GUADALCANAL IN AMERICA

Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands.  Idyllic, isn’t it?  Everybody’s dream of a South Seas island paradise.  But it wasn’t in 1943.  On a moonless night back then, an American PT boat was tracking a Japanese convoy.  All ships were "running dark" with no lights.  Suddenly, a Japanese destroyer was on top of the PT boat, ramming it before the crew could get their boat out of the way.

Their boat sunk, the crew swam to this island, and were subsequently rescued.  An insignificant tale, save for the fact that the PT boat was numbered 109 and captained by Navy Lieutenant John F. Kennedy, who 17 years later would become President of the United States.  That’s why the name of the island is Kennedy Island.  (The original native name is Kisolo.)

One can only imagine the rage, disgust, and contempt he would feel over his successor’s treatment of his fellow World War II veterans by physically preventing them from visiting the memorials that honor them in Washington.

PT109 was run down on the edge of "The Slot," the watery passage between the Solomon Islands from Guadalcanal to Bougainville. 

At the south end of The Slot is Iron Bottom Sound.  I’m looking out across it as I’m writing this.  It’s cobalt blue beautiful and placidly peaceful.  It’s called Iron Bottom Sound because so many Japanese and American warships lie sunk in it.  Here’s the map.  Yes, all those labels in red mark where a US or Japanese ship was sunk during the Battle of Guadalcanal.

Words like "epic" and "monumental" only whisper the barest hint of the scale of heroism and horrific struggle overcoming ridiculous incompetence to win the most massive and destructive naval battle history had ever seen. It all began with an airfield built by the Japanese.

Within six months after Pearl Harbor, by May of 1942 the Japanese had seized the Philippines, Singapore, Malaya, Burma, all of what is now Indonesia (then the Dutch East Indies), and much of New Guinea along with neighboring New Britain.  Then they moved to take over Britain’s colonial protectorate of the Solomon Islands.

When the Allies learned the Japanese were building a large airfield on Guadalcanal (with Korean slave labor), they realized Australia was the next target.  If US and Allied forces were ever to stop fighting defensively and start going on the strategic offensive against the Japanese, that airstrip had to be taken and held as the very first step.

On the night of August 6, 1942, 16,000 barely trained Allied troops (mostly US Marines) armed with bolt-action 1903 model Springfield .30-06 rifles and 10 days of ammo landed on Guadalcanal and other islands surrounding Iron Bottom Sound.  They were all secured within 48 hours, and the fanatical attempt to retake them, especially the airfield, by the Japanese began.  The Commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was determined to get Guadalcanal back at whatever cost.

The Marines named the airstrip Henderson Field after Major Lofton Henderson, the first Marine aviator to die in air combat at the Battle of Midway (June 4, 1942).  We think of the Marines in the Pacific taking islands from entrenched Japanese, like Tarawa and Iwo Jima.   But Guadalcanal was the reverse.  For the next three months, Yamamoto ordered assault after assault after assault upon Guadalcanal and Henderson Field, landing thousands upon thousands of troops, shelling it with naval artillery, and bombarding it with fighter aircraft.

Every one failed.  To read accounts of the constant fighting and battles, Marines hand-to-hand hunting down Japanese in the Guadalcanal jungles, the never-ending attempts of the Japanese soldiers to defeat them all to no avail, month after month just leaves you breathlessly awestruck at American grit, guts, and heroism.  It is truly staggering.

And that’s on the island.  Then there’s the battle at sea.  That’s even more astounding.  Prior to the decisive engagement, the US had lost two aircraft carriers, the Wasp sunk by a submarine torpedo, and the Hornet sunk by an opposing Japanese carrier that also severely damaged a third US carrier, the Enterprise.

The final effort of Yamamoto to take Henderson Field came on November 12, 1942.  A huge task force steamed into Iron Bottom Sound that night, and was met by a US force commanded by Rear Admiral Daniel Callaghan, so brain-dead he didn’t put the ships with advanced SG radar in front and didn’t even issue a battle plan to his ships’ captains.

Communication between the US ships was fubar.  Callaghan wouldn’t issue orders to commence firing, and when the Japanese ships opened up, he ordered, "Odd ships fire to starboard, even ships fire to port," but no ship by now knew who was which.  It was chaos, "a barroom brawl with the lights out."  The Japanese lead battleship Hiei was heavily damaged yet attacked Callaghan’s flagship San Francisco, hitting the bridge and killing Callaghan.

Four US destroyers and three light cruisers were sunk, while one Japanese battleship, two destroyers, and seven troop transports were sunk – just on that one night.  1,439 US seamen were killed, and up to 800 Japanese.  As Yamamoto had failed to get his soldiers onto Guadalcanal, he ordered his task force to regroup and attack again.  It entered Iron Bottom Sound late at night on November 14.

It was met by a US task force organized by Admiral Bill Halsey and commanded by Admiral Willis Lee, far more competent than Callaghan.  It was an incredibly brutal knife-fight at sea, with three more US destroyers lost along with another 293 seamen.  But the Japanese lost another battleship, another destroyer, four more troop transports, and 1,100 crew.  Only a fraction of the Japanese soldiers made it to Guadalcanal, and without food and ammunition.

Within two weeks, Yamamoto gave up and ordered the evacuation of all his soldiers on Guadalcanal.  The US campaign to hold Henderson Field had been costly – over 7,000 US dead, 29 ships sunk, 615 aircraft shot down.  But Japan’s to take it was far more so – over 31,000 dead, 38 ships sunk, and over 800 aircraft downed. 

Japan retreated, the tide of battle had turned, never again would Japan be on the offensive.  The US and her Allies had beaten Japan’s best straight up, on land, at sea, and in the air.  The defeat of Japan in World War II began at Guadalcanal.  As the commanding theatre general of the IJA (Imperial Japanese Army), Kiyotake Kawaguchi, later wrote:

"Guadalcanal is no longer merely a name of an island in Japanese military history. It is the name of the graveyard of the Japanese army."

One of the Japanese troop transports, the Hirokawa Maru, was sunk in 50 feet of water as it attempted to beach at Bonege Creek on Guadalcanal.  It’s now a marvelous dive site.  I made a dive on it yesterday,  making my way through the carcass of the ship, now encrusted with soft and hard corals, coral fans, and huge clams with multi-colored lips.  Gorgeous reef fish were everywhere, with orange and white clown fish hiding among swirling anemone tentacles.

It was dive I won’t forget, for as I was immersed in the visual spectacle all around me, I couldn’t help thinking of what happened here 71 years ago.

The men who turned the tide of the War in the Pacific seven decades ago achieved victory at enormous cost.  They are beyond heroic.  To see them dishonored and shabbily treated by this scumbag president we are suffering under is beyond intolerable.  This has to be the last straw in this scumbag presidency.  We need a Guadalcanal in America.   

The fascist pigs of the National Park Police are under the explicit directive to behave like Gestapo thugs by their Thug-in-Chief.  The very least any of us can do is get to a National Park and tear down the Barrycades.  Especially at the Iwo Jima Memorial.  Three cheers for the Syracuse Honor Flight!  Note their wheelchairs didn’t stop them.

If anything can bring down this Fascist Police State that America is so tragically becoming it’s civil disobedience.  And defying and tearing down the Barrycades at National Parks and War Memorials is where to begin.

This Sunday, October 13, there is supposed to be a Million Vet March on the WWII Memorial in Washington.  Let’s hope they beat the crap out of any NPP fascisti who try to stand in their way.  Guadalcanal in America.  Let’s pray it’s coming and not a moment too soon.  We need to turn the tide against Fascism in America.  Now is the time to go for victory.

(Note:  The best book on the battle is Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle by Richard Frank.)