Guadalcanal campaign (see Map 47). This was, following the first Philippines campaign, the first real test of land strength between Japan and the USA in the Pacific war. The bloody and protracted struggle for this steamy, malaria-ridden, rain-sodden Solomon Island began on 7 August 1942.

The operation came under the overall command of Vice-Admiral Ghormley (1883–1958), C-in-C South Pacific Area, and was commanded tactically by Vice-Admiral Fletcher. US naval victories in the Coral Sea and at Midway had given the Americans the opportunity to mount the campaign, its purpose being to prevent a further Japanese advance southwards which would have severed the lines of communication between Australia and the USA.

Three fleet carriers and a powerful escort of warships protected Rear-Admiral Turner's amphibious force as it landed 19,000 men of the reinforced 1st Marine Division commanded by Maj-General Alexander Vandegrift (1887–1973). Except on the twin islets of Gavutu-Tananbogo, two of seven nearby islands also being oc cupied (see Tulagi), the marines met little opposition. But the landings were hurriedly conceived and executed to pre-empt a Japanese occupation, and to capture a partially-built Japanese airfield before it became operational. They flouted basic amphibious warfare doctrine by failing to secure lines of communication and isolate the landings from Japanese attack. Additionally, little was known either about the British-owned island—available maps of the area proved hopelessly inaccurate—or the Japanese order of battle.

Japanese reaction to the landings was swift. Aircraft and a strong naval force under Vice-Admiral Mikawa Gunichi were immediately dispatched from Rabaul. An early warning by a Coast Watcher of the bombers' approach prevented much damage, but before dawn on 9 August Mikawa surprised and defeated an Allied screening force off Savo Island. The landings then under way remained unscathed, but when Fletcher, who felt vulnerable to air attack, withdrew his carriers the next day the partially unloaded transports were forced to leave too. This left the marines without vital reserves and essential supplies, and until the nucleus of the Cactus Air Force arrived on 20 August they remained virtually isolated and highly vulnerable.

The Savo island battle gave the Japanese superiority at sea and they immediately began to land troops of their Seventeenth Army to wrest Guadalcanal from the marines. But throughout the campaign their commander, Lt-General Hyakutake Haruyoshi, not only repeatedly committed his men piecemeal—an error he could sometimes not avoid as they were brought from all over Japan's Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere at different times —but greatly underestimated the marines' strength. So it was symptomatic of his tactics and approach that, on 18 August, only part of the Ichiki Detachment was used to attack the marines' defensive perimeter around the airfield; and in what became known as the battle of Tenaru River—it was really the River Ilu—the whole Japanese force, some 900 men, was wiped out.

In the following months many more desperate land actions were fought to defend the airstrip (Henderson Field) but gradually the marines widened their perimeter as other units, which included 2nd Marine Division, reinforced them. But initially they only received Seabees to keep the airfield operational while the Japanese used the ‘Tokyo Express’ to pour in infantry and supplies, though Cactus Air Force patrols soon forced it to operate only at night.

The Table shows how both sides built up their forces on the island, the dates being some of the most critical of the campaign.

In their efforts to reinforce and support their men ashore both sides fought several critical naval actions and the struggle for supremacy on land was contingent on the outcome of the one being fought at sea. In the Eastern Solomons battle on 24 August the Japanese won a tactical victory, though the Americans delayed the landing of the Kawaguchi Brigade and the balance of the Ichiki Detachment. Six days later the fleet carrier Saratoga was torpedoed and so badly damaged that she had to return to the USA. Then on 15 September submarines sank another carrier, Wasp, and badly damaged the new battleship North Carolina; and though in the battle of Cape Esperance, fought on the night of 11/12 October, the Americans partially avenged these losses, it seemed that command of the sea was slipping from them. However, on 18 October 1942 Ghormley was replaced by the more aggressive Vice-Admiral Halsey and from that time the US Navy—although it suffered several more tactical reverses, which included the battles of Santa Cruz and Tassafaronga—slowly gained the upper hand.

Guadalcanal: Build-up of Japanese and American forces during the campaign to take Guadalcanal

Bibliography

Coggins, J. , The Campaign for Guadalcanal (New York, 1972).
Tregaskis, R. , Guadalcanal Diary (New York, 1962).

Guadalcanal, Battle of (1942–43).The Guadalcanal campaign, unexcelled for sustained violence on land, sea, and in the air in World War II, lasted for six months: August 1942 to February 1943. The struggle arose because Adm. Ernest J. King countered a planned Japanese thrust down through the South Pacific to isolate Australia by initiating an offensive following the U.S. naval victory at the Battle of Midway. King targeted Guadalcanal, a jungle‐entangled island ninety miles long and twenty‐five miles wide in the Solomon Islands in the southern Pacific. Radio intelligence showed the Japanese planned to prepare an airfield there to intercept U.S. convoys to Australia. The landing by the 1st Marine Division achieved tactical and strategic surprise and seized the nearly completed airfield. Immediately thereafter, in the first of a series of dramatic reversals, a Japanese task force defeated Allied warships off Savo Island and forced the withdrawal of the transports. The Marines were left isolated.

The airfield, renamed Henderson Field and located in the northwest corner of Guadalcanal, proved a key to the campaign. From its runway, a conglomerate of Marine, navy, and army squadrons defended the local air space, eventually permitting resupply and reinforcement. Air attacks denied the Japanese daylight access to the island, and compelled them to resort to night runs by destroyers—dubbed the “Tokyo Express”—to reinforce and maintain their forces. Over the next three months, the Japanese sought to recapture Henderson Field with successive counterattacks. Each time, they were repulsed. Four U.S. divisions, two Marine and two army, successfully defeated the Japanese in bloody fighting.

The ultimate decision in the campaign came at sea. The Americans won a carrier clash at Eastern Solomons in August, and a night encounter in October at Cape Esperance. When the South Pacific theater commander, Vice Adm. Robert L. Ghormley, faltered, Pacific naval commander Adm. Chester Nimitz replaced him with the dynamic Vice Adm. William F. Halsey. But “Bull” Halsey's positive impact on morale was initially balanced by a defeat in carrier battle at Santa Cruz. In a wild series of air and sea battles between 12 and 15 November, Halsey threw in everything he had. American arms prevailed—barely—at a fearful cost.

The Japanese would win another night sea action at Tassafaronga, but they decided to evacuate their surviving troops. This they did successfully in the last week of the campaign in the face of local Allied air and sea superiority, and under pressure of an American ground offensive. The campaign cost the Japanese over 680 aircraft and 24 warships; American losses were 615 planes and 25 ships. The United States lost an estimated 5,000 sailors and about 2,500 soldiers, Marines, and airmen killed in action; the Japanese lost about 30,000 men.

The lasting importance of the U.S. victory at Guadalcanal rested in its vindication of American will and morale; in the severe attrition it inflicted on the Japanese, especially on experienced pilots; and in the American destruction of the myth of Japanese invincibility.
[See also Marine Corps, U.S.: 1914–1945; World War II, U.S. Naval Operations in: The Pacific.]

Bibliography

Richard B. Frank , Guadalcanal, 1990.
John B. Lundstrom , The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign, 1994.

Richard B. Frank

GUADALCANAL CAMPAIGN

GUADALCANAL CAMPAIGN. To check the Japanese advance and open the way for a strategic offensive against Rabaul, the Allies planned to seize bases in the southern Solomon Islands. On 7 August 1942 Maj. Gen. Alexander A. Vandegrift's First Marine Division landed on Guadalcanal and nearby Tulagi, scattering small Japanese forces on both islands. The Japanese reaction was swift. First, Japanese aircraft struck at the beachhead. Then, in a surprise night attack against Allied naval forces early on 9 August (the Battle of Savo Island), seven Japanese cruisers and a destroyer sank three American cruisers, an Australian cruiser, and an American destroyer. Rear Adm. Richmond K. Turner and Adm. Frank J. Fletcher were forced to withdraw ships from the area, leaving the marines alone to defend the Guadalcanal airfield. Undaunted by the loss of the aircraft carrier Ryuto at the battle of the Eastern Solomons (August 23–25), the Japanese landed thousands of troops on the island in nightly destroyer runs ("Tokyo Express"). In mid-September, the Japanese, now about a division strong, attacked the marine positions (the Battle of Bloody Ridge), only to be repulsed with heavy losses.

For the next month, heavy air and sea battles took place in the Guadalcanal area. While further Japanese reinforcement efforts were frustrated in a series of naval actions, the marines were soon replaced by more than fifty thousand army troops under Maj. Gen. Alexander Patch. The Japanese, short on supplies and weakened by disease, fell back before heavy American attacks. In early February 1943, the thirteen thousand Japanese survivors were evacuated in night operations, leaving Guadalcanal in American hands.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Frank, Richard B. Guadalcanal. New York: Random House, 1990.

Griffith, Samuel B., II. The Battle for Guadalcanal. New York: Lippincott, 1963.

Hammel, Eric M. Guadalcanal, Decision at Sea: The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, November 13–15, 1942. New York: Crown, 1988.

Stanley L.Falk/a. r.

See alsoAircraft Carriers and Naval Aircraft ; Bismarck Sea, Battle of ; Bougainville ; Marine Corps, United States ; Rabaul Campaign ; World War II ; World War II, Navy in .

Guadalcanal, Battle of a long-running air, sea, and land battle on the island of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands in World War II. The Japanese had initially targeted the island as a strategic staging area for the planned isolation of Australia. U.S. Marines invaded in August 1942 and captured a nearly completed Japanese airfield. Opposing forces fought for control of the island during the next six months. There were heavy losses of men and materiel on both sides, but particularly for the Japanese, who finally fled in February 1943. This U.S. victory destroyed the myth of Japanese invincibility and boosted U.S. morale.