1942: The Year That Tried Men's Souls

by Winston Groom

  Watching through their powerful nighttime optics as they entered Ironbottom Sound, lookouts aboard the lead Japanese ships were happily flabbergasted to see the crucial picket destroyers Blue and Ralph Talbot steaming leisurely away from them on their rectangular courses about five miles off to starboard and port. In a line one after the other, the big Japanese cruisers raced into the sound at full speed. Then all hell broke loose. At 1:43 A.M. the radio aboard the U.S. destroyer Patterson suddenly came to life: “Warning! Warning! Strange ships entering the harbor!” No sooner had this urgent message been broadcast than the entire night sky over the Guadalcanal landing beaches and anchorage was lit up by flares from the Japanese floatplanes, also silhouetting perfectly the cruisers of the Southern Force.

  First to go was the Canberra, which was struck almost immediately by two torpedoes, and in the next instant a salvo of twenty-four eight-inch shells exploded on her bridge and in the engine room, killing almost everybody in both places; she immediately caught fire and began drifting away, only to go down the following morning. Next in line was the Chicago, which took a torpedo that blew off most of her bow; a number of shells blasted her decks rendering her hors de combat and she wobbled off westward, out of the fight. Worse, in all the confusion Chicago’s captain, Howard Bode, forgot to warn Captain Riefkohl commanding the Northern Force that the Japanese were in the sound and headed their way. Thus in a matter of six minutes the Southern Force was put out of action, since its third Allied cruiser, the Australia, still had not returned from the conference with Turner.* Now it was Riefkohl’s Northern Force’s turn.

  It wasn’t that the Northern Force was unaware that something was happening; they had seen the flares off Guadalcanal and picked up some of the radio traffic from the Southern Force. They just didn’t know what exactly it was that was happening, or that the Japanese had quickly turned northward toward them. The first inkling they got of it was when the Astoria, last in line of the Northern Force cruisers, was suddenly caught in the powerful searchlights of Mikawa’s flagship Chokai and immediately afterward a big salvo of shells threw up geysers of water off the port bow. The Astoria’s gunnery officer had already asked for permission to fire but, because the exhausted captain was asleep in his cabin, he received none. He took it on his own initiative to commence firing, but this order was quickly countermanded by the now wide-awake captain who, when the big guns roared, rushed out fearful they were firing on their own ships.

  The gunnery officer, however, knew he was firing at Japanese and cried out over the telephone to the captain, “Sir, for God’s sake give the order to commence firing!” But a crucial two minutes had been lost and another Japanese salvo from about three miles away exploded upon Astoria amidships, setting her afire. The Japanese kept bombarding her, killing the navigator, the helmsman, and the signal officer. The Astoria’s catapult planes amidships had been hit and flaming gasoline enveloped the ship. She still fought, though, throughout it all, and with her last shot managed to blow off the forward turret of her tormentor, the Chokai.17

  Meantime, the cruiser Quincy, next in line ahead of the Astoria, was suddenly caught in the searchlights of the Japanese cruiser Aoba. Her horrified crew rushed to their battle stations just in time for a Japanese salvo that torched off one of her catapult planes and, like Astoria, she became a flaming pyre for the Japanese fleet to aim at. Quincy’s captain, Samuel Moore, shouted to his gunners: “We’re going down between them! Give them hell!” An instant later a salvo hit the bridge, killing Captain Moore and everyone else. As salvo after salvo plowed into the proud ship, men died in agony from flames, were scalded to death from ruptured steam pipes, or in many cases were simply obliterated without a trace. The engine room was wiped out and she was sinking fast by the bows; there was no question that the Quincy was doomed and going down, but not before she, like the Astoria, got off a final salvo that might just have saved Turner’s helpless transports at the Guadalcanal anchorage. The salvo crashed into the Chokai’s chart room, destroying it and killing thirty-four men. Now without charts, on a rainy night in the hazardous confines of shoal waters, Mikawa had to wonder what his fate would be if he led his fleet aground.18

  By now Mikawa was steaming to the north around Savo Island, having completed a shockingly destructive three-quarters of a circle from the point at which he entered Ironbottom Sound. But one more prize awaited him; this was the cruiser Vincennes, now alone and facing all seven of the Japanese cruisers. Captain Riefkohl was living in a fool’s paradise. He and his watch had seen the flashes from the Southern Force group area about ten miles south, but for some reason assumed they must be shooting at planes. The weather and visibility were bad, but even when he was suddenly caught in the searchlights of three enemy cruisers, he thought they must be friendlies from the Southern group and politely sent out a radio request that the lights be shut off. No sooner was this being done than a great salvo crashed into the water just ahead of the Vincennes and another immediately afterward hit her amidships. As occurred on both Astoria and Quincy the catapult planes went up in a great conflagration of gasoline. This illumination of course made Vincennes the perfect target. After a continuous blasting for the next few minutes, Riefkohl tried to escape by turning eastward, but as he did so at least two if not three torpedoes exploded on his port side. Communications and power were cut off and the gun turrets would no longer operate. The Vincennes took about sixty more hits and another torpedo in these closing moments and was sinking quickly when the Japanese broke off the action.

  Mikawa had by now completely rounded Savo Island when his cruisers ran into the destroyer Ralph Talbot, whose crewmen had seen and heard the gunfire in the sound but were unaware of the terrible results. Suddenly a searchlight from one of Mikawa’s ships singled her out of the gloom, and she quickly came under fire from three enemy cruisers. Ralph Talbot returned fire as best she could, launching four torpedoes, which, as usual, failed to score, and let loose with her five-inch guns against the far larger and more heavily armed Japanese ships. She was burning and listing twenty degrees when a dense rain squall intervened and doubtless saved her from utter destruction.

  By now Mikawa had decided he had done enough for one night. It was nearly two-thirty in the morning and by the time he would have gotten his force reorganized and accomplished his primary mission of destroying the American transports at the beachhead, and then headed back to sea, dawn would have broken and his fleet become an easy target for the U.S. carrier planes, which he did not know had already departed the area. That coupled with two more minor problems, the loss of his charts and the fact that they had used up all their torpedoes, convinced him that the damage inflicted on the Americans at this point was sufficient to justify his withdrawal, which he soon ordered.

  As the sun came up over Ironbottom Sound that Sunday, August 9, a pitiful sight greeted the rescue craft that had been dispatched to the area. Furiously burning ships and thousands of oil-covered sailors, many gravely wounded or burned, huddled in lifeboats or were clinging to any piece of flotsam they could find. They of course were the lucky ones. One thousand and twenty-three U.S. sailors were dead or dying. The channel itself from Cape Esperance to Savo Island was littered with foul oil slicks and any amount of floating refuse from the sunken or sinking ships. Quincy and Vincennes were already at the bottom; Canberra, damaged beyond repair, was scuttled just after sunup, and Astoria managed to linger until a little after noon before she heeled over and sank. Chicago, the lone survivor, was sent limping back to dry dock in Australia.

  It would come to be known as the Battle of Savo Island and was the worst disaster the U.S. Navy has ever suffered in a sea battle. It had taken just thirty-five minutes from beginning to end.19 It would not, however, be correct to call it a total defeat, since the Japanese had not accomplished their primary mission, which was to forestall the U.S. invasion of Guadalcanal, and this is a very important point to remember.

  By the time the sun set on that tragic day, Admiral Turner had sadly
and angrily departed with his transports, still only half unloaded. From the landing beaches the marines gaped incredulously as the transport ships sailed away. They had scarcely enough food for three weeks, and no more air or sea protection; none of their large five-inch coast defense guns had made it ashore to repel a Japanese counterinvasion. They had less than a week’s ammunition supply and countless items that they desperately needed had sailed away in the transports, from barbed wire to sandbags and shovels to bulldozers and all of the other heavy equipment. They didn’t even have a radio that worked well. They were on their own as they stood on the beaches, staring as small boats began arriving with hundreds of oil-blackened, burned, or dead sailors fished from the bloody, tepid waters of Ironbottom Sound.

  The Battle of Savo Island stunned U.S. naval leaders, who withheld the news from the American public for two months, in order not to let the Japanese know how badly they had been hurt. How could it have happened? The answer was soon surmised: surprise and lack of communication.* It had all happened so quickly, but four big Allied cruisers were sunk, along with the loss of more than a thousand of their sailors. Clearly, something must be done, and soon it was—orders being issued from Washington and from Nimitz’s headquarters to prevent it ever happening again. Unfortunately, these orders could not and did not prevent this, but the precautions probably helped anyway. It was found that the old-school practices had no place in modern warfare. Paint, for instance, which kept the ships looking shipshape, would burn like tinder when exposed to fierce gasoline fires, and so it was decreed that paint would be stripped off of decks and superstructures. The ships might not have looked as good but at least they wouldn’t become flaming coffins if hit. The linoleum used to carpet the floors also was identified and removed as a fire hazard, as was all the wood furniture the ships had accumulated over the years. The time-honored navy witch hunt for culprits whenever a ship is sunk was suspended by Nimitz, who found that there was enough blame to go around for everybody. Things were bad enough as it was.

  For their part the Japanese proclaimed, correctly this time, a great victory, and mass parades were held from Tokyo to Yokohama. Still, Tokyo newspapers and radio broadcasts screamed with exaggerated and fantastic headlines and bulletins proclaiming that five American cruisers and four destroyers had been sunk, as well as “eleven transports filled to capacity” with U.S. marines.*20

  The Japanese soon discovered there was no longer U.S. air protection for Guadalcanal and happily began a Rabaul-relay to bomb the helpless marines below. One bomber, a floatplane that appeared at night, was nicknamed “Louie the Louse” and another “Washing Machine Charlie,” for the strange clanking of its unsynchronized engines. These two characters soon passed into Marine Corps legend and remain so today, in story and in song. Japanese submarines also found that with the departure of the surface fleet, particularly the destroyers, they could operate with impunity, and so would frequently surface and lob shells onto the marine beachhead at Lunga Point. Frantically the engineers, using the captured Japanese construction equipment, worked to finish the airstrip so at least they could get some cover from these tormentors.

  Meantime, the Tulagi operation had not gone nearly so well for the Japanese as things had on Guadalcanal. There were some eight hundred Japanese troops on Tulagi and they were not simply laborers, as the main body on Guadalcanal were; they were combat soldiers and sailors, avowed to die to the last man for their emperor. And this they just about did. Vandegrift had sent over a force of about 5,000 of his marines to secure Tulagi and almost immediately upon moving inland they began running into stiff resistance. The Japanese had set themselves up in a series of caves on a ridge overlooking the cricket field, from which they shot at, mortared, and grenaded the Americans. At night they fiercely attacked the marines, who had dug shallow foxholes, but did not break their lines. As the sun came up, Captain Lewis W. Walt (later to become commander of the Marine Corps in Vietnam) found one of his riflemen, Private First Class John Ahrens, in a foxhole, dying from bullet wounds to the chest and literally covered by dead Japanese, fifteen of them in all. As Captain Walt gently “gathered Ahrens into his arms to carry him to the colonial Residency, the dying marine, still clinging to his BAR, said, ‘Captain, they tried to come over me last night, but I don’t think they made it.’”

  “They didn’t, Johnny,” Captain Walt replied softly. “They didn’t.”21

  The only way to get at the Japanese holed up in the caves was to climb on top of the ridge’s backside, and using explosives or gasoline cans tied to poles fling them into the openings. This was done time and again; one marine officer early on had his pants blown off by an explosion but merrily continued his work, pantsless, until most of the caves were sealed. By the time the fighting on Tulagi was finished, several days after the landing, more than seven hundred Japanese were dead; only a handful of others escaped into the nearby jungles of Florida Island. Nearly three hundred Americans had been killed or wounded. Now they settled down to the grim business of securing Guadalcanal. No one, not even the most pessimistic, would have believed how long it was going to take or the ordeals they would soon endure.

  Chapter Fifteen

  At the beginning of August, 1942, the Japanese had not yet apprehended American intentions at Guadalcanal; in fact, they would not understand them until much later. Both Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo and the Japanese army and navy commanders at Rabaul still seemed to believe it was some kind of raid, or “reconnaissance in force,” and not a full-scale invasion. Thus they began wishful countermeasures inadequate to the circumstances, and with nauseating results. Yet the U.S. invasion had stopped the Japanese in their tracks, and ultimately it stopped them from further conquests in the Pacific—all of it—because the United States Navy and Marines, and soon the Army, did not give any ground, despite horrific losses; this was the beginning of the end of the Japanese grand design. It had already become apparent to everyone, however, with the heavy casualties at Tulagi and the calamity of the Battle of Savo Island, that it was not going to be without a high cost in lives and treasure.

  First there was the Goettge Raid, one of those cowboy sorts of things that occur all too frequently in war when a hotshot ranking officer decides to get into the action instead of staying where he belongs. Four days after the landings, a patrol had gone westward several miles from the marine encampment and run into gunfire from Japanese soldiers situated on the banks of the Matanikau River.* The Matanikau as it emptied into the Lengo Channel was wide, unfordable upstream, and crocodile infested but, like most rivers on Guadalcanal, it had a sandbar at its mouth along the beach that allowed a crossing. It was here that the marine patrol suffered an officer killed and several marines wounded. Those returning, however, reported to the division intelligence officer, Lieutenant Colonel Frank B. Goettge, that they had seen a strange sight at the Matanikau—a white flag from the Japanese side of the river.† No one knew what to make of this, since the ambush of the marine patrol did not sound like the Japanese were eager to surrender. Next day brought a further clarification, when a Japanese prisoner told his marine interrogators that hundreds of his fellow soldiers were starving in the jungles and wanted to give up.

  This prompted Lieutenant Colonel Goettge to organize a patrol to investigate, with himself as patrol leader and many of his noncombat intelligence staff acting as combat patrolmen. General Vandegrift was not keen on the notion, and should have stopped it, but he let himself be argued into it by Goettge, who apparently conjured up visions of the remaining Japanese force on the island marching in behind him hands in air, willing and starving prisoners. They got off late, in the wee hours of the morning, in a noisy landing boat, which put them ashore near the mouth of the river. They never had a chance. Goettge was hit first and killed immediately, followed by one of the regimental medical officers and some interpreters; as dawn broke, of the twenty-six men in the patrol only three had survived, and those only by running into the ocean and swimming and crawling several
miles along the coast back to the marine encampment. Along the way their knees and hands were terribly cut up by the sharp coral heads. The other marines had tried to dig in for a fight after the first shots but, alas, their entrenching tools were aboard the transport ships headed back south, so they dug frantically with their helmets and with their hands. The Japanese had met them with overwhelming force, however, and the slaughter was quick. One survivor, a twenty-two-year-old sergeant, who was half American Indian, watched the Japanese closing in, hacking up the remaining marines. “I could see swords flashing,” he told a reporter afterward.1 After this, there would be little or no talk of any surrender by the Japanese, and all now realized that the easy landing had been a chimera.

  Ten days after the landings the marines received an unusual visitor. Out of the jungle and onto the beach near the perimeter marched a tall and aristocratic-looking young Englishman dressed in a tattered khaki shirt and shorts and wearing a new pair of oxford shoes.* He was Martin Clemens, a famed Oxford University oarsman and newly appointed district commissioner for Guadalcanal. Behind him were two neat columns of very black, bushy-haired, half-naked Solomon Islanders, one wrapped in the British Union Jack, as sort of a shift. These were members of Clemens’s Guadalcanal constabulary who had remained with him as scouts and bearers for his coast-watching duties ever since the Japanese first landed. Clemens had seen and reported it all, from the Japanese invasion of Tulagi, to their invasion of Guadalcanal, to the construction of the Japanese air base there, and then the subsequent marine landings and the Battle of Savo Island, which they had watched from high in the hills. Now he was down to his last few cans of food and wanted to speak to the marine commander. Clemens had been looking forward for months to sleeping in a real bed and having a warm bath and hot food; instead, like everyone else, he ate cold tinned beans and Japanese rice and slept dirty in a foxhole as Japanese planes bombed them.2