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
37th Infantry 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
The
Pacific and Adjacent Theaters
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.
Guadalcanal
7 August 1942
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
Change
of command on Guadalcanal, December 1942. Maj. Gen. Alexander M. Patch,
center, succeeds Maj. Gen. Alexander A. Vandegrift (USMC), right. Col. R. Hall
Jeschke (USMS) briefs them. (USMC Photograph)
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
XIV
Corps Advance
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
The
Galloping Horse, a Major Japanese strongpoint. (DOD photograph)
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
Japanese
bunker and foxhole in theGifu position. (DA photograph)
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
Lack
of unloading equipment on beaches caused supoply problems inland. (DA
photograph)
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.
"A
New Air Strip Being Laid Down" by Aaron Bohrod. (Army Art Collection)
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).
CMH Pub 72-8