Islands of Destiny: The Solomons Campaign and the Eclipse of the Rising Sun

by John Prados

  During their voyage to the Solomons, General Kawaguchi marveled to a Japanese journalist that, unlike themselves, forced to sneak into Guadalcanal, the Americans had everything. That image of plenty belied the shoestring experience of Marines, but it was a lurid fantasy for Japanese. In mid-August, Japanese naval infantrymen were approaching Marine lines at night to search for food. Others surrendered just for something to eat. Japanese soldiers had the same problems on Guadalcanal, magnified. They had no antimalarials. They called the ’Canal “Starvation Island.” It was a wonder Japan’s soldiers could fight. But they did. For many men of both sides, Guadalcanal was an emotion not an island, a trial rather than a battle.

  BLOODY RIDGE AND AFTER

  General Vandegrift was desperate for troops. Reinforcements seemed remote—in fact, Ghormley and MacArthur were just then fighting over the destination of the 7th Marine Regiment—yet to be given to SOPAC and sent to the ’Canal. Vandegrift could not defend a full perimeter plus his long beachfront, much less provide reserves. The only men he could draw upon were on Tulagi. Early in September he did that, ordering the 1st Marine Raider Battalion and 1st Parachute Battalion over to the big island. Colonel Merritt A. “Red Mike” Edson, commanding the Raiders, was ready. A pioneer in Marine special warfare, Red Mike had teamed up with another legendary Marine, Evans Carlson, to create the Raiders. Now Edson led the 1st Battalion and it seemed marooned on Tulagi, where fighting had been savage during the invasion, but nothing had happened since.

  Itching for action, Colonel Edson sent two companies to Savo Island to look for Japanese but found none. That had a sad postscript, because destroyer-transports Little and Gregory, which carried the Raiders, were trapped by a returning Tokyo Express and blown to bits in the early morning of September 5. Commander Kikkawa Kiyoshi of the Yudachi impressed his cohorts: landing fresh troops, bombarding Henderson, and sinking the American vessels. More metal to line the seabed of Ironbottom Sound. It could have been worse—the original idea had been to keep the Raiders on board that night.

  Meanwhile Edson suggested that on their way to Cactus, his Raiders should strike the Japanese rear. Vandegrift’s staff readily agreed. The landing took place at Tasimboko on September 8, and it hit General Kawaguchi’s depot. Coincidentally, just as the four-ship Raider flotilla approached, an American convoy appeared in the distance, a pair of cargo vessels with a strong escort of a cruiser and four destroyers. The Japanese feared an invasion and fled. Furious, Kawaguchi ordered them back. He could not help, because his main force was deep into the jungle on its way to assault Henderson. There was a sharp firefight at Tasimboko, ending with the Japanese driven into the bush again. Marines disabled the artillery they found, destroyed supplies, appropriated more, and returned with a haul of maps and documents that convinced Vandegrift a major attack impended.

  At the time General Vandegrift was moving division headquarters to a location he thought safer, overlooked by a ridge. Colonel Edson brought in the captured maps and, together with Colonel Gerald C. Thomas, the 1st Marines operations officer, announced they had figured out where the Japanese would strike. Vandegrift thought Red Mike respectfully disapproving when he came to the punch line: “The ridge you insist on putting your new CP behind.” But the general quickly bought that analysis and arranged counters. Edson would take an amalgam of his 1st Raiders plus the 1st Parachute Battalion to defend the ridge. Marine artillery zeroed in on the position. Del Valle moved a battalion to beef up the fire support. Vandegrift deployed his reserves to interpose between the ridge and Henderson Field and alerted another battalion to intervene if necessary. The Marines waited.

  The Tokyo Express hit again that night. Admiral Ghormley, alert to the enemy, recalled the latest convoy before it had emptied. Japanese bombing continued also. Seabees were putting finishing touches to Fighter 1, but it was yet to become active. The Cactus Air Force lost twelve-plane ace Captain Marion Carl on September 10. SOPAC warned that day of an Imperial Navy task force that might reach the area in a couple of days. Henderson was like a pot of honey attracting bees. Surveying the damage, Vandegrift called in Jerry Thomas and asked him, without telling anyone else, to craft a plan for last-ditch guerrilla resistance from the interior. If it came to that, the Marine leader wanted to be ready.

  General Kawaguchi had his own problems. With the uncertain supply line up The Slot, Kawaguchi had to reduce the rice ration for his soldiers by two-thirds. The Tasimboko raid cut his radio relay to Rabaul. Hacking through the jungle, progress remained slow, unpredictable. Captain Inui Genjirou led the 8th Antitank Company, originally part of the Ikki Detachment. Inui’s men had already learned to slice open coconuts, supplementing meager rations with their milk and meat. So far, at least, the men did not seem to have weakened from the harsh regimen. Partway to his assembly area, General Kawaguchi dropped off the remaining Ikki Detachment troops for one prong of his attack. But Japanese knowledge of the battlefield remained so sketchy that Kawaguchi did not even know that his planned line of advance went right over a ridge. And he had no contact with Colonel Oka. The general sent a search party ahead to contact the 124th Regiment commander and tell Oka of his plans. Those men, practically emaciated, found the colonel only the very morning of the attack. It had not been a good start.

  The outcome matched the run-up. Shouting their battle cries of “Banzai!” the Japanese assaulted the ridge, and the other prongs of Kawaguchi’s offensive hit as well. It was raining. A cruiser and three destroyers, for once, shot at targets other than Henderson Field. In another departure from custom, the Imperial Navy warships used searchlights to illuminate the beach. Louie the Louse lit the night with parachute flares. All for naught. Red Mike had prepared his men well. Sergeant Frank Guidone of the Raiders’ C Company on the right flank, saw almost no Japanese reach the crest, though some broke past where his unit tied in with A Company. Marines lost a little ground, but slowly and exacting a great price. The Oka and Ikki prongs were complete failures. Admirals Richmond Kelly Turner, the amphibious boss, and John S. McCain, Commander Air Solomons, who both happened to be visiting Cactus, stayed through the night, witnessing this delicate moment. At the new headquarters, Herb Merillat ran out of his tent and hit the ground amid the downpour.

  Kawaguchi repeated his attack the next night. The battlefield became known as “Bloody Ridge.” Some called it “Edson’s Ridge.” The fighting was much like World War I, with the difference that the Japanese, great infiltrators, managed to insert little packets of soldiers inside Marine lines. By daylight Edson used Raiders and parachutists to roust out the enemy, and in darkness Kawaguchi sent them back. On the second night, fighting raged barely a quarter mile from Vandegrift’s headquarters. A couple of Marine artillery rounds, falling short, plastered the command post. Edson sent back word that many Japanese were filtering through. Vandegrift committed his reserve battalion, but Red Mike, increasingly confident he could hold, did. His troops sustained 263 casualties, including 49 dead and 10 missing. From prisoners and documents the Marines calculated that the Japanese had employed 6,230 troops and suffered more than 700 killed and missing and more than 500 wounded.

  As the various Imperial Navy sea and air activities suggest, Combined Fleet had coordinated closely on the Kawaguchi offensive. The Fleet had made a specific agreement on operations with 17th Army a week ahead of time, and chief of staff Ugaki had flown to Rabaul on September 10 to supervise. But Tokyo’s major effort collapsed. The Kido Butai left Truk to cruise east of the Solomons. The morning after Kawaguchi struck, scout planes flew to check Henderson Field and one tried to land. Finding forty American fighters on the ground there, the pilot gave up. Later, information that Cactus fighters intercepted Japanese bombers made it certain. In the face of conflicting reports, Ugaki had hoped for Henderson’s fall. Now he felt dejected. The Eleventh Air Fleet morning search on September 13 discovered a U.S. task force, but Kido Butai was 600 miles away. Nagumo wanted to attack. The Americans stayed beyond striking distance. By the fourteent
h Admiral Ugaki concluded that the Kawaguchi offensive had miscarried. In almost two weeks at sea, Nagumo accomplished nothing.

  The ultimate embarrassment came in the afternoon on September 14, when ammunition at a Rabaul dump ignited, driving everyone into bomb shelters for more than two hours. Munitions continued to brew up all night. Eighth Fleet headquarters sustained damage. A splinter struck next to the armchair where Ugaki had been sitting hours before. Finally a message from Kawaguchi admitted failure. The admiral drew several conclusions from the Imperial Navy point of view. There had been a critical lapse in naval communications when the radio on Guadalcanal tried to move prematurely to the area thought captured. Such movements had to be more cautious. The Navy had also erred by not having someone directly positioned on the battlefield, who could report independently of the Japanese Army. Ugaki could not understand why officers of the various commands at Rabaul—this applied to Tsukahara and Mikawa, exactly reprising Tanaka’s complaint, as well as to Navy and Army—could not simply walk down the street and visit one another. Time together meant better liaison. At air fleet headquarters Ugaki instructed staff to prepare a new plan, negotiating with General Hyakutake for modifications to their local cooperation agreement. Both had underestimated the Americans and overvalued their own strength. A serious effort needed to be made. Ugaki sent a dispatch to Yamamoto at Truk asking him to take the matter up with IGHQ and secure agreement on a plan for a real offensive.

  One thing Admiral Ugaki did not do in his week at Rabaul was spend much time with Tsukahara Nizhizo. The air fleet leader was in bed with fever and intestinal problems. At first this seemed uncomplicated; then Tsukahara was diagnosed with dengue fever and malaria. He would have to be sent home. The Solomons consumed men as much as airplanes. In an allusion to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, naval writer Ito Masanori decided that Guadalcanal had become the Port Arthur of the Pacific war. As for the emperor, when told of the failed attacks, Hirohito encouraged his commanders, assuring them he remained confident the island could be held. He coupled that generality with a more pointed question to Army chief General Sugiyama as to whether the eastern tip of New Guinea could be seized. The emperor’s underlying purpose was to galvanize his military and naval leaders to greater action. On September 16 Hirohito told Lord Kido of the failure.

  Colonel Tsuji now returned after weeks on Starvation Island. He was astonished at Rabaul’s transformation. Suddenly there were signs of battle everywhere. It was not just the burned-out houses. When Tsuji walked outside town he found munitions and tins of food scattered about that must have blown clear in the depot explosions. This was a base at war.

  Search planes discovered the convoy carrying the 7th Marines on September 15. The U.S. task force, in fact, was steaming east of the Solomons precisely to protect this movement. That day Henderson Field was spared because the air fleet sent its bombers after the convoy. Bad weather turned them back. The sighting, however, led to the greatest Japanese submarine success of World War II.

  Much as men had nicknamed the waters off Guadalcanal Ironbottom Sound, Allied seamen called those south and east of the Solomons, the waters separating SOPAC’s bases from its combat zone, “Torpedo Junction.” These seas were a regular hunting ground for I-boats and quite dangerous. On August 31, Lieutenant Commander Yokota Minoru’s I-26 had put a torpedo into the carrier Saratoga that left her out of action for three months. A week later Commander Shichiji Tsuneo’s I-11 took a shot at the Hornet, saved by an alert patrol plane that deflected the torpedo by dropping bombs in front of it.

  Then came September 15. Lieutenant Commander Kinashi Takaichi, on station in the I-19, detected sound on the hydrophones powerful enough for a fleet. Kinashi’s boat had survived an air attack during the Eastern Solomons battle, diving quickly to escape the scout bombers. Now he sought revenge. The adversary was a task force with the Wasp and Hornet. The I-boat gave chase but, submerged, had no chance of catching up, except that the Americans zigzagged across his course. Then Wasp turned into the wind to launch aircraft, putting her right in front of Kinashi. The I-19 emptied all six bow tubes and the torpedoes ran true. In an incredible act of fate, three hit the Wasp. Another ran past her stern and on to the other carrier group, passing under the keels of two destroyers to hit the battleship North Carolina. One torpedo hit the destroyer O’Brien, also part of the Hornet task group. Kinashi’s single spread sank a 15,000-ton aircraft carrier, damaging two more warships of 36,500 tons.

  Chance and circumstance saved the mobile radio unit that might have been aboard the Wasp. Lieutenant Gilven Slonim led this group of five sailors, previously aboard the Enterprise and Saratoga, and they had been driven from pillar to post. Petty Officer Kenneth E. Carmichael had been standing in a chow line at Pearl Harbor when asked if he’d like sea duty. Carmichael was told to be on board in an hour, and sailed with Slonim in the Enterprise. The unit transferred to the Saratoga when “Big E” suffered damage at the Eastern Solomons, and they had barely found their bunks when Saratoga got hit in Torpedo Junction. Slonim’s unit went ashore at Tonga, were shuffled among ships and planes to reach SOPAC, and were on a destroyer preparing to transfer to the Wasp when Kinashi’s torpedoes sank her.

  With the damage to Enterprise and that to Saratoga, suddenly the Hornet became the only American aircraft carrier in the South Pacific. Dockyard workers at Pearl Harbor, where the Enterprise was by now under repair, raced more desperately than ever to return her to sea. The entire campaign could depend on it.

  Admiral Ugaki reappeared at Truk on September 18. He huddled with communications specialists over plans to improve radio transmission in the southeast area, notoriously bad, and the procedures for which would be changed at the end of the month, and puzzled over how to improve the fleet’s fuel situation. The Navy burned oil at a rate of 10,000 tons a month, and this had become a problem. At Rabaul the scarcity of tankers limited deliveries. The Army did not help with its antics to avoid drawing down troop strength in China, culling reinforcements for the South Seas by the regiment, battalion, even company, from places all over Southeast Asia. Finding escorts for these units bedeviled the Combined Fleet, and transporting them burned even more oil. In late September, when Rabaul begged for Kido Butai’s intervention because it feared the Americans were about to strike Shortland, there was a fuel shortage at Truk too. The Nagumo force stayed at anchor, because the Zuikaku had not quite attained combat readiness, but fuel played a role in that calculation.

  Nevertheless the die was cast for a fresh operation on September 28, when a raft of staff officers flew up from Rabaul to confer with Combined Fleet. Its own operations chief, Commander Watanabe Yasuji, returned with them, as did Colonel Tsuji, representing the Army General Staff. Commander Ohmae Toshikazu attended for the Eighth Fleet, and Major Hayashi Tadahiko for the 17th Army.

  Colonel Tsuji’s reactions visiting Truk were much like his first impressions of the Imperial Navy base at Rabaul. Warships filled the lagoon, though he was surprised to see only two aircraft carriers. Nearing flagship Yamato in a launch seemed like a fly approaching an elephant. Of course, Tsuji knew the Navy nicknamed her the “Yamato hotel” because the battleship never seemed to go into combat. Except for the hatches and the pipes that ran everywhere, Yamato might actually have been a hotel. But an organic one—a broken pipe, like a blood vessel, might drain its lifeblood. Anyone visiting the huge ship would fear getting lost, so Tsuji’s fantasy was not unusual. But when it came to dinner he was overwhelmed. The staff ate on nice china—fish made into sushi and also broiled, washed down with ice-cold beer. The Army man thought of Guadalcanal, where soldiers were “thinner than Gandhi himself.”

  The key conversations took place in flag country, the area of Yamato reserved for fleet staff. The officers went there immediately upon boarding the huge battleship. Principals on the Combined Fleet side of the table were Admiral Ugaki and Captain Kuroshima Kameto, senior staff officer. Tsuji presented plans for a major offensive. The Army insisted on a high-sp
eed convoy down The Slot to deliver a full division of troops with their heavy equipment. The 2nd Infantry Division would come from Java for this purpose, while the 38th, training on Borneo (today Sulawesi), could reinforce if necessary. General Hyakutake would lead in person. Army heavy artillery would fire directly on Henderson Field. Kuroshima told the Army men of the Imperial Navy’s losses, pressing for agreement on moving by fast destroyers. Tsuji demanded transports—the only way to deliver big guns. The Navy did not agree. Seaplane carriers with their heavy-duty cranes were better suited for big artillery pieces. Kuroshima also emphasized that, once they were in motion, fuel would limit the Navy to a fortnight at sea. It is not clear that Tsuji appreciated the significance of that remark.

  To break the impasse, Ugaki took Tsuji to Yamamoto’s cabin. The colonel found the admiral drawing Japanese characters in a letter. Tsuji described the plight of the men on Starvation Island. The Navy and Army united at last, in tears, according to Tsuji. Both Yamamoto and he cried. “If army men have been starving through lack of supplies,” Tsuji quotes Yamamoto, “then the navy should be ashamed of itself.” The admiral promised, “I’ll give you cover even if I have to bring the Yamato alongside Guadalcanal.” Here came his decision on the fleet staff’s earlier ruminations about battleship bombardments of Henderson Field. Yamamoto insisted on one thing—that General Hyakutake himself travel by fast destroyer, not vulnerable transport. The Navy would extend an air umbrella using the Kido Butai, and bombard Henderson Field this time with battleships—fulfilling Yamamoto’s promise.