by Dick Camp
Walt’s Able Company advanced against light resistance, trying to stay abreast of Charlie Company on the right. At one point the company became concerned with the amount of firing in Charlie Company’s area. Walt sent a fire team to see if help was needed. Along the way the team knocked out a machine gun nest and, together with several Charlie Company men, helped clear the way to advance. Later that afternoon, Able was pinned down by heavy automatic weapons fire from the forward slope of Hill 281 where there were numerous enemy concealed positions. The company suffered quite a number of casualties from the galling fire. About 1600, the fire slackened off, which allowed the company to pull back to a better defensive position and prepare for the expected Japanese counterattack. Raider Henry Popell recalled, “We moved over the ridge and men are being dragged back wounded. It is now five in the afternoon … [O]ur 1st Platoon is in a bad way in an attempt to take out a number of machine guns. … [T]hey have to withdraw. … [D]arkness is now falling.”
Bonzai
Edson decided to call it a day and dig in for the night. “By this time Edson had moved forward to the Residency and established his command post there,” Griffith said. “We fully expected a counterattack.” Pettus described the Residency as “a large, white, wooden building located on the crest of the hill, which formally had been occupied by the highest British official in the Solomons.” By this time, the battalion had come up against Hill 281, which captured maps and documents indicated was the main Japanese stronghold. Lieutenant John “Tiger” Erskine*, the Japanese-language officer, translated them and found that Suzuki’s command was located in the ravine west of the hill, which paralleled the south end of the Raider lines. The map showed two machine guns at the foot of the hill behind the hospital, one on top, and two 8mm antiaircraft guns on top of the southeast promontory. “Bird Hill” was Suzuki’s key defensive position.
It was just too late in the day to mount a coordinated attack; besides, the battalion occupied the high ground, making it difficult for the enemy to attack. At this point the battalion extended in a somewhat continuous line, depending on the nature of the terrain, stretching from Government Wharf across the crest of Hill 230 down the ridge to the beach—Baker Company, with elements of Headquarters Company attached, Easy Company, Able Company, and Charlie Company (less one platoon) were in position in that order from left to right, with Charlie Company right flank resting on the beach. Dog Company’s lines ran from the beach on its left flank and up the ridge line. Easy and Fox companies, 2/5, had moved up to reinforce the left flank.
The Raiders quickly turned to and tried to dig in—under the watchful eyes of their officers and SNCOs—in an attempt to get below ground before dark. Edson had trained them well, capitalizing on his observations of Japanese tactics during his assignment with the 4th Marine Regiment in Shanghai, China (1937-1939). He studied how the Japanese conducted night attacks by first sending in scouts to locate the perimeter lines and crew-served weapon positions. They sought weaknesses, particularly seams between units or gaps in the defense. The scouts would generally follow terrain features through dense cover in an attempt to get close to the enemy positions. The main body might make considerable noise in order to drown out the movement of the scouts. During the attack, the main body generally followed clearly defined terrain features—a crest, draw, ridge line—for ease of control and orientation. The effort of the attack was to close with the enemy and destroy him in close combat—with the bayonet.
All along the line, Edson’s men laid out grenades and stacked ammunition close at hand so it would be easy to reach in the dark. Machine gunners carefully sited their guns in an attempt to get overlapping bands of fire. Communicators strung wire linking the command posts. The password for the night contained words with the letter “L”—“Lily’s thistle,” “Philippines,” and “Lola’s thigh.” Chambers noted, “Any one of them was supposed to keep you from getting shot by your own men because the Japs couldn’t pronounce the letter ‘L.’” Night fell. The exhausted Raiders peered anxiously into darkness, straining to hear the man-sound of a Japanese infiltrator. Warrant Officer Albert E. “Bud” Fisher, Easy Company’s 2nd Machine-Gun Platoon, said, “We were all pretty nervous as darkness fell. The Nips came out of the caves making all sorts of weird noises.” Chambers explained, “The Japs tried every trick on us that we had been told they would, yet we really never imagined they would. They shouted, whistled, and sniped at us all night long. … [A]t first there was considerable promiscuous night firing, the Japs trying to locate our units by [shooting] at us at random. But our men learned to hold their fire and not give away their position unless attacked in hand-to-hand assault.”
Sometime around 2300 a large force of Rikusentai boiled out of the ravine and struck the seam between Able and Charlie Companies, splitting them and leaving their flanks dangling in the air. Able Company quickly refused its right flank and prepared to repel boarders. It was not long in coming. Private Pete Sparacino recalled that, “… There was movement to the front … the enemy found a gap and began running through the opening. Some Japanese crawled within twenty yards of [Frank] Guidone’s squad. Frank began throwing grenades from a prone position. His grenades were going off fifteen yards from our position and we had to duck as they exploded. The enemy was all around. It was brutal and deadly”—but the new line held, killing twenty-six Japanese within twenty yards of the front line foxholes. However, a few infiltrators got through. Platoon Sergeant Pettus recalled that, “Some thirteen Japs charged through Company A’s line and ran over our small bivouac area on the lawn [in front of the Residency], going into the house behind us. Two of our observers were wounded at this time.”
Griffith remembered “a series of attacks but the real force of the counterattack hit the center of the position; this gave us the first indication of how dumb the Japs were, because the center of the position was by any evaluation of the terrain just naturally the strongest.” That said, Griffith explained that “we knew the Japanese were good fighters [but] I think we were taken by surprise by the viciousness and tenacity of these night attacks. Normally if you make a couple of attacks and get your ass kicked and burned badly, as they did, you’d think they’d stop.” In all the Rikusentai launched two major attacks and at least five separate small scale assaults against Edson’s command post near the Residency. Platoon Sergeant Pettus said that, “When the Japs got into the house … Captain John B. Sweeny gave the word for the machine guns to fire. Some of the Japs were killed in the house and some were killed as they tried to run out. There were thirteen dead in and around the building. All of the Japanese outside were dragged in, and the house was set afire. This saved burial, but it destroyed a perfectly good building!”
A temporary casualty collection point had been established about two or three hundred yards on the south side of the Residency, where a large number of wounded had been gathered, including the indomitable Justice Chambers. “When I got there it was dark but I could see all these white figures lying around. The Navy had sent in white blankets to wrap the wounded.” A number of Japanese had been bypassed and they were starting to cause trouble. “There were a lot of people down below us … hollering and shouting … and jabbering in Japanese.” Chambers was afraid the wounded were directly in the path of a Japanese assault. “They shifted us back to the west and up the slope and laid us along a path that ran along underneath the ridge line. We were all jammed in there together … then all hell broke loose!” The Japanese were attacking. “Both … sides were firing mortars and there was a lot of rifle fire … and we’re lying there with this stuff bursting around. We had no protection whatsoever except a blanket. I heard them coming!”
Chambers started moving the wounded. “Those who could walk I told to get moving and help each other out. There were a few Corpsmen and they started taking men out on stretchers … it was a mess!” Chambers found a trench along the trail. It was full of Marines, one of whom he recognized. “Get some men out here and get these wounded to w
here they can be safe,” he ordered. “From then on out I had no more concern about the wounded.” For this action, Chambers was awarded the Silver Star. The next morning he was evacuated to the beach. “They were carrying me down on a stretcher and the Japs shot at me all the way, which was another little black mark I had in my book against the Japanese.” Chambers was taken aboard the hospital ship USS Solace and ended up in Wellington, New Zealand, where he recovered in time to lead the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines, in the Iwo Jima campaign where he received the Medal of Honor.
By first light, the surviving Japanese had melted back into their caves and bunkers that honeycombed Hill 281. Edson sent 2/5’s Echo and Fox companies, along with his own Charlie Company to clear them out. The troublesome terrain was flanked on three sides and pounded with 60mm and 81mm mortar fire. Platoon Sergeant Pettus recalled one incident. “Soon we saw Japs running up the south slope of Hill 281, one of them with a white cloth tied around his head ran to one of the antiaircraft positions and tried to take off the gun. This was about six hundred yards from our OP. The Jap was pointed out to Captain Adams, who killed him with his .03 rifle. In a few minutes Marines were seen coming up the hill and we ceased firing. Hill 281 was ours shortly after this.”
By late afternoon the battalion had made such good progress that Edson radioed General Vandegrift and told him that organized resistance on the island had ended—Tulagi was “secure.” The fact remained that well-armed Rikusentai were still holed up and had to be hunted down before the island was truly secure. The Raiders stayed on the island for three more weeks before being transferred to Guadalcanal. During that time, they were subjected to naval bombardment. “Many mornings,” Pettus said, “our reveille on Tulagi was announced by Japanese destroyers or submarines. This bombardment was frequent, but casualties were surprisingly light. At dawn one morning a single destroyer lay at the mouth of Tulagi Harbor. White and blue clad Japs were scurrying across its deck and soon the ship’s guns were pointed in the direction of our CP. Its first shells went over and landed in the harbor. One salvo straddled the government wharf and another landed among dispersed Higgins boats, causing no damage. However, one salvo landed in China Town killing a Marine and a sailor.”
A few days later, the battalion was transferred to Guadalcanal. During the conquest of Tulagi, the 1st Marine Raider Battalion suffered thirty-eight men killed in action and an additional fifty-five men wounded in action. All but three of the estimated 350 Japanese defenders were killed. Griffith “estimated that another fifty to sixty Japs escaped from Tulagi by swimming to Florida [Island].”
* Special Lieutenant (junior grade) were officers who had completed a special course, as opposed to graduating from the Naval Academy; they had joined the Imperial Japanese Navy when young and needed a long year of service to qualify for a commission.
* Lt. Erskine was a 1941 graduate of the Japanese Language School at the University of Hawaii. “Tiger” Erskine earned his nickname because of his stature—65.5 inches tall and 104 pounds.
CHAPTER 6
Gavutu-Tanambogo
Flight quarters sounded well before dawn for the pilots of the USS Wasp (CV-7)’s air group and by 0530, the first planes barreled down the flight deck. Tulagi and Gavutu were among the early targets assigned to Lt. Cmdr. Courtney Shands’s Scouting Squadron 71 (VF-71) comprising four division Grumman F4F Wildcat fighters. As they approached Guadalcanal, Shands took the flight down to the deck to avoid the possibility of anti-aircraft fire from Savo Island. At 0600, they flew over the Navy transports preparing to disembark the landing force. After passing the ships without challenge—there was a real danger of friendly fire from anxious gunners—the 4th Division of Shands’s flight climbed to five thousand feet above Tulagi to serve as the combat air patrol (CAP) for the strafers. Shands took the 1st Division around the northwest tip of Tulagi, where he split it. He and his wingman, Ensign Sam W. Forrer, swung down the north coast toward Gavutu Seaplane Base. The other two F4Fs in the division piloted by Ensigns Don G. Reeves and Raymond F. Conklin headed for Tanambogo, to work over the seaplane facilities there. The 2nd Division, Lt. S. Downs Wright and Ensign Roland H. Kenton headed south toward Gavutu and Tanambogo and the 3rd Division, Lt. Charles S. Moffett and Ensigns William M. Hall, and Thomas M. Purcell Jr. went to strafe an enemy bivouac area just north of the small village of Haleta on Florida Island.
Shands could not believe his good fortunate. Spread out below him at anchor were over a dozen Japanese flying boats and float planes of the Yokohama Air Group. According to author John Lundstrom in The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign: Naval Fighter Combat from August to November 1942, “Four Kawanishi H6K4 Type 97 flying boats [Allied designation, ‘Mavis’] swung at moorings along Tanambogo’s north shore, while in the quiet waters off Tulagi’s east coast, gasoline barges serviced the other three for a dawn takeoff … six [Nakajima A6M2 Type 2 sea fighters, ‘Rufe’] Type 2s drifted in line just off Halavo, a small village on a peninsula of Florida [Island] a mile east of Tanambogo. Two others under repair reposed ashore on Tanambogo.” The Type 2 was the amphibious version of the standard A6M2 Zero carrier fighter and was used to provide fighter coverage for advanced seaplane bases. A green flare arched over the harbor as Shands’s 1st Division started its gun run.
“Ku-shu-keihoh! (Air Raid)”
Captain Shignetoshi Miyazaki, Imperial Japanese Naval Air Service (Dai-Nippon Teikoku Kaigun Koku Tai), was in command of Gavutu’s flying-boat unit and had ordered three aircraft on an extended patrol in response to a dramatic increase in American naval radio traffic. Master Chief Petty Officer Masaichiro Miyagawa, as the duty noncommissioned officer, had the responsibility for ensuring that the three flying boats were serviced and ready for the 0700 launch. Thus far everything was going well. The aircrews had been ferried to their planes moored off the eastern shore of the island. They were in the process of, “warming up their engines by taxiing about in Gavutu Harbor, their blue and white guidance lights flickering,” according to author Jersey. “Petty Officer Kyosho Mutou was at the controls of his flying boat, waiting patiently for the signal to take off. Lieutenant Commander Soichi Tashiro, third in command of the air unit, was making his final instrument adjustments. When the green takeoff signal flare was fired, the Kawanishi jockeyed into position.”
Suddenly the telephone rang in headquarters. Master Chief Petty Officer Miyagawa picked it up and was startled to hear, “Ku-shu-keihoh (air raid)!” It was too late for him to do anything because Shands and his wingman were already streaking across the harbor, barely fifty feet off the surface, spewing .50-caliber tracers into two of the moored four-engine flying boats. The aircraft instantly burst into flame, illuminating the taxiing aircraft. Like moths attracted to flame, Reeves and Conklin spotted the flames and bore in on the lumbering Kawanishis. Their .50-caliber bullets shredded the metal fuselages, exploding the fuel tanks and incinerating the crews at their stations. In a matter of minutes, Shands’s 1st Division had destroyed five Type 97s and the four boats that serviced them.
GAVUTU-TANAMBOGO
Gavutu and Tanambogo are coral islets—little more than steep hills rising sharply from shallow reef-bound beaches—off the southern coast of Florida Island, eighteen miles north of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. Gavutu is only 250 yards by 500 yards in size, while Tanambogo is about half that in area. The two are connected by a stone causeway five hundred yards long and just eight feet wide. They are dominated by high ground, Hill 148 on Gavutu and Hill 121 on Tanambogo, both honeycombed with caves and mutually supportive machine gun bunkers. Intelligence reports indicated that they were garrisoned by only two hundred naval troops and construction workers. The assault on Gavutu, code named Acidity, was scheduled for 1200 on 7 August 1942 by the 1st Marine Parachute Battalion.
Shands’s two-plane 2nd Division spotted four other flying boats moored in a semicircle around Tanambogo’s north coast. The Wildcats made several firing passes, destroying the aircraft and leaving them burning in
the water. On one of his passes, Lieutenant Wright spotted a silver rubber boat filled with flight personnel near one of the burning aircraft. He came around in a tight turn and opened fire. The thumb-sized bullets walked across the boat, tearing it to pieces and throwing the passengers into the flaming water. As the 2nd Division worked over the flying boats, Shands and his wingman found another lucrative target: a line of six Nakajima sea fighters moored close together just off Halavo’s shoreline. The two made several firing passes and destroyed them all. In the roughly thirty-minute “turkey shoot,” VP-71 virtually destroyed the Gavutu/Tanambogo branch of the Yokohama Air Group Flying-Boat Unit. The squadron’s attack was so violent that a pilot from another squadron blurted out, “[We] cleared out to keep from getting shot down by our own fighters who were going wild and shooting at everything in sight!” For this early morning action, Lieutenant Commander Shands and several of his flight were awarded the Navy Cross for “destroying seven enemy fighters and fifteen patrol planes. This victory eliminated all local air opposition in the area …”