World War II was the largest and most violent armed conflict in the history of mankind.
However, the half century that now separates us from that conflict has exacted its toll on
our collective knowledge. While World War II continues to absorb the interest of military
scholars and historians, as well as its veterans, a generation of Americans has grown to
maturity largely unaware of the political, social, and military implications of a war
that, more than any other, united us as a people with a common purpose.
Highly relevant today, World War II has much to teach us, not only about the profession
of arms, but also about military preparedness, global strategy, and combined operations in
the coalition war against fascism. During the next several years, the U.S. Army will
participate in the nation's 50th anniversary commemoration of World War II. The
commemoration will include the publication of various materials to help educate Americans
about that war. The works produced will provide great opportunities t learn about and
renew pride in an Army that fought so magnificently in what has been called "the
mighty endeavor."
World War II was waged on land, on sea, and in the air over several diverse theaters of
operation for approximately six years. The following essay is one of a series of campaign
studies highlighting those struggles that, with their accompanying suggestions for further
readings, are designed to introduce you to one of the Army's significant military feats
from that war.
This brochure was prepared in the U.S. Army Center of Military History by Charles R.
Anderson. I hope this absorbing account of that period will enhance your appreciation of
American achievements during World War II.
M.P.W. Stone
Secretary of the Army
For sale by the U.S. Government Printing Office, Superintendent of Documents, Mail
Stop: SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-9328
ISBN 0-16-038104-5
GUADALCANAL
7 August 1942-21 February 1943
On 7 December 1941, Imperial Japanese forces turned their war on the Asian mainland
eastward and southward into the Pacific with simultaneous attacks on Pearl Harbor, the
Philippines, Wake, Guam, Hong Kong, and the Malay Peninsula. The rapid southward advance
of Japanese armies and naval task forces in the following months found Western leaders
poorly prepared for war in the Pacific. Nevertheless, they conferred quickly and agreed
that, while maintaining the "German first" course they had set against the Axis,
they also had to blunt Japanese momentum and keep open lines of communication to Australia
and New Zealand. As the enemy closed on those two island democracies, the Allies scrambled
to shore up defenses, first by fortifying the Malay Barrier, and then, after Japanese
smashed through that line, by reinforcing an Australian drive north across New Guinea. To
make this first Allied offensive in the Pacific more effective, the Americans mounted a
separate attack from a different direction to form a giant pincers in the Southwest
Pacific. This decision brought American forces into the Solomon Islands and U.S. Army
troops onto the island of Guadalcanal.
Strategic Setting
During a series of conferences dating from January 1941 the combined ground, sea, and
air chiefs of staff of the United States and the United Kingdom discussed strategies to
defeat the Axis Powers and listed the priorities that should guide their efforts toward
that end. Although they conferred as allies, the two Atlantic partners had to refer to
themselves as Associated Powers while the United States remained neutral. As the major
decision of these conferences, the Associated Powers agreed on a Germany-first strategy:
the anti-Axis coalition would concentrate on the defeat of Nazi Germany and Italy before
turning its collective war-making power against Japan. Until the European Axis partners
surrendered, the Associated Powers would mount only limited offensives in the Pacific to
contain the Japanese. Decisions supportive of the Germany-first priority included a
division of the world into areas of military responsibility reflecting the respective
military potential of the major powers in various geographical areas. The British would
concentrate their efforts in western Europe and the Mediterranean theaters, while the
United States would carry the burden of limited offensives in the Pacific.
On 30 March 1942, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff made a further division of
responsibility for the War and Navy Departments. The U.S. Navy assumed operational
responsibility for the vast Pacific Ocean Areas and gave the new command to Admiral
Chester W. Nimitz, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet since shortly after the attack
on Pearl Harbor. The U.S. Army took operational control of the Southwest Pacific Area,
assigning the command to General Douglas MacArthur, recently ordered from the Philippines
to Australia. MacArthur's new command encompassed the seas and archipelagos south of
Formosa and the Carolines, east of the Malay Peninsula, and west of New Caledonia, an area
including the Philippines, the Netherlands East Indies, Australia, and New Guinea. On 20
April the Joint Chiefs established a subdivision of the Navy's Pacific Ocean Areas command
- the South Pacific Area, under Vice Adm. Robert L. Ghormley - which included New Zealand,
important island bases at the end of the South Pacific ferry route from Hawaii, and the
Solomons, a former British protectorate only 500 miles east of New Guinea. Ghormley had
the mission of blocking the Japanese before they cut the South Pacific ferry route and
severed Australia and New Zealand from the United States. The line between MacArthur's
Southwest Pacific Area command and Ghormley's South Pacific Area command divided the
Solomons at a point 1,100 miles northeast of Australia. Obviously, any operations in
defense of Australia or New Zealand and the South Pacific ferry route would depend on
close Army-Navy cooperation.
The Allies mounted their first attempt to stop the Japanese at the Malay Barrier, a
3,500-mile-long line from the Malay Peninsula through the Netherlands East Indies and
ending in the British Solomon Islands. The four nations contributing men and arms to the
Malay Barrier defense established the American-British-Dutch-Australian Command (ABDACOM)
to direct their effort. Though unsuccessful - the Japanese punched through the Malay
Barrier in January 1942 - ABDACOM gave the Allies valuable experience in coalition warfare
and combined operations.
As Japanese forces rolled on south and east toward Australia, it became obvious to the
Allies and especially to the United States, the only nation still able to mount meaningful
opposition in the Pacific, that more than token forces would have to be deployed to
accomplish even the modest goal of containing the enemy. A convoy sent to reinforce the
Philippines but diverted to Australia when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor had brought
4,600 air forces and artillery troops to Australia. Four thousand of these men still
awaited deployment. In January Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall had
dispatched another reinforcement to Australia - this one numbering 16,000 men - and placed
it under command of Brig. Gen. Alexander M. Patch. Combined with American forces already
in Australia, this force would form the nucleus of an infantry division and air wing.
The collapse of ABDACOM did not stop dispatch of American forces to the South Pacific.
In the early months of 1942 a number of separate Army ground units shipped out for New
Caledonia, and the first complete division - the 37thInfantry Division, a National Guard
unit from Ohio boarded transports for the Fiji Islands. In June the U.S. Joint Chiefs of
Staff began planning an independent American offensive, and at the same time deployed Army
Air Forces and Marine Corps air squadrons to support the campaign. In late June and early
July the 1st Marine Division arrived at Wellington, New Zealand. The increase in Army
troop strength led the War Department to organize a new command for the imminent
operations: U.S. Army Forces in the South Pacific Area, commanded by Maj. Gen. Millard F.
Harmon.
While the Americans struggled to send enough men and arms to protect Australia, the
Japanese rapidly consolidated their gains in the South Pacific. The Imperial Japanese Navy
exercised theater control in the South Pacific through its Southeastern Fleet,
headquartered at Rabaul. The Imperial Japanese Army organized its troops in the area into
the Seventeenth Army, commanded by Lt. Gen. Harukichi Hyakutake. Imperial forces built
naval port facilities, leveled land for airfields, and fortified jungled hill masses to
hold the islands they had taken and to support subsequent operations on the march to
Australia. Each island group had at least one strongpoint; some had several. Large bases
were built in the Palaus and the Carolines and at Rabaul in the Bismarcks. Smaller bases
held the Marshalls and the Gilberts, in addition to New Britain and New Ireland in the
Bismarcks and Buka, Bougainville, and Guadalcanal in the Solomons. By the middle of 1942
the American Joint Chiefs faced options of dubious merit: they could find the Japanese in
almost any direction they turned.
Naval action in the spring and summer of 1942 gave American ground forces and opening
into the South Pacific. In the Battles of the Coral Sea in May and Midway in June, the
U.S. Navy seriously damaged the Japanese fleet. In those two engagements the Japanese lost
five carriers and hundreds of aircraft and their pilots, while the American loss of two
aircraft carriers was also significant. Although the Coral Sea and Midway engagements did
not give the Americans undisputed access to the South Pacific, they did bring the naval
balance of forces close enough that the Americans could realistically consider an
amphibious operation.
In this more favorable tactical situation, the Joint Chiefs of Staff in July proposed a
two-pronged assault, one in a northwesterly direction up the Solomon Islands, and the
other from Port Moresby on the south coast of New Guinea north across that island. Of all
enemy strongpoints in the South Pacific, that on Guadalcanal appeared most threatening
because it lay closest to Australia and to the South Pacific ferry route. If the Americans
were going to blunt the Japanese advance into the South Pacific, Guadalcanal would have to
be the place, for no other island stood between the Solomons and Australia.
Operations
Ninety miles long on a northwest-southeast axis and an average of twenty-five miles
wide, Guadalcanal presented forbidding terrain of mountains and dormant volcanoes up to
eight thousand feet high, steep ravines and deep streams, and a generally even coastline
with no natural harbors. With the south shores protected by miles of coral reefs, only the
north central coast presented suitable invasion beaches. There the invading Japanese
forces had landed in July, and there the Americans would have to follow. Once ashore,
invaders found many streams running north out of the mountains to inhibit east-west
movement. A hot, humid climate supported malaria and dengue-carrying mosquitoes and posed
continuous threat of fungal infection and various fevers to the unacclimated. The
Melanesian population of the island was generally loyal to Westerners.
Prior to the American landing in early August, the Japanese had not tried to fortify
all terrain features, but concentrated on the north plain area and prominent peaks. They
had built an airfield at Lunga Point and many artillery positions in nearby hills. At
1,514 feet, Mount Austen stood as the most important objective to anyone trying to hold or
take the north coast. By August General Hyakutake had a force of some 8,400 men, most in
the 2d Division, to hold the island and build airfields. Japanese naval superiority in the
theater assured him of sufficient troop inflow - the 38th Division would land later - to
realize his plans for a two-division corps.
In its early stages, the Guadalcanal Campaign was primarily a Navy and Marine Corps
effort. Directly subordinate to Admiral Nimitz, Admiral Ghormley commanded both Navy and
Army units. On the Navy side of the joint command, Maj. Gen. Alexander A. Vandegrift
(USMC) commanded the 1st Marine Division, the assault landing force. Army troops committed
to Guadalcanal came under command of Maj. Gen. Millard F. Harmon, as Commanding General,
South Pacific.
On the morning of 7 August 1942, the 1st Marine Division followed heavy naval
preparatory fires and landed across the north beaches east of the Tenaru River. In a
three-month struggle marked by moderate battlefield but high disease casualties and
accompanied by sea battles that first interrupted and finally secured resupply lines, the
marines took the airfield and established a beachhead roughly six miles wide and three
miles deep.
On 13 October the 164th Infantry, the first Army unit on Guadalcanal, came ashore to
reinforce the marines and took a 6,600-yard sector at the east end of the American
perimeter. Commanded by Col. Bryant E. Moore, the 164th had come through the South Pacific
ferry route in January to New Caledonia. There, the 164th joined the 182d Infantry and
132d Infantry Regiments, in addition to artillery, engineer, and other support units, to
form a new division called the "Americal," a name derived from the words America
and New Caledonia. Until the Americal commander, Maj. Gen. Alexander M. Patch, and other
units of the division arrived, the 164th would fight with the marines.
The newest American unit on Guadalcanal, the 164th moved into the southeast corner of
the perimeter. On the night of 23 October, Moore and his troops heard the Japanese begin
their attempt to retake the Lunga Point airfield, renamed Henderson Field by the marines.
Two nights later the Japanese hit the 164th, running out of the dark jungles yelling
"Banzai," throwing grenades, and firing every weapon they could carry. Despite
armor, artillery, air, and naval support, the Japanese could achieve no more than
temporary breakthroughs at isolated points. The men of the 164th put up a much stiffer
defense than the Japanese expected of a green unit, and with the marines repulsed the
enemy with heavy losses while losing 26 killed, 52 wounded, and 4 missing. Once the enemy
attack failed, Vandegrift had four experienced regiments manning a secure line.
General Vandegrift now moved into the second phase of his operations on Guadalcanal:
pushing out his perimeter far enough so that Japanese artillery could not reach Henderson
Field and overrunning the Seventeenth Army headquarters at Kokumbona, nine miles west of
the airfield. On the morning of 1 November, following naval, air, and field artillery
fire, Marine units began the attack both east and west. On the 4th the Army's 1st
Battalion, 164th Infantry, joined the western attack, while the 2d and 3d Battalions,
164th, moved to the eastern front. The Army battalions assisted in a major victory during
9-12 November when they trapped against the sea 1,500 enemy troops who had just landed at
Koli Point. Soldiers and marines killed half the enemy force in a twoday fight; the rest
escaped into the jungle toward Mount Austen, six miles southwest of Henderson Field.
Vandegrift suddenly stopped his attacks in mid-November when he learned the Japanese
would soon attempt a major reinforcement via the "Tokyo Express," the almost
nightly run of supply-laden destroyers to the island. As expected, the enemy transports
came, bearing the 38th Division for General Hyakutake. In the four-day naval Battle of
Guadalcanal, the U.S. Navy so seriously damaged the task force that the enemy never again
tried a large-unit reinforcement. Only 4,000 troops, of 10,000, reached land, and the 38th
Division had to function as a large but underequipped regiment.
The attack toward Kokumbona resumed on 18 November with the 164th Infantry, two
battalions of the newly arrived 182d Infantry, and a Marine regiment. After advancing only
one mile against strong opposition, the attack stalled on the 25th. The 164th Infantry
alone lost 117 killed and 625 wounded or sick. Rather than continue the costly push into
the jungle, American commanders decided to await reinforcements.
But rather than receiving reinforcements, the Americans lost effective combat units in
December. Vandegrift's battle-hardened but diseasewracked 1st Marine Division boarded
ships for a much-deserved reconstitution, leaving General Patch in command of all American
units on the island. Despite this temporary reduction, Patch wanted to mount a limited
offensive before the enemy strengthened positions any further. He planned to take Mount
Austen to secure both Henderson Field and his left flank for the next push toward
Kokumbona. Forces available for the Mount Austen operation included the complete Americal
Division, the 147th Infantry, two Marine regiments, and four field artillery battalions.
Patch gave the mission of taking Mount Austen to the 132d Infantry, which had arrived
on the island on 8 December. With its 3d Battalion in the lead, the 132d kicked off the
assault the morning of the 17th. The battalion had plenty of artillery support on call but
was easily pinned down in the foothills by rifle and machine-gun fire. On the 19th the
battalion commander led a patrol forward in an attempt to locate enemy positions; he found
one machine-gun position which killed him and scattered his patrol. The 132d thrashed
through the jungle for five more days before locating the main enemy strongpoint, called
the Gifu position after a Japanese prefecture. Inside the Gifu, five hundred troops manned
over forty log-reinforced bunkers arranged in a horseshoe on the west side of Mount
Austen. During the last ten days of 1942 the 132d hammered Gifu repeatedly, making little
progress at a cost of 34 killed and 279 other casualties, mostly sick. Finally, on 1-2
January 1943, the 1st and 3d Battalions attacked from the north while the 2d Battalion
swung around and attacked from the south to overrun most of the Gifu strongpoint and
secure the west slopes of Mount Austen. Now the Americans could move against Kokumbona
without fear of enemy observation or fire from the rear. In the 22-day battle for Mount
Austen the 132d Infantry had killed between 400 and 500 Japanese but in the process lost
112 killed and 268 wounded.
During the last weeks of 1942 and the first weeks of 1943 the Americans strengthened
their toehold on Guadalcanal by reorganizing and bringing in fresh troops. On 2 January
General Harmon activated a new headquarters, XIV Corps, and assigned General Patch to its
command. The 25th Infantry Division and the rest of the 2d Marine Division joined the
Americal Division on the island to fill out a three-division corps in preparation for a
January offensive. Patch now planned to destroy the Japanese on Guadalcanal rather than
simply to push them farther away from the Henderson Field perimeter. With the newly
arrived units, he could expect to make more progress than in the previous two months.
Japanese troop strength on the island had peaked at 30,000 in November, but then fell to
about 25,000 in December. With supplies from the Tokyo Express steadily falling and
malaria casualties rising, General Hyakutake had no choice but to scale down his
objectives.
On 10 January XIV Corps began its first offensive of the new year, with Patch pointing
almost all of his units west. Maj. Gen. J. Lawton Collins' 25th Division took over the
Gifu-Mount Austen area and moved west across the Matanikau River against a hill mass
called Galloping Horse after its appearance from the air. The 2d Marine Division tied in
with Collins' right flank and advanced west along the coast toward Kokumbona. Most of the
Americal Division took over the Henderson Field perimeter, except the 182d Infantry, one
battalion of the 132d Infantry, and division artillery, all of which supported the corps
attack.
Col. William A. McCulloch's 27th Infantry led the assault on Galloping Horse at first
light on 10 January. In support, six field artillery battalions tried an innovation
Collins hoped would deny the enemy the usual warning given when rounds fired from the
nearest battery struck before those of the main concentration, allowing troops in the open
to seek cover and move equipment. Called "time on target," the technique
depended on careful firing sequencing so that all initial projectiles from whatever
direction and distance landed at the same time. Thereafter the batteries would fire into
the kill zone continuously but at irregular intervals through an extended period, thirty
minutes in this case. The technique seemed to be effective, for soldiers later advancing
through such zones found little opposition.
The 1st and 3d Battalions led off the 27th Infantry attack, hitting the Galloping Horse
at the forelegs and tail. In the early hours the battalions had more trouble with the
steep cliffs, deep ravines, and thick jungle of the island. As they moved up the slopes of
objectives they found stiff enemy resistance from hidden bunkers. Expecting fire from
rifles, machine guns, and small mortars, the Americans were somewhat surprised that the
Japanese had managed to muscle the much heavier 37-mm. and 70-mm. pieces atop the sharp
hills. The 1st Battalion made better progress than the 3d, but by the second day both
units experienced another problem: a shortage of water. The Americans had expected that
the many streams on mountainous Guadalcanal would provide water inland and were surprised
to find most stream beds dry. The need to transport water threatened to slow operations
seriously.
At the end of the second day the 3d Battalion slumped into a night position more than
800 meters short of the head of Galloping Horse, exhausted by enemy resistance and water
shortage. Colonel McCulloch pulled the unit back for a rest and moved the 2d Battalion up
to continue the advance along the body of the Horse. Company E soon stalled against a
ridgeline between Hills 52 and 53. For the men involved, the battle now evolved into
intense struggles between fire teams and individuals in the hot jungle and steep ravines.
Capt. Charles W. Davis saw only one way to end the stalemate. Taking four men and all the
grenades they could carry, he led his party in a crawl up to the enemy strongpoint. The
Japanese threw grenades first, but they failed to explode. Davis and his men threw theirs,
then charged before the enemy could recover from the blasts. Firing rifles and pistols
into the position, Davis and his men finished off the stub-born enemy, and Company E swept
up the ridge. For his initiative Davis was awarded the Medal of Honor.
As if in reward, a heavy rain began shortly after Company E took the ridge. Their
thirst relieved, the men of the 27th Infantry prepared to take the rest of the Galloping
Horse. After Colonel McCulloch put the fire of three artillery battalions on Hill 53, the
head of the Horse, company-size assaults from two directions swept forward through the
feeble resistance of starving and sickly Japanese. By the afternoon of 13 January
McCulloch's men held the entire Galloping Horse hill mass.
On the same day the 27th Infantry assaulted Galloping Horse, the 1st and 3d Battalions
of another 25th Division regiment, the 35th, swung around the Gifu strongpoint and moved
west against another hill mass, the Sea Horse. The regimental commander, Col. Robert B.
McClure, opened the attack by sending his 3d Battalion toward Hill 43, the head of the Sea
Horse. For the first seven hours of the attack the troops had more trouble with the
terrain than the enemy, until Company K tried to cross a stream between the head and body
of the Sea Horse. Anxious to continue the advance, the Americans waded into the water
before posting adequate fire cover. With the company split over the two sides of the
stream, Japanese machine gunners began firing on the inviting target below. Fortunately
for the Americans, two men in the company saved the situation. Sgt. William G. Fournier
and T5g. Lewis Hall turned a machine gun on the enemy, now mounting an infantry rush on
the disorganized Americans, and broke up the attack before receiving mortal wounds. For
saving Company K from disaster, Fournier and Hall were awarded posthumous Medals of Honor.
After Company K regrouped, the 3d Battalion attack picked up momentum. By nightfall on
10 January the Americans had half the Sea Horse surrounded, and Colonel McClure began
relieving 3d Battalion companies with those from the 1st Battalion. The next day the
attack resumed against weak resistance. When the Japanese massed machine-gun fire on the
3d Battalion, the 1st Battalion rejoined the attack, and the two units drove the enemy
completely off the Sea Horse by late afternoon on the 11th. In four days of combat 25th
Division troops had taken two important objectives in their January offensive. To
consolidate his gains in the Galloping Horse-Sea Horse area, General Collins brought
forward his last maneuver regiment-the 161st Infantry. During the third week of January
the fresh regiment fought several sharp firefights to clear isolated stream beds and
ravines between the major objectives now in American hands.
While its two companion battalions in the 35th Infantry moved against the Sea Horse,
the 2d Battalion had stayed a mile back to complete the difficult job begun by the 132d
Infantry in December: clearing the Gifu area. By 10 January the battalion estimated it was
facing a lone enemy strongpoint held by one hundred troops with ten machine guns. Two days
later, with the Japanese defenders surrounded but offering still more resistance, the
regiment doubled the estimate of enemy strength in the objective. After three attempts to
break into the area, Colonel McClure relieved the 2d Battalion commander on the 16th and
prepared new thrusts at the strongpoint. Besides heavier artillery barrages, the Americans
added psychological operations to their arsenal. For three days from the 15th the 25th
Division intelligence staff beamed Japanese-language surrender appeals into the Gifu. But
the Japanese were determined to fight to the death, and the Americans resumed the
yard-by-yard struggle against their well-prepared enemy. On the 21st three Marine light
tanks joined the assault and tipped the balance of combat power. The next day the tanks
punched through the northeast side of the strongpoint and roared on out the south side,
along the way knocking out eight machinegun positions and opening a 200-yard hole in the
enemy line. Still unwilling to surrender, the Japanese mounted a desperate attack the
night of 22-23 January. The 2d Battalion troops turned back the enemy with heavy losses
and the next morning mopped up the Gifu.
Three days after the 27th Infantry and 35th Infantry assaulted the Galloping Horse and
Sea Horse, the marines kicked off their advance along the coast. In its first operation as
a complete unit, the 2d Marine Division moved west on a two-regiment front on 13 January.
After gaining over 800 yards at a cost of six killed and sixty-one wounded, the marines
stalled on the 14th under heavy enemy machine-gun and mortar fire from ravines to their
left. Adding tanks the next day helped little, but a new weapon - flamethrowers - proved
more effective in driving enemy crews away from weapons. By the 17th the marines had
regained their momentum. In five days of combat they killed 643 Japanese and took 71
machine guns, 3 artillery pieces, and a large quantity of rifles and ammunition. The next
day they stopped a mile west of Point Cruz to await further orders from General Patch.
By 18 January XIV Corps had pushed two miles west of the Matanikau River and over four
miles inland. In taking the major objectives of Galloping Horse, Sea Horse, the Gifu, and
the coastal strip beyond Point Cruz, the XIV Corps killed 1,900 Japanese while losing
fewer than 200 killed and 400 wounded. Enemy survivors not yet immobilized by malaria or
starvation were reeling back toward their last stronghold on Guadalcanal, Seventeenth Army
headquarters at Kokumbona.
To complete the destruction of Japanese forces on Guadalcanal, General Patch planned a
follow-up offensive to begin on 2 January. The renewed attack involved a reorientation of
XIV Corps toward a point on the coast three miles west of the new perimeter: the village
of Kokumbona. To bring his forces to bear on Kokumbona, Patch planned to swing the 25th
Division from a direct westerly axis to a northwesterly heading. Then, as that division
neared the coast, the 2d Marine Division and other Army units between it and the 25th
would have to reduce their front. Thus, by the time the Americans reached Kokumbona, XIV
Corps would be pushing a spearpoint only two regiments wide into Japanese defenses.
Because every division in his corps had suffered substantial losses from combat and
malaria, Patch also had to reorganize his remaining regiments. The result was the
Composite Army-Marine (CAM) Division, consisting of two Army regiments, the 147th and
182d, and one Marine, the 6th, plus artillery battalions from both the Americal and 2d
Marine Divisions. Other support would come from Navy destroyers offshore and the 2d Marine
Air Wing. The remaining regiments from the Americal and 2d Marine Divisions would man the
American perimeter east of the Matanikau River. The CAM Division would advance west along
the coast on a 3,000yard front while the 25th Division executed its more involved swing to
the northwest toward Kokumbona.
Finally, early in January, even before his renewed offensive began, Patch assembled a
small force in an effort to ensure that no Japanese escaped Guadalcanal to fight another
day. Consisting of Company I, 147th Infantry, reinforced by one platoon from Company M and
antitank, heavy weapons, and engineer detachments and commanded by Capt. Charles E. Beach,
the unit had the mission of cutting off a possible enemy withdrawal over a 20-mile-long
native trail to the Beaufort Bay area. Part of Beach's force sailed aboard Navy landing
craft around the western end of the island, while the remainder took a trail network into
the hills; the unit assumed its blocking force position on the trail by mid-January.
After a heavy artillery and naval gunfire bombardment, XIV Corps moved out toward
Kokumbona at 0630 on 22 January. On the corps left, the 25th Division's 161st Infantry
soon bogged down in deep jungle. On the corps right, the CAM Division ran into a heavy
enemy machine-gun concentration after moving only 1,000 yards. Only the 27th Infantry
(25th Division), between the 161st Infantry and the CAM Division, made good progress,
covering nearly two miles in less than three hours.
Shortly after his division had begun its attack, General Collins noticed the Japanese
offered much less opposition than expected in his 27th Infantry sector. Showing the
initiative that would later bring him a corps command and after the war lift him to the
chief of staff's office, Collins jumped in a jeep, raced to the front, and changed his
plan of attack. Despite the danger of allowing one regiment to advance far ahead of its
neighbor-the enemy could easily surround the forward unit-Collins perceived the Japanese
were incapable of taking advantage of his vulnerability, and he told Colonel McCulloch to
push 27th Infantry as far and as fast as possible. The 27th had already outrun its
communications wire and would soon leave its artillery support fan, but Collins still saw
no reason to wait. With signalmen frantically laying new wire and artillerymen scrambling
to displace batteries forward, the men kept going. By nightfall the 27th Infantry had
gained over three miles and occupied the high ground overlooking Kokumbona.
Along the coast the CAM Division began its attack at the same time with a
three-regiment front: the 6th Marines on the beach, the 147th Infantry in the center, and
the 182d Infantry abreast of 25th Division on the left. For the first 1,000 yards terrain
posed the main problem, but soon the marines came under heavy machine-gun and antitank
fire from an estimated 250 Japanese on Hills 98 and 99.
On the morning of the 23d McCulloch's 27th Infantry pushed out of the jungle to the
beach immediately east of Kokumbona, a move which trapped the enemy pocket holding up the
CAM Division column. Then, while the CAM Division hammered the trapped Japanese, two 27th
Infantry columns, one from the east, the other from the south, broke into Kokumbona in
midafternoon. The Japanese, now more interested in escaping farther west of the village,
offered little resistance, and by late afternoon the Americans were examining hastily
abandoned Seventeenth Army documents and equipment. The next day CAM Division troops
killed over two hundred enemy and captured three 150-mm. guns, a light tank, and other
weapons in claiming Hills 98 and 99 and moving into Kokumbona.
Anxious to destroy the remaining Japanese before they could prepare defensive
fortifications similar to those of Gifu, General Collins sent the 27th Infantry in pursuit
beyond Kokumbona. By late afternoon on the 25th McCulloch's men had fought through
rearguard actions of varying effectiveness to reach the Poha River, a mile west of
Kokumbona. Now the campaign became a race between Japanese survivors trying to reach
possible evacuation at Cape Esperance, seventeen miles west of the Poha River, and XIV
Corps attempting to trap and annihilate them. McCulloch's victorious but exhausted 27th
Infantry stopped at the Poha while the CAM Division moved through to join the chase.
Alternating the lead attack position, the 147th Infantry, the 182d Infantry, and the 6th
Marines progressed from one to three miles a day through weak resistance. By 8 February
these units had reached Doma Cove, nine miles beyond the Poha River and the same distance
short of Cape Esperance.
Despite the fact that Captain Beach's Beaufort Bay trail-blocking force had seen no
Japanese since January, General Patch still saw the possibility of an enemy escape from
the west end of the island. In a second effort to deny the enemy that option, Patch
assembled a task force around the 2d Battalion, 132d Infantry, and sent it around the west
end of the island by Navy landing craft to Verahue, ten miles southwest of Cape Esperance.
Commanded by Col. Alexander M. George, the force began moving north along the coast on 2
February with the intention of meeting the CAM Division sometime in the next few days.
Though the Japanese discovered George's troops and surmised their mission, they offered
little opposition; George's men had more trouble pushing their supply trucks through mud
and jungle. But on 7 February a Japanese rifleman found a prime target, wounding Colonel
George. Lt. Col. George F. Ferry took over, and by the 8th his men stood less than two
miles from Cape Esperance. The next day the 1st Battalion, 161st Infantry, swept over six
miles west through fast dissolving opposition while Ferry's battalion moved over three
miles up from the southwest. The two units met at Tenaro on Cape Esperance but found only
a few stragglers. Abandoned enemy equipment and landing craft on the beach explained the
empty trap: the Japanese had evacuated most of those who had reached Cape Esperance, about
13,000 troops in all, according to prisoners of war.
Analysis
Victory on Guadalcanal brought important strategic gains to the Americans and their
Pacific allies but at high cost. Combined with the American-Australian victory at Buna on
New Guinea, success in the Solomons turned back the Japanese drive toward Australia and
staked out a strong base from which to continue attacks against Japanese forces,
especially those at Rabaul, the enemy's main base in the South Pacific. Most important for
future operations in the Pacific, the Americans had stopped reacting to Japanese thrusts
and taken the initiative themselves. These gains cost the Americans 1,592 killed in action
and 4,183 wounded, with thousands more disabled for varying periods by disease. Entering
the campaign after the amphibious phase, the two Army divisions lost 550 killed and 1,289
wounded. For the Japanese, losses were even more traumatic: 14,800 killed in battle,
another 9,000 dead from disease, and about 1,000 taken prisoner. On Guadalcanal General
Hyakutake's troops gave American fighting men a chilling introduction to the character of
the Japanese soldier: willing to fight to the death rather than surrender. Both navies
lost twenty-four ships during the campaign but with a smaller industrial base to replace
them, Japanese losses were more significant. Even more costly to Japan was the loss of
over six hundred aircraft and pilots.
U.S. Army-Navy coordination began poorly due in part to different views of the
campaign's purpose. Ground commanders saw the campaign as an amphibious operation with the
normal division of joint responsibilities. That is, naval forces would secure the seas
around the objective for as long as it took ground forces to clear Guadalcanal of enemy.
But higher Navy commanders viewed the operation as more of a raid than a formal amphibious
campaign. They reserved the right to react to enemy naval operations as they saw fit
without offering uninterrupted fire support to forces ashore, and they acted on that view
by leaving Guadalcanal waters twice, in August and October. Later, Army and Navy
commanders in the theater arrived at methods of operation generally satisfactory for the
initial effort in a major war. For Army tactical leaders, Navy support proved most
valuable when ground units operated close enough to the coast that destroyers' guns could
reach into the jungled ravines so well fortified by the Japanese. Navy and Marine air
support was always welcome but not always well aimed. On one occasion a dive bomber
dropped ordnance on an infantry unit advancing toward Galloping Horse. Fortunately, such
incidents proved the rare exception in close air support missions.
Intelligence about the island of Guadalcanal and Japanese forces on the island proved
inadequate throughout the campaign. Before the effort began, the best information on
terrain and soil conditions came from missionaries and planters expelled by the Japanese.
But the recollections of these sincere but untrained observers were often of dubious
quality, most of them more impressionistic than factual. As a result, ground commanders
had to fight on Guadalcanal without accurate maps.
Once the fighting began, information continued to come from a jerrybuilt system of the
most and least sophisticated methods available. At one end of the spectrum was the highly
developed effort to intercept and to decipher enemy naval radio traffic. At the other was
a network of "coastwatchers," native and Western informers in the jungle
notifying the Americans by radio of Japanese ship and troop movements. In between,
Generals Harmon, Vandegrift, and Patch could apply a number of military methods, including
aerial photographic reconnaissance. On Guadalcanal the coastwatchers performed valuable
service, but they could not be permanently integrated into military and naval intelligence
systems. While no one doubted the courage of the coastwatchers, their communications with
the ground commanders were indirect and intermittent, and they often had little more than
an extremely localized view of the situation.
Even in their estimates of the situation on the ground, the four American division
commanders in the campaign frequently underestimated the forces they faced, either in size
or strength of fortification. The most grievous example occurred at the Gifu, where an
enemy pocket originally estimated at 100 men with 10 crew-served weapons turned out to
contain over 500 with 52 large weapons. The defenders ultimately held off five American
battalions for a month, delaying the advance west long enough for the Japanese to evacuate
13,000 men from the island.
In their first combat experience, XIV Corps infantrymen carried out their missions with
the mix of enthusiasm, hesitation, and incompetence characteristic of inexperienced
troops. In the early stages of the campaign the troops allowed the Japanese to pin them
down too often with light weapons. Compounding the error, commanders on the scene showed
reluctance to resume the attack without a heavy artillery barrage. While this pattern of
behavior may have faithfully conformed to contemporary doctrine, it played to a particular
strength of the enemy. Artillery delays used up daylight hours, and the Japanese soon
learned that American commanders did not like to initiate assaults in the last two or
three hours before sunset. In contrast, the Japanese seemed to relish the onset of
darkness and relied extensively on night movement to mount counterattacks and to position
assault units and supporting arms for the next day. Until American soldiers stopped
viewing sunset as the end of the tactical day and gained more expertise in night
operations, they would continue to take unnecessary losses at the hands of their more
experienced enemy.
Sloppy execution of routine infantry techniques cost some units unnecessary casualties.
While approaching the Sea Horse on 10 January, Company K of the 35th Infantry began
crossing a stream before properly checking the site or placing covering weapons on the
flanks. With half the company on one bank and half on the other, the Japanese fired on the
disorganized and vulnerable unit. Careful application of the basic principles of tactical
movement, a responsibility of company grade officers and NCOs, would have prevented this
disaster. Instead, it took two posthumous Medal of Honor performances to save the day for
this company.
On another occasion a badly handled communication cost the 25th Division valuable time.
During attacks on the Gifu strongpoint on 15 January, the executive officer of the 2d
Battalion, 35th Infantry, ordered one platoon of Company G to withdraw. The order rapidly
spread by word of mouth, and soon the entire battalion withdrew, costing the unit a full
day's advance.
The jungle environment of Guadalcanal forced Americans to fight at very close quarters,
a difficult but realistic adjustment to make, for subsequent campaigns in the Pacific
would present the same conditions. Enemy positions usually were not visible until
attacking troops had closed within fifty feet. The Japanese proved masters of using
natural materials found in the jungle to build strong, as well as nearly invisible,
fortified positions. Units which thought they had discovered one or two machine-gun
positions often found themselves attacking half a dozen or more. And once a network of
positions was identified, the bunkers-some with reinforcing logs up to two feet in
diameter-proved impermeable to all but direct hits by the largest caliber ordnance.
Nevertheless, XIV Corps troops did not hesitate to attack such positions and in so doing
innovated effective techniques against them, including flamethrowers to reach into narrow
openings.
Fire support in various forms-air, naval, and field artillery-remained plentiful
throughout the campaign, although in the early weeks air squadrons were occupied with
enemy aircraft. Japanese survivors expressed surprise at the duration of preparatory
fires. Even a single battalion attacking a minor position on the way to a major objective
could call for as much as half an hour's fire. Especially effective in disorienting enemy
troops was time-on-target artillery fire, which made extremely difficult the detection of
American battery locations, essential for counterbattery fire missions. But American
infantrymen found that plentiful artillery support did not translate into an immediate
reduction in enemy opposition. Elimination of enemy bunkers required direct hits, a low
percentage result for most types of fire support, including air strikes even when pilots
could see targets. As assaults moved deeper inland, the terrain of Guadalcanal began to
affect fire support. Artillery fire frequently overshot enemy positions in deep ravines or
on steep hillsides. A field expedient proved partially effective: propping antitank
weapons and pack howitzers against steep slopes to achieve higher angles of fire.
One type of fire support-tanks-did not play a major role on Guadalcanal. Although the
few tanks present occasionally proved valuable in reducing enemy bunkers, neither Marine
nor Army forces had enough tanks on the island to mount sizable tank-infantry assaults.
Nor did the terrain of Guadalcanal permit the maneuver of armored columns. Army commanders
and troops would have to find more level battlefields to learn armorinfantry coordination.
Another type of tracked vehicle-the bulldozerperformed more valuable service for the XIV
Corps in the long run by assisting the engineers in airfield and road construction.
Supply proved a major problem throughout the campaign, although the character of the
issue changed as the battle continued. In the early stages of the campaign the perennial
military problem of supply volume threatened to limit operations. But once the Army-Marine
invasion force secured the Henderson Field perimeter and began to move inland, the
delivery of supplies became the larger difficulty. Without port facilities, supplies
reached the troops only after a series of timeconsuming and labor-intensive equipment
transfers. Supplies were first unloaded from Navy ships offshore into lighters for the
trip to the beach. There American service support personnel transferred the tonnage to
trucks that hauled it inland to several dumps on roads under construction. From the dumps
supplies had to be hand carried, by both Americans and native laborers, to using units. As
the fighting moved farther inland the distance between dumps and front line lengthened and
road building could not progress as fast as assault units advanced, especially when
Japanese forces began to withdraw to their evacuation points.
American troops temporarily solved the distribution problem by using the many streams
and rivers on the island. Loading supplies into small boats, some of them captured
Japanese craft, Americans pushed the craft through the water as close to the tactical
units as possible. Not described in any field manual, the transport expedient called forth
a linguistic innovation: "pusha-maru," combining an English verb and the
Japanese suffix attached to ships' names.
Several troublesome aspects of Army performance on Guadalcanal could not be addressed
by more training or troop innovation. Improvements in some areas would have to wait on
technological and organizational developments. Ship-to-shore logistics did not keep up
with operations ashore because of a shortage of amphibian tractors and landing craft
equipped with drop-down bow ramps. Reserving such craft for assault echelons forced the
laborious series of unloadings and reloadings that delayed receipt of essential supplies
at the fighting fronts. Solution of this multifaceted problem called for a high degree of
joint cooperation, for it touched on Navy procedures of embarkation and debarkation as
well as Army methods of land transportation and road building. An improved technological
base for combat operations in the Pacific held the promise of significantly reducing the
cost in time and casualties of taking enemy-held islands.
The greatest single factor reducing troop effectiveness on Guadalcanal was disease,
particularly malaria. For every man who became a casualty in combat, five fell to malaria.
Until a more effective prophylaxis became available, tropical diseases would continue to
degrade the efficiency of ground operations in tropical areas.
The Guadalcanal Campaign also made clear that whether subsequent fighting in the
Pacific took place in an Army or a Navy theater, success would depend on a high degree of
interservice cooperation. The early stages of the campaign were dominated by Navy-Marine
components of the interservice team. But as the battle continued, Army units assumed the
burden of interservice coordination and, in the end, secured the American victory on the
ground. The campaign also made clear the scale of operations the Americans would have to
mount to take sizable island outposts from the Japanese: between fifty and one hundred
thousand troops, at least half a dozen air squadrons of high-altitude bombers, dive
bombers, and fighters, and between two and three hundred Navy ships and smaller craft of
all types. In coming months fresh Army divisions would form new interservice teams and,
applying techniques demonstrated by the XIV Corps, continue the island march to Japan.
Further Readings
The Guadalcanal Campaign is one of the most extensively written about of all in World
War II, with more than one volume published in each of several categories: official
histories, journalistic views, and personal accounts. The authoritative treatment remains
John Miller, jr. Guadalcanal: The First Offensive (1949), a volume in the series United
States Army in World War II. Two accounts published during the war have attracted readers
from three generations: Richard Tregaskis, Guadalcanal Diary (1943) and Ira Wolfert,
Battle for the Solomons (1943). More recent works include Robert Edward Lee, Victory at
Guadalcanal (1981), Herbert C. Merillat, Guadalcanal Remembered (1982), and Richard B.
Frank, Guadalcanal (1990).
ISBN 0-16-038104-5
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1993 O -331-232: QL 2
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