by Daniel Wrinn
One Japanese and three American destroyers were sunk. When the Japanese attack force retired, Admiral Tanaka ran his four transports onto the beach. He knew they would be targets at daylight. Most men on board managed to get ashore before the expected pummeling by American warships, planes, and artillery. The Japanese had landed ten thousand troops of the 38th Division. But they were in no shape to ever again attempt a massive reinforcement. The horrific losses caused by the frequent naval clashes, which seemed to favor the Japanese, did not represent a standoff. Every American ship damaged or lost would be replaced. Every Japanese ship was precious to their steadily diminishing fleet. The air fighting losses on both sides were overwhelming. The Japanese would never recover from the loss of its experienced carrier pilots. In the Battle of the Philippine Sea between Japanese and American carriers, it would be called the “Mariana’s Turkey Shoot” because of the ineptitude of the Japanese trainee pilots.
The enemy troops fortunate enough to reach land were not ready to assault the American positions. The 30th Division and the remnants of the various Japanese units attempting to penetrate the Marine lines needed to be trained in built into a coherent attack force before General Hyakutake could have any reasonable attempt at taking Henderson Field. General Vandegrift now had enough men and fresh units to replace his veteran troops along the front lines. He swapped the 1st Marine Division with the Army’s 25th Infantry. Admiral Turner told Vandegrift to leave all of his heavy equipment on the island, and when he pulled out “in hopes of getting your units re-equipped when you come out.”
He told Vandegrift that the Army would now command the final phases, since it would provide most combat forces once the 1st Division Marines departed. Major General Alexander Patch, commander of the Americal Division, would relieve Vandegrift as senior American officer ashore. His air support would continue to be Marine dominated with General Geiger, now on Espiritu Santo with 1st Wing headquarters fighter squadrons, to maintain the offensive. The Guadalcanal air command would be a mixture of Marine, Navy, Army, and Allied squadrons.
The sick list of the 1st Marine Division in November was over three thousand men with malaria. The men of the 1st Division still manned the frontline foxholes and rear areas, if any place within Guadalcanal’s perimeter could properly be called a rear area. The men were exhausted. They had done their part of the fighting and they all knew it. On November 29, General Vandegrift was handed a message from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The crux of it read: “1st Marine Division is to be relieved without delay. And will proceed to Australia for rehabilitation and employment.”
The word spread that the 1st Division was leaving and where it was going. Australia was not yet the special place it would become in the division’s future, but anywhere was better than Guadalcanal.
Defeat of Japanese Forces on Guadalcanal
On December 7, one year after the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor, General Vandegrift sent a message to all under his command thanking them for their steadfastness and courage. He reminded them of their unbelievable achievements they’d made on Guadalcanal, now a synonym for disaster and death in the Japanese language. On December 9, he handed over his command to General Patch and flew out to Australia.
Elements of the 5th Marines boarded ship. The 1st, 11th, and 7th Marines soon followed together with the rest of the division’s supporting units. The men that left with him were tired, thin, hollow-eyed, and demoralized.
This group of young men had grown considerably older in only four months. They left behind 681 dead Marines in the island cemetery. The final regiment of the 132nd Infantry of the Americal Division landed on December 8 as the 5th Marines prepared to leave. The 2nd Marine Division’s regiments were already on the island. The 6th Marines were on their way to rejoin. Many of the men of the 2nd Marines, who landed on D-Day August 7, should have also left. They took little comfort in the thought that they, by all rights, should be the first of the 2nd Division to leave Guadalcanal whenever the day came.
A steady stream of replacements and ground reinforcements came to General Patch in December. He was still not ready to undertake a full-scale offensive until the 25th Division, and the rest of the 2nd Marine Division arrived. He kept all reconnaissance patrols and frontline units active—especially toward the western flank. The island commanders’ air defense capabilities multiplied. The Cactus Air Force was organized into a fighter command and a strike and bomber command. They now operated from the newly redesignated Marine Corps airbase. Henderson Airfield had a new airstrip, Fighter Two. Fighter Two replaced Fighter One, which had suffered severe drainage problems.
General Lewis Woods took over as senior aviator when General Geiger returned to Espiritu Santo. Geiger was relieved on December 26 by General Francis Mulcahy, the commanding General of the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing. New bomber and fighter squadrons were added regularly. The Army added a bomber squadron of B-26s. The Royal New Zealand Air Force flew in a reconnaissance squadron of Lockheed Hudsons. The US Navy sent a squadron of PBY Catalina patrol planes, with night-flying capability.
This aerial buildup forced the Imperial Japanese to curb air attacks and make their daylight naval reinforcement attempts an event of the past. The nighttime visits of the Tokyo Express destroyers now only brought supplies encased in metal drums rolled over the ship sides, hoping to float into shore. The men on shore desperately needed everything that could be sent, even by this method. But most of the drums never reached the beaches.
No matter how desperate the enemy situation was becoming, the Imperial Japanese were prepared to fight. General Hyakutake continued to plan the seizure of the airfield. He ordered the commander of the Eighth Area Army to continue the offensive. General Imamura had fifty thousand men to add and reinforce to the embattled Japanese troops on Guadalcanal.
Before the enemy units could be used, the Americans were prepared to move out from the perimeter on their own offensive. They knew that the Mt. Austin area was a continuing threat to their inland flank. General Patch committed the Americal’s 132nd Infantry to clearing the mountain’s wooded slopes on December 17. The Army was successful in isolating the major Japanese force in the area by early January. The 1/2 Marines took uphill positions to the southeast of the 132nd to increase flank protection. By now, the 25th Infantry Division had arrived. So had the 6th Marines and the rest of the 2nd Division’s headquarters and support troops. General De Carre took charge of all Marine ground forces on the island. The 2nd Division’s commander General John Marston remained in New Zealand because he was senior to General Patch.
General Patch was in command of three divisions and designated as the XIV Corps Commanding General on January 2. His Corps headquarters numbered less than twenty officers and men, almost all taken from Americal staff. General Sebree, who had already led both Army and Marine units in attacks on the Japanese, took command of the Americal Division. On January 10, General Patch gave the signal to start the most vigorous American offensive in the Guadalcanal campaign. The mission of the troops was to attack and destroy remaining Japanese forces on Guadalcanal.
The objective of the Marine Corps attack was a line fifteen hundred yards west of the jump-off positions. These lines ran inland from Point Cruz to the vicinity of Hill 66—three thousand yards from the beach. To reach Hill 66, the 25th Infantry Division attacked with the 27th and 35th Infantry driving west and southwest across a scrambled series of ridges. The going was rough against a dug-in enemy. Elements of two regiments of the 38th Division gave way reluctantly and slowly. By the 13th, American soldiers aided by 1/2 Division Marines had won through two positions on the southern flank of the 2nd Marine Division.
On January 12, the Marines began their advance with the 8th Marines along the shore and 2nd Division Marines inland. At the base of Point Cruz in the 3/8 Marine sector, regimental weapons company half-tracks ran over half a dozen enemy machine gun nests. This attack was held up by an extensive emplacement unit. The weapons company commander, Captain Henry Crow, took cha
rge of the squad of Marine infantrymen taking cover from enemy fire with the classic line: “You’ll never get a Purple Heart hiding in a foxhole. Follow me!”
The men followed and destroyed the emplacement.
The going was difficult along the front of the advancing assault companies. The remnants of the Japanese Sendai Division were dug in on a series of cross compartments. Their fire took Marines in the flank advances. The progress was slow despite massive artillery support and naval gunfire from offshore destroyers. In over two days of heavy fighting, flamethrowers were used for the first time, and tanks were brought into play. The 2nd Division Marines were relieved, and the 6th Marines moved into the attack along the coast while the 8th Marines advanced inland. Naval gunfire spotted by officers onshore improved the accuracy. The Marines and Army reached their initial core objective on the 15th. In the attack zone, over six hundred Japanese had been killed.
The battle-weary 2nd Marines had seen their last infantry action on Guadalcanal. A new unit now came into being. It was a composite Marine/Army division, or CAM division, formed from units of the 2nd Marine Divisions and the Americal Division. The directing staff was from the 2nd Division since the entire Americal Division was responsible for the main perimeter.
Two of their regiments, 147th, and 182nd Infantry, moved up to attack in line with the 6th Marines still strung out along the coast. The 8th Marines were pinched out of the front lines by a narrowing attack corridor as inland mountains and hills pressed closer to the coastal trail. The 25th Division advance across this rugged terrain was tasked with outflanking the enemy in the vicinity of Kokumbona, while the CAM Division continued to drive west. On the 23rd, as the CAM troops approached Kokumbona, the infantry of the 1st Battalion surged north from the hills and overran the village and Japanese base. They offered a steady but slight resistance to the American advance and withdrew west toward Cape Esperance.
The Imperial Japanese would not attempt to retake Guadalcanal. These were the orders sent in the Emperor’s name. Senior staff officers were dispatched to make sure they were followed. The Imperial Japanese Navy would make its final runs of the Tokyo Express, only this time in reverse, to evacuate the garrison to fight later battles to hold the Solomons. Enemy ships were massing to the northwest. General Patch took steps to guard against overextending his forces. Especially faced with what appeared to be another enemy attempt at reinforcement. He pulled back the 25th Division to bolster the primary perimeter defenses and ordered the CAM Division to continue its attack. Marines and soldiers moved out on January 26, gaining over one thousand yards on the first day and two thousand the next. The Japanese contested every attack—but not in strength.
By January 30, the sole frontline unit in the American advance was the 147th Infantry; the 6th Marines held positions to its rear.
The Japanese destroyer transports made their first run to the island on the night of February 2, evacuating twenty-three hundred men from positions near Cape Esperance. On the night of February 5, they returned and evacuated most Sendai survivors, and General Hyakutake and his 7th Army staff.
On February 8, the final evacuation was carried out, and a three thousand man rearguard action was embarked. The Japanese withdrew over eleven thousand men in those three nights and evacuated over thirteen thousand soldiers from Guadalcanal. The Americans would meet many of these soldiers again in later battles, but not the six hundred evacuees who died—too sick and worn out to survive the rescue.
On February 9, American soldiers advancing west and east met at Tenaro village on Cape Esperance. The only Marine ground unit still in action was the 3/10 Marines, supporting the advance. General Patch reported the complete and total defeat of Japanese forces on Guadalcanal. No organized Japanese units remained.
On January 31, the 2nd Marines boarded ships to leave Guadalcanal. As with the 1st Marine Division, some of these men were so beaten down by malaria that they had to be carried on board. Observers were struck again as these young men had considerably aged in the last few months, “with their skin cracked, and furrowed, and wrinkled.” On February 9, the rest of the 8th Marines boarded the transports. The 6th Marines, with only six weeks on the island, left on the 19th. All troops headed for Wellington, New Zealand. They left behind, on the island as a legacy of the 2nd Marine Division, 263 men dead.
The total cost of the Guadalcanal campaign to the American ground combat forces was 1,598 officers and men killed. 1,152 of them were Marines.
The wounded totaled 4,709. Of these 2,799 were Marines. Marine aviation casualties were 147 killed and 127 wounded.
The Japanese lost nearly 25,000 on Guadalcanal. About half killed in action—the rest died from wounds, starvation, and illness.
At sea, each side lost a similar number of fighting ships. The Japanese lost two battleships, three carriers, twelve cruisers, and twenty-five destroyers—all were irreplaceable. While the Allied ship losses were substantial and costly: they were not fatal. All lost ships were ultimately replaced. Over six hundred Japanese planes were shot down. Worse than the loss of aircraft was the death of over two thousand experienced pilots and aircrew. The Allied plane losses were only half that of the enemy’s number, and the pilot and aircrew losses were substantially lower.
President Roosevelt, awarded General Vandegrift the Medal of Honor for outstanding and heroic accomplishment for his leadership of the American forces on Guadalcanal from August 7 to December 9, 1942. He also awarded a presidential unit citation to the 1st Marine Division for “outstanding gallantry, reflecting courage and determination of an inspiring order.”
Included in the division citation and award, besides the organic units of the 1st Division with the 2nd and 8th Marines and attached units of the 2nd Marine Division, all of the Americal Division, the 1st Parachute Battalion, 1st and 2nd Raider Battalions, elements of the 3rd, 5th and, 14th Defense Battalions, the 1st Aviation Engineer Battalion, the 6th Naval Construction Battalion, and two motor torpedo boat squadrons. The vital Cactus Air Force was included. Represented by seven Marine headquarters and service squadrons, sixteen Marine flying squadrons, sixteen Naval flying squadrons, and five Army flying squadrons.
The Guadalcanal victory was a crucial turning point in the Pacific War. The Japanese offensive was ended. The Imperial Japanese pilots, seamen, and infantry had been in close combat with the Americans and their allies. There were still years of fierce fighting ahead, but now there was no question of the eventual outcome.
1
General Alexander A. Vandegrift
If military titles were awarded in America as they were in England, the commanding General of the Marine Corps forces at Guadalcanal would be known as “Vandegrift of Guadalcanal.” But America does not give aristocratic titles, nor would such a formality be in keeping with the soft-spoken, modest demeanor of Alexander Vandegrift.
The man who led the 1st Marine Division and America’s first ground offensive operation of World War II was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, 1887. His grandfather told him fascinating stories of life in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. It was destiny that young Alexander would settle on a military career. He was commissioned as a Marine lieutenant in 1909. He received an early baptism of fire in 1912 during the bombardment, assault, and capture of Coyotepe in Nicaragua. Two years later, he would take part in the capture and occupation of Veracruz, Mexico. Vandegrift would spend the greater part of his next decade in Haiti. He fought bandits and served as an inspector of constabulary with the Gendarmerie d’Haiti. In Haiti, he met and befriended Marine Colonel Smedley Butler, who called him “Sunny Jim.” The lessons of these years fighting an elusive enemy in a hostile jungle environment were not lost on this young Marine officer.
He spent the next eighteen years in several posts and stations in the United States and two tours of China duty in Tientsin and Peiping. Before Pearl Harbor, Vandegrift was appointed assistant to the Major General Commandant, and in 1940 received a single star of a Brig. General. He was dispatched t
o the 1st Marine Division in November 1941. In May 1942, he sailed for the South Pacific as the commanding general of the 1st Marine Division ever to leave the United States. On August 7, 1942, he told his Marines that “God favors the bold and strong of heart.” He led the 1st Marine Division ashore in the Solomon Islands in the first large-scale offensive against the Japanese.
His victory at Guadalcanal earned him the Medal of Honor, and the Navy Cross, along with the praise of a grateful nation. In July 1943, he took command of I Marine Amphibious Corps. He planned the landings at Empress Agusta Bay, Bougainville, and the Northern Solomons. On November 1, 1943, he was recalled to Washington to be the 18th Commandant of the Marine Corps.
January 1, 1944, as a Lieutenant General, he was sworn in as Commandant. On April 4, 1945, he was promoted to General and became the first officer on active duty to attain a four-star rank. In the final stages of the war, General Vandegrift directed an elite force approaching half a million men and women, with its own aviation force. When he compared his Marines to the Japanese, he noted that the Japanese soldier is: “trained to go to a place, stay there, fight, and die. We train our men to go to a place, fight to win, and to live. I assure you, it is a better theory.”