maruyama’s boast that he would “exterminate the enemy Americans around the airfield in one blow” had proven empty. The remainder of his force now limped back over the Maruyama Trail, with mostly wounded men. The soldiers and Marines, together, lost just under three hundred men killed and wounded.
The existing records are sketchy and incomplete. One result of the battle was a warm welcome to the 164th Infantry from the 1st Marine Division. Vandegrift commended Hall’s battalion and said: “The division was proud to have serving with it another unit which had stood the test of battle.”
Through the heroics of two nights of constant brutal fighting, several Marines were singled out for recognition. Two outstanding Marines were Sergeant John Basilone of the 1/7 Marines, and Sergeant Mitchell Paige of the 2nd Battalion. Both of these Marines were machine gun section leads recognized as having performed above and beyond the call of duty in the inspiring words of their Medal of Honor citations.
Fighting Withdrawal Along the Beach
While the Marines and soldiers battled the Japanese ashore, A patrol plane sighted a sizeable Japanese fleet near the Santa Cruz Islands, east of the Solomons. The enemy force was formidable for battleships and for carriers with twenty-eight destroyers and eight cruisers. Admiral Halsey was poised for a victorious attack after the capture of Henderson Field. He signaled Admiral Kincaid, with the Hornet and Enterprise carrier groups, and ordered them to attack.
On October 26, American planes located the Japanese carriers. The Japanese Zuiho’s flight deck was damaged by the scout bombers, canceling their flight operations. But three other carriers launched strikes. A dogfight raged overhead as each side’s planes strove to reach the other’s carriers. The Hornet was hit repeatedly by torpedoes and bombs. Two Japanese pilots crashed their planes into the deck. The damage to the ship was so massive, the Hornet was abandoned and sunk. The Enterprise, the battleship South Dakota, the light cruiser San Juan, and the destroyer Smith were also hit. The destroyer Porter was sunk. On the Japanese side—no ships were sunk. Three carriers and two destroyers were damaged. One hundred Japanese planes were lost. Seventy-five US planes went down. This was considered a standoff. The Imperial Japanese Navy could have continued their attacks but were discouraged by the defeat of their ground forces and withdrew to attack another day.
The enemy naval force departure marked a period in which sizable reinforcements reached the island. The 2nd Marines’ headquarters found transport space to come up from Espiritu Santo on October 29. Colonel Arthur moved his regiment from Tulagi to Guadalcanal, changing out the 1st and 2nd Battalions for the well bloodied 3rd Division, which took up the Tulagi duties. The 2nd Marines’ battalions at Tulagi had performed the task of scouting and securing all the small islands of the Florida group. They were frustrated, only being able to watch the battles taking place across the Sealark Channel. These Marines could now take part in the big show.
US planes flew into the Cactus fields from the island of New Caledonia. Squadrons of MAG-11 fighters moved forward from New Caledonia to Espiritu Santo to be closer to the battle. The flight echelons could now operate forward to Guadalcanal with relative ease. Two batteries of 155mm guns landed on November 2, providing Vandegrift with his first artillery units capable of matching the enemy’s long-range 150mm guns. The 8th Marines had arrived from American Samoa. The full-strength regiment, reinforced by the 75mm howitzers of the 1st Battalion, 10th Marines, added another four thousand men to the defending forces. Thes
e fresh troops reflected a renewed emphasis at all levels of command, ensuring that Guadalcanal would hold no matter the cost. The reinforcement/replacement pipeline was being filled. The rest of the 2nd Marine Division, and the Army’s 25th Infantry Division arrived. More planes of every type from American as well as Allied sources were slated to reinforce and replace the battle-weary Cactus Air Force veterans.
The increased pace of reinforcement was provided by Pres. Roosevelt. Cutting through the demands for American forces worldwide, he told each of the Joint Chiefs, on October 24, that Guadalcanal must be reinforced immediately. The operational pace on Guadalcanal did not slacken after the Japanese offensive was pushed back. General Vandegrift wanted to clear the area immediately west of the Matanikau of all troops, forestalling another buildup of attacking forces. Admiral Tanaka’s Tokyo express was still operating despite punishing attacks by the Cactus aircraft and American motor torpedo boats now based at Tulagi.
On November 1-5, Marines backed up by the newly arrived 2nd Marines, attacked across bridges engineers had laid over the Matanikau River the previous night. Inland, Colonel Whaling led his scout snipers in a screening movement with the main driving attack to protect the flank. The opposition was fierce in the shore area where they drove forward toward Point Cruz, but Whaling’s group encountered little resistance. At nightfall, when the Marines dug in, the only sizable enemy force was in the Point Cruz area. In the days of bitter fighting, Corporal Anthony Casamento, a badly wounded machine gun squad leader in Edson’s 1st Battalion, distinguished himself so well that he was recommended for a Navy Cross. Many years later, in August 1980, Pres. Jimmy Carter approved the award for the Medal of Honor in its stead.
The attack continued with the reserve 3rd Battalion moving into the fight and all 3/5 Marine units moving to surround enemy defenders. On November 3, the Japanese pocket just west of the base at Point Cruz was eliminated. Well over three hundred enemy soldiers had been killed. The Marines encountered light resistance and slowly advanced across the rugged terrain one thousand yards beyond the 5th Marines’ action.
The offensive objectives seemed well in hand, and the advance halted. Intelligence was reported that a substantial enemy reinforcement attempt was underway. General Vandegrift pulled most of his men back to safeguard the perimeter of the airfield. This time he left a regiment to outpost the ground that had been gained. Colonel Arthur’s 2nd Marines reinforced the Army’s 164th Infantry.
Vandegrift emphasized the need to be cautious because the Japanese were again discovered in strength, east of the perimeter. On November 3, Lieutenant Colonel Hanneken’s 2/7 Marines on a reconnaissance in force toward Koli Point, could see the Japanese ships clustered, eight miles from the perimeter. His men encountered strong Japanese resistance from fresh troops, and he pulled back. A regiment of the enemy’s 38th Division landed as Hyakutake used the Japanese Navy to attack the perimeter from both flanks.
Hanneken’s battalion executed a fighting withdrawal along the beach. They took fire from the jungle inland. A rescue force was soon put together comprised of two tank companies, the 1/7 Marines, and the 2nd and 3rd Battalions of the 164th Infantry. The Japanese troops, members of the 38th Division Regiment and remnants of Kawaguchi’s brigade, fought to hold ground as the US Marines and Army drove forward along the coast. Marines and soldiers attempted to outflank the enemy in the jungle. This battle lasted for days, supported by Cactus Air, naval gunfire, and the newly landed 155mm guns.
The Japanese commander received new orders as he struggled to hold back the Americans. He was to move inland and break off the action in March to rejoin the main Japanese forces west of the perimeter—a tall order to fill. This two-pronged attack had been abandoned. The Japanese managed the 1st part. Japanese soldiers found a gap in the 164th line and broke through along a meandering jungle stream. They left 450 dead throughout a seven-day battle. The Army and the Marines had lost forty dead in one hundred and twenty-five wounded. The enemy soldiers who broke out from the encircling Americans escaped into worse circumstances.
Admiral Turner had employed one of his several plans for alternate landings and beachheads. All of which General Vandegrift opposed. At Aola Bay, forty miles east of the main perimeter, the Navy put an airfield construction and defense force ashore on November 4. While the Japanese were still battling Marines near Tetere, Vandegrift persuaded Turner to detach part of his landing force, the 2nd Raider Battalion, to sweep west and destroy any enemy forces it encountered.
Colonel Carlson’s Raider Battalion had already seen action before reaching Guadalcanal. An additional two companies had reinforced the Midway Island offenders when the Japanese attacked in June. The remainder of the battalion landed on the Macon Islands and destroyed the garrison. For his part in the fighting, Sergeant Clyde Thomason was awarded a Medal of Honor, the first Marine enlisted to receive his country’s highest award in World War II.
Marching from Aola Bay, The 2nd Raider Battalion encountered the Japanese attempting to retreat to the west. On November 12, the raiders beat off attacks by two enemy companies. They pursued the Japanese, fighting a series of small actions over the next five days before making contact with the main Japanese force. For two weeks, the raiders came down from the jungle ridges into the perimeter, harassing the retreating enemy. They killed over five hundred Japanese soldiers. Their losses were only sixteen dead and eighteen wounded. This mission at Aola Bay provided the 2nd Raider Battalion a starting point for its month-long jungle campaign but proved to be a bust. The site chosen for an airfield was unacceptable—too wet and unstable. The entire force moved to Koli Point in early December, where another airfield was constructed.
The build-up on Guadalcanal continued. On November 11, guarded by a destroyer/cruiser covering force, a convoy was attacked by enemy bombers. Three transports were hit, but the men still landed. These men were badly needed. Vandegrift’s veterans on Guadalcanal were ready to be replaced.
Malaria cases were averaging over one thousand a week besides related diseases. Enemy soldiers who had been on the island for any length of time were in no better shape. Rations and medical supplies were scarce. The entire thrust of the Japanese reinforcement effort continued to get troops and combat equipment ashore. In Tokyo, the idea prevailed that despite all evidence to the contrary, one overwhelming coordinated assault would crush the American resistance. The enemy drive to take Port Moresby, New Guinea, was put on hold to put all of their effort into driving the Americans off Guadalcanal.
On November 12, Japanese naval forces converged on Guadalcanal to cover the landing of the main body of the 38th Division. Admiral Callahan’s cruisers and destroyers moved in to confront the enemy. Coastwatcher and scout plane sightings and radio intercepts identified two carriers, two battleships, four cruisers, and a host of destroyers heading toward Guadalcanal. The battleships were led by Hiei and Kirishima with the light cruiser Nagura, and fifteen destroyers spearheaded the bombardment and attack.
Just after midnight, Callahan’s cruisers picked up the Japanese on radar and continue to close. The battle was fought at such a short-range that each side fired at their own ships. Callahan’s flagship, San Francisco, was hit fifteen times. Callahan was killed; his ship limped away. The cruiser Atlanta was also hit and set ablaze. Admiral Scott, who was on board, was killed. Despite the hammering by the Japanese fire, the Americans held and continued fighting. The battleship Hiei was hit by over eighty shells. Badly damaged, it retired, and with it the rest of the attack force. Four destroyers were damaged, and three others were sunk. The Americans accomplished their purpose. They’d forced the Japanese to turn back. But the cost was high. Two antiaircraft cruisers, the Juneau and the Atlanta, were sunk. For destroyers, the Laffey, the Monssen, the Cushing, and the Barton also went to the bottom. The San Francisco, the heavy cruiser Portland, and the destroyers Sterret and Aaron Ward were also damaged. Only one destroyer of the thirteen American ships engaged, the Fletcher, was unscathed when survivors retired to the
New Hebrides.
At dawn came the Cactus bombers and fighters. They attacked the crippled Hiei and pounded it ruthlessly. The Japanese were forced to scuttle her on the 14th. Admiral Halsey ordered his only surviving carrier, the Enterprise, out of Guadalcanal to get it out of reach of Japanese aircraft. He sent in his battleships the South Dakota, Washington, and escorting destroyers north to meet the Japanese. Some of the Enterprise’s planes flew into Henderson Field to help even the odds.
On November 14, Cactus and Enterprise flyers found a Japanese destroyer/cruiser force that had pounded the island the night before. They damaged four cruisers and a destroyer. They quickly refueled and rearmed and went on the hunt for the approaching Japanese troop convoy. They hit several transports and sank one. Army B-17s from Espiritu Santo scored one hit and several near hits, bombing from over 17,000 feet. In a persistent pattern of attack, return, refuel, rearm, and resume, Guadalcanal planes hit nine transports—sinking seven. Many of the five thousand troops on the damaged ships were rescued by Tanaka’s destroyers.
The Japanese fired furiously and laid smokescreens to protect the transports. General Tanaka later recalled: “Bomb’s wobbling down from highflying B-17s, of carrier bombers roared toward targets as though to plunge full in the water, releasing bombs and pulling out barely in time; each miss sending up towering columns of mist and spray; every hit raising clouds of smoke and fire.”
Despite the intensive attack, Tanaka continued on to Guadalcanal with four transports and four destroyers. Imperial Japanese intelligence learned of the oncoming American battleship force and rushed to warn Tanaka. Japanese admirals sent their own cruiser/battleship force to intercept. The Americans led by Admiral Lee on the Washington, reached the Sealark Channel by 2100 on the 14th. A Japanese cruiser was picked up north of Savo Island an hour later, and battleship fire repelled her. The Japanese now understood the opponents they expected would not be the cruisers. This clash, fought in the glare of gunfire and Japanese searchlights, was the most significant fight at sea for Guadalcanal. When the battle was over, the American battleships’ 16-inch guns had more than matched the Japanese. Both South Dakota and Washington were damaged so severely they were forced to withdraw.
