The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 (Modern Library War)

by Toland, John

  Stung, Vandegrift radioed back that reconnaissance “would tend to show that we may expect an attack in force from additional troops to be landed some time around the first of October when the moon is favorable to such landing and operations.” Accordingly, he added, a major Marine push would be dangerous. He was irked that Turner couldn’t realize that the Japanese were merely slacking off while they mounted a new offensive.

  Two days later Admiral Nimitz flew in and patiently listened to Vandegrift’s argument that the principal mission of the Marines was to hold Henderson Field. The admiral was sympathetic but noncommittal. That evening over a drink he said, “You know, Vandegrift, when this war is over we are going to write a new set of Navy Regulations. So just keep it in the back of your mind because I will want to know some of the things that ought to be changed.”

  “I know one right now. Leave out all reference that he who runs his ship aground will face a fate worse than death. Out here too many commanders have been far too leery about risking their ships.”

  Nimitz smiled, but something about his manner gave Vandegrift the feeling that he understood the problems on Guadalcanal and would send out more air, ground and sea reinforcements. Heartened by Nimitz’ visit, Vandegrift decided to launch another limited attack to keep the enemy off balance. This time he ordered a full regiment to move down the coast from the east to the mouth of the Mataniko, and sent three battalions through the jungle about a mile inland to cross the river secretly upstream and catch the Japanese in a pincers.

  The regiment reached the east bank of the river and began making obvious preparations for crossing. Men moved about noisily, and amphibious tractors rumbled around just behind the lines. This diversion allowed the three battalions to cross the Mataniko on the morning of October 9 without being discovered. They then wheeled sharply to the right toward the sea, entrapping the Japanese along the west bank. Tons of artillery and mortar shells were dumped onto the Japanese positions. Those who tried to escape over the ridges were caught in the open and cut down by automatic-weapon fire. The Marines reported that more than seven hundred Japanese (almost one third of their entire effective force on the island) lay dead along the Mataniko. The Marines lost sixty-five.

  Yamamoto kept his word, and that midnight the transports carrying the 2nd Division, as well as 17th Army Headquarters, safely reached Tassafaronga Point. General Hyakutake—accompanied by Kawaguchi, Konuma and Tsuji—waded ashore. With them was Major General Tadashi Sumiyoshi, commander of 17th Army artillery units.

  As bags of rice and other supplies were brought to the shore, ragged figures emerged from the brush and timidly approached. They looked like walking skeletons; their hair was long and dirty and their torn, begrimed clothing no longer resembled uniforms. One man told Tsuji they were survivors of the Ichiki and Kawaguchi detachments and they had come to help unload the supplies.

  Kawaguchi led Hyakutake and his party down the beach toward the new headquarters of the 17th Army. It was dawn, October 10, by the time they reached their destination near a small river five miles west of the Mataniko. At breakfast Hyakutake received a report that most of the rice unloaded the night before had been stolen by the volunteer coolies. “It is my fault for having brought such loyal soldiers to such a miserable lot,” said Hyakutake. “May they fill their stomachs with our food and be remade into good soldiers.”

  All along the coast near Hyakutake’s headquarters the last survivors of the Battle of Bloody Ridge were stumbling out of the jungle. Their ribs protruded. Their black hair had turned a dirty brown and could be pulled out in patches. Their eyebrows and eyelashes were dropping off and their teeth were loose. For almost three weeks no one had had a bowel movement and their bodies were so starved for salt that the sea water tasted sweet. The water brought on a painful urge to evacuate but they were too weak. They had to help each other with fingers. The relief was indescribable.

  The dismay that Hyakutake felt at the sight of such suffering was compounded when he learned the details of the devastating defeat at the Mataniko. He radioed Rabaul: SITUATION ON GUADALCANAL IS FAR MORE SERIOUS THAN ESTIMATED, and asked for more reinforcements and supplies at once.

  Furthermore, the Marine victory made it necessary for Konuma and Tsuji to draw up another battle plan, to start in about ten days. Instead of attacking straight down the coast across the Mataniko, they would make a surprise night attack on Henderson from the rear. While the 2nd Division pushed through the jungle behind Mount Austen, General Sumiyoshi would keep the Americans occupied by shelling their positions from the west bank of the Mataniko and then, several hours before H-hour, launch an infantry attack of regiment size as a diversion—and draw the Americans to the Mataniko. At H-hour Lieutenant General Masao Maruyama, commander of the 2nd Division, would launch a simultaneous two-pronged attack from the south. The main body—commanded by General Yumio Nasu, who had first learned about Guadalcanal on Shortland from Nishino—would turn left and come up the corridor between Bloody Ridge and the Lungga River while the right flank, under Kawaguchi, advanced to the east of the ridge over almost the same ground he earlier fought. Kawaguchi felt apprehensive about the plan but he was in too precarious a position to argue that this particular terrain was too rugged for an attack, particularly since it was logical to make a flanking attack where the enemy least expected it.

  Success depended on the prompt arrival of artillery and ammunition, as well as on the completion of a semicircular trail which led behind Mount Austen and then northward along the Lungga River to a point just below the airfield. Fortunately it had been started a month earlier and was almost finished. It ran fifteen miles through jungle so thick that men could not walk upright for more than a few paces. The Army Engineers had only hand tools with which to cut down large trees and hack through tough vines as thick as a man’s arm. The felled trees were placed along either side of the trail; bushes and roots were cut away. Log roads spanned marshes, and camouflage netting hid stretches across grass plains. Ravines as wide as a hundred feet were bridged with thick vines, with smaller vines serving as handrails up steep inclines.

  It was already nicknamed “the Maruyama Trail” after the resolute commander of the 2nd Division. Maruyama was a mild-looking man, imperturbable under fire. He had no illusions about the difficulties of his mission but realized its significance. Before they set out for Guadalcanal he told his troops: “This is the Decisive Battle between Japan and the United States, a battle in which the rise or fall of the Japanese Empire will be decided. If we do not succeed in the occupation of these islands, no one should expect to return to Japan alive.”

  The first answer to Hyakutake’s urgent call for reinforcements was a modest force of two small seaplane carriers and six destroyers. They came down Solomons passage at full speed on October 11, bringing four big howitzers, two field guns, an antiaircraft gun, ammunition, assorted supplies and 728 troops.

  They were sighted by a B-17, and at dusk an American task group of two heavy and two light cruisers and five destroyers, commanded by a veteran of World War I, Rear Admiral Norman Scott, speeded at 29 knots from its hiding place less than a hundred miles below Guadalcanal, to catch the enemy convoy before it reached the island. Unlike previous American units, Scott’s was ready and eager for night battle; for weeks the crews had been kept at their stations from sunset to dawn. What Scott didn’t know was that lurking behind the convoy was a special bombardment force—the three heavy cruisers and two destroyers of Rear Admiral Aritomo Goto.

  The sky was slightly overcast and the sliver of a new moon gave off almost no light. There was a gentle breeze as Scott approached Cape Esperance from the southwest just before ten-thirty, cruisers in column, one destroyer on either side. Scott planned to turn right at the cape in order to contact the enemy and be in position to hit the transports when they tried to unload on the north coast of Guadalcanal. He signaled his ships to form a single column and prepare for battle.

  About forty miles to the northwest Goto was appr
oaching Savo with his three cruisers in column—the first was his flagship, Aoba—flanked by the two destroyers. The transport group was ahead, just off Cape Esperance, and starting down the coast toward Tassafaronga Point to land its valuable cargo.

  Around eleven o’clock the eight ships were discovered by one of Admiral Scott’s planes but reported only as “one large, two small vessels.” Friend or foe? Scott wondered. And, if enemy, where were the rest of the transports? He set out to look for them and turned left to pass six miles west of Savo. The light cruiser Helena had already picked up the Japanese column with its new SG search radar, but her commander, Captain Gilbert C. Hoover, wanted to make sure before passing on the information to Scott. The flagship San Francisco was not yet equipped with SG, and Scott had no idea that Goto was bearing down on him. Upon reaching the north end of the little volcanic island at eleven-thirty, he ordered the entire column to reverse course. Two minutes later the nine ships started heading back to the southwest at 20 knots, patrolling the passage between Savo and Cape Esperance. After ten more minutes Captain Hoover at last signaled Scott that there was definitely an enemy six miles to the northwest and coming fast.

  Then the light cruiser Boise reported “five bogies.” Scott was confused; “bogey” usually meant an unidentified plane. At last San Francisco’s less efficient radar found Goto’s flagship just 5,000 yards away. Before Scott could determine whether it was friend or foe, Captain Hoover got a message from a lookout: “Ships visible to the naked eye.” By voice radio Hoover asked permission to open fire. Scott laconically answered “Roger,” meaning “Message received,” but fortunately Hoover took it for its code meaning, “Commence firing.” And so, shortly before midnight, Helena opened up on Goto.

  With no radar at all, Goto was taken completely by surprise. As other ships joined in the bombardment, he assumed that the transport convoy was firing on him because it had mistaken him for the Americans in the dark. He ordered the column to turn right and almost immediately was knocked to Aoba’s deck, mortally wounded, by one of the shells exploding the length of the cruiser.

  Like Goto, Scott imagined friend was attacking friend and ordered Cease Firing a minute after the first shots. It took him another four minutes to learn the truth, but once Scott was sure it was the enemy out front, he bore in tenaciously to give the Japanese their first real challenge in a night battle. The action was furious and bold, with both sides loosing salvo after salvo on the other and refusing to back off. By the time all firing had ceased, about twenty minutes after midnight, the waters between Cape Esperance and Savo were ablaze with flaming ships. Aoba, though hit forty times, escaped up The Slot with the dying Goto, but the cruiser Furutaka and the destroyer Fubuki were sinking.

  The American task group was also hurt. Boise was an inferno and the magazines threatened to go up at any moment. Then sea water cascaded in through a shell hole, flooding the magazines. Only one of Scott’s ships was in desperate shape, the destroyer Duncan; its fires could not be controlled. For the first time the Japanese had been beaten at their own game—night battle—and the Americans were elated. The humiliating Battle of Savo had been avenged. Victory it was, but as at Savo, where Admiral Mikawa had allowed the American transports to land, the Battle of Cape Esperance had diverted the winners from the Japanese convoy. During the fierce melee, the transports were putting ashore the artillery, ammunition and reinforcements that General Hyakutake needed so desperately.

  The seesaw battle of supply, however, went to the Americans the next day, October 13: 2,852 GI’s of the Americal Division, along with sixteen British Bren-gun carriers, twelve 37-mm. guns, ammunition, trucks and a mountain of provisions were unloaded at Lungga Point in spite of two bombing raids. Now Vandegrift had 23,088 men to defend his perimeter, and judged by Japanese standards, he was unbelievably rich in, all kinds of supplies.

  Still, there was no time for complacency. At noon two dozen Japanese planes bombed Henderson from an altitude of 30,000 feet with devastating accuracy, and before Seabees could clear away the worst of the rubble, another fifteen bombers droned over to rip up the airstrips. Combat Engineers swarmed back to work and finished filling in the holes. There was an unearthly shriek followed by an explosion on the main runway. General Sumiyoshi had already moved up the first of his 150-mm. howitzers to the Mataniko River and he continued to pound the field so unerringly that the Marines nicknamed the long-range gun “Pistol Pete.”

  Nor was this the end of Japanese harassment for the day. At dusk two battleships, Kongo and Haruna, plowed toward Guadalcanal, along with six destroyers. The big warships hoped to blast Henderson out of existence with their mighty 36-cm. guns.* Together they carried over nine hundred shells. Some were Type 3 incendiaries, but most were the brand-new Type Zero armor-piercing bombardment shells.

  Just before midnight the raiders, still undetected by the Americans, approached Guadalcanal at 18 knots, guided by oil drums set afire by Japanese infantrymen. Kongo led, with Haruna a thousand yards behind, all sixteen of their big guns trained to the south. Shortly after one o’clock, October 14, they began spewing out incendiary shells. In moments Captain Tomiji Koyanagi, skipper of Kongo, could see a lake of fire to starboard. It was Henderson! He gave orders to load up with the new armor-piercing shells. The cannonade became even more deafening, and on Guadalcanal spouts of flame shot up from exploded fuel and ammunition depots. The Marines burrowed into their foxholes or crouched helplessly in shelters as the earth shook. It was the most terrifying experience in their lives and Vandegrift himself was shaken. Finally, after half an hour, the firing stopped. “I don’t know how you feel,” said his operations officer, “but I think I prefer a good bombing or artillery shelling.”

  Vandegrift nodded. “I think I do—” His words were cut off by a violent explosion. The concussion bowled over everyone in the shelter. Kongo and Haruna had resumed the bombardment on the return trip up the coast.

  So far, not a plane or ship had gone out to challenge the Japanese, but now four torpedo boats from Tulagi rushed at them, launching torpedoes and spraying the area with machine-gun fire. It was a gallant gesture, but they were driven off by destroyers and their torpedoes skipped past the battleships.

  For an hour and a half the bombardment continued. With ammunition almost exhausted—814 armor-piercing shells and 104 incendiaries had been flung at Guadalcanal—the Japanese were ordered to cease fire. Kongo and Haruna turned north, slipping between Savo and Tulagi at 29 knots.

  Henderson Field had been blasted almost beyond recognition. Bits of clothing and equipment dangled from phone wires. Forty-one men lay dead, many others were wounded. Vandegrift’s tiny Cactus Air Force (“Cactus” was the code name for Guadalcanal) was a shambles. There was almost no aviation gas; only thirty-five fighters and seven dive bombers were operable. Army fliers eyed the ravaged field and wondered if they could get in the air with their P-400’s and Airacobras. “We don’t know whether we’ll be able to hold the field or not,” a Marine colonel told them. “There’s a Japanese task force of destroyers, cruisers and troop transports headed our way. We have enough gasoline left for one mission against them.” He told them to load up with bombs and go after the enemy. “After the gas is gone we’ll have to let the ground troops take over. Then your officers and men will attach yourselves to some infantry outfit. Good luck and good-bye.”

  Gone were the high hopes of yesterday; a feeling of doom settled over the island. The night bombardment had done more than physical damage; Marines would never forget the primal terror that came when the very earth writhed and exploded in the dark.

  The report that another Japanese convoy was heading for the island was true. Six big new high-speed transports loaded with four thousand men, fourteen tanks and a dozen 15-cm. howitzers and assorted supplies were coming down The Slot protected by destroyers and fighter planes.

  The Cactus Air Force managed to get eleven planes off the ground, but the best they could do was slightly damage one destroyer. By midni
ght the transports were unloading off Tassafaronga Point as two heavy cruisers, Chokai and Kinugasa, ranged up and down the coast lobbing in 8-inch shells. Their captains had been so sure they would be sunk that all men had been told to prepare to swim for shore and join the soldiers as infantrymen. But like the battleships, Kongo and Haruna, they escaped without damage up The Slot after firing 752 shells.

  Three empty transports also managed to withdraw; however, the other three were still unloading at dawn when the remnants of Vandegrift’s planes, after a frantic scramble for fuel, took to the air. All three ships were set afire and had to be run aground. Most of the tank fuel went up in flames, detonating countless rounds of ammunition, but the troops aboard did make it to shore along with the tanks and howitzers. Now Hyakutake had more than fifteen thousand able-bodied men and adequate artillery. He was as ready as he ever would be for his offensive.

  Vandegrift suspected that most of the supplies had been landed and radioed Nimitz, Ghormley and Turner that at least fifteen thousand Japanese and a considerable amount of equipment and supplies were now on the island.

  … OUR FORCE EXCEEDS THAT NUMBER BUT MORE THAN HALF OF IT IS IN NO CONDITION TO UNDERTAKE A PROTRACTED LAND CAMPAIGN DUE TO INCESSANT HOSTILE OPERATIONS … THE SITUATION DEMANDS TWO URGENT AND IMMEDIATE STEPS: TAKE AND MAINTAIN CONTROL OF SEA AREAS ADJACENT TO CACTUS TO PREVENT FURTHER ENEMY LANDINGS AND ENEMY BOMBARDMENT SUCH AS THIS FORCE HAS TAKEN FOR THE LAST THREE NIGHTS; REINFORCEMENT OF GROUND FORCES BY AT LEAST ONE DIVISION IN ORDER THAT EXTENSIVE OPERATIONS MAY BE INITIATED TO DESTROY HOSTILE FORCE NOW ON CACTUS.

  Nimitz’ inspection of Guadalcanal and Nouméa had convinced him that Ghormley had to be replaced with a more aggressive commander, a man who would see opportunities rather than difficulties. On October 18 he radioed Halsey: