by Ian W. Toll
Those who can stand upright: 30 days.
Those who can sit: 3 weeks.
Those always lying down: 1 week.
Those who pass urine lying: 3 days.
Those who cannot speak: 2 days.
Those who cannot wink: On the morrow.5
On December 8, the Seventeenth Army headquarters on Guadalcanal reported that only 4,200 troops (about 15 percent of the total on the island) were strong and healthy enough to fight. Combat deaths were running at forty to fifty per day, mainly as a result of air attacks, but some three times that number were succumbing to disease or starvation.6
Tanaka’s mid-November resupply effort had been a debacle. He had lost eleven valuable transports in three days. From the four ships he had sacrificed by running them aground on the beaches, he had disembarked just 2,000 troops, 360 cases of ammunition for field guns, and 1,500 bales of rice.7 By consuming so many scarce cargo ships, the fight for Guadalcanal threatened to cripple the entire Japanese war economy, which could not function without raw materials imported into the home islands.
A new supply tactic was urgently needed. Tanaka’s hard-run destroyers would again be deployed as transports, this time using the “drum method.” Empty fuel drums were sterilized and filled with ammunition and provisions. The drums, linked together by ropes, were secured to the outboard railings of the destroyers. A column of destroyers would approach the island at high speed and cast away the drums, which would be retrieved by small craft (or even swimmers) and towed or hauled ashore. All supply drops would be attempted at night, as Tanaka dared not expose his ships to air attack.
The first run was attempted on November 30, 1942. Shortly after ten that evening, a single column of eight destroyers roared into Ironbottom Sound at nearly 30 knots. Admiral Tanaka knew that his ships had been spotted from the air, but hoped to launch the drums and withdraw up the Slot before daybreak. The weather was fair, with a gentle breeze and good visibility at the surface. Six of the eight ships were loaded with between 200 and 240 supply drums each. To offset the added weight topside, those six ships had sailed with only eight torpedoes (one per tube) and half their usual supply of main battery ammunition.8
American search flights had tracked Tanaka’s movements carefully. He had staged through Rabaul and the Buin and Shortland harbors, where a large increase in shipping during the last week of the month had clearly signaled another supply run. To counter it, Halsey dispatched Rear Admiral Carleton H. Wright with a cruiser-destroyer force (Task Force 67) from Espiritu Santo. Wright passed through Lengo Channel at 9:45 p.m. and arrived in the waters north of Tassafaronga Point just as Tanaka closed from the north.
At 11:06 p.m., SG radar on the flagship cruiser Minneapolis discovered two ships at a distance of 23,000 yards. The blips gradually resolved into seven or eight ships on a southeasterly course. At about the same time, Japanese lookouts noted flares dropped from cruiser planes overhead, and obtained a visual fix on “what appear to be enemy ships, bearing 100°.”9 Without waiting for Tanaka’s order, the lead destroyer Takanami launched torpedoes and opened fire.
The Americans had brought superior firepower into the action—five cruisers and six destroyers matched against Tanaka’s eight destroyers, six of which were short of munitions and heavily loaded with supplies. But Wright was slow to give the order to open fire, and the delay mattered. The American torpedoes were fired at an awkward angle, and none struck home. Their 8- and 5-inch projectiles were better aimed, but they were concentrated on the lead ship Takanami, which was quickly set ablaze all along her length and began going down by the head. Takanami’s sacrifice effectively decided the action in favor of the Japanese, because she absorbed all the American gunners had to offer while her explosions and fires screened her seven sisters. No other Japanese ship suffered a direct hit in the battle, or even a destructive near miss.10
Tanaka ordered a hard port turn to take his column on a course parallel to that of Wright’s. As they rotated their broadsides toward the enemy, the undamaged Japanese destroyers launched their deadly spreads. The Long Lance torpedoes ran true. Beginning at about 11:27, as the warheads connected with their targets, the big cruisers at the heart of Wright’s column lurched upward and erupted in flames. The Minneapolis took two crippling blows on her port side. The first tore off the ship’s bow and ignited gasoline storage tanks; the second struck amidships and flooded her engineering spaces. Less than a minute later, the New Orleans was hit on her port bow. The explosion detonated her magazines, tore off a large section of her bow, and killed the entire crew of turret 2.11 The Pensacola’s fuel tanks were ignited by a torpedo hit; she would burn through the night. The venerable Northampton, the last cruiser in Wright’s column, gave chase to the retreating Japanese ships and sent several 8-inch salvos after them. For that she was rewarded with two devastating torpedo hits that put an end to her. She was abandoned and sank early the next morning.
Not for the first time, the U.S. Navy had suffered a dreadful beating in a night torpedo action. In fifteen minutes, and at a cost of one destroyer, Tanaka had sent one heavy cruiser into the abyss and critically damaged three more. The naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison, a free-handed critic but a miser with praise, rated Tanaka’s performance “superb.”12 Admiral Nimitz ruefully observed that “we are made painfully aware of the Japanese skill, both in night and day action, in the use of guns and torpedoes. To date there has been no reason to doubt his energy, persistence, and courage.”13
Wright estimated that his force had sunk four Japanese destroyers and damaged two more. That rosy claim was viewed with suspicion even by the crews of his own ships, especially when dawn revealed no sign of enemy wreckage. If there was anything to console the Americans, it was the exceptional valor and skill of the damage-control parties that saved the Minneapolis, New Orleans, and Pensacola. The action had left the three cruisers ablaze and in near-sinking condition, but all somehow managed to quell the fires and hobble into Tulagi Harbor, and all would be returned to service later in the war.
Tanaka chose to withdraw to Shortland without attempting the supply drop. His reasons were sensible enough—his destroyers had expended all torpedoes, and he could expect attack from the air if he did not get well away to the west before morning. But the decision exacerbated the privations of the army on Guadalcanal, and apparently angered his superiors at Rabaul and Truk. He must try again, without delay. On the night of December 3, ten destroyers managed to drop 1,500 supply drums off Cape Esperance. But only a fraction, perhaps one-fifth of the drums, reached the Japanese army. The units assigned to recover them had been undermanned and physically exhausted. The following morning, American fighters flying from Henderson Field strafed and destroyed several hundred drums found drifting in Ironbottom Sound. Tanaka tried another run on December 7, but his ships were harried by bombers and fighters, then attacked and driven away by six PT boats west of Savo Island.14
Even in their anchorage at Shortland, the Japanese could not rest. B-17s and fighters raided the area every day. On December 10, two fuel tankers were struck and set afire, with heavy damage. Tanaka sortied with nine destroyers the following afternoon and managed to drop 1,200 supply drums. American PT boats swarmed out of Tulagi Harbor and launched torpedoes, one of which struck Tanaka’s flagship, the recently commissioned Teruzuki. “The ship caught fire and became unnavigable almost at once,” he wrote. “Leaking fuel was set ablaze, turning the sea into a mass of flames. When fire reached the after powder magazine there was a huge explosion, and the ship began to sink.”15 She was scuttled at 4:00 the next morning; more than half her crew went down with her. The eight surviving destroyers withdrew to Shortland. Tanaka, injured in the action and confined to a hospital at Buin, was disgusted to learn that only 220 of the 1,200 drums launched that night had been recovered by the army.
With the moon waxing, the PT boat attacks were growing more deadly every night, and Admiral Mikawa ordered a temporary halt to the supply runs. Tanaka privately advised
him that the game was up—Guadalcanal must be abandoned. For his trouble, Tanaka received orders transferring him to an administrative post in Singapore. This talented officer, who had done his best to supply Guadalcanal with the limited tools at hand, and who had scored a mighty naval victory less than a month earlier, would never command at sea again.
Talk of pulling out of Guadalcanal was strictly taboo. The Japanese army, even more than the navy, had staked its honor and reputation on the recapture of Henderson Field. Lieutenant General Hitoshi Imamura, recently arrived at Rabaul to assume command of Eighth Area Army, intended to summon the Sixth and Fifty-First Divisions from China and put them ashore on Guadalcanal by the end of the year.16 Senior naval commanders thought the plan absurd but were reluctant to say so. Even if 50,000 more troops could somehow be transported to the island, an unlikely prospect in light of November’s events, how could they be supported? If 30,000 men currently on the island were starving, how could 80,000 be fed?
In the privacy of his diary, Admiral Ugaki contemplated the inevitable. The interservice politics were extremely delicate, and considerations of “face” would certainly come into play. But it would not do to persist in a futile campaign for the sake of maintaining cordial relations between the army and the navy. On December 7, he wrote, “Deeming wrong as wrong and impossible as impossible, and without being obstinate because of face-savings or without coaxing others, we should deal with this important matter with the utmost frankness.” The army would have to arrive at the conclusion independently—“it is essential to let them realize its inevitability by themselves.”17 At any event, the question was out of his hands. Such a momentous change in policy could be decided only by the high command in Tokyo.
IN JAPAN AND OTHER POINTS WEST of the International Date Line, the eighth day of December marked the first anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The date was feted with the usual self-congratulatory bunkum. The Imperial Navy headquarters released a grossly inflated tally of enemy ships sunk in the first year of the “Greater East Asia War”: eleven aircraft carriers, eleven battleships, forty-six cruisers, forty-eight destroyers, and ninety-three submarines. (More accurately, it also reported a cumulative total of Japanese officers and sailors killed in action: 14,802.)18
Newspapers and magazines published annual retrospectives highlighting the notable victories achieved by Japanese forces. Kokusai Shashin Joho, the International Graphic Magazine, published gun camera photos depicting burning enemy ships and aircraft.19 In a speech carried over the airwaves, Foreign Minister Masayuki Tani declared that American leaders “are truly running their nation in a laughable manner. They may be high in producing capacity, but without the more essential qualities, such as lofty war ideals, America cannot win over us.”20
Japanese servicemen returning from the South Pacific were confounded by the elation they found at home. No one in Tokyo seemed to grasp how precarious Japan’s position had become. There might be some compelling purpose in firing up the spirits of the public, but the boundaries dividing fact and fantasy were blurred even in the inner councils of power. Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, in a December 8 speech to military leaders at the War Ministry, declared that the Allies “want obstinately to continue their counterattack, but making use of our great material resources, we are ready to annihilate them at any moment at any point on the globe.”21 That very week, as Tojo undoubtedly knew, the Imperial General Staff had begun a joint army-navy strategic review with an eye toward cutting losses and pulling out of Guadalcanal. In Truk, Admiral Ugaki judged that a visiting delegation of army staff officers “didn’t seem to have enough knowledge of the fervent fighting spirit of the American forces. Neither did they show much interest in comparative strength, theirs and ours.”22 Captain Tameichi Hara, who had returned to Japan for repairs to his ship, dined with a group of naval staff officers in mid-December. “I don’t know how you who are stationed here view things from the homeland, but it is hell at the front,” he told them. “As professionals you all know better than to base your judgments on the official bravado announced by headquarters in Tokyo. We have had some tactical victories, but we are suffering a strategic defeat.”23 The mood grew tense, and one of the others told Hara that it was a social occasion and he ought to lighten up.
In mid-December, Colonel Joichiro Sanada of the Imperial Headquarters staff was dispatched on a fact-finding mission to the South Pacific. At Truk and Rabaul, he solicited and recorded the views of senior officers of both the army and the navy. Even accounting for what is lost in translation, one is struck by the temporizing, evasive, and subtext-laden character of the answers given. More than one officer remarked that recapturing the island “is difficult.” Several kicked responsibility up to the “ultimate authorities.” All were preoccupied with army-navy sensitivities. The army called for more ships; the navy called for more army airpower. Neither was willing to be the first to advocate giving up Guadalcanal, but neither was keen to commit its strength to a renewed offensive. “If the army can undertake it with confidence,” said a senior member of Yamamoto’s staff, in a typical reply, “the navy will pitch in, too.” General Imamura, who had recently spoken of landing two fresh divisions on Guadalcanal, offered Sanada this master stroke of equivocation: “At present, we are searching for a plan to lead us out of the difficulty, but we alone cannot say that the operational policy be changed. I hope that the central authorities will make a decision from the overall viewpoint after deliberating on the relationship with the navy.”24
In conferences at the Imperial General Headquarters, it was customary for officers of the two services to sit on opposite sides of the table, an arrangement that could only dramatize the rift between them. Recriminations proceeded until all arguments were exhausted. The army blamed the navy for failing to maintain adequate supply lines. The navy criticized the ground tactics employed on Guadalcanal, and demanded more army air support. General Kenryo Sato recalled “heated discussions exchanging clenched fists over the table between the army and navy.”25 Neither side could afford an impasse, however, and not only because both services were suffering ruinous losses in the Solomons. The emperor had lost patience with the sniping between his two military branches and had issued stern warnings against disharmony. The generals and admirals had no choice but to grapple toward some sort of face-saving consensus. Gradually it became clear that everyone was looking for a way out of Guadalcanal. As one conference followed another, and the regime stumbled toward a new accord, about 200 Japanese soldiers on the island perished each day.
Colonel Sanada reported to Tojo upon his return to the capital on December 29. His formal recommendation, couched in terms only slightly less paralytic than those he had heard in Rabaul and Truk, was that “it is not advisable to hurry the recapture of Guadalcanal Island.”26 He had expected a furious rebuke, but was relieved to learn that Tojo had apparently reached the same conclusion. Sanada’s report and recommendation were “adopted much more readily than I had feared.”27
According to Ugaki, an “understanding” had been reached between the services on December 16, 1942, but another two weeks passed before the issue was put to the emperor. At a conference at the Imperial Palace on the last day of the year, the high command offered a unanimous recommendation that Guadalcanal be abandoned. The navy would attempt to evacuate as many of the surviving army troops as possible. The emperor was displeased, and he questioned Admiral Nagano closely concerning the laggardly pace of new airfield construction in the South Pacific.28 Hirohito gave his approval to the recommendation, as he always did when his advisers were unanimous, but added that it was “unacceptable” to pull out of Guadalcanal without simultaneously mounting a new offensive in New Guinea.29 Japan’s forces must not be seen to shift to a merely defensive posture. Some days later, the man-god conveyed an imperial message to the high command, transmitted through his chief aide-de-camp: “The evacuation from Guadalcanal Island was regrettable. Further cooperation between the Army and Navy is requested hereafter f
or the attainment of operational objectives.”30
Disguised though it was, the new policy called for a retreat to a new defensive line running north and south through the central Solomons. The army would fortify and garrison islands north of New Georgia and Santa Isabel. The navy would accelerate work on the new airstrip at Munda on New Georgia, making it the region’s principal forward fighter base. As for the remnants of the army on Guadalcanal, the navy would continue supply runs, but these would be little more than missions of mercy—there would be no further offensives against the American lines. Admiral Tomiji Koyanagi, with ten cruisers under his command, made supply drops on January 2 and January 10, 1943. As in the prior month, provisions were crammed into fuel drums that were dropped into the sea off Tassafaronga Point.31 More than half of these drums were apparently recovered, providing life-saving relief to the Japanese forces on the island, whose number had diminished to fewer than 15,000.
“Operation KE” was the name given to the evacuation and the covering operations that disguised it. On January 14, a fresh infantry and artillery battalion (the “Yano Battalion”) was landed on the island to act as a rear guard. Naval and air forces moved down the Solomons in strength. These were discovered (as the Japanese knew they would be) by Allied air reconnaissance. Daylight and nighttime air attacks against Henderson Field rose sharply. Radio traffic analysis misled American intelligence to believe that the Japanese were mounting another naval offensive and troop landing, and the American commanders reacted accordingly. Major General Alexander Patch of the army (who had relieved General Vandegrift as commander of American ground forces on the island on December 7) had some 50,000 army and marine troops under his command. Patch began to press into the hills south of the village of Kokumbona, the Seventeenth Army headquarters on the island’s north coast. The Americans found Japanese resistance surprisingly light, and elements of the 25th Infantry Division walked into the village unopposed on January 23. The Japanese were evidently withdrawing in a hurry to the west, but Patch did not commit to a pursuit in force, as he still believed another large-scale amphibious landing was at hand. Halsey deployed his remaining cruisers and carrier task forces to the waters in and west of Ironbottom Sound. On January 30, Japanese air attacks destroyed the cruiser Chicago.