Challenge for the Pacific

by Robert Leckie

  And now the iron voices of the bombardment ships were bellowing, now the six- and eight-inch muzzles spouted orange, now great gobbets and gouts of flame and splintering debris shot into the air from the shores of both Guadalcanal and Tulagi, and now columns of black smoke rose into the air while the Dauntlesses dove and dove relentlessly and the Avengers skimmed in low.

  High up at Vungano, Sergeant Major Vouza saw it all and hastened downtrail to tell his master.

  Below him at Matanga, Martin Clemens was on his feet shouting in exultant joy. He had bounded from his bedroll at the first crash of Quincy’s guns, instinctively aware of its meaning, tired no longer, and crowing: “Calloo, callay, oh what a day!”7 Vouza found the District Officer crouched gleefully beside a radio crackling with the voices of American pilots spotting targets for the gunfire ships, of others shouting to one another or begging their ships for new missions. One after another the scouts came down from Matanga. Grinning broadly, they related how favorite targets, ones that they had scouted for Clemens and his radio, had gone up in flames and smoke.

  Out on the Bay the landing boats were fanning out into assault waves. Power was poured to the motors. Sterns dug deep into the waves. Hulls down, white wakes creaming out behind them, the Marines sped north and south toward palm-fringed shores.

  Six hundred miles to the northwest, Vice-Admiral Gunichi Mikawa read a message from Guadalcanal, “Encountered American landing forces and are retreating into the jungle”; and one from Tulagi, “The enemy force is overwhelming. We will defend our positions to the death, praying for everlasting victory.”8 Reacting swiftly, Admiral Mikawa began collecting ships and men for a counterstroke.

  Even as the Americans entered the Solomons, the Japanese began preparing to throw them out again.

  PART TWO

  ALONE

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  IT WAS at Tulagi that the American counteroffensive began.

  Minutes after Tulagi radioed its last defiant message, shells from cruiser San Juan smashed the radio shack. Tulagi was never heard from again.

  Out in the harbor men of the Yokohama Air Group frantically sought to save eight blazing Kawanishi flying boats caught on the surface like sitting ducks. A ninth, piloted by Lieutenant Commander Yoshio Tashiro, roared over the water and tried to flounder aloft, only to be tumbled back in flames by San Juan’s guns. Commander Tashiro and his roaring tiger belt-buckle—triplet to the one worn by his brother-in-law Lieutenant Junichi Sasai—sank to the bottom of Iron Bottom Bay.

  Off Tulagi’s southern coast the men of the First Raider Battalion were debarking from destroyer-transports which had brought them from New Caledonia. Lieutenant Colonel Edson watched them going. Short, wiry, pale, and icy-eyed, his eyebrows mere wisps of that carroty red hair which had earned him the nickname of “Red Mike,” Edson stood with his hands on the butt of the big six-shooter he wore, Western style, smiling his cold smile while making sure that the men were stripped down for battle.

  “Don’t worry about the food,” he told a company commander fretting about the absence of rations. “There’s plenty there. Japs eat, too. All you have to do is get it.”1

  Edson was not leading the attack personally. Lieutenant Colonel Sam Griffith would do that. Griffith was another hard professional, but with an intellectual side. He was a Chinese scholar, a Marine who could write as well as fight. Shortly before eight o’clock, with the British Residency and other buildings on the southeastern tip enshrouded in smoke, Griffith and the Raiders sped for the northwestern end of the little, boot-shaped island. At eight o’clock their Higgins boats grated to a halt on coral shoals and assault riflemen leaped into the surf.

  They sank into waist-deep water. Many of them floundered beneath heavy loads and went under. Others slipped on slimy coral underfooting and also sank. Yanked to their feet by their buddies, they struggled shoreward. They emerged with blood streaming from hands and knees torn by cruel coral. Fortunately, no enemy fire spat from the jungle and they plunged into its murk. At 8:15 A.M. Griffith signaled:

  “Landing successful, no opposition.”

  Now the Raiders moved swiftly. They were two thirds up the island. They scaled a steep grim cliff to their front and wheeled right. They drove southeastward along the cliff’s spine and sloping sides. Behind them, the Second Battalion, Fifth Marines, under Lieutenant Colonel Harold Rosecrans crossed the same landing beaches and swung left. Rosecrans’s men were to clear the northwestern third. They struck out quickly and found the territory undefended. They turned again and moved in behind Griffith in support.

  Throughout the morning the Raiders moved over rough, jumbled ground, working through rocks and trees, keeping clear of shore trails covered by enemy cliffs. At noon they spilled into the former Chinese settlement on the island’s north coast, and there the Japanese struck back.

  Mortar shells began to fall. Marines toppled. Lieutenant (j.g.) Samuel Miles, a physician, rushed to help three badly wounded men and fell dead, the first casualty of the campaign. A company commander was wounded. The Marines moved more warily against these rickety Chinese shacks and the tempo of their advance slowed. Late in the afternoon, Edson, who had come ashore, called a halt.

  The Marines held a line running roughly from Carpenter’s Wharf on the north to a small clubhouse south of the Residency. It was not really a continuous line, rather a position held by Raiders in hastily scooped two- or three-man foxholes—sometimes connected with each other, more often not—with the Second Battalion, Fifth, backing them up.

  Red Mike Edson calculated that there were about three hundred Japanese defenders in front of his men, and he expected that they would counterattack that night.

  Rabaul’s counterattack was already underway.

  Upon receipt of the Tulagi message, Vice-Admiral Gunichi Mikawa had ordered the 25th Air Flotilla to send twenty-four Betty bombers bound for New Guinea to Tulagi-Guadalcanal instead. Then he called in the Tainan Group’s fighter leader, Commander Tadashi Nakajima. He showed him the target area. Nakajima was thunderstruck. Six hundred miles to the target and six hundred back! Even if his Zeros could land at Buka on Bougainville on the way back, they would still be flying the longest fighter mission ever. Mikawa did not care.

  “Take every Zero that will fly,” he said.

  Nakajima protested. “This is the longest fighter mission in history. Not all of my men are capable of making it. Let me take only my twelve best pilots.”2

  His eyes blazing, Mikawa shoved the Tulagi farewell over the table. Nakajima read it and stiffened. Very well, then: eighteen Zeros for Guadalcanal. Nakajima left the shack and told an orderly to recall the men waiting in cockpits for the New Guinea mission. They came back—Sakai, Nishizawa, Ota, Lieutenant Sasai—the best of Japan’s aces, and they wondered at the anger on Nakajima’s face. Handing out maps of the Solomons, he told them quickly of the American strike. Lieutenant Sasai’s face blanched. He stared straight ahead and said softly: “My brother-in-law was assigned to Tulagi.”3 Nakajima ignored him and rapped out the distance to the target. The men gave low whistles of disbelief. Nakajima ignored them too and snapped: “We will take off at once for Guadalcanal.”

  The pilots broke up into trios. Saburo Sakai turned to his wingmen, Yonekawa and Hatori. “You’ll meet the American Navy fliers for the first time today. They are going to have us at a distinct advantage because of the distance we have to fly. I want you both to use the greatest caution. Above all, never break away from me. No matter what happens, no matter what goes on around us, stick as close to my plane as you can. Remember that—don’t break away.”4

  Yonekawa and Hatori nodded. Why break away anyway? Saburo Sakai had never lost a wingman.

  Turning, the three pilots joined the others sprinting for their Zeros. They climbed into cockpits and watched two dozen Bettys go thundering down the runway ahead of them. At last Commander Nakajima lifted his hand over his head. Within ten minutes all of his fighters were airborne.

&n
bsp; In Tokyo, reports of the American invasion did not unduly disturb Imperial General Headquarters. Army General Staff’s chief reaction was one of surprise to find that the Navy had been building an airfield on “this insignificant island in the South Seas, inhabited only by natives.”5 An intelligence report from the Japanese Military Attaché in Moscow claimed that there were only 2000 Americans involved and that they intended to destroy the airfield and withdraw.6 The enemy operation was nothing but a reconnaissance-in-force. The report was believed, although both Army and Navy agreed that the Americans should be ousted before they could put the airfield into operation.

  General Gen Sugiyama, chief of Army General Staff, spent the morning hunting for a unit to do the job.

  Admiral Osami Nagano, chief of Naval General Staff, passed a more active day. First, he had received Admiral Mikawa’s radioed request for approval of his proposal to launch a night surface attack against the American fleet. Nagano had been appalled. A night attack in the narrow, uncharted water of The Slot seemed too risky. But his staff, arguing that this was a chance to hit the Americans hard, persuaded him to approve Mikawa’s plan. He signaled:

  “Execute.”

  Next, Nagano directed Combined Fleet to give first priority to the recapture of Guadalcanal. Admiral Yamamoto immediately set up a supreme Southeast Area Force and notified Vice-Admiral Nishizo Tsukahara on Saipan to take charge of it. Tsukahara, commander of the Eleventh Air Fleet, quickly made provisions to lead the cream of his command to Rabaul for action next day. Tsukahara now superseded Mikawa.

  Admiral Yamamoto also began gathering all available ships and planes for a massive sortie. Characteristically, he considered the Solomons invasion as one more chance to destroy the enemy fleet. It was not Guadalcanal that was important to him; it was the fact that the American Navy was gathered there in force and could be annihilated in decisive battle.

  Thus the importance of Guadalcanal to Japan’s military leaders: General Sugiyama, echoed by General Hyakutake, thought it a mere nuisance which might interfere with the Port Moresby operation and must therefore be quickly squelched, Admirals Nagano and Yamamoto saw it as an opportunity to regain the naval edge lost at Midway.

  Nevertheless, Nagano thought enough of the event to report it to Emperor Hirohito. Putting on dress whites, Nagano went to the Emperor’s summer villa at Nikko. Alarmed, more prescient than his admirals, Hirohito said he would return to Tokyo.

  “Your Majesty,” Nagano protested, “it is nothing worthy of Your Majesty’s attention.”7 Nagano showed the Emperor the report from Moscow, and Hirohito stayed in Nikko.

  Gunichi Mikawa was overjoyed to receive Naval General Staff’s order to attack. He had already ordered Rear Admiral Aritomo Goto to sortie from New Ireland with Eighth Fleet’s big sluggers, heavy cruisers Chokai, Aoba, Kinugasa, Kako, and Furutaka, along with destroyer Yunagi. Mikawa intended to board Chokai to lead his force, plus light cruisers Tenryu and Yubari then in harbor at Rabaul, south to the Solomons.

  Mikawa had also attended to reinforcements for the Solomons garrisons. Hyakutake had been of no help, as Mikawa had expected, insisting that he could not spare a man from the Port Moresby operation. So the admiral had had to scrape up 410 men from the Fifth Sasebo Special Naval Landing Force and from the 81st Garrison Unit. He put them under Lieutenant Endo with instructions to board transport Meiyo Maru and sail south for Guadalcanal next day.

  Mikawa realized that this was not very many men, but he expected them to do some good; for he, too, believed that there were only about 2000 Americans to the south.

  Japanese bombers flying to Guadalcanal from the airfield at Kavieng on New Ireland usually passed over Buka Passage in the northern Solomons—where they could be seen by the coastwatcher, Jack Read.

  Bombers flying from Rabaul passed over Buin on Bougainville—and there they could be spotted by the coastwatcher, Paul Mason.

  At half-past ten that morning of August 7 the bespectacled and benign Mason sat serenely within his palm-thatched hut on Malabite Hill and heard the thunder of motors overhead. He rushed outside and counted the Bettys preceding the Zeros down to Guadalcanal. He ran back inside and signaled:

  “Twenty-four torpedo bombers headed yours.”

  Twenty-five minutes later, aboard the Australian cruiser Canberra down at Iron Bottom Bay, sailors heard the bullhorn announce:

  “The ship will be attacked at noon by twenty-four torpedo bombers. All hands will pipe to dinner at eleven o’clock.”

  The “bonzer boys up north,” as the Australians described their countrymen of the coastwatchers, had given the convoy’s sailors time to line their bellies for battle, and Admiral Fletcher’s fighter pilots time to climb high over Savo Island to await the oncoming enemy.

  Commander Nakajima’s fighters were flying at 13,000 feet. Sixty miles south of Rabaul they passed over Green Island. Saburo Sakai looked down in astonishment. He had never seen such incredibly green hills before. He noticed that the island was horseshoe-shaped and he filed the landmark in his brain.

  Over Bougainville the sun beat so harshly upon the canopy of Saburo’s airplane that it made him thirsty. He took a bottle of soda from his lunchbox. Forgetting the high-pressure altitude, Saburo slit the cork—and the soda came foaming into his cockpit, covering everything until it was dried by the cockpit draft. But there was a coating of dried sugar left on Saburo’s goggles and his windscreen and controls. He had to rub them clean. As he did, his Zero wandered all over the formation, and he missed the beauty of The Slot as they winged southeastward over that broad, blue sea-corridor.

  Over New Georgia the formation began climbing, crossing the Russells at 20,000 feet. Fifty miles ahead of them the pilots could see Guadalcanal. Next they saw Iron Bottom Bay and gasped at the spectacle of so many ships, such a vast armada cleaving white, crisscrossing wakes in the water. Then they saw the Wildcats. There were six of them, stubby, powerful craft painted olive but for the white underside of their wings. They came plunging down out of the sun. But they ignored Saburo and his comrades. They were diving on the torpedo bombers, heedless of the popping black bursts of antiaircraft fire which rose from the American ships and kept the Bettys respectfully high.

  Some of the Zeros raced ahead, firing to distract the Americans. But the Wildcats rolled together and disappeared in dives. They forced the Bettys to bomb wildly, to make foolish attempts to hit moving ships from four miles up. Saburo ground his teeth and wondered why the bombers had not been carrying torpedoes. Perhaps it was because they had been loaded for land bombing against New Guinea. Whatever, it was a waste—and now the Wildcats were growling and spitting among the Bettys. Some of the Japanese planes fell blazing into the Bay.

  Nakajima’s Zeros formed up and escorted the bombers as far north as the Russells. Then they turned back to Guadalcanal. And the Wildcats jumped them. Time after time the Americans came plunging out of the sun, fired, rolled back and vanished far below. Each time they fired quick bursts from six .50-caliber machine guns mounted in the wings of each plane. After each pass, the Wildcats climbed into the sun to make their single, massed, slashing attack, and to bank and climb again. Such tactics astounded Nakajima’s pilots. They cut his formation to pieces, and they forced him to flee for safety.

  Saburo Sakai was also shaken. Japan’s leading ace gaped at the spectacle of a single Wildcat taking on three Zeros in a wild left-spiraling dogfight. The American had come out on the tail of a Zero and was stitching its wings and tail with bullets when Saburo dove and drove him off. It was then that Saburo Sakai became engaged in the dogfight of his life. Spin for spin, roll for roll, spiral for spiral, the American matched the Japanese master. They fought each other and also those tremendous G pressures which pushed each pilot down in his seat, investing flying suits with the weight of lead and heads with the senseless density of iron. At last Saburo got the upper hand. Again and again he cut inside the American, he wounded him, and then, as the man flew on like a bleeding automaton, Saburo drove in f
or the kill with a stream of cannon shells that sent the Wildcat spinning seaward in flames and its pilot drifting limply toward Guadalcanal’s beaches beneath a blossoming, billowing parachute.

  It was Saburo Sakai’s fifty-ninth kill and within a few minutes he had his sixtieth—a Dauntless dive-bomber.

  His blood up, Saburo climbed to 13,000 feet to hunt for further game. He sighted eight aircraft over Guadalcanal. He gunned his motor to come up on them in surprise. He would take the Wildcats on the right and leave the others for three Zeros following him. But the American planes were not Wildcats. They were Avengers, heavy, sturdy torpedo-bombers; they had .50-caliber gunners in top and belly turrets; and they were waiting for Saburo Sakai.

  Saburo saw the trap too late. He tried to fireball out of it with overboosted engine and flaming guns. The Americans opened fire.

  From twenty yards away Saburo Sakai could see the stuttering muzzles of those massed guns, and then a terrible power smashed at his body, searing spikes went driving into his brain, and his Zero nosed over and fell toward the sea.

  Before Tulagi had been assaulted it had been necessary to secure the island’s left flank. This had been accomplished at 7:40 in the morning when B Company of the First Battalion, Second Marines, landed at Haleta Village on Florida Island. Private Russell Miller was the first Marine ashore, thus becoming the first American to tread Japanese-held soil in World War II.