Islands of Destiny: The Solomons Campaign and the Eclipse of the Rising Sun (13 page)

Due to the few messages received from the front, Rabaul knew little of the real situation on “Cactus,” as the Allies code-named the island. In Tokyo, IGHQ believed Marines aimed to raid Guadalcanal, not conquer it. Emperor Hirohito was not so sure. Acording to his naval aide, when told of the landing Hirohito wondered whether it was the beginning of an Allied counteroffensive. The emperor proved nearer the mark than the high command. Intelligence put American strength at just 2,000 men, a gross underestimate. The command decided to match that by sending the Army regiment previously tagged to capture Midway, Colonel Ikki (often rendered as Ichiki) Kiyonao’s 28th Infantry, presently camped on Saipan. Japanese Army circuits on August 8 carried traffic between 17th Army (Rabaul) and Saipan, plus Davao, rear base of the South Seas Detachment and camp of Major General Kawaguchi Kiyotake’s 35th Brigade, already slated as a later reinforcement. Kawaguchi went immediately to Rabaul for consultations. The landing of Ikki’s troops led to another great naval battle.

While preparations were made to transport the Ikki detachment, the Japanese harassed Cactus. That began with submarines. Here too the Imperial fleet was caught flat-footed. Concentrating against shipping off Australia, Rear Admiral Kono Chimaki’s Submarine Squadron 3 operated in the Outer South Seas. Kono had a boat of the smaller RO-type off Port Moresby, another cruising near Townsville, Australia, plus fleet boats
I-121
and
I-122
at Rabaul and
I-123
then servicing at Truk. Rear Admiral Tamaki Tomejiro’s Submarine Squadron 7 had four I-boats off Australia, one in the New Hebrides, and one at home. Tamaki had just been ordered to Japan, so 7th Squadron simply mustered the boats available in the Mandates and the South Pacific and sent them to the Solomons.

Kono’s 3rd Squadron led the attack. They were too late. The I-boats at
Rabaul left on invasion day and reached Cactus on August 9, just after Kelly Turner departed. Lieutenant Commander Kuriyama’s
RO-33
arrived from Papua twenty-four hours later. Lieutenant Commander Ueno Toshitake had sortied from Truk in
I-123
on August 7 and approached Ironbottom Sound ninety-six hours later. Admiral Kono recalled
RO-34
(Lieutenant Commander Morinaga Masahiko) from northeastern Australia, and she patrolled off Guadalcanal’s southern tip but found nothing. Morinaga made up for his bad luck by relaying messages from Japanese lookouts at Taivu Point.

The Japanese subs owned these waters for weeks. With no way to differentiate individual enemies, Marines called the irritating undersea craft “Oscar.” The
I-121
and
I-122
reported shelling Guadalcanal numerous times, and both also communicated with the lookouts. Lieutenant Commander Norita Sadatoshi’s
I-122
stayed in Ironbottom Sound until ordered away to support fleet operations. When reporter Richard Tregaskis crossed the sound in a launch bound for Tulagi, to gather accounts of the biggest firefight of the invasion, a sub chased the little flotilla of three motorboats. The next day, August 13, an I-boat surfaced in broad daylight to bombard. At night, subs fired star shells, interrupting Americans’ sleep. Lieutenant Jack Clark of the Navy boat unit recorded that Oscar used to surface around midnight and make high-speed runs up and down the sound, creating waves that pushed his boats farther up the beach, making them harder to refloat. Oscar typically shelled at 6:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m., Clark recalls. Meanwhile, profiting from the subs’ dominance, several times Imperial Navy destroyers came to bombard Lunga Point too. Because Vandegrift had no coast artillery, the Marines were powerless against them. A captured Japanese 75mm was wrestled into position on the shore, and Marines used field artillery to fire seaward. On August 14 a gunner rejoiced that his 105mm howitzer of I Battery, 11th Marines, had hit a submarine. Japanese officers simply learned to surface outside gun range, and destroyers stayed there too.

During late August, by Tregaskis’s account, submarine shells fell on Guadalcanal about every other night. When SOPAC mounted its first resupply sortie, the fleet used fast destroyer-transports timed to arrive at night, minimizing the submarine threat. Lieutenant Commander Fujimori Yasuo’s
I-121
filed a sighting report of Allied cruisers and destroyers
approaching Guadalcanal on August 22, which led to the torpedoing of U.S. destroyer
Blue
by a Japanese warship. The next day Commander Morinaga’s
RO-34
launched torpedoes at supply ship
Fomalhaut
and was credited with sinking her. The Marine gunners shot back. Both sides missed, and one of
RO-34
’s expended tin fish washed up on the beach, but the
Fomalhaut
hightailed it away, depriving Cactus once more. The
I-121
,
I-122
, and Morinaga’s boat all received battle honors for their work off Guadalcanal.

As the Japanese submarines harassed the Americans however they could, Tokyo began to realize this was no raid. Guadalcanal would be a campaign, not a battle. Command was reorganized at Rabaul. Vice Admiral Tsukahara Nizhizo of the Eleventh Air Fleet became the new supremo on August 8. He controlled all Imperial Navy ground, maritime, and aerial operations in the Solomons. Tsukahara summoned fresh air groups, including the 26th Air Flotilla as a reinforcement, not a replacement for Yamada’s unit. Admiral Mikawa led Eighth Fleet under Tsukahara’s overall command.

At Hashirajima, where the
Yamato
arrived a few days after the invasion, Combined Fleet staff huddled over their charts. Admiral Yamamoto issued some orders even before the Savo Island battle. His measures included the dispatch of Tsukahara, aerial units, a recall of the heavy cruiser force then in the Andaman Sea, preparations for a midget submarine attack on the Ironbottom Sound anchorage, planning for a fleet sortie, and the creation of a Guadalcanal Reinforcement Unit to specialize in pushing troops and supplies onto Cactus. To lead the latter, Yamamoto chose Rear Admiral Tanaka Raizo of the 2nd Destroyer Squadron, then conducting antisubmarine operations off Japan. Yamamoto summoned the Second and Third fleets. The Third Fleet was Nagumo Chuichi’s re-formed
Kido Butai.
On the afternoon of August 10, in Yamamoto’s cabin on
Yamato
, the staff briefed admirals Nagumo and Kondo Nobutake, of the Second Fleet, on the roles they would play. The fleet would cover arrival of reinforcements on Guadalcanal, while the Japanese Army plus SNLF troops overpowered the enemy. Briefly distracted by an American deception—Nimitz sent a light cruiser toward Japan to mimic a repeat of the Doolittle raid—Yamamoto never wavered.

Radio intelligence became the Allies’ only instrument to watch this first stage unfold. The Imperial Navy was aware of that. Having recently modified their fleet code, the Japanese changed their radio call signs just before Watchtower, and again at mid-August. Allied codebreakers found indications that the Japanese intended to shift presently to yet another version of JN-25. Yamamoto sent key messages from Kure in a seldom-used personal code that had not been penetrated. The fleet also made efforts at radio deception and utilized special single-use codes. Commander Wilfrid J. Holmes, of Station Hypo, notes that the Allies were now reading codes used by the port director at Truk, plus local ones employed in the Marshalls and Carolines, not JN-25. Despite that, traffic analysis permitted a clear picture.

On August 13 Allied intelligence reported dispatches indicating an imminent movement of
Kido Butai
from Empire waters south. Four days later the fleet implemented its call sign change, always a suggestion of impending operations. Intelligence was aware the cruisers returning from the Andamans were scheduled to join the Second Fleet, Yamamoto’s major surface unit, at Truk between the nineteenth and twenty-first. Traffic analysis showed elements of the Second Fleet en route to Rabaul as its main body refueled at Truk.

While the Imperial Navy resorted to radio deception, having other units assume the call signs of their carriers, by August 17 the CINCPAC war diary noted this prospect. Meanwhile movements of destroyers associated with the Third Fleet gave notice that Nagumo was under way. But confusion persisted. That day SOPAC issued an intelligence summary declaring the Japanese carriers, though in Empire waters, were definitely heading south, if they had not already set out. Pearl Harbor felt less certain of the carriers, but confident that a strong effort to recapture Guadalcanal was in the offing. CINCPAC believed a surface fleet might reach Cactus around August 20, but one including flattops could not attack before the twenty-fifth. Captain Layton mentioned potential carrier movements repeatedly, but still located the Nagumo force in Japan on August 20, though he allowed that its tactical exercises could cover a sortie. As late as the twenty-second Layton placed at least Carrier Division 2 at home, despite knowing some messages for its commander were being sent to Truk. Layton’s summary that day explicitly drew attention to the possibility that the
Kido Butai
might have departed, undetected, at any point after August 16. The summary for
August 23 affirmatively located Nagumo at sea, bound for Truk. At SOPAC, Admiral Ghormley had no doubt. He signaled Fletcher in the evening on the twenty-second, “INDICATIONS POINT STRONGLY TO ENEMY ATTACK ON CACTUS AREA 23–26 AUGUST.” However, even Ghormley was uncertain about Nagumo’s fleet, noting in his dispatch, “PRESENCE OF CARRIERS POSSIBLE BUT NOT CONFIRMED.”

The Japanese obtained at least tactical surprise. Kondo’s force steamed out of Hashirajima at 5:00 p.m. on August 11. Nagumo should have gone too but begged for a few more days to train pilots, sailing on the evening of August 16. Yamamoto departed for Truk with the main body at noon on the seventeenth. Emperor Hirohito sent the fleet a declaration of confidence through the Navy General Staff. Meanwhile, at Guadalcanal on the eighteenth, Admiral Tanaka’s destroyers delivered nine hundred troops of Colonel Ikki’s Army regiment. Rather than awaiting arrival of the bulk of his troops and equipment, plus the lead echelon of the Kawaguchi brigade, Ikki led his men in a vain frontal assault across a river against entrenched Marines. The Japanese were wiped out. On this news Admiral Nagumo canceled a stop at Truk and made directly for the battle area northeast of the Solomons. Tanaka, with the rest of Ikki’s troops plus the 5th Yokosuka SNLF, pressed on. When search planes discovered a U.S. carrier at sea on August 20, the die was cast. A sighting the next day confirmed the presence of a task force—Fletcher’s command.

The American game changer would be the “Cactus Air Force.” Watchtower’s objective had been to obtain the almost-completed Guadalcanal airfield, and General Vandegrift had worked overtime to finish it. The 1st Marine Division lacked construction equipment—this had sailed away with Turner’s ships—but the Marines captured a bulldozer, five steamrollers, and the narrow-gauge mining railway. Vandegrift remembers that the two gasoline-powered mine cars were key. There was no other way to move the more than 7,000 cubic yards of earth necessary to finish the runway. There were also cement mixers, thirty tons of high-grade concrete, fifty to sixty tons of steel plate, a few hoisters, and two generators. And the 1st Marine Engineer Battalion benefited from the Japanese work, including most of the runway, several bomber-size revetments, five open-sided hangar workshops, and aircraft dispersal areas cut out of the surrounding coconut palms. Marines declared the runway complete on August 12.

Several days later American destroyer-transports came to Lunga Point to deposit Lieutenant Colonel Charles L. Fike, executive officer of Marine Air Group (MAG) 23; a portion of his staff; sailors of CUB-1, a naval base unit, who substituted for mechanics; ammunition and parts; 400 barrels of aviation gas; and 300 bombs. Captured gasoline had impurities making it unsuitable for U.S. aircraft engines, but here were resources for combat. On August 20 Fike christened the base for Lofton Henderson, a Marine pilot lost defending Midway Island.

That day escort carrier
Long Island
launched the first planes for Henderson Field. They became the Cactus Air Force. This initial group comprised nineteen Wildcat fighters of Major John L. Smith’s VMF-223, plus twelve Dauntless dive-bombers of Marine Squadron VMSB-232. Another squadron of each was still in the pipeline. With the
Long Island
then the only U.S. escort carrier in the Pacific, the buildup would be slow. Army Air Force planes appeared on August 22 with Captain Dale Brannon, a flight of five P-400s of the 67th Fighter Squadron. The Cactus Air Force suddenly threatened every enemy ship and unit within its air range.

The new battle began with a convoy carrying the troops who were the focus of the KA Operation. This was Admiral Tanaka’s reinforcement unit. Tanaka, his destroyer squadron shorn of its divisions and reassembled with assorted warships, worried they would not cooperate well, but he had Admiral Mikawa’s firm decree to move the Ikki and SNLF troops. Tanaka’s fast destroyers had delivered Ikki’s advance guard in good order, though the Army wasted that success with its stupid attack. One destroyer that stayed at the landing point was damaged by a B-17, forcing her return to Truk in company with a second; then a third was hit by U.S. carrier aircraft, clinching suspicions of the presence of Fletcher’s task force. Tanaka turned his slow convoy around to mark time, ignoring conflicting orders from Mikawa and area commander Tsukahara. Then he learned U.S. aircraft had arrived at Henderson Field, strengthening his foreboding. Tanaka drew blood when destroyer
Kawakaze
, detached for a futile mission, torpedoed U.S. destroyer
Blue
. Meanwhile Mikawa radioed that the Japanese surface and carrier forces would be in place on August 23, giving Tanaka a position for that day, plus instructions to prepare the troop arrival for the twenty-fourth.
But on the twenty-third, about two hundred miles from Cactus, Tanaka again received conflicting orders, with Mikawa directing him to head north, requiring a one-day postponement, while Tsukahara charged him to proceed as planned. Atmospheric disturbances played havoc with radio transmission, preventing Tanaka from resolving this dilemma.