by Toland, John
YOU WILL TAKE COMMAND OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC
AREA AND SOUTH PACIFIC FORCES IMMEDIATELY.
Halsey got the message moments after his flying boat touched down on the waters of Nouméa harbor. He read it twice in wonder and then exclaimed, “Jesus Christ and General Jackson! This is the hottest potato they ever handed me!” He went from astonishment to apprehension. He knew only enough about the situation in the South Pacific to realize it was desperate; and he regretted having to relieve his old friend Bob Ghormley, who had played on the same football team at the Academy.
Halsey ordered Vandegrift to fly down to Nouméa. The Marine general reported that his men were “practically worn out” by more than two months of lean diet, disease, bombings, bombardments and banzai attacks, and had to have air and ground reinforcements.
The stocky Halsey, gray eyebrows bristling, thoughtfully drummed his fingers on the desk. “Are we going to evacuate or hold?” he asked.
“Yes, I can hold. But I have to have more active support than I have been getting.”
Admiral Turner protested. The Navy was doing all it could to send in more supplies, but there were no warships to protect transports, neither was there a base at Guadalcanal where they could find shelter. Moreover, enemy submarines were getting more numerous and increasingly aggressive.
Halsey knew Turner was right, but Guadalcanal had to be held. “All right,” he told Vandegrift, “go on back. I’ll promise you everything I’ve got.”
2.
On Guadalcanal 5,600 men of Maruyama’s 2nd Division—not including artillery, engineer and medical troops—had begun their march toward Mount Austen. They planned to be in position to attack on the night of October 21. Just before they left, Hyakutake’s senior staff officer, Colonel Konuma, took Tsuji aside and said he had hoped to direct operations in person but had to remain at 17th Army headquarters to act as chief of staff. “Would you go in my place?” he asked. There was nothing Tsuji wanted better. Besides, he would have “jumped into fire” for a friend like Konuma.
Starting off with a compass and a single inaccurate map, General Maruyama led his force down the trail. The first day was an easy walk through coconut groves and over barren ridges, and that night the men settled down as if it were a camping trip. But at midnight a torrent of rain beat down on the sleeping men. They tried to protect themselves with huge umbrella-like leaves. Shivering, soaking wet, miserable, they huddled together for warmth.
The next day the long line was swallowed up by a dark, dense, hilly forest. The white-haired Maruyama led the way, pushing himself forward with his white cane. Beside him General Nasu, a hachimaki tied around his forehead, was wracked by malaria, but he continued stolidly without complaint. At a break he called to Tsuji, “I have something good but there’s only a spoonful left.” The general reached for a round cigarette tin which was attached to his waist by a string, much in the same way his ancestors had carried pillboxes. Tsuji found about a spoonful of sugar at the bottom of the can and poured half into his palm. He gave the rest to his aide. Nothing had ever tasted so sweet.
The Maruyama Trail narrowed, forcing the men to walk single file. The winding column crossed hill after hill, rivers, streams, inching forward slowly, painfully, like a great worm. Each man carried, in addition to his pack, some part of a field gun, a shell or other equipment. Since it was too dangerous to cook, all—from Maruyama to the lowliest private—lived on half rations of rice. They scaled steep cliffs with ropes, hauling up light field pieces and machine guns by sheer muscle. But by the third day the task was too much except for the hardiest, and gun after gun had to be abandoned at the side of the trail.
Since it was obvious that they could never keep their schedule, Maruyama radioed 17th Army headquarters that the attack would have to be postponed one day. On October 22 Maruyama still had not reached his line of departure and he made another postponement of twenty-four hours. By afternoon his men had circled around Mount Austen. Here the 2nd Division split in two, with Nasu and Division Headquarters continuing on the trail directly toward Henderson Field. Kawaguchi, who would command the right flank, turned off to the southeast with three infantry battalions and three machine-gun and trench-mortar battalions.
As Kawaguchi left the main body, he encountered Tsuji. The colonel had no use for Kawaguchi. First, he was a loser and a complainer; second, he was one of the so-called “liberal” officers who, like Homma, had tried to save captured Filipino leaders from their just fate—death. But the general was not aware of his enmity. “I’m glad to find you here,” he began and went on to discuss his misgivings about the Tsuji-Konuma plan of attack. It could not possibly work: although Nasu would be attacking over fairly good terrain on the left flank, his own advance on the right would be over much the same ground where his detachment had suffered such a disaster in September. The area around the ridge was just too rough for a frontal type of assault.
“Have you seen the Navy’s aerial photographs?” he asked. In his opinion these recent pictures indicated that the Americans had greatly strengthened and enlarged their perimeter defense. “They show clearly that I have no chance of success with a frontal assault. I would like to lead the right column in a circle behind the enemy’s eastern flank.” This was a point southeast of Henderson, with nothing but rolling open hills, fields and sparse woods to traverse. He knew that section well from personal observation. Nasu could advance as planned, and the two forces would catch the Americans in a real pincers.
“I don’t need to see the pictures,” Tsuji replied. “I’m familiar with the terrain and I agree fully with your proposal.” Kawaguchi wanted to take his suggestion to Maruyama, but Tsuji assured him that wouldn’t be necessary. “I will explain personally to His Excellency Maruyama. I wish you great success.” He extended his hand. “Well, the battle is really getting interesting, isn’t it?” he said and laughed. As Kawaguchi was soon to find out, the Machiavellian colonel never told Maruyama about the conversation.
On the morning of October 23, Maruyama was not yet in position and made a third postponement, issuing final orders to launch the general attack the following day at midnight. He added his personal exhortation for every officer and man “to fight desperately and fulfill his duty in repayment of His Majesty’s favor.”
Kawaguchi didn’t get the message until midafternoon, when he was still at least a day and a half’s march from his new line of departure. In the emergency he cable-phoned Maruyama that he couldn’t get into position in time. Maruyama curtly replied that there could be no further delays, and it suddenly dawned on Kawaguchi that the division commander knew nothing about his verbal agreement with Tsuji of the day before. Controlling himself, Kawaguchi said, “In that case, I will carry out the night assault with my advance unit, the Third Isshiki Battalion.”
Maruyama began shouting that Kawaguchi would follow orders to the letter. With that he slammed down the receiver, so angry that his hair seemed to bristle—the stories about Kawaguchi were apparently true. He got Kawaguchi on the phone again. “Major General Kawaguchi,” he said stiffly, “report immediately to Division headquarters.” He was to turn over command of the right flank to Colonel Toshinari Shoji.
It was Tsuji himself who phoned 17th Army headquarters with the information. “Kawaguchi refused to advance,” he told Konuma, “and the division commander relieved him of his command.” He gave no details.
On the coast General Sumiyoshi was ready for his diversionary attack. All his heavy artillery and ammunition had been manhandled into position several miles west of the Mataniko River. Early that evening, the twenty-third, he opened his attack, a day ahead of time. He had not received notice of the third postponement.†
After a heavy bombardment he sent nine tanks across a sandbar in the van of his infantry. They were met by a counterbombardment so effective that only one tank managed to reach the other side of the river. It ran into the sea, however, wallowing about in the surf until it stalled and was blasted to pieces by a 75-
mm. tank destroyer. Six hundred Japanese infantrymen lost their lives.
It was a useless gesture. The diversion had failed and by now the Americans were alerted. The next afternoon they discovered that the enemy was behind Henderson in force: first a column was detected crossing the foothills of Mount Austen, then someone noticed a Japanese officer studying Bloody Ridge through field glasses, and finally a Marine from the Scout-Sniper Detachment reported seeing “many rice fires” rising out of the jungle two miles south of the ridge.
Tsuji and Konuma had guessed correctly that Vandegrift never expected a major attack from this direction. But unlike the Kawaguchi Detachment, which had arrived behind Henderson undiscovered, Maruyama’s presence was now known. Marine Colonel Lewis “Chesty” Puller, a short man with a pouter-pigeon chest who had survived a hundred combats in the “banana wars” of Haiti and Nicaragua, walked along the lines south of the airfield personally checking the positions. He ordered his men to dig in deeper and to set up more sandbags. Shell fragments and other pieces of metal were hung on barbed wire to give audible warning of any surprise assault at night, while men using bayonets as scythes cut fields of fire in the seven-foot-tall grass out front. Lookouts were posted on top of a barren knoll. Puller’s Marines were ready.
Maruyama wasn’t—but thought he was. Nasu was in position on the left, but Kawaguchi’s replacement, Colonel Shoji, had encountered such precipitous ravines and dense jungles after leaving the Maruyama Trail that he had not yet been able to get his main body to the original line of departure.
An hour before midnight huge drops of rain fell slowly, heavily, like blobs of oil. They plummeted faster—and faster, becoming an almost solid sheet of water. Maruyama, his staff and Tsuji scrambled up a disintegrating hill to a small flat ledge. The staff sat in a tight circle, huddling together around Maruyama to keep him warm. A few minutes after midnight they heard small-arms fire from the right. It grew in intensity. Had Shoji broken through or been thrown back?
A report finally came in by phone from Matsumoto, a division operations officer on liaison duty with Shoji. “The right flank attacked the airfield,” he cried. “The night attack is a success!”
“Banzai!” Maruyama shouted impulsively.
Now they could hear firing on the left—the ping of rifles and the low chuckle of machine guns. It was Nasu. Then a roar of mortar and heavy-artillery fire. The Americans! The response was so immediate and so intense that Tsuji feared something had gone wrong. The others—including Maruyama—were infected by his anxiety and sat rigid.
The phone rang again. “I was mistaken about the success of the right flank,” said Matsumoto. “They haven’t reached the airfield yet. They crossed a large open field and thought it was the airfield. It was a mistake.” Shoji’s meager vanguard, forced to attack prematurely at midnight, was already pinned down.
The bombardment on the left continued, louder than ever. An hour passed without a report from Nasu. Tsuji was struck with “an omen of doom” and his bones “felt cold.”
Nasu’s first charge had been forced back by a furious mélange of Marine small-arms, automatic-weapon and artillery fire. Critically ill from malaria, Nasu remained near the front, more afraid of dying from the disease than of the explosions around him. His troops—the 29th Regiment—regrouped, but a second charge in a new direction was stemmed by Puller’s men. Again and again Nasu’s men tried to penetrate the American defenses, hastily shored up by GI’s of the Americal Division, but each attack grew weaker.
In the rear Kawaguchi sloshed disconsolately through the jungle in search of Maruyama’s headquarters. To the right he heard the rumble of battle. He slumped against a tree as rain streamed over his head. His career was over. What did life have to offer now? Curling up in the hollow of some tree roots, he dozed off, wondering almost disinterestedly if the rain would wash him away.
By dawn Nasu had lost half of his troops. Practically the entire 29th Regiment, the best in the 2nd Division, had been wiped out. Its commanding officer and the regimental flag were missing.
“Soka [That’s it],” muttered Maruyama when he heard the report. His staff advised him to withdraw, but he would not listen. He phoned Nasu and said Division was giving him its last reserves for an all-out attack the following night.
It would have been normal for a commander who was called upon to launch a major attack after a crushing defeat to ask for more time to prepare. “Let me carry out the attack tonight,” Nasu replied in a feverish voice. He gave no reasons and was so insistent that Maruyama acceded; Nasu would know what was best.
Nasu called for another shot to control his temperature, which was already over 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), and prayed that he would live to lead the assault.
• • •
The first message to Admiral Yamamoto from his liaison officer on Guadalcanal was “Banzai.” It was code for “We have seized airfield.” Yamamoto radioed Vice Admiral Kondo to head south with his armada, which included Nagumo’s Kido Butai, and force the Americans into a battle. Another, much smaller naval group—eight destroyers and the light cruiser Yura—was already on its way to back up Maruyama’s assault on the airfield with a daylight naval bombardment.
A second message from Guadalcanal about the continued fighting at the airfield failed to deter Yamamoto and his staff, but a third, at 6:23 A.M., announcing that the Americans held Henderson, made Yamamoto hesitate. With the airfield still a threat he ordered Kondo to mark time, so his formidable aggregation of vessels milled around three hundred miles northeast of Guadalcanal.
But the Yura force, oblivious of what had taken place, continued down the channel. By the time its commander learned that the airfield had not fallen, planes from Henderson swept down on his ships. A bomb plunged into Yura’s central boiler room, killing all occupants. The cruiser sluggishly started back north, but other bombs turned her into a helpless hulk. The skipper, Captain Shiro Sato, gave the order to abandon ship, then tied himself to the bridge with a rope.
Yamamoto was right in thinking that the Americans would come out to challenge any carrier force moving south. In Nouméa, Halsey had already ordered the commander of Task Force 16, Rear Admiral Thomas Kinkaid, to bring his ships—two carriers, Enterprise and Hornet, nine cruisers and twenty-four destroyers—to a point off the Santa Cruz Islands, about four hundred miles east of Guadalcanal. Kinkaid was to stop any carrier force heading toward the island.
On the afternoon of October 25, American patrol planes discovered two large enemy groups 360 miles from Task Force 16. From his flagship, the Enterprise (back in action after around-the-clock repairs in Pearl Harbor), Kinkaid sent out a search and then a strike, but Kido Butai had seen one of the enemy patrol planes, a PBY. Nominally Admiral Nagumo was under Kondo but in reality he acted independently, and without asking Kondo’s permission, he ordered a turn north, away from a confrontation.
Yamamoto, however, had already decided that there was to be a fight no matter what the outcome of the battle for Henderson Field, and Nagumo’s hasty withdrawal brought to a head a disagreement over the use of Kido Butai. For weeks Yamamoto had pressed Nagumo, without ever making it a direct order, to take his carriers south and engage the American carriers. But his chief of staff, Kusaka, persuaded Nagumo each time that this would be a foolhardy venture; it would lead to another Midway.
Late that afternoon Yamamoto decided to force Nagumo into action. He dispatched a message, deliberately insulting in tone, “urging” Nagumo to attack “with vigor.” Nagumo summoned Kusaka to his little battle room under the bridge. Kusaka could see that his chief was upset. Nagumo said he could not ignore Yamamoto’s latest message, and he wanted Kusaka’s support this time.
“I admit I’ve objected to your suggestions, but you are the commander and must make the final decisions,” Kusaka replied. “It’s your battle. If you really want to head south, I’ll go along with your verdict.” However, he reminded Nagumo, they had not yet located the enemy fleet and warne
d him that they themselves would undoubtedly be discovered by B-17’s operating from Espíritu Santo. “But now that your mind is made up, I want you to know that we shall not be destroyed without first destroying the enemy.”
Kusaka returned to the bridge in the gathering darkness and ordered the carrier striking force—three flattops, a heavy cruiser and eight destroyers—as well as the Vanguard Group of two battleships, four cruisers and seven destroyers, to turn south toward the enemy at 20 knots.
The two enemy carrier forces were closer to each other than either realized. Admiral Kinkaid (described in the Annapolis Yearbook of 1908 as a “black-eyed, rosy-cheeked, noisy Irishman who loves a roughhouse”) was coming up toward Kido Butai on an aggressive zigzag course.
On Guadalcanal, General Nasu had hastily moved into position for attack. On the left was his own reserve regiment, the 16th, and the remnants of the 29th; on the right were the reserves sent by Maruyama. After nightfall the feeble Nasu led the first charge, using his sword as a cane. He managed to hobble across the line of barbed wire before a volley of rifle fire flashed in the dark. A bullet tore into Nasu’s chest. All along the line automatic-weapons fire raked the attackers. Within minutes almost every commander down to the company level was dead or wounded. Their men continued to drive forward. Whenever they were stopped, they re-formed and charged again. The GI’s and Marines refused to give ground. In the lulls the two sides shouted at each other. “Blood for the Emperor!” yelled a Japanese in English. “Blood for Elea-nor!” retorted a Marine. The shouting turned to insults. “Tojo eat shit!” taunted a GI of the Americal Division. There was a moment’s pause, then from the other side: “Babe Ruth eat shit!”
The fighting continued until midnight. The assault was crushed and the survivors filtered back over the bodies of their comrades. In two days Nasu’s attacks had left more than three thousand Japanese dead or dying in the uprooted jungle. It was as if a fire storm had swept over the area. The wounded Nasu was carried on a litter back to Division headquarters. As he held out a feeble hand to Maruyama and opened his mouth to speak, he died.