by John Prados
So the fleet went to sea. Vice Admiral Kondo maneuvered in the waters northeast of the Solomons. By night they steamed south to attain favorable dawn launch positions. During the day they would turn north and head toward Truk—if battle came, the Japanese wanted to be headed for safety, not destruction. This cautious approach disgusted many. In the screen, Commander Hara Tameichi on his destroyer Amatsukazi was among those discomfited by the seeming reluctance to close with the enemy. It bothered Yamamoto too. He had imagined an aggressive sortie beyond the Solomons into the Coral Sea, cutting through Torpedo Junction to isolate Guadalcanal. That would have forced the Allies into the open to restore communications. As Combined Fleet saw Kido Butai diverge, Ugaki nudged Kondo and Nagumo to adopt a forward-leaning posture. But neither Ugaki nor Yamamoto made this a direct order.
Rear Admiral Kusaka counseled caution. Kusaka could not escape feeling the American carriers, as at Midway, would appear on Nagumo’s flank. A sortie into the Coral Sea invited that. Kusaka was determined not to take the risk until the enemy carriers were accounted for. In the Imperial Navy, chiefs of staff had great power, and Kusaka used his to shield Nagumo from the complaints of inaction. When a new staffer aboard flagship Shokaku asked why the fleet did not stop this indecisive to-ing and fro-ing, Kusaka told him off, saying he was still an amateur at battle. The staff chief used the example of the sumo wrestler, who repeatedly left the fight to get salt to improve his grip, an act known as shikari. The fleet was doing shikari.
Kusaka fended off Ugaki as well. But as the days passed without action, morale suffered. The surface fleet was engaging the enemy. The Army, supposedly, was fighting. The Kido Butai did nothing. There were two key questions: the Army’s attack and the location of Allied fleets. Actually Hyakutake’s troops were still cutting their way through the jungle, struggling to reach assault positions. They literally hacked the “Maruyama Trail,” named for the leader of the Sendai Division, through the harsh land. The date of the Seventeenth Army attack was postponed once, then again. General Hyakutake pleaded insuperable difficulties. At Truk, Admiral Ugaki complained that the Army did not understand that postponements of a day here and there, of little consequence to a soldier, were serious for a fleet burning oil and wearing its ships. Delay pressed against operational limits. Had the Army kept its promises, the naval battle would have occurred before the arrival of U.S. carrier Enterprise, affording the Japanese overwhelming superiority. Aboard Amatsukaze, Commander Hara recalled “waiting impatiently,” a Navy that “stamped its feet in disgust.”
Intelligence on the Allied fleet posed the other big headache. The Imperial Navy had an inkling of new Allied forces. The Owada Communications Group had reported a task force leaving Pearl Harbor in mid-October. Ready to inform the Japanese was a low-grade aviation codebook captured from a U.S. torpedo bomber downed at Shortland on October 3. The first concrete information came ten days later, when a Chitose floatplane spotted a carrier and a battleship through a hole in the clouds. Also that day, Lieutenant Commander Nagai Takeo’s I-7 sent a floatplane over the harbor at Espíritu Santo at dawn, determining that there were no U.S. carriers there. Traffic on Japanese direction finding and intelligence radio nets spiked, especially on Rabaul circuits, something Allied codebreakers noticed. On the fourteenth Nagumo’s combat air patrol shot down an Allied scout. The Kido Butai (the text will use this term for all the Kondo-Nagumo forces for the moment) went looking for American carriers on its run south next day and found nothing but a tug towing a fuel barge toward Cactus. There had been an Allied convoy, but SOPAC had recalled it.
Continuing this shadow sumo bout, Japanese codebreakers recorded a high volume of Allied operational traffic, and on October 16, Rabaul added at least a dozen radio fixes on Allied ships. Aerial searches revealed a battleship group and a carrier force. With Nagumo out of position, the Eleventh Air Fleet sent out two attack units that encountered nothing but a tanker, which they hit but could not sink. Submarines supplied numerous sighting reports, establishing that Allied battleships were steaming south of Cactus. A few days later, Lieutenant Commander Tanabe Yahachi of the I-176 got close enough to attack, and his torpedoes put the U.S. cruiser Chester out of action for more than a year.
At the initiative of Kusaka Ryunosuke, the fleet tried another ploy to locate the American carriers. Kusaka imagined them lurking at the edge of Torpedo Junction. He convinced Nagumo to conduct a special search using the heavy cruisers Tone and Chikuma of Rear Admiral Hara’s Cruiser Division 8. These had been designed specifically as scout vessels. Carrying five floatplanes and capable of supporting more, they were ideal for work with the Kido Butai. Indeed, these cruisers had been sailing with Nagumo since Pearl Harbor. Hara had commanded carriers and knew their habits and workday cycles. For this operation his cruisers were with Abe Hiroaki’s Vanguard Force, still part of Nagumo’s command. On October 19, the Japanese carrier boss set Hara on a dash forward to the Santa Cruz islands. The Tone, screened by a single destroyer, sent aerial scouts to search. They found nothing. Admiral Abe recalled Hara when an Emily patrol bomber from Jaluit sighted a U.S. carrier near Nouméa. A few days later the Chikuma repeated the exercise in an easterly direction. Again no result.
Meanwhile the Japanese scouted Nouméa on October 19 with a floatplane from Lieutenant Commander Kobayashi Hajime’s I-19. No American carriers there. I-boats and air searches sighted battleships and cruisers but not carriers. Japanese intelligence circuits went wild, according to Allied monitors. By October 22, the Allies knew the Japanese were recording and tracking their radio call signs, and a couple of days later reported that the Imperial Navy had installed and was operating a radio direction finder on Guadalcanal itself.
The South Pacific cruise took its toll on the Imperial fleet. By October 17, Admiral Ugaki worried that the Kido Butai, running short of fuel, would be unable to maneuver. As an emergency measure one of Kondo’s tankers, emptied by the fleet, took half the oil from each of battleships Yamato and Mutsu at Truk and, after topping off from another vessel, went back out. The Japanese suffered their first important loss that day, in Kakuta’s Carrier Division 2, when a fire broke out in the generator room of his flagship, Captain Beppu Akitomo’s aircraft carrier Hiyo. Damage control extinguished the blaze, but Commander Matoba Shigehiro, Hiyo’s chief engineer, thereafter could not produce more than sixteen knots, hardly enough for a fleet engagement. Hiyo stayed in formation for the moment, but with growing strain on Matoba’s engines, on October 22 she blew out a condenser, cutting steam to some boilers. Admiral Kakuta shifted his flag to Captain Okada Tametsugu’s Junyo. Lieutenant Kaneko Tadashi led half of Hiyo’s planes to Buin, while the rest crowded onto Junyo. Escorted by destroyers, Beppu sailed Hiyo to Truk at her best speed, six knots. This loss reduced Japanese strength even before the battle.
The quandary continued. On October 22, an I-boat surfaced off Espíritu Santo before dawn and treated the SOPAC base to a rare harassing bombardment. Part of the Kido Butai refueled on October 24. In his cabin on the Shokaku, even Nagumo Chuichi chaffed. Hara Tameichi relates this scene: Puzzling over the assorted sighting reports and an American news story that mentioned expectations for imminent battle in the South Pacific, Nagumo spoke to his senior staff officer, Commander Takada Toshitane. What to do? Takada mentioned the high level of radio emissions from Allied submarines and aircraft. Nagumo asked for his chief of staff. Kusaka reported on the progress of refueling. Nagumo ordered him, once the oilers had finished, to inform the fleet that major battle impended.
A similar conversation took place on Kakuta’s flagship. Commander Okumiya Masatake, the admiral’s senior staff officer, drew attention to the date October 27—Navy Day in the United States (today annual naval festivities are part of Armed Forces Day, at that time Navy Day, dreamed up by active officers but enshrined in 1922 by the Navy League of the United States), which was celebrated on the birthday of Theodore Roosevelt, the father of the “Great White Fleet.” In conjunction with the expectations expre
ssed in the American press, it seemed SOPAC might engage that day.
Back on the Shokaku, Commander Takada, no doubt aware of Admiral Kusaka’s views, suggested consulting Combined Fleet. Kusaka assented, but, after a few moments’ thought, turned the idea on its head, sending a dispatch that warned of a trap and recommended halting the fleet until the Army captured Henderson Field. He mentioned the idea of rescheduling to October 27. Ugaki’s return message was direct: “STRIKING FORCE WILL PROCEED QUICKLY TO THE ENEMY DIRECTION. THE OPERATION ORDERS STAND, WITHOUT CHANGE.”
Admiral Ugaki’s version of this story appears in his diary. Kusaka’s dispatch reached Yamato in the evening. Though sent before noon, it was delayed in retransmission by a relay vessel. Ugaki acknowledged that October 27 might be a better moment for battle, but the Kido Butai’s failure to attain assigned positions could endanger the entire plan. Combined Fleet sent the Army a different message declaring that if the offensive did not begin immediately, lack of fuel would require the Navy’s withdrawal. But Ugaki felt Kusaka’s eleventh-hour démarche outrageous and arbitrary. His urgent reply: “THIS COMMAND HAS THE WHOLE RESPONSIBILITY. DO NOT HESITATE OR WAVER!”
Everything hinged on the Japanese Army. Admiral Yamamoto recognized that. As they stood together on Yamato’s upper deck, he told Ugaki that the Army chief of staff must be more anxious for victory than anyone. Only the Army could actually capture Henderson Field. American bombardments and air attacks had robbed Seventeenth Army of about a third of the supplies from the high-speed convoy, and the remainder, those to sustain the fight, had to be carried by the men themselves. General Hyakutake split the Army into two detachments under his overall control. To attack along the coast, around the Matanikau, would be Major General Sumiyoshi Tadashi, the Army’s artillery commander, with two infantry regiments plus the tanks and guns. Inland, under tactical command of Sendai Division boss Lieutenant General Maruyama, the other group would make the direct attack toward Henderson Field.
The difficulties of the land slowed preparations. Except for Sumiyoshi’s men along the Matanikau, in increasingly well-known terrain, the Japanese were largely navigating by compass bearing through thick jungle. No one had surveyed Guadalcanal or produced accurate maps. And the soldiers starved. Hungry men had trouble hacking their way through the undergrowth. Rough country plus rudimentary navigation meant errors in reckoning positions. Thus Hyakutake’s postponements. To divert the Americans and keep to some semblance of the schedule, General Sumiyoshi ordered one regiment across the Matanikau to probe the Marine defenses. The unfortunate Colonel Oka led this maneuver, never intended as the main assault. On October 23 his troops tried to attack but bogged down in the jungle. At Truk, Admiral Ugaki, learning of Oka’s failure, reflected on the dishonor the colonel heaped on his regiment’s flag. Sumiyoshi’s other regiment, with the tanks, was to attack across the river as part of the main offensive, most recently scheduled that very day. But General Sumiyoshi was prostrated with malaria, and his staff never circulated the postponement notice. The attack along the Matanikau went ahead on the original schedule. It gained little—though Marine General Vandegrift indeed turned his eyes there. The Marines crushed the developing attack with 6,000 rounds of artillery fire.
Hyakutake’s main attack by Maruyama’s force had been set for nighttime. But the tactical commander found himself short of the assembly area. Chronic neuralgia also impaired Maruyama’s faculties. He pleaded for another postponement. The troops finally swung into action on October 24. This operational group divided into two wings plus a reserve. Each wing, one of them led by General Kawaguchi, comprised a reinforced regiment. Maruyama kept another regiment in reserve. They would attack up Bloody Ridge and to its right.
In U.S. Marine lore, that night through the next went down as “Dugout Sunday.” Vandegrift had made preparations too, and his forces were well fortified. With the addition of the U.S. Army 164th Infantry, Vandegrift was slightly superior in men, considerably advantaged in artillery, and now better supplied. One Japanese officer ruefully told comrades that for every shell loosed against the Americans, they answered with a hundred.
The redoubtable Chesty Puller and his battalion had redeployed to the sector Maruyama attacked. Vandegrift sent them a battalion of the green 164th Infantry, making up for a Marine unit hastily pulled away to the Matanikau. The Japanese went in. Unlike in the Matanikau sector, Maruyama had but a single mortar battalion to support him. Kawaguchi’s column wandered into the jungle and hardly participated. A fulminating Maruyama relieved Kawaguchi. Colonel Nakaguma Nomasu’s regiment bore the brunt of the fight. Their only chance lay in the fact that Puller had had to extend his line to take over the front vacated by the absent Marine battalion, and that Marine artillery had expended most of its ammunition in the Matanikau action. A spirited attack began after midnight on October 25. Puller slowly fed the 164th Infantry reinforcements into his 1/7 Marine line as the fighting progressed. Nakaguma made only a few shallow penetrations. The Japanese left almost 1,000 bodies in the barbed wire.
Following Maruyama’s attack, the Army notified the Navy that Henderson Field had been captured. Carrier planes were sent to verify this. Soon afterward, Lieutenant Funashi reported from his observation post that battle raged in Henderson’s vicinity. The situation remained obscure. Based on General Hyakutake’s instructions and the original capture claims, Admiral Mikawa initiated what was to have been the coup de grâce of the offensive—a variety of actions by several units. One was the landing of a unit called the Koli Detachment to complete the conquest of the airfields from the beach side. A group of three destroyers would also deliver fuel and bombs to the newly captured Henderson Field to enable Japanese planes to fly from it immediately. A formation of tin cans led by a light cruiser would interdict Guadalcanal waters from the west, while another did so to the east. Mikawa recalled them when aerial observers determined that the Americans still held Henderson.
But the Army begged for a naval bombardment, and Mikawa sent back three destroyers, hoping a sudden shelling might stun the Americans into relinquishing their hold. Combined Fleet ordered Rear Admiral Takama Tamotsu’s group, with light cruiser Yura and five destroyers, to back this sally, unnecessary since the Destroyer Squadron 4 leader had already reversed course for that very purpose. After daybreak, the Navy observation post reported a U.S. light cruiser in the anchorage. Two World War I–vintage tin cans, not a cruiser, actually lay off Tulagi, where they had delivered fuel and torpedoes for the PT boats and towed in four new craft. They cleared harbor once they saw the first Japanese destroyers, which gave chase and inflicted some damage. The Japanese then nearly ran down a pair of U.S. naval auxiliaries before returning to their bombardment mission. At that point shore batteries and the Cactus Air Force intervened, driving off the destroyers.
Cactus airplanes caught up to Yura. When the first bomb hit, Lieutenant Kamimura Arashi was at the engineering control station, his body vibrating as the engines strained into a high-speed turn. Kamimura staggered with a direct hit on Yura’s number three boiler room. Men in the other two were wounded by fragments. The Yura lost power, fires broke out; then more hits followed. Captain Sato Shiro ordered, “Abandon ship.” He signaled other vessels to fight to the end. Sato refused to leave, tying himself to Yura’s bridge. The sailors evacuated to destroyers. While standard accounts state the Yura had to be scuttled, Lieutenant Kamimura believed the cruiser was breaking up as her crew left.
Through the afternoon the Cactus Air Force beat off renewed JNAF attacks with more losses on both sides. But that was only a prelude for the ground battle, when General Maruyama again hit Vandegrift’s perimeter, this time with a better-prepared night attack. Chesty Puller’s Marines and the U.S. Army infantry had by now taken separate sectors, with Puller on Bloody Ridge. Maruyama hit both and committed his reserve, whose commander, as well as Maruyama’s tactical leader, Major General Nasu Yumio, were killed. The weight of the Japanese attack fell on the newly blooded 3/164, which acquitted
itself well. Meanwhile, the wing formerly led by General Kawaguchi again failed to engage. On the Matanikau front, Colonel Oka launched his troops against the 2/7 Marines and succeeded in taking one hill, but they were ejected by Marine counterattacks. Although General Maruyama claimed he had penetrated the U.S. perimeter, that was an illusory result. Staff officers, including Colonel Tsuji, told Seventeenth Army the attack had failed. General Hyakutake ordered a stand-down on the morning of October 26. The Army offensive had collapsed. Navy observers reconfirmed the American hold on Henderson at 5:15 a.m. But by that time the Imperial Navy was embroiled in its own battle.
Rear Admiral Kusaka discounted Combined Fleet’s peremptory orders. In his view Ugaki was a blowhard with no battle experience, a neophyte not worth listening to. The fleet held to its routine, making the usual run south on the night of October 24. Frustration increased. In the morning Nagumo detached Rear Admiral Abe Hiroaki’s Vanguard Force to take station ahead of the carriers. Abe had battleships Hiei and Kirishima, Cruiser Divisions 7 and 8, and a destroyer squadron. Shortly after 10:00 a.m., a U.S. scout discovered the Kido Butai in position roughly 230 miles northeast of Henderson. Kusaka heard that a snooper had been downed by patrol fighters. Nagumo turned north. Carrier planes, then the Navy observation post, advised that the Americans were still at Henderson, affirmed by the bombing that cost the Yura. Unknown to Nagumo, Kinkaid had actually sent an Enterprise strike wave against him that afternoon, but with Kido Butai’s turnaway, and no tracking data, the planes found empty sea. They returned in the dark. A Wildcat plus seven TBFs and SBDs, out of gas, had to ditch.
