MARINE CORPS HISTORICAL REFERENCE SERIES
Number 29
THE UNITED STATES MARINES
in the
GUADALCANAL CAMPAIGN
HISTORICAL BRANCH, G-3 DIVISION
HEADQUARTERS, U. S. MARINE CORPS
WASHINGTON, D. C.
Revised 1962
DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY
HEADQUARTERS UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS
WASHINGTON 25. D. C.
REVIEWED AND APPROVED 14 Jun 1962
C. A. YOUNGDALE
Brigadier General, U. S. Marine Corps
Assistant Chief of Staff, G-3
THE UNITED STATES MARINES
IN THE
GUADALCANAL CAMPAIGN
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Original Online
Page Page
The United States Marines In The Guadalcanal Campaign 1 6
Selected Bibliography 14 19
The United States Marines in the Guadalcanal Campaign
by
Henry I. Shaw, Jr.
The first American ground offensive in the Pacific during World War II
took place at an obscure island in the southern Solomons--Guadalcanal. There,
the high tide of Japanese conquest was reached and the ebb began.
Until the decisive naval Battle of Midway (4-6 June 1942), Allied forces
could do little more than hold what they had, wait, and prepare. After
Midway, the U. S. Joint Chiefs of Staff decided that the strategic situation
had improved enough to risk the mounting of a limited offensive. The target
chosen was Tulagi, a small island once the headquarters of the British Solomon
Islands Protectorate, and with it such parts of surrounding islands as seemed
necessary to hold the objective. A fine deep-water anchorage existed between
Tulagi and neighboring Florida Island, and on Guadalcanal, 20 miles south
across Sealark Channel, kunai grass plains amidst the jungle were suitable for
extensive airfield development. In July, when aerial reconnaissance showed
that the Japanese had begun to build an airfield on Guadalcanal, the larger
island became the principal target.
The division of the Pacific into operational command areas made by the
JCS on 30 March 1942 placed all of the Solomons chain in General Douglas
MacArthur's Southwest Pacific Area. In reviewing the forces available for the
Guadalcanal-Tulagi
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operation, however, the Joint Chiefs determined that all of the ships and most
of the assault troops would have to come from Admiral Chester W. Nimitz'
Pacific Fleet and Pacific Ocean Areas. Accordingly, on 2 July, the boundary
between Nimitz' and MacArthur's commands was shifted west just far enough to
bring the lower Solomons within the admiral's South Pacific Area. At the same
time, the JCS agreed upon a series of operations in the Solomons and Bismarcks
that would lead eventually to the capture of the Japanese stronghold of Rabaul
on New Britain. General MacArthur was given responsibility for planning and
coordinating the advance and command of all its phases after Guadalcanal was
secured.
On 25 June, Vice Admiral Richard L. Ghormley, Nimitz' South Pacific Area
commander, was told to begin preparations to take the Solomons objectives,
with a tentative D-Day of 1 August. At least a division of trained amphibious
assault troops was needed for WATCHTOWER, the code-name of the
Guadalcanal-Tulagi operation, and only one such unit was available in the
Pacific--the 1st Marine Division. Other divisions that might have been
assigned the task lacked the amphibious experience or were spread thinly to
hold vital strategic bases. The reinforcements that were tentatively slated
for WATCHTOWER would be available only when garrison forces came out from the
States to relieve combat troops in New Caledonia, Samoa, and Hawaii.
Initially, the 1st Division would go it alone.
When he got the word that his division was headed for action in the
Solomons, Major General Alexander A. Vandegrift was
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just getting set up in New Zealand where the 1st was scheduled to undergo six
months of intensive combat training. With Vandegrift at Wellington were his
command post, the 5th Marines, and elements of the 11th Marines; at sea en
route to New Zealand were the division rear echelon, the 1st Marines, and the
remainder of the 11th. Since one of the division's infantry regiments, the
7th Marines, was already committed to the defense of Samoa, the 2d Marines of
the 2d Division was dispatched from San Diego to bring Vandegrift's command up
to strength. Other major elements attached to the 1st Division had to be
assembled from overseas bases, the 1st Raider Battalion from New Caledonia and
the 3d Defense Battalion from Hawaii.
Faced with the task of assembling and loading out a reinforced division
within a month's time, Vandegrift asked for and got a week's delay of D-Day to
7 August. Feverishly, improvising as necessary, the Marines in Wellington
unloaded the transports as they arrived, sorted and repacked equipment and
supplies for combat, and loaded ship again. There was not enough room for all
the division's motor transport, and most of the heavier cargo trucks were left
behind to come up with a rear echelon. Re-embarkation was completed by 22
July and the convoy sailed from Wellington the same day. As finally loaded,
the Marines carried along 60 days supplies, enough ammunition for 10 days of
heavy fighting, and the minimum individual baggage actually required to live
and fight.
Rehearsals, unsatisfactory and incomplete, were conducted at Koro in the
Fiji Islands, where the various components of the
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forces assigned to take Guadalcanal and Tulagi assembled for the first time.
Rear Admiral Richmond K. Turner, the commander of the amphibious force which
included the Marine division, its transports, and the bombardment and escort
vessels, was given responsibility for the conduct of the operation. The
Marine Corps' point of view, one that prevailed and became standard amphibious
doctrine in later stages of the war, was that the landing force commander
should have complete control of operations ashore. During WATCHTOWER,
however, the command setup of an earlier era held forth, and the naval
commander continued to have the last word in the employment of ground troops.
The plan for WATCHTOWER called for two separate landings, one by the
division's main body near Lunga Point on Guadalcanal and the other on the
Florida side of Sealark Channel by an assault group built around the 2d
Battalion, 5th Marines, and the 1st Raider and Parachute Battalions.
According to intelligence of the enemy gleaned from Allied coastwatcher
reports and reconnaissance flights, the strongest resistance could be expected
from Japanese defending Tulagi and two nearby fortified islets, Gavutu and
Tanambogo. Enemy air and naval reaction to the assault was expected to be
violent and strong.
On 7 August, the prelanding estimates of Japanese defenses proved
accurate. After a preliminary bombardment by cruisers and destroyers, the
assault waves boated in ships' landing craft raced ashore on both Guadalcanal
and Tulagi. On the big island there was no enemy response; naval gunfire had
driven the labor troops working on the airfield into the hills that rimmed the
4
kunai grass plain. The primary obstacles to the Marine advance were the
jungle and the enervating effect of the hot, humid climate on men not used to
the tropics. By nightfall on D-Day, General Vandegrift's men were dug in in
positions just short of the airfield site and had yet to contact their first
enemy soldier.
The capture of Tulagi and its neighboring islets took three desperate
days of fighting during which the three battalions of the 2d Marines were
committed to add weight to American attacks. The Japanese defenders, about
1,000 naval landing, aviation, and labor troops, holed up in caves and
pill-boxes and fought to the death against tank-infantry attacks, point-blank
artillery fire, and close-in grenade and small arms assaults. Twenty-seven
prisoners and a sprinkling of survivors that swam to Florida Island were all
that was left of the enemy garrison when the last shot had been fired.
The strongest Japanese countermoves were launched from air and sea. On
D-Day afternoon, enemy bombers attacked and scored a hit on an American
destroyer. Daily for months thereafter, except when foul weather gave the
Marines a respite or Allied aircraft intercepted, Japanese planes raided,
concentrating on shipping when it was present off the beaches but turning
frequent attention to the division beachhead on Guadalcanal. The unwelcome
intrusions of enemy warships had an even more important effect on the course
of the campaign. Seven Japanese cruisers attacked on the night of 8-9 August
and the havoc wrought was staggering. Torpedoes and gunfire sank four Allied
5
cruisers and badly damaged another and two destroyers. The attacking force
sailed away intact.
The grave risk posed by enemy air and naval attacks prompted Admiral
Turner to withdraw the transports and cargo vessels standing off the beaches
late on 9 August. On board the ships that left was a good part of the rations
and ammunition that the 1st Division had counted upon having in its supply
dumps and nearly 1,400 Marines of ships' unloading details and reserve units.
The men and supplies returned to Espiritu Santo and New Caledonia, two of the
nearest forward bases, eventually reaching Guadalcanal again but not before
their absense was sorely felt.
Cast loose, or at best promised only a tenuous lifeline back to rear
areas, the 1st Marine Division set out to make do with what it had. Captured
enemy materiel was used to the fullest extent; weapons were made part of the
defenses, food stocks were added to the ration dumps, and trucks were put to
work hauling supplies. General Vandegrift posted his troops to hold perimeter
defenses along 5,000 yards of the coast between Alligator Creek and Kukum
village and along an arc inland which encompassed the airfield site. Within
the perimeter, engineers worked around the clock, finishing the job the
Japanese had begun, in order to ready an airstrip to handle planes. By 18
August, it was ready, but an enemy bombing raid knocked it out, and it was the
20th before the first Allied air units landed.
6
Fundamental to success of WATCHTOWER plans was the concept that aircraft
would form part of the defending force and eventually the means of carrying
the fight up the Solomons chain to enemy bases. The initial runway, and the
airfield complex that was gradually built within the Marine perimeter, was
named Henderson Field after a Marine flyer who was killed at the Battle of
Midway. The first flying units to reach Henderson were Marine Fighter
Squadron 223 and Marine Scout-Bomber Squadron 232 which flew in from the
escort carrier Long Island. Succeeding flights of Marine and Army planes
staged through the New Hebrides to reach the field, and Navy dive bombers from
the damaged carrier Enterprise joined the growing force.
On 3 September, Headquarters of the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing under
Brigadier General Roy S. Geiger arrived on Guadalcanal and took command of the
composite organization that came to be known as CACTUS Air Force after the
code name of the island. Although Geiger's command was always predominently a
Marine outfit, it never lost the joint service make-up of its early days. The
flight echelons of 21 Marine squadrons served in the forward area during the
battle to hold Guadalcanal, but only a few of the unit ground echelons reached
the island. The resulting burden thrown on the understrength ground crews
that kept the miscellaneous collection of patched and shot-up aircraft flying
was tremendous, but the job was accomplished with ingenuity and dispatch. The
isolated nature of the first months of fighting on Guadalcanal bred a comrade
ship of adversity with
7
an attitude that the 1st Marine Division and its supporting air could
accomplish the impossible.
The Japanese high command at Rabaul assigned the task of erasing the
American position on Guadalcanal to the Seventeenth Army, but made the mistake
of underestimating the strength and tenacity of the Marines ashore and in the
air. The number of enemy troops available and uncommitted in August and
September, many of them combat veterans of the fighting in China and the
Philippines, was more than enough to have overwhelmed the Henderson Field
defenses. But the Seventeenth Army sent its forces to the island piecemeal, a
battalion or a regiment at a time, never in sufficient force to mount and
sustain a prolonged attack.
General Vandegrift, on his part, kept strong and aggressive combat
patrols forward of his lines and launched limited offensives to keep the
Japanese off balance. He never over-committed his men or undertook tasks that
would place a severe strain on his resources. He had a mission--hold
Henderson Field--and he fulfilled it.
The Japanese method of building up their forces on Guadalcanal, and the
impetuosity of Japanese leaders, furnished the pattern of the six-month-long
battle to retake the island. A few thousand men at a time would land from
transports outside the perimeter and then would attack almost immediately.
The action at the threatened point would be bitterly fought with local
advantage whipsawing back and forth, but with the defenders always able to
concentrate enough reserve strength to beat the Japanese back with staggering
losses.
8
The ground action on Guadalcanal revolved around a series of highpoints
of intense fighting with intervals marked by vigorous patrol combat. In
mid-August, the Marines located and engaged the original island garrison in
positions about 6,000 yards west of Kukum beyond the Matanikau River. Then on
the 21st, a reinforced enemy battalion which had just landed east of the
perimeter rushed the Marine defenses along Alligator Creek, often misnamed the
Tenaru River. The Japanese force was destroyed.
The same fate befell a brigade of 6,000 men which landed on both sides of
the perimeter in late August and early September. Moving through the jungle
with his main body, the enemy commander attempted to launch a three-pronged
attack from inland and both flanks. The spot choosen for the inland drive
through to the airfield was a ridge manned by the original assault troops at
Tulagi whom General Vandegrift had brought over to reinforce his defenses.
Marine raiders, parachutists, infantrymen, pioneers, and artillerymen all had
a hand in the two-day battle to hold the ridge, but when the last enemy
soldier withdrew on 14 September, the position was still in American
possession. The enemy flank attacks planned to accompany the main assault
faded away in the face of strong Marine defenses near the coast.
While the 1st Division was holding its own, helped along by the faulty
reinforcement strategy of the Japanese, the American Navy was suffering the
worst series of reverses in its history. The Japanese and the Americans, the
latter bolstered
9
on occasion by Australian and New Zealand ships, tangled repeatedly in the
waters off Guadalcanal and in the Solomon Sea. Sealark Channel won a new
title, Iron-Bottom Sound, in dubious tribute to the number of ships that sank
there during frequent and costly night battles.
The over-all score of ships lost from August through December was
staggering, but in the final analysis hurt the Japanese more than the
Americans because of the differing replacement potential of the two nations.
Two American carriers, 6 cruisers, 13 destroyers, and a score of smaller
vessels were sunk; many more ships were severely damaged. The Japanese lost
one carrier, two battleships, three cruisers, and eleven destroyers and had at
least an equal number damaged.
The decisive factor in the sea battles in the Solomons was Allied air.
The CACTUS Air Force and carrier squadrons exacted a heavy toll of transports
during Japanese reinforcement attempts, and often evened the tally when enemy
warships that had come out ahead in an exchange of gunfire and torpedoes at
Guadalcanal were caught retiring toward Rabaul.
On 18 September, the 7th Marines arrived on Guadalcanal from Samoa, just
in time to test themselves against a Japanese force that had landed west of
the Matanikau. In a succession of sharply fought engagements lasting through
9 October, the 1st Division turned back the enemy attackers, exacting a heavy
toll of dead and wounded for the attempt to break through the perimeter. The
arrival of the division's missing regiment was followed on 13 October by the
landing of the first infantry regiment of the Army's Americal Division to
reinforce the Marines.
10
The soldiers were assigned their own sector of the defense line to hold and
took part in the repulse of the heaviest Japanese offensive of the campaign
during attacks which lasted from 21-28 October.
The enemy strength at the start of the October offensive had reached
20,000 men, while General Vandegrift's command had grown to 23,000. Many of
the combatants on both sides were in poor health, however, and the figures do
not reflect men at peak combat efficiency. Tropical diseases found easy prey
among men weakened by mental and physical strain and a shortage of rations;
both the Japanese and Americans had difficulty keeping any more than a bare
subsistence level of supplies on the island. Thousands of the Marines within
the perimeter and in the front-line positions suffered repeated attacks of
malaria and other fevers, yet they held on because they had to. For the
Japanese in the jungle, the case was even worse as medicine and doctors were
in short supply, food often failed to reach assault troops, and hundreds of
the enemy died of malnutrition and disease.
November was the critical month in which the issue of the campaign was
decided. Despite terrible losses, the Allied naval forces, aided by CACTUS
Air Force, won a four-day sea and air battle for control of the waters of the
lower Solomons. The 1st Division received further reinforcement from the
Americal Division and from the 2d Marine Division and used these fresh troops
to hammer at the Japanese positions. A month of continuous fighting with
artillery, air, and naval gunfire support
11
all playing a part in the destruction, virtually finished one Japanese
division and elements of another.
On 9 December, General Vandegrift turned over command of the forces on
Guadalcanal to Major General Alexander M. Patch, commander of the Americal
Division, as the 1st Marine Division was officially relieved. The
battle-weary Marines of the 1st, many of them badly in need of hospitalization
as a result of their bouts with tropical diseases, departed in the next few
days for Australia and a much-needed rest. During December and the first few
days of the new year, General Patch regrouped his forces for a drive
calculated to push the Japanese off the island. The 25th Infantry Division
and the remaining units of the 2d Marine Division arrived to join the soldiers
of the Americal in the final offensive.
The XIV Army Corps was organized under General Patch's command to control
the actions of the three divisions. On 10 January, the corps launched its
attack west along the coast toward Cape Esperance, the tip of the island. The
advance was hotly contested in its first days, but the Japanese gave way
steadily before the combined Army-Marine offensive. Late in January, when
intelligence was received of a build-up of enemy shipping at Rabaul, the
American advance was slowed. Thinking that this news might presage a
large-scale reinforcement attempt as it had many times previously, General
Patch wanted to keep his combat forces concentrated enough to repel a
counterlanding. But the Japanese ships were being readied for another
reason--the evacuation of Guadalcanal.
12
The enemy had had enough. He wished only to rescue the troops still
alive on the island to fight another day. In the first week of February,
during a series of daring night runs by destroyer transports, about 13,000
Japanese were taken off Cape Esperance. On 8 February, General Patch could
report "Total and complete defeat of Japanese forces on Guadalcanal...."
In winning control of the island, Marine and Army units had over 1,500
officers and men killed and 4,700 wounded in action. The Japanese lost 14,800
killed and counted another 9,000 dead from wounds or disease; a thousand
prisoners, most of them labor troops, were taken. Both sides lost about the
same number of fighting ships and crewmen in the battle for control of the
seas, perhaps the most costly naval campaign in modern history. In the air,
the balance weighed heavily in favor of the Allies who accounted for 600 enemy
planes and pilots and lost less than half as many in return. An accounting of
comparative losses during the Battle for Guadalcanal only emphasizes the
importance of the campaign. The seizure of the island from the Japanese was
the all-important first step forward on the road to Tokyo, the signal of the
end to a year of retreat and the switch to the offensive.
13
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cates, eds. "The Pacific: Guadalcanal to
Saipan. August 1942 to July 1944 --- The Army Air Forces in World War
II," v. 4. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950. pp. 37-60.
LtCol Frank O. Hough, USMCR, Maj Verle E. Ludwig, USMC, and Henry I. Shaw, Jr.
"Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal---History of U. S. Marine Corps Operations
in World War II," v. I. Washington: Historical Branch, G-3 Division,
Headquarters, U. S. Marine Corps, 1958. pp. 235-374.
Jeter A. Isely and Philip A. Crowl. "The U. S. Marines and Amphibious War."
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951. pp. 72-165.
Richard W. Johnston. "Follow Me! The Story of the Second Marine Division in
World War II." New York: Random House, 1948. pp. 24-81.
George McMillan. "The Old Breed: A History of the First Marine Division in
World War II." Washington: Infantry Journal Press, 1949. pp. 25-142.
John Miller, Jr. "Guadalcanal: the First Offensive---The War in the
Pacific---United States Army in World War II." Washington: Historical
Division, Department of the Army, 1949. xviii, 413 pp.
Samuel Eliot Morison. "Coral Sea, Midway and Submarine Actions, May
1942-August 1942--"History of United States Naval Operations in World War
II," v. IV. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1949. 245-296.
-------------------. "The Struggle for Guadalcanal---History of United States
Naval Operations in World War II," v. V. Boston: Little, Brown and
Company, l950. xxii, 389 pp.
Robert Sherrod. "History of Marine Corps Aviation in World War II."
Washington: Combat Forces Press, 1952. pp. 65-129.
Maj John L. Zimmerman, USMCR. "The Guadalcanal Campaign." Washington:
Historical Division, Headquarters, U. S. Marine Corps, 1949. vi, 189 pp.
14
These items and much more can be found at The Marine Corps Research Center (MCRC)
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