by Toland, John
3.
The Battle of Bloody Ridge had ended but Vandegrift’s men, wracked by dysentery, fungus infections and malaria, scarcely resembled victors. The real crisis in the Pacific, however, was one the Marines on Guadalcanal were not even conscious of. Operation Shoestring had opened with three heavy carriers. Then Enterprise was so badly damaged in the Battle of the Eastern Solomons that she had to return to Pearl Harbor for extensive repairs. A week later the submarine I-26 put a torpedo into Saratoga. Only twelve men were injured—Admiral Fletcher was one of them—but it would be months before the big ship could return to duty.
This left Wasp—and Hornet, which had arrived too late for the Battle of the Eastern Solomons. And the day after Bloody Ridge two Japanese submarines, I-15 and I-19, penetrated the destroyer rings around these two flattops and moved into position to fire torpedoes. It was a clear, pleasant day with a brisk 20-knot trade wind. Wasp had just slowed down in order to launch twenty-six planes and take aboard eleven others which had been out of patrol. Startled lookouts saw torpedoes—a spread from I-19—approaching “hot, straight and normal,” and gave the alarm. The skipper, Captain Forrest Sherman, ordered a turn to the right, but two torpedoes plunged into the starboard side of the carrier. Explosions shuddered through Wasp, and she began to list heavily.
Five miles away, torpedoes from I-15 were churning toward Hornet. They all missed her but just before three o’clock one struck the battleship North Carolina, blasting a hole eighteen by thirty-two feet below the water line. Two minutes later another ripped open the destroyer O’Brien. The fires on Wasp were already out of control. A monumental explosion rocked the carrier. At three-twenty Sherman was forced to abandon ship. The Navy had one battleship and one carrier to back up the Marines on Guadalcanal.
On the hillside overlooking Bloody Ridge, Kawaguchi, uniform in tatters, faced the battlefield, bowed his head and clasped his hands together in prayer for the dead. Now his task was to get his men back safely to the coast. He decided it was shorter to keep heading west and follow the path of the scouts he had sent to search out Oka.* By the second day hundreds of walking wounded had collapsed, and exhausted litter carriers had to abandon scores of others on the trail. There was no order at all. They traveled in groups of fifteen or twenty, each at its own pace. Nishino’s left arm was useless and he was weak from malaria. Weighted down by his heavy money belt of 50,000 yen, he followed the ragged column along the slopes of Mount Austen, through endless jungles. There was nothing to eat but grass, moss and an occasional betel nut. He passed scores of bodies in blood-soaked uniforms. Most had outstretched arms as if reaching for something.
By the sixth day the noncoms had to lash the younger soldiers with switches to keep them moving. Nishino could hardly put one foot in front of the other. Just before noon he emerged from the dark jungle into a palm grove. Ahead was an endless expanse of green sea. They had come out at Point Cruz, seven miles west of the airfield.
“Oi! The sea!” a soldier shouted and led the way into the surf, clothes and all. They gulped down salt water. Nishino called out a warning but one private shouted back, “I don’t mind if I die!” Nishino tried a mouthful of water but had to spit it out. He picked several little stones and licked the salt; it tasted almost sweet. He gathered another handful of pebbles and went back to the grove.
All afternoon they lazed around, drinking coconut milk, eating the white meat and discussing the battle. “We say we have Japanese seishin, but those Yankees have their own, don’t they! On the night of the thirteenth when we attacked the gun position, an American jumped at me but I bayoneted him. He screamed, but just before he died he set off a red signal flare. In a moment mortar shells came in all around us. My comrades all died. Only I escaped.”
There was silence. “That’s Yankee spirit,” murmured another man.
“That’s it.”
“They love their country too. We’re not the only ones.”
Guadalcanal already had a new name—Starvation Island. Ga, the first syllable of Gadarukanaru, means among other things “hunger.” Even during the indescribable ordeal of the march to the sea, one sentence always brought sardonic laughter: “The sky may fall but never Gadarukanaru”—the line supposedly uttered by the Navy commander of the island just before the Americans landed.
On September 18, four days after the Bloody Ridge battle, the Marines were reinforced with 4,200 men of the 7th Marine Regiment. They landed along with trucks, heavy engineer equipment, ammunition and supplies, and for the first time since he had been left stranded by the Navy, Vandergrift felt in control of the situation. He had a total of 23,000 men and an aggressive if dwindling air force that was more than holding its own.
But this confidence was not shared by his superiors. The next day Hanson Baldwin, the military correspondent for the New York Times, informed him that Washington was extremely alarmed by the situation on Guadalcanal, and Ghormley’s headquarters in Nouméa even more so.
The aggravated Vandegrift said he “could neither understand nor condone such an attitude.” It was obvious that the seizure of Guadalcanal “had caught Japan away off guard,” and intercepted messages “pointed in certain cases to mass confusion at top command levels.”
“Are you going to hold this beachhead?” Baldwin asked. “Are you going to stay here?”
“Hell, yes. Why not?”
• • •
Kawaguchi decided to send the reporters back to Rabaul. Nishino wanted to stay, but the general told the Mainichi group they had to leave. “After you’ve gone we shall fight resolutely and I hope to welcome you again on this island, gentlemen.”
Nishino grasped his hand. It was bony, hot from fever.
At Shortland Island, Nishino transferred from a destroyer to the transport Daifuku, where he ran into an old acquaintance, Major General Yumio Nasu, commander of an “infantry group” of the 2nd Division.† The general failed to recognize him until he introduced himself.
“Ah so, Nishino, you seem to be terribly ill,” he said. “Gadarukanaru?” He moved his chair nearer. His division was bound for Guadalcanal and he wanted firsthand information. Nishino hesitated, but Nasu said, “I’d like to hear what an amateur thinks about things.”
Nishino told about the fate of the Kawaguchi Detachment, of incessant air raids, of the Marines’ use of electric warning devices, their endless food supplies, their inexhaustible ammunition and their surprising seishin.
“It’s very serious,” the general muttered. “What should be done?”
“Under such circumstances, I would say that if we keep sending in forces piecemeal, they will be swallowed up one by one. It’s the worst thing to do, don’t you agree, sir?” Nasu’s interest encouraged him to be candid. “If I talked like this to anyone else, I’d probably be sent off to jail.” Japanese soldiers were being asked to give their lives without proper equipment and supplies. “The last hope of our soldiers before they die is to see planes marked with the Rising Sun. They tell me they have the spirit to fight without food, but they can do very little on spirit alone.”
“I agree,” said Nasu. “It’s a great pity we don’t have enough planes and ships to do what you want.”
Nasu was the vanguard of a new offensive to take Henderson Field. In Rabaul, General Hyakutake had decided to go to Guadalcanal and take personal command of the campaign. He was going to bring with him the 17th Army artillery—field pieces, 100-mm. guns and huge 150-mm. howitzers.
A series of joint Army-Navy meetings convened in 17th Army headquarters to co-ordinate the operation. One of the observers was Lieutenant Colonel Tsuji, “God of Operations.” He had persuaded his superiors in Tokyo to send him south to find out what was really going on at Guadalcanal.
Tsuji listened without comment as General Hyakutake and the Navy argued endlessly over the means of transporting the 2nd Division to Guadalcanal. The Navy insisted that they be sent by the usual “Rat Express” or “Ant Freight.” The general said the risk was too great; the
2nd Division had to be taken as a body in one large convoy under powerful naval escort. Impossible, said the Navy. They couldn’t afford to provide more than “rat and ant” transportation: “How can we shake a sleeve we don’t have?”
The Navy’s refusal to commit important surface units to the operation enraged Hyakutake and he delivered a reckless threat. “If the Navy lacks the strength to escort the Second Division properly to Guadalcanal, we will go in transports without any escort. And Seventeenth Army Headquarters will lead the way!”
Tsuji knew that if Hyakutake was forced to abide by his rash plan, it meant almost certain destruction of all the transports, and he abandoned his role as observer. He met privately with Hyakutake and offered to fly up to Truk, where he could present the general’s arguments direct to Admiral Yamamoto.
Tsuji found Yamamoto on the battleship Yamato in the great Truk harbor. The admiral was on the floor of his cabin engrossed in writing bold Japanese characters with a brush—perhaps it was a poem for some admirer or a slogan for a schoolboy. His short, powerful body seemed to be bursting from his uniform.
Yamamoto listened in silence, occasionally nodding his head, as Tsuji dramatized the sacrifices made by the detachments which had previously been sent to Guadalcanal: “Our supply has been cut off for more than a month. Officers and men have to dig grass roots, scrape moss and pick buds from the trees and drink sea water to survive.” They were all thinner than Gandhi. The new invasion force must be transported intact, and with supplies, to the island or it too would fail. “I beg you provide it with a strong escort. If the Navy finds it impossible to do this, then Army Commander Hyakutake is determined to lead the convoy himself and is prepared to be wiped out in his attempt to retake the island.”
Yamamoto began to speak slowly. He admitted that the mistakes of the Navy had aggravated the hardships of the soldiers on Guadalcanal. “Very well,” he said deliberately, “I, Yamamoto, will be personally responsible. If necessary, if we have to bring Yamato alongside the island, I promise to escort the transports the way the Army wants. There is only one thing—to save my face, don’t let Hyakutake-san sail on a transport. Please have him go on a destroyer so he can land safely. His command capabilities are needed on the island.”
Tears streaked Yamamoto’s impassive face. Tsuji, also in tears, impulsively wished he could die under Yamamoto’s command as a Navy staff officer.
There were many officers in the Japanese Army who would not have accepted—as Yamamoto so readily did—the realities of Guadalcanal. Nishino had just arrived in Rabaul by transport from Shortland, intent on making a report in person to 17th Army headquarters. He was taken to the office of the adjutant, a lieutenant colonel named Fukunaga, who asked, “How’s the island?”
Nishino disliked him on sight. He was haughty and his well-fed body looked greasy—so unlike the skeletons on Guadalcanal. “Our friends on Gadarukanaru are now surviving on fighting spirit alone. But it won’t last much longer. Let me beg you, sir, to supply them with as much food as possible—”
“Are you criticizing the Army?” he accused.
“This is not criticism.” Nishino explained that he only wanted to tell the truth about Guadalcanal. He began to feel dizzy and put his hands on the adjutant’s desk to steady himself.
“This is the tropics,” said the colonel. “Why are you so pale?” It too came out like an accusation.
“I’ve been in the jungle. There’s no sunlight there.”
“You just lack seishin!”
“My seishin saved me from the hell of Gadarukanaru. If you go there, you’ll see.” It was useless to talk to such a fool. He turned to leave.
“Eat tomatoes, that’ll do you good!” Nishino was almost at the door when he heard, “Hey, you!” Fukunaga’s voice was ominous. “Just remember, we’ll never let you return to Japan. It would be like sending a spy back home.”
* More than half of the Ichiki men returned on their own to the coast in the other direction, the way they had come.
† Before Pearl Harbor, a Japanese army division had two infantry brigades, each with two infantry regiments. After Pearl Harbor, a division had one infantry group consisting of three infantry regiments.
16
“I Deserve Ten Thousand Deaths”
1.
Before Colonel Tsuji left Yamato, Admiral Yamamoto put his verbal promise on paper: the Combined Fleet would escort the 2nd Division transports to Tassafaronga Point, and Henderson Field would be shelled by battleships on the eve of the landing. Yamamoto went further. He saw in Guadalcanal yet another opportunity to force the Decisive Battle that obsessed Japan’s military leaders. Once Hyakutake launched his general attack on the airfield and began to make progress, Combined Fleet would compel the U. S. Navy to wage a major engagement. It would be the end of American naval power in the Solomons and the beginning of the end of their authority in the Pacific.
Tsuji returned to Rabaul to work out final plans for the attack on Henderson with General Hyakutake’s senior staff officer. Colonel Haruo Konuma—his father ran a small silk-weaving plant—had followed the classic military route: cadet school, Military Academy and War College. Chief of the Strategy and Tactics Section of the General Staff at the time of the American occupation of Guadalcanal (even he had not heard of the island), he was not involved in the operation until September. To dislodge the enemy, he concluded, it would take a full division, heavy guns, tanks and substantial quantities of ammunition and supplies. But these could not be transported to Guadalcanal without wholesale support by the Army air force. The Navy fliers were trained to screen warships rather than transports.
Operations Chief Takushiro Hattori saw the merit of his argument but vetoed it; he was afraid that the Soviet Union might attack the Kwantung Army if so many planes were withdrawn from Manchuria. Although his plan was rejected, his services were not. He was selected to go to Rabaul as Hyakutake’s operations officer. Konuma refused at first. He not only doubted the feasibility of retaking Guadalcanal—Ichiki and Kawaguchi had already failed miserably—but had no confidence that the Navy would supply strong enough escorts for convoys.
It took more than the persuasion of his department chief to change his mind. Colonel Tsuji, his close friend and classmate at the War College, offered his services as unofficial adviser, and his reputation for overcoming all obstacles was such that Konuma, albeit reluctantly, took the post.
The first problem he faced in Rabaul did not originate with the Navy but with the Army. Hyakutake’s chief of staff, General Akisaburo Futami, was a sick man, which may in part have accounted for his conviction that Guadalcanal was a lost cause. At every meeting—even at the conferences with the Navy—he would repeat over and over again, “We must not try to retake Guadalcanal; we have no chance of winning there!”
By-passing Hyakutake, Konuma radioed the Army General Staff direct, demanding a replacement. Before the day was over, Futami was relieved but there continued to be command problems. Since Kawaguchi had failed, the younger staff officers wanted him taken off Guadalcanal and returned to Tokyo lest his critical attitude toward Imperial Headquarters infect newcomers. But Konuma remembered him as an able and bright officer and arranged to have him brought up to Rabaul for interrogation. Kawaguchi arrived in a torn, filthy uniform. His report of the tribulations of his detachment was irrefutable and Konuma advised Hyakutake to let him command one of the units in the coming attack. Who else knew the conditions and terrain so intimately?
Recently arrived reinforcements and supplies allowed Vandegrift to set up a complete perimeter defense, studded with foxholes and machine-gun emplacements, and following hills and ridges wherever possible. There was enough barbed wire to surround the entire front with two bands of double-apron fencing.
With more than nineteen thousand men Vandegrift at last felt ready to inaugurate a limited offensive of his own against the concentration of Japanese to the west. On September 23 he sent one battalion southwest; upon reaching the slopes of Mou
nt Austen, it began looping back toward the sea along the east bank of the Mataniko River closely tagged by another battalion. Surprisingly, they met no resistance. As these two forces approached the mouth of the river, they were joined by a third battalion which had come the easy way, along the coast.
The following day, September 27, the Marines tried to push across the river but were unexpectedly pinned down by enemy fire. A message back to Colonel Edson, commander of the joint forces, got so badly scrambled in the heat of action that “Red Mike” took it to mean that his troops had successfully crossed the Mataniko. Consequently he ordered another battalion to make an amphibious landing at Point Cruz and trap the retreating enemy. This battalion landed without opposition and advanced 350 yards inland before the enemy attacked from both flanks. Badly mauled, the Marines fought their way back to the beach and were evacuated under heavy fire to a destroyer. Sixty Americans died.
There were no more than five thousand Japanese scattered on both sides of Henderson and most of them were starving. Probably not more than half that number was capable of bearing arms, but these men were prepared to fight to the death. Their first aggressive reaction at the Mataniko convinced Vandegrift that he was facing a much stronger force. The Navy, which had abandoned the Marines after the Savo debacle, did not agree. Admiral Turner wrote Vandegrift that it was time to press the enemy. “I believe you are in a position to take some chances and go after them hard,” he said.