by Dick Camp
Risler, Bodnar, and LaSalle were awarded the Silver Star for their exploits, while Ortiz received a second Navy Cross. Risler and LaSalle were discharged in July 1946 when their enlistments were up. Bodnar remained in the Marine Corps, retiring as a sergeant major. Brunner was killed in action on a subsequent operation.
PART II
Pacific Theater
CHAPTER 5
Tulagi
Early in the morning of 1 May 1942, Japanese flying boats from the Yokohama Air Corps bombed and strafed the Australian government’s facilities on Tulagi, a small island just north of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. Later that day, Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Sgt. C. W. “Bill” Miller, piloting RAAF Consolidated PBY Catalina A-24-17, focused his binoculars on the Japanese five-ship task force steaming for the southern tip of Guadalcanal. “Send out a sighting report,” he ordered. His radio operator tapped out the message in the clear—no sense in sending it in code, the Japanese knew they had been spotted. The RAAF radio station on Malaita Island picked up the signal and relayed it to the twenty-four commandos of No. 1 Section, 1st Independent Company, at the Advance Operating Base (AOB) on Tulagi, signaling that an invasion force was on the way. The next day, two Australian coastwatchers, Jack Read on Bougainville and D. G. Kennedy on New Georgia, reported that a large force of Japanese ships, believed to be part of the Tulagi invasion force, were heading toward the southern Solomons.
Commando Captain A. L. Goode and Flight Officer R. B. Peagam, 11 Squadron RAAF, decided it was time to evacuate Tulagi and the seaplane base on the nearby island of Gavutu-Tanambogo. All other nonessential civilians had been evacuated in early February by the Morinda, an old inter-island steamer chartered specifically by the Australian government for the evacuation. On 3 May, after destroying everything they couldn’t carry, the Australians sailed away on the Balus, an old copra schooner that had been hidden in the mangroves swamp on the south coast of Florida Island. Every day the mast had been covered with fresh palm branches to conceal it from air observation. The Balus sneaked out of the harbor for Vila in the New Hebrides. Two hours later, the Japanese invasion task force sailed in. Coastwatcher Martin Clemens wrote in Alone on Guadalcanal: A Coastwatcher’s Story, “At 0530 on 3 May … a squat black craft was reported from the direction of Tulagi. It was the Balus with the RAAF, lock, stock, and barrel. They had escaped the notice of the Jap aircraft because of low cloud and slight rain.”
The Japanese landing force, code named RXB Landing Force, consisted of approximately four hundred men of the Kure 3rd Special Naval Landing Force (Kaigun Kure Daisan Tokubetsu Rikusentai), under the command of Special Lieutenant (j.g.)* Junta Maruyama, commanding the 2nd Company. Special Lieutenant (j.g.) Kakichi Yoshimoto led the 3rd Company and Special Lieutenant (j.g.) Sakazo Takamura led elements of the 1st Company. The SNLF was reinforced by a 54 man antiaircraft unit (Mitsuwa Butai) under Lieutenant Toshichi Mitsuwa and a 132-man civilian Hashimoto Construction Force (Hashimoto Butai) led by Shim’ya Hashimoto. Major General Oscar F. Peatross wrote in Bless ’em All: The Raider Marines of World War II that the landing force was “… accompanied by interpreter and guide T. Ishimoto. … Before the war, Ishimoto had worked on Tulagi as a carpenter, while moonlighting as a spy for his Imperial Majesty’s government.”
Late in the evening on 2 May, the transport Tosan Maru dropped anchor in Tulagi harbor. “In practice the transports stood offshore about three miles,” Warrant Officer Takeo Iwata, commander of the 1st Platoon, 2nd Company explained, “But in the RXB operation they came right into the harbor.” The heavily armed 2nd Company clambered into three of the ship’s landing craft (Kokosuka). Lieutenant Maruyama’s Kokosuka carried his headquarters platoon, 1st Platoon (Iwata), one section of the 3rd Platoon (W.O. Kikuo Tanaka) and the company signalers. The other landing craft carried 2nd Platoon, the remainder of the 3rd Platoon and the medical section. Seaman Engineer (SME) Tameichi Shimmamoto, 4th Squad, 2nd Platoon, 1st Company, described his thoughts waiting for the run to the beach. “We are going to carry out an opposed landing on Tulagi at 0100. It is before a fight, and there in not a tremble in our hearts. I believe the most beautiful part of a Japanese is this present mental state, transcending life and death.”
TULAGI
Tulagi, the seat of the British Solomon Islands Government, is a long, narrow island surrounded by coral beds. The island is approximately 4,000 yards long and just 1,000 yards across at its widest. A 350-foot-high heavily wooded ridge , runs along the northwestern two-thirds of the island. On the other side of a saddle corridor running across the island, a smaller southeastern ridge continues down the island.
The developed portion of the island was centered in the southeastern section around the coastline in the corridor between the two ridges. The resident commissioner’s home and office (the “Residency”), complete with a cricket field, tennis court, and golf links was located in the saddle on the southern end of the island, at the foot of Hill 281, called Tori-dai (bird hill) by the Japanese. The promontory would figure prominently in the ensuring battle. The buildup area contained numerous government buildings, a radio station, a prison, and a small hospital. Numerous concrete wharves fronted the northeastern coast.
Just after midnight the landing craft sped toward the north side of Tulagi. Third Platoon’s SME Yodoyama Mori crouched down in the crowded landing craft. “Our 120-130 men started to head for the coast. … We placed bullets in our “I” type [bolt action rifle produced by Italy] rifles. Approaching the coast, 500 meters, 400 meters, 300 meters, 200 meters, and 100 meters and then 50 meters and carefully landed on the pier. No resistance! It seems the enemy has escaped and burned their barracks.” With no opposition, the landing force focused on unloading supplies and equipment. “We completely occupied Gavutu and Tulagi by 0415,” Mori said. “The 7th Construction Unit, RXB Detachment, began unloading their equipment immediately.” One of their first priorities was to construct defensive positions. Lieutenant Maruyama concentrated the main defenses on Hill 281 and a nearby ravine on the southeastern end of the island. The defenses consisted of dozens of tunneled caves dug into the hill’s limestone cliffs and machine-gun pits protected by sandbags. Base construction and improvement of existing facilities—a ship refueling point, a communications facility, and repair of the seaplane base on Gavutu-Tanambogo—were also started. They worked hard. Author Stanley Coleman Jersey, in his comprehensive book Hell’s Islands: The Untold Story of Guadalcanal, noted, “Reveille on Tulagi was at 0400. Breakfast was ready twenty minutes later. Work normally began at 0630.”
Retribution
The United States was quick to respond. In early April, the U.S. Navy’s highly classified Fleet Radio Unit Pacific (FRUPAC) located at Pearl Harbor had picked up indications of a large force of Japanese warships and a dozen troop transports moving toward the Solomons. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief Pacific Fleet (CinCPac) directed Allied forces toward the Coral Sea area to interdict the Japanese. On 27 April, the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Yorktown’s Task Force 17 (TF 17), sortied from Tonga to join a second carrier, the USS Lexington’s Task Force 11 (TF 11) northwest of New Caledonia. On 3 May, the two task forces were notified of the Japanese Tulagi invasion and began preparations to retaliate. At 0701 on 4 May, Yorktown launched three air strikes against Japanese ships anchored near Tulagi. Brigadier General Samuel B. Griffith wrote in The Battle for Guadalcanal, “The strike caught the Japanese by surprise. A destroyer, two minesweepers, and a destroyer escort went to the bottom.” Jersey noted, “Sailors from Yoshimoto’s 3rd Company had been unloading cargo from the transport at the time of the attack; seven were wounded and three killed. No member of the Kure 3rd on land had died, but twenty-nine were wounded.”
Despite the damaging air attacks the Japanese proceeded with the construction of the naval seaplane base at Tulagi and Gavutu, receiving more shipments of troops and construction workers over the next several months. The bulk of the 3rd Kure SNLF was sent back to Rabaul, leaving just
Yoshimoto’s 3rd Company, two platoons of the 1st Company (WO Yoshiharu Muranaka and WO Katsuzo Fukimoto) and the Tanaka platoon. The reconfigured unit was designated the Yoshimoto Detachment. After completing construction of the base, the Japanese turned their attention to Guadalcanal. In early July, they started construction of an airfield. As Edward J. Drea wrote in Japan’s Imperial Army: Its Rise and Fall, 1853-1945, “… the navy unilaterally dispatched an airfield construction unit to Guadalcanal in the Solomons to build a forward airstrip to support future operations.” U.S. Army Air Corps B-17s and B-24s reported its progress on a daily basis. General Douglas MacArthur’s Joint Intelligence Center-Pacific Ocean Area (JICPOA) noted, “An enemy airdrome appears to be nearing completion on Guadalcanal and another is under construction.”
KURE 3RD SPECIAL NAVAL LANDING FORCE
The Japanese Special Landing Force was the marine troops of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN). The IJN did not have a separate marine force until well after World War I. Prior to that, the IJN formed naval landing forces from individual ship’s crews as needed for special mission. The sailors’ basic training included infantry training to prepare them for such temporary missions. It was in the late 1920s that the IJN first started forming Special Naval Landing Forces (SNLF) as separate standing units. Japan’s four largest naval bases—Kure, Maizuru, Sasebo, and Yokosuka—all raised multiple SNLF units, which took their names from the bases.
The SNLF first saw action in the 1932 Shanghai Incident when 2,500 of its troops participated in the fight for the city. At the start of World War II, there were sixteen SNLF units, which were increased to twenty-one units during the war. The units ranged from 750 to 1,500 men organized into two rifle companies and one or two heavy weapons companies, which were much larger than their Army counterparts. The rifle company was commanded by a naval officer and consisted of a headquarters, four rifle platoons, and a machinegun platoon. The rifle platoons had a platoon headquarters, three rifle squads (thirteen men each, with one bipod-mounted machinegun), and a weapons support squad (thirteen men with three 50mm “knee mortars”). The machinegun platoon had four squads, each having at least ten men and two tripod-mounted machineguns. In a defensive role, the typical SNLF was augmented by antiaircraft, coast defense, anti-boat, and field artillery batteries, plus service and labor troops.
The War Department Handbook on Japanese Military Forces noted that, “During the early part of the war, the SNLF was used to occupy a chain of Pacific island bases. Wake Island was taken by one such force, while another seized the Gilbert Islands. Later they were used to spearhead landing operations against Java, Ambon, and Rabaul. … During this period [they] were used as mobile striking units.”
Stanley Coleman Jersey wrote in Hell’s Islands: The Untold Story of Guadalcanal that, “The Kure 3rd SNLF was formed on 2 February 1942 at the Naval Training Center, Kure Barracks. Ninety-five percent of its personnel were reservists; the balance consisted of recent inductees and apprentice seamen. The unit was led by Cmdr. Minoru Yano of Sasebo, a career officer; at thirty-nine he was younger than most of the men in his charge. When Executive Officer Lieutenant Nagata read the muster roll that first day, 1,122 enlisted men and 44 officers answered. Their average age was forty-three.”
The steady and rapid southward extension of Japanese power through the Solomons threatened the U.S. line of communication with Australia. The Joint chiefs of Staff were alarmed. Admiral Ernest J. King, commander-in-chief, United States Fleet, and chief of Naval Operations (COMINCH-CNO) directed an offensive in the Lower Solomons to seize Tulagi and adjacent areas. On Tulagi, rumors were rife of an American attack. “One sea infantryman, while on pier duty at Tulagi, said that a boat came from Gavutu and warned that an American task force was approaching the Solomons and may land at Tulagi and Gavutu on 30 May,” SME Mori noted. Nothing happened but the rumors persisted. On 1 July, the Yoshimoto Detachment was incorporated into the newly formed 84th Guard Unit and the fifty-three-year-old Yoshimoto was relieved by Cmdr. Masaaki Suzuki. A month later, Tulagi’s radio station received an alert from the 8th Fleet Signals Unit. “… [E]nemy is gathering power along the east coast of Australia … you should keep close watch.”
1ST MARINE RAIDER BATTALION
The 1st Marine Raider Battalion was an outgrowth of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s interest in establishing a commando force similar to the British organization. In a letter to Lt. Gen. Thomas Holcomb, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, Admiral E. J. King wrote, “The President proposed the use of ‘commandos’ as essential parts of raiding expeditions which attack (destroy) enemy advanced (seaplane) bases in the Pacific Fleet area.” At the same time, Marine Capt. James Roosevelt, the president’s son, wrote the commandant a letter proposing “a unit for purposes similar to the British Commandos and the Chinese Guerrillas.” Finally, Col. William J. Donovan proposed being appointed a brigadier general in the Marine Corps Reserve for the purpose of taking charge of the “Commando Project.” Under this pressure, the commandant “staffed” the proposals through the Corps’ senior leadership. While not generally supportive—his successor, Maj. Gen. Alexander Vandefrift, would note “Neither General Holcomb nor I favored forming elite units from units already elite.”—the commandant nevertheless decided to activate the special unit. Lt. Col. Merritt Austin “Red Mike” Edson was picked to lead the new unit and given carte blanch to comb Marine units for those men “deemed to be suitable.”
The next issue became what to call the organization. Names ranged from, “Commando,” to “First Destroyer Battalion,” to “1st Shock Battalion,” before General Holcomb personally selected “Raiders.” The first special unit was activated on 16 February 1942 and designated the 1st Marine Raider Battalion. Manning this new organization caused considerable heartburn among the other personnel-starved Marine units, which were also trying to gear up for deployment. The battalion consisted of four rifle companies (A, B, C, and D) and a weapons company (E) of two .30-caliber light machine gun platoons, a 60mm mortar platoon, and eventually a demolitions platoon. A small headquarters company provided essential administrative, logistical, and command and control services. Each rifle company was composed of 137 officers, enlisted Marines and Sailors organized into three platoons. Three 8-man squads made up a rifle platoon. They were armed with .30-caliber Springfield rifles and two .30-caliber Browning Automatic Rifles (BAR).
On 5 August, Amphibious Task Force Tare steamed through the dark waters of the Pacific. For the men of the 1st Raider Battalion who were slated to take Tulagi, it was a time of reflection. Major Justice Chambers, commanding officer of “Dog Company” recalled, “I don’t think that any of us will forget that last night before we landed. Officers and men realized that all their training the last few months was finally going to be put to the test. I personally was worried to death and kept going over my notes for fear that I had forgotten some detail in the orders. As we headed up for Tulagi in the darkness of the night the men wrote their last letters home and I collected them, knowing that for some of them it would probably be the last letters they would write.”
At 0300 7 August, Transport Group Yoke, with USS Neville in the lead, turned onto course 058 degrees to pass to the north side of Sealark Channel and then to 115 degrees to head directly for Tulagi. Neville reported, “No shots fired, no patrol boats encountered, no signs of life were evident.…” As the ship approached the transport area, fifteen fighters and fifteen dive bombers from USS Wasp (CV-7) (sunk on 15 September 1942 by Japanese submarine I-19) strafed and bombed Tulagi, destroying several seaplanes in the harbor.
Seize, Occupy and Defend
“On August seven, this force will recapture Tulagi and Guadalcanal Island, which are now in the hands of the enemy.”
—Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner, Commander Amphibious Force
Lieutenant Yoshimoto’s observer on Savo Island was the first to spot the gray silhouettes approaching the roadstead in the early morning light. At first he thought they were another c
onvoy bringing men and material; however, as the ship’s profile became clear, a jolt of adrenalin surged through his bloodstream—American warships! “Petty Officer Third Class Osmu Yamaoka of the Tulagi radio communications section had been on duty when at 0600 a runner alerted him that a group of strange ships had been seen near Savo Island, …” Jersey wrote. At 0613, the cruiser USS Quincy (CA-39) opened fire with her eight-inch guns, followed immediately by the rest of the bombardment ships. Twelve minutes later, at 0625, Radio Tulagi sent an emergency report to the 25th Air Flotilla headquarters on Rabaul, “Enemy surface force of twenty ships has entered Tulagi. While making landing preparations, the enemy is bombarding the shore, help requested.”
On Guadalcanal, coastwatcher Martin Clemens was startled by explosions. “Starting about 0610, very heavy detonations, at very short intervals, were heard from Lunga and Tulagi,” he later wrote. “There was no doubt what they meant … I could hardly comprehend that help had finally come.” Journalist Richard Tregaskis noted in Guadalcanal Diary, “It was fascinating to watch the apparent slowness with which the shells, their paths marked out against the sky in red fire, curved through the air.” The Americans weren’t the only shooters. At 0700, as the Navy’s minesweepers came within range, the Japanese antiaircraft unit on Gavutu took them under fire with their three-inch guns. Jersey noted that, “The Mitsuwa unit found the range of the [USS] Hopkins and fired several times without scoring any hits. There were close calls, but the Japanese shells were of a small caliber and their light charges inflicted no damage.”
