Martin Clemens, a British district officer on Guadalcanal, a large island northeast of Australia, had taken to the hills with his native scouts when the Japanese first arrived in June 1942, six months after their attack at Pearl Harbor.
The next month, he radioed his observations of Japanese construction of an airfield to alarmed allied authorities in Australia.
After a string of victories throughout the Pacific in the months after the Pearl Harbor attack, the Japanese started to expand their bases into the eastern Solomon Islands chain directly northeast of Australia. Japanese air power based on the island of Guadalcanal could be a dagger to the throat of allied shipping lanes to eastern Australia.
Although the United States had executed a brilliant naval victory west of the Hawaiian Islands in early June, the Japanese still possessed a powerful navy in the South Pacific. Most American battleships lay wrecked at Pearl Harbor and the U.S. Navy was reeling from the recent loss of two of its major aircraft carriers. This was no time to start a major offensive against the Japanese.
American forces scrambled to prepare a major amphibious operation in six weeks. Time was of the essence before the Japanese airbase was operational.
The Marine’s Aug. 7 landings on Guadalcanal were largely unopposed by the surprised Japanese labor troops. However, the Japanese soon responded with aircraft from distant bases, and the next night, delivered a crushing naval defeat upon a force of allied cruisers that were protecting the American transports. The next morning, Marines saw that their partially unloaded supply ships had cleared the area for fear of another Japanese attack.
Allied warships were burning off the island with survivors struggling in shark-infested waters. The Marines were short of supplies, ammunition and food and were on their own with no air support.
Elements of a Japanese army unit landed on the island two weeks later. Confident in the superiority of his seasoned men and underestimating the size and the fighting quality of the Marine forces on the island, the unit’s commander, Col. Ichiki, did not wait for reinforcements to arrive.
Two days later, the Japanese conducted a shrieking nighttime frontal assault against the marines with waves of charging infantrymen. This frightening technique had worked effectively in the past to break poorly armed Chinese troops. Now they were met by U.S. Marines in hastily-prepared defensive positions on a bank of Alligator Creek. The Japanese were cut down by the hundreds. Ichiki, stunned by his defeat, committed suicide.
When Marines later approached disabled men they sought to take captive, the Japanese would often shoot at them or blow themselves up with the hope of killing Americans. After these encounters, the Marines started to either bayonet or shoot fallen Japanese to ensure they were dead. This battle foreshadowed the suicidal and desperate character of Japanese fighting that would be the hallmark of the Pacific War.
In the ensuing months, the Japanese continued daytime bombing raids, poured further troops onto the island and occasionally shelled the Marine airfield with fierce evening naval gunfire.
Major Japanese ground offensives were repelled by the Marines in desperate fighting in September and October, but the Marine’s foothold on the island was still in doubt. The Marines established an air base weeks after landing on Guadalcanal, but were poorly supplied and forced to cannibalize wrecked aircraft to provide parts for planes that could be repaired to fly.
In October, the appointment of Admiral Halsey as commander of American forces in the region instilled an increasingly aggressive spirit to the campaign when things appeared most desperate.
Hundreds of miles offshore, two battles between aircraft carrier groups shattered Japanese plans to destroy American air power around Guadalcanal. These clashes took a high toll – at one point, the U.S. Navy had one operational large carrier in the Pacific.
In the fall, the U.S. air and ground forces strengthened on the island and, with the commitment of new aircraft and American battleships in the area, Japanese supply and reinforcement convoys were relegated to nighttime missions that grew increasingly hazardous and inadequate.
Japanese shipping caught in the daylight near Guadalcanal could expect to be visited by American dive bombers screaming down at a 70-degree angle with bombs slung under their bellies.
Survivors were strafed so they would not augment the Japanese garrison on the island.
With increased Marine superiority of the air around Guadalcanal, American supply ships returned in greater numbers, and the Japanese forces on the island slowly diminished in fighting strength. By the time the Japanese secretly withdrew what was left of their troops under cover of darkness in early February 1943, many had died of disease or even starvation as Japanese supply efforts had proved to be totally inadequate.
The Japanese, struck with “victory disease,” only slowly realized the size and commitment of American forces on Guadalcanal. Had they concentrated more naval and army forces early in the campaign, they may have routed the Americans from the island. In the end, Imperial Japanese Gen. Kawaguchi summed it up: Guadalcanal was “the graveyard of the Japanese army.”
Thomas R. Williamson, attorney at law, is a self-described amateur WWII historian. Reach him at tomdgolaw@gmail.com.
