Next it was required to protect the right flank of Gavutu-Tanambogo by occupying the tip of Halavo Peninsula on Florida. Other Marines of the same battalion carried out this mission. Both operations were unopposed.
It was different at Gavutu-Tanambogo. These Siamese-twin islets, joined by a narrow causeway, were both tiny; Gavutu barely 500 by 300 yards, Tanambogo even smaller. Both were steep, ringed by coral, pocked by armored caves, and defended by troops sworn to go down fighting. Marines of the First Parachute Battalion were to take these objectives, beginning with Gavutu. They had to sail around the island to get at the only landing place, a seaplane ramp and pier on the northeastern tip.
About noon of August 7, almost coincidental with the arrival of the Japanese airplanes, Major Robert Williams and his Paramarines sped toward the seaplane ramp.
Automatic fire struck them in the boats. They found that naval shelling had torn the ramp into jagged pieces. Swerving wildly, the boats made for the pier. Some men jumped onto it, getting inland. Most of them were pinned down beside the pier. A hail of fire came from three sides: from a Gavutu hill to the left, from trenches behind the pier and from Tanambogo on the right. Major Williams was hit and command passed to Major Charles Miller. Riddled, the Paramarines called desperately for naval gunfire to knock out the enemy positions. But the covering destroyers dared not run close in uncharted, shoal-filled waters.
A landing boat full of mortars roared to the rescue. Mortarmen vaulted over gunwales and bent swiftly to the task of setting up their unlovely stovepipe killers. Soon shells were plop-plopping from tubes to fall with a killing crrrunch-whummp in enemy trenches. Enemy fire fell off and the assault swept forward. Fresh units came in to join it. The Japanese fought doggedly from their trenches. Corporal George Grady charged eight of them, firing his Thompson submachine gun as he ran. Two fell dead and Grady’s tommy gun jammed. He swung the weapon like a club and smashed an enemy soldier to the ground. He drew his sheath knife and stabbed two more. And then the others were upon him to exact his own life.
Gradually the Marines gained the upper hand. By midafternoon they held the highest land on the islet and the American flag was flung to the wind there. But the Marines stood atop a volcano. Beneath their very feet was a series of about two dozen impregnable coral caves, and around these a fierce battle began.
Improvising swiftly, the Marines strapped explosives to the end of long poles. They fitted them with five-second fuses and pushed or hurled them into cave mouths. Big blond Captain Harry Torgerson led the attack. His first charge sealed off an enemy position and blew his pants off. “Boy, that one was a pisser!”8 Torgerson yelled, running back for more explosives.
“Goddam, Captain,” an irreverent Marine called, “you done lost the seat of yer pants.”
“Screw the pants,” Torgerson bellowed, “get me more dynamite!”9
One by one the caves fell to Torgerson and his pole-chargers and Gavutu was conquered before nightfall.
A strong cold wind blowing through his shattered windshield restored Saburo Sakai to consciousness.
He felt his plane falling, plummeting like a stone. But he could see nothing, only red, only a world of scarlet. Flames? No. He felt no heat. He groped for the stick with his right hand. He pulled it back gently. Pressure pushed him back into his seat. The Zero was coming out of its dive.
But where was he? What was he to do?
He tried reaching for the throttle with his left hand. He could not. He worked his feet on the rudder bar. Only the right one moved, and the Zero skidded violently.
Saburo’s left side was paralyzed.
He began to weep.
Tears flowed from the samurai’s eyes and suddenly the red thinned and vanished and he saw sunlight again. He had wept away the blood that had gummed his vision.10
Even so he could see only dimly. Once he had lost sight of the water, and the great black shapes sliding by beneath his wings, he realized vaguely that he was lost. His instruments were sometimes clear, sometimes a blur—and he had to trust to touch. Fits of madness or a terrible overpowering desire to sleep seized him. But he flew on, thinking suddenly that the blood must have come from a wound. He raised his right hand to snap off his glove and felt his head. There was a slit in his helmet, there was a hole in his head. He could feel the thick sticky blood inside it, feel his skull, and he feared to feel deeper.
His Zero droned on and he discovered that he was flying at 200 miles an hour. The wind dried his face. Then his right eye flamed in pain. He put his hand before it, withdrew it, and discovered that his vision had not changed. He was blind in his right eye. Wave after wave of pain passed over him. He became conscious of loss of blood. With only one hand, he tried to use his four service bandages. The wind tore them away. He unwound his silk muffler. He pushed it beneath his helmet. Agonizing inch by agonizing inch he shoved it up and into his wound.
Saburo Sakai flew on. His vision and his thinking gradually clearing, he found himself on a 330-course bound for the middle of the Pacific. He corrected it and flew on, the samurai of the sky. He flew on, fighting drowsiness and despair, he flew on racked with pain and aware that he probably did not have enough gas to reach a Japanese-held island. Then he saw beneath him that strikingly green, horseshoe-shaped island.
Green Island!
He was only sixty miles south of Rabaul.
Saburo Sakai’s hand trembled on the throttle. He could make it! And there was a big island dead ahead. There was a mountain. Saburo cursed. He recognized the mountain. He was over New Ireland. He would have to cross this 2400-foot mountain peak to come down at Rabaul on the other side. He would have to climb and consume more gas. But he would have to, and he flew on—his Zero now rocked by the lash of a rain squall.
Saburo came down over St. George Channel between New Ireland and Rabaul and saw the great foaming wakes of two big ships blow beneath his wings. He saw the ships—heavy cruisers—steaming south at full speed.
But then he saw tiny Vunakunau beneath his wings. He saw the narrow runway and decided to try to ditch off the beach. He was only a few feet above the water when he changed his mind. The impact might knock him unconscious and he would drown. He had to climb again, he had to circle the field four times, in all, before he finally lowered down. A sharp jolt, a skid, an abrupt halt—and then a blessed blackness engulfed him.
Japan’s greatest ace had come home on his iron will and his unrivaled flying skill, but he had lost the sight of one eye and would not fly again until the last days of the war. Attrition had begun in the invincible Tainan Air Group, in the 25th Flotilla. Although there was sudden joy in the faces of the men who lifted unconscious Saburo Sakai from his bloody and riddled cockpit, behind their eyes lay an older, deeper grief.
Of fifty-one aircraft that left Rabaul that August 7, thirty had not come back.
The Americans could not possibly take Tanambogo from Gavutu. Every so often bursts of daisy-cutting machine-gun fire came whistling over the causeway from this smaller of the twin islets. No one ventured near the causeway above ground.
Brigadier General William Rupertus, who commanded the operations in the harbor islands, decided to take Tanambogo from the sea. He called upon Company B of the Second Marines, the outfit which had seized Haleta on Florida Island without firing a shot.
Air strikes were called down on Tanambogo. Destroyers pounded its installations. A Japanese three-inch gun was blown into the air in full view of the Marines coming to the assault. Daylight was fading fast as the coxswains pointed their prows shoreward and gunned the motors.
From a hilltop crowning Tanambogo came a terrible, withering fire. Private Russell Miller, the first American to land on Japanese soil, fell dead at his Lewis gun. A destroyer shell fell short and exploded among the boats. A coxswain was wounded and torn from the wheel of his boat. The craft yawed wildly, swinging around and heading back to Gavutu. Others followed it. Only three boats dared the Japanese fire and only one got ashore. Its occupants were pi
nned down and chopped up by Japanese fire. Under cover of night, friendly boats slipped in to take off dazed American survivors.
Tanambogo was very tough, Rupertus admitted. He would have to have more men. He appealed to Vandegrift who in turn appealed to Admiral Turner. Another battalion of the Second Marines—one which Turner had been holding back for the Ndeni operation—was released to Rupertus. At dawn of August 8, the attack would be renewed.
The two cruisers seen by Saburo Sakai were Aoba and Kinugasa. They were part of the force of five heavy cruisers and one destroyer which Rear Admiral Aritomo Goto had brought south from Kavieng under Admiral Mikawa’s orders. Before Saburo saw them they had also been sighted by an American B-17, which radioed the sighting back to Australia. After that Goto had detached Chokai and the destroyer Yunagi to pick up the Eighth Fleet commander while he continued on in Aoba with the others.
Chokai sailed into Simpson Harbor at two o’clock. Admiral Mikawa and his staff came aboard and Eighth Fleet commander’s red-and-white striped flag was broken from the masthead. A half-hour later, with Yunagi and the two light cruisers, Mikawa’s flagship stood out of the harbor.
It was a fine clear day. A sea as calm as a mirror lay glimmering in the sunlight. On Chokai’s bridge the officers chatted in high spirits. The men were excited. Everyone knew that they were sailing to battle.
Gunichi Mikawa was confident, even though he was aware of the terrible risks that he ran. His returning pilots had already informed him of the vastness of the American fleet. They had seen no aircraft carriers but Mikawa knew that carriers had to be somewhere in the vicinity. Mikawa dreaded the carriers, and he hoped to avoid aerial attack.
Throughout the afternoon and night of August 7, Mikawa intended to steam toward Bougainville. Next day, August 8, would be spent marking time north of Bougainville, well out of range of carrier aircraft. With dusk the ships would enter The Slot. They would come up on the enemy under cover of darkness, destroy him, and then race north again to be out of carrier range by daylight of August 9.
Mikawa’s eight ships were to strike like a wolfpack falling on a flock of sheep. First they would destroy the sheep dogs, the American warships, after which the sheep, the transports, could be devoured at leisure.
Three hours out of Rabaul, Mikawa’s and Goto’s ships made rendezvous. “Alert cruising disposition,” was ordered for the night. As the ships swung into line an American submarine was sighted. It was the veteran S-38 under Lieutenant Commander H. F. Munson. Mikawa ordered his ships to turn east to avoid it. Munson let them go. He had been so close to the enemy column that he could feel his vessel shuddering under their powerful wash. Nor could he, Munson, maneuver. Nevertheless he could see that something big was brewing. He decided to patrol St. George Channel, and meanwhile, he sent off the report: “Two destroyers and three larger ships of unknown type, heading 140 degrees True, at high speed, 8 miles west of Cape St. George.” Although Munson had miscounted the number of ships, he had still given Guadalcanal a valuable warning.
Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner did not heed the warning, just as he had dismissed the earlier report of Goto’s ships made by a Flying Fortress. Turner was not troubled because he considered a surface sea attack on the night of August 7 to be a practical impossibility. He was, however, deeply concerned about attack on August 8—either day or night. Because of this he had expressed doubts about plans to search The Slot and had requested Admiral McCain to make sure that Flying Fortresses would patrol that sea-corridor in the morning.
Otherwise, Turner was confident. The first day of invasion had gone off beautifully. Perhaps 17,000 Marines had been landed. Fletcher’s carriers were still to the south and would not depart until Sunday, August 9. On that clear calm Friday night of August 7 sailors on watch could congratulate themselves on being safe at sea and not ashore like the Marines on Tulagi, whence came the sounds of battle.
Red Mike Edson had expected the Japanese to counterattack at night, and they did.
Marines in their shallow foxholes could hear the enemy assembling. The Japanese crawled noisily out of their caves and dugouts. They shouted their war cry “Banzai!” in a kind of gurgling turkey-gobbler whoop. They howled threats which, they had been assured, would turn American hearts cold with fear.
“Japanese boy drink American boy’s blood!”
“Blood for the Emperor!”
They attacked, coming in ragged bands or sometimes as solitary infiltrators. They fired their rifles as they charged, deliberately trying to draw giveaway fire so that they might grenade the source of muzzle flashes. Where they threw grenades they were grenaded, where they closed with knives they were met with knives. Four times they charged, striking savagely at Marine positions in the center.
Here they came against Private First Class Johnny Ahrens and his Browning Automatic Rifle, and each time Ahrens and his chattering BAR broke them up. Just before dawn the Japanese were finally repulsed.
Captain Lewis (“Silent Lew”) Walt came quickly to the foxhole held by Ahrens. He found the youth dying. He was covered with blood. His eyes were closed and he was breathing slowly. There were bullet holes in his chest and thick blood rose slowly from three deep bayonet wounds. Next to Ahrens lay a dead Japanese sergeant. A dead officer was sprawled across his legs. Around his foxhole thirteen more Japanese bodies lay crumpled in grotesque, ungainly death. Johnny Ahrens lay dying, still clinging to his BAR, and Walt, a big, powerful man, bent to lift the youth in his arms.
“Captain, they tried to come through me last night,” Ahrens gasped, “but I don’t think they made it.”
“They didn’t, Johnny,” Walt replied gently. “They didn’t.”11
The attack on Tanambogo had re-commenced.
At 8 A.M., August 8, the Third Battalion, Second Marines, landed on Gavutu to help mop up. By noon Gavutu was cleared and Lieutenant Colonel Robert Hunt signaled that he was ready to attack Tanambogo. He asked for an air strike. Six Dauntlesses came swooping down—to drop their bombs on Gavutu! Three Marines were blown apart and six others badly wounded. Enraged and helpless, Colonel Hunt hurled a stream of invective at the departing “friendly” planes. Then San Juan stood into the harbor to shell Tanambogo briefly and withdraw. Next another group of carrier bombers arrived. They were going to knock out a Japanese position crowned by a Japanese flag. Once again, several bombs fell short—and more Marines on Gavutu were killed and wounded.
Hunt asked that he be spared further air “support.”
At four o’clock he called on the destroyer Buchanan to attempt short-range fire. Buchanan ran boldly inshore and blasted Tanambogo so thoroughly that a company of Marines were able to land standing up. An hour later they tore down the flag that had so disastrously intrigued the dive-bombers, and next day mopping-up operations cleared both Tanambogo and Tulagi of the remaining Japanese.
About 750 Japanese had died defending Tulagi and Gavutu-Tanambogo, while 144 Americans were killed and 194 wounded. Capture of the harbor islands had not been costly—as “prices” are measured in the heartless business of war—and yet it seemed so when compared to the effortless conquest of Guadalcanal.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
VANDEGRIFT’S main body—some 10,000 Marines—hit the middle of Guadalcanal’s northern coastline shortly after nine o’clock the morning of August 7.
Two battalions of Colonel Hunt’s Fifth Marines came in abreast, fanning out on a front of 2000 yards to cover for Colonel Cates’s First Marines landing behind them in a column of three battalions.
They were unopposed.
The Americans were stunned. Many of these youths had sincerely expected to fight for their lives from behind a barricade formed by the bodies of fallen comrades. Instead they had trotted into an exotic grove of coconut palms, and some of them celebrated this pleasant introduction to modern war by shinnying up the palms to throw down coconuts to their buddies. Bayonets honed razor-sharp were drawn to cleave, not enemy skulls, but the outer husks of coconut
s, and next to puncture softer inner shells yielding a cool and tasty milk.
“Knock off openin’ them coconuts!” screamed an outraged sergeant who had memorized the “Know Your Enemy” manual by heart. “They might be poisoned!”
“Damfine poison,” Lew Juergens murmured, drinking happily, and Lucky shot back disdainfully, “Who’n hell’s gonna poison a whole damn grove of coconuts?”1
A few minutes later, the Fifth Marines wheeled west to work toward the village of Kukum, and the First Marines plunged south toward Grassy Knoll, or Mount Austen, a high patch of ground which dominated the airfield from the south. Grassy Knoll was supposed to be only two miles inland across passable terrain. Actually it was four miles away and over the sort of tortuous terrain with which Martin Clemens—still crouching by his radio at Matanga—had become painfully familiar.
Throughout the day men whose bodies had softened during weeks of shipboard life scrambled up the faces of muddy hills and slid down the reverse slopes. Rifles rang against canteens and falling helmets rattled on the stones. Gasping in humid heat, bathed in a stream of enervating sweat and burdened with packs and ammunition loads that were far too heavy, the First Marines moved through dripping rain forests with all the stealth of a traveling circus. They blundered through fields of sharp kunai grass as tall as a man and sometimes became lost in them or shot at each other there. They forded what seemed to be river after river but what was actually one or two streams doubling back on themselves. Half of the time they had no scouts out ahead of them and most of the time they had no flankers probing the jungle to either side, and if the Japanese had chosen to sit in ambush that day there could have been a slaughter.
But the enemy was absent. Only a few—Mr. Ishimoto among them—were east of the Tenaru River. Most of them—about 1700 naval laborers, with their protectors of a Naval Landing Force—had fled to the west of that Lunga River against which the Fifth Regiment was advancing.
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