by John Prados
None of the invasion sites directly threatened Munda. The strategy was rather to seize a foothold, develop Rendova, then mount the offensive on Munda and Vila from there. The covering force, under Halsey’s direct command, would be Task Force 36. It included both Ainsworth’s and Merrill’s cruiser groups and a carrier unit built around Saratoga and HMS Victorious. As a historical artifact, it is interesting that the Royal Navy here participated in a U.S. amphibious landing in the South Pacific.
At Rabaul, Admiral Kusaka knew of the general threat but not specific Allied intentions. On New Georgia the Japanese now had 10,500 troops, built around two regiments of the Army’s Southeast Detachment, under General Sasaki Akira, and Rear Admiral Ota Minoru’s 8th Combined SNLF, divided between Munda and Vila, with a few scattered outposts elsewhere, including Rendova. Preparatory bombardments did nothing to destroy the defenses. As the invasion fleet dropped anchor, only a few miles away shore batteries at Munda opened fire. Their very first salvo hit the destroyer Gwin. But two others replied, and American troops going ashore quickly set up artillery at Rendova and added their counterfire. The Japanese guns fell silent.
American amphibious ships just beginning to learn their trade at the time of the Guadalcanal landing were now well practiced. The command ship McCawley not only put ashore 1,100 soldiers but landed supplies at a rate of 157 tons per hour. This proved fortunate, for the first important Japanese reaction was an afternoon strike by two dozen torpedo bombers, one of which put a fish into the McCawley. That night an overenthusiastic PT boat launched her spread at the “Wacky Mac” and finished her off. The only other naval casualty was the destroyer Zane, run aground on a reef in the dark.
General Sasaki updated Rabaul in a stream of radio messages. Startled when no landings were attempted against Munda itself, Sasaki soon understood. Seabees went ashore at Rendova in the early assault waves. They had strict orders to fabricate an airfield within two weeks, along with a new PT boat base and other facilities. The Seabees worked through rain and dark. They almost never stopped. Admiral Kusaka added his bit. The day after the landing he sent in a bomber attack that arrived undetected at noon, with GIs in their chow lines. Bombs smashed the hospital, damaged boats, and inflicted more than 130 casualties. New Zealand Squadron No. 14 participated in the defense. Pilot Officer Geoff Fisken, flying the P-40 called the “Wairarapa Wildcat,” splashed two Zeroes and a Betty. Bombings continued, with Japanese Army aircraft participating during the early days.
On July 5 came the first surface naval engagement. Tip Ainsworth brought his cruiser group back to punish Vila. Starting after midnight, Ainsworth dumped more than 3,000 rounds of six-inch fire on the enemy base. While that happened, other Allied ships moved 43rd Infantry Division troops and the 1st Marine Raider Battalion across from Rendova to make the first landing near Munda. A Tokyo Express did the same for the Japanese. The Express had been unloading when the Japanese heard Ainsworth’s thunder and they hurriedly put to sea. As the Americans completed fire missions, the Ralph Talbot reported radar contact. Moments later a torpedo plowed into the destroyer Strong. The Japanese were so far away that no one could believe their destroyers had launched these deadly fish.
That injury became insult the following night. Halsey flashed word that intelligence called a Tokyo Express run from Buin. Rear Admiral Ainsworth, who had been retiring down The Slot, reversed and came back hunting bear. Ainsworth far outgunned the enemy, with light cruisers Honolulu, Helena, and St. Louis, plus four destroyers. Admiral Akiyama led a full-bore Express, with a guard unit of three ships escorting seven destroyers crammed to the gunwales with troops and supplies. At 1:40 a.m. of July 6, American radars acquired Japanese targets inside Kula Gulf. Akiyama had just detached his second transport unit to Vila, having already sent the first. He was headed north-northwest, hugging the Kolombangara shore. Lookouts spotted the Americans minutes later, but surprise had already been lost—though lacking radar, Akiyama’s flagship, destroyer Niizuki, had a radio receiver designed to detect radar emissions. More than half an hour earlier she recorded the Allied signals. Akiyama knew the enemy was out there, just not where. Ainsworth began clearing for action and maneuvering to trap the Japanese. He ordered guns at 1:54 a.m., but it was several minutes until the cannonade began. The initial salvo smashed the Niizuki, but her mates instantly launched torpedoes. Despite 2,500 six-inch shells, only the Niizuki sank, taking Akiyama to his grave. Three other destroyers were lightly damaged. But on the American side Captain Charles P. Cecil’s Helena was destroyed by torpedoes. A single hit between her forward six-inch turrets simply blew off the bow, sluicing water into every deck—and above deck too as she forged ahead at twenty-five knots. Seaman First Class Ted Blahnik, whose action station was in an AA gun director tub far aft on the 600-foot-long ship, could not figure out why water coursed over the deck and poured into his tub. But in moments the “Happy Helena” shuddered as a second Long Lance hit, and a third shattered her keel. For extra ignominy a final hit was a dud torpedo. The Helena sank in little more than twenty minutes, except for her prow, which jutted from the water like an arrowhead pointed at the Southern Cross. Almost 450 sailors were lost.
Amid the confusion the battle had a second act. Destroyers that stopped for rescues or were late out of Vila faced a pair of Ainsworth’s tin cans that had stuck around to rescue Helena survivors. The Nagatsuki ran aground. In daylight she would be pounded into a wreck by SOPAC airmen. Some Helena sailors, convinced they faced an enemy force of four new cruisers with eight destroyers, insisted they had blown every one out of the water. Admiral Ainsworth himself reported eight Japanese craft, claiming all of them sunk save one or two left as cripples. The CINCPAC war diary recorded that result. The truth was that no Japanese were visible because the Imperial Navy had disappeared into the night.
Even worse from the American point of view would be what became known as the Battle of Kolombangara, in the same waters a week later. Ainsworth was back with Task Group 36.1, the Atlanta replaced by New Zealand light cruiser Leander, with six extra destroyers for a total of ten. Every ship had radar and an integrated combat information center. They now sported a combination of search and microwave radars that enabled actual spotting of the fall of shells, optimally at 10,000 yards or less. Radar-controlled gunnery had become a reality. Ainsworth was there because of Ultra, confirmed by coastwatchers. So well-informed were the Allies that he could delay departure until late on July 12 and still be in position at the appointed hour. Ainsworth had a crushing superiority.
The Japanese made some changes. Eighth Fleet headquarters moved forward to Buin. But the Imperial Navy no longer had the resources to accomplish wholesale unit rotation. A fresh fighter unit advanced to Rabaul—but the fighter component of the 582nd Air Group had to be disbanded. The air groups of carriers Ryuho and Junyo were also thrown into the meat grinder. Admiral Koga ordered a fresh destroyer squadron to Rabaul to replace the battered ships with the Eighth Fleet. But much like Captain Hara Tameichi’s destroyer division, its vessels farmed out to others, Rear Admiral Izaki Shunji’s 2nd Destroyer Squadron had a few original ships with a hodgepodge of others glommed onto it. The flotilla on July 12 included several destroyers that had fought with the 3rd Squadron, plus others drafted in from the outside. In the U.S. official history Samuel Eliot Morison complains of the late-inning addition of unfamiliar destroyers into Ainsworth’s force creating “once more the setup of Tassafaronga.” This condition had become the norm on the Japanese side.
Izaki’s force left Rabaul before dawn, loaded 1,200 troops at Buin, and stood down The Slot. He sailed in the light cruiser Jintsu with a covering unit of five destroyers. The transport unit with four more carried the load, departing Shortland in the afternoon. Captain Sato Torajiro’s cruiser launched a floatplane at 8:15 p.m. to scout Kula Gulf. After nightfall a bright moon lit the sea, enabling an Allied snooper to spot Izaki soon after midnight. The Catalina carried an observer from Task Group 36.1’s flagship, so premeditation is clear. Ai
nsworth was already within thirty miles of Izaki. The admiral had to have been expecting action. Izaki detached his destroyer-transports to slide by the Americans and they did so. Whether he based this on a general understanding of the combat environment—Izaki was an Etajima classmate of codebreaker Ushio Fujimasa, then heading the Owada Group—or on detecting Ainsworth’s radars is unknown. One destroyer, Yukikaze, carried her own radar and acquired the enemy thirty minutes before visual contact. The bright moon now worked to Japanese advantage. Izaki’s vessels saw the Americans before they had closed to optimal range.
Admiral Ainsworth instructed his ships to launch torpedoes before shooting, but Izaki beat them to the punch—and Japanese torpedoes were faster and more powerful. Captain Sato’s Jintsu spit seven torpedoes, and the destroyers more. Sato ordered his ship to illuminate the enemy—as fatal here as it had been for the Hiei off Guadalcanal. Jintsu’s main battery had been in action only a couple of minutes when she was hit. The Allied cruisers pummeled her—2,630 six-inch shells in about twenty minutes. American light cruisers in particular had awesome firepower. At least ten hits slammed the Jintsu, and she was also struck by a torpedo. Seaman Toyoda Isamu, one of the ship’s oldest salts—he had been with Jintsu since the spring of 1939—was at his action station just forward of the aft smokestack when there was a tremendous explosion on the port side. Admiral Izaki, Captain Sato, and the ship’s executive officer were all killed. There were no fires. Jintsu listed slightly to port but then rolled to starboard. After just ten minutes, at 1:48 a.m. the cruiser broke in two and sank. A handful of men were rescued by the submarine I-180, and the Americans picked up a few more. Seaman Toyoda was captured on New Georgia four days after the battle. The vast majority of 484 sailors perished.
But by this time Rear Admiral Ainsworth’s battle plan had already gone wrong. Captain Shimai Zenjiro of the Yukikaze took charge of the remaining Japanese warships. He turned away under a squall and ordered torpedoes reloaded, a vital chore completed at 1:36 a.m. Twenty minutes later Shimai’s destroyers regained sight of the Allies. They flung thirty-one torpedoes at 2:05. At about that moment Ainsworth, confused over the identity of the targets on his radar, ordered star shell illumination. Shortly thereafter, within a hellish six minutes Long Lances detonated against cruisers Leander and St. Louis, Ainsworth’s flagship Honolulu, and the destroyer Gwin. Both American cruisers’ bows were opened to the sea. The Leander had a starboard list. As a final act, the PBY that had been observing all this made her own bombing run against the retiring Japanese. She missed. The damaged warships returned to Guadalcanal under their own power, but Honolulu and St. Louis would be out of action for four months and the Leander laid up the better part of a year. The destroyer Gwin sank. At Pearl Harbor, Admiral Nimitz decided that Pug Ainsworth had handled a succession of difficult situations with aggressiveness and skill. At Rabaul, learning the details, Hara Tameichi concluded this had been a greater victory even than Tassafaronga. But not all Imperial Navy officers were so pleased. Another destroyer captain, Hanami Kohei of the Amagiri, emphasized the technological balance: “While night fighting had long been regarded as a unique prowess of the Japanese Navy, the results now had become entirely the reverse. This was because US forces were using radar and we were powerless from preventing them from approaching us suddenly with…guns blazing.”
The young John F. Kennedy’s story epitomizes this moment, its trials and anguish, and the relentless rhythm of the conflict. Kennedy had arrived at Tulagi under the hammer of Japanese air attack, a fresh-faced PT boat officer hungry for a command. The boat he would skipper, PT-109, claimed to have downed one of the Japanese raiders that day. The tender Niagara, serving the PT boat base, claimed seven. Patrol boat methods and missions were changing to reflect burgeoning Allied strength and the new texture of the war. PT patrols that had been a matter of one or a few boats from Squadron 3 on Tulagi first became mass sorties to block the Express at Guadalcanal, then switched to a variety of activities. Flotilla One, a collection of squadrons, replaced the single unit. Tulagi harbor became a receiving center. The need for room drove the PT flotilla to set up a satellite base on Florida Island. Lieutenant Kennedy spent his early weeks at Sesapi on Florida with Squadron 2, integrating his basic training with the practical experience PT boat hands had acquired and now passed along. Florida too had become a backwater. The advance up The Slot moved the nexus of PT operations first to the Russells, then Rendova.
PT-109, the boat Jack Kennedy made famous, distinguished herself in the Russells invasion before he arrived. She recovered some of the scouts sent to reconnoiter the islands. During the landing phase the PTs, including the 109, turned out en masse to help screen the transports. Two-boat sections of PTs then patrolled Russells waters. But Squadron 6 became the denizens of the Russells base, while Squadron 2 pulled back to Sesapi for the boats to be overhauled, their hulls scraped. The 109’s radar proved troublesome, but in itself this detail shows the difference between sides in this war: The Allies now had radars even in individual patrol boats, whereas this crucial technical development was only beginning to trickle down to reach Japanese destroyers. Lieutenant Commander Rollin Westholm, flotilla operations officer and a former skipper of PT-109, assigned Jack Kennedy as her new captain. He took command on April 25. Her crew included only a couple of men from the boat’s original complement, and some sailors boarded with Kennedy himself.
For a period of weeks Lieutenant Kennedy made familiarization patrols and did shake-down runs with PT-109. He was off Lunga Point on April 18 when fighter pilot Tom Lanphier, returning from the Yamamoto shoot-down, made a celebratory rollover down the runway of the airfield to mark his success. Kennedy’s patrol boat investigated strange lights on Savo Island, charted water obstacles, and looked for stray supply drums off the coast. Kennedy experienced the dangers of cruising in fog—near zero visibility, throttling up the PT boat’s three engines was an invitation to disaster—and the fear of seeing a light at sea that might turn into a Japanese warship. At Sesapi Kennedy lived in a native hut and employed a Melanesian houseboy, who confessed that he’d helped eat a missionary. The Melanesians were friendly and the houseboy helpful, but one day he disappeared. Scuttlebutt had it that he had been apprehended by authorities who sought to punish indigenous cannibalism.
This is a good place to spend a moment on the impact of the war on this primitive society. Throughout the Solomons lived tribes of headhunters, fishermen, or others who practiced slash-and-burn agriculture. Shell money remained standard currency. Many Melanesian ways had not changed in decades, if not centuries. Excepting those who crewed island steamers, most experiences of the outside world were limited to contacts with missionaries, colonial officials, and plantation owners or overseers. New Zealand and Australian colonial authorities, in succession to the British, and in particular missionaries like the Seventh Day Adventists, whose South Seas Evangelical Mission made them possibly the most enthusiastic proselytizers in the islands, introduced a modicum of modernization. The main island of the New Georgia group suggests the degree of missionary penetration: It had settlements called Jericho and Nazareth. Developers came to the Solomons to install plantations, primarily for coconuts and gum trees. This led to a reduction in nomadization, some wage-based employment, the growth of villages into towns around the ports, and the establishment of new settlements, particularly around missions. The colonizers introduced notions of “law” and legal norms that clashed with traditional adjudication and lineal descent, not to mention the concept of “property” as against tribal lands. Traditional ways were diluted, though not eliminated. Close connections among the islands remained. An example springs from Jack Kennedy’s experience when his PT boat was later smashed and the young officer worked desperately to save his crew. Years afterward Kennedy thanked the islanders who helped rescue them. By then the ten men lived on seven different islands. Two resided at Munda, another at Rendova. One had taken the name “Moses.” One, Eroni Kumana, later donated a bracelet mad
e of seashells to the Kennedy Library, asking that it be laid on the former president’s grave. That was done in 2009. In the Solomons the cream-colored shells were money still. Modernity had arrived in the islands, yet tradition remained strong.
The clash of cultures did not come to the Solomons because of World War II, though war accelerated many trends and brought tremendous agitation. Sophisticated ships and planes, cannon, mechanisms people had hardly seen, and alien men with guns who tried to enlist the natives or demanded they take sides were major features of the indigenous experience. The sheer scale shocked the Melanesians. On Guadalcanal the indigenous population amounted to perhaps 15,000 people. The warring sides flooded the island with soldiers numbering many times that—and more men died there than the entire native community. Some indigenous people took the war as an opportunity to better their lot, others to break free of the colonial mold; still others sought to flee.
With a colonial tradition already spanning decades, the Melanesians mostly sided with the Allies, who represented the whites they had long known. Vicious Japanese reprisals for real or imagined slights made that choice easier. Coastwatchers, in particular, depended on these traditional loyalties. Roughly 400 Melanesians served alongside the coastwatchers on the various islands. Such cooperation explains how Australian coastwatchers could be active on New Georgia while the Japanese held bases on the same islands. In addition there was a Solomon Islands Protectorate Defense Force that carried 680 natives on its rolls. Some of these people, like Sergeant Vouza, fought with the Americans on Guadalcanal. The war sparked demands for native labor. Indigenous men from Guadalcanal, Tulagi, Florida, and Malaita became the mainstay of supply handling for the huge Allied bases on Cactus. Eventually this phenomenon would be recognized by the establishment of an official Solomon Islands Labor Corps in which 3,200 Melanesians served.