History Pgs. 32-65
10/9/06
5:27 PM
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THE MARINES
GUADALCANAL FIRST OFFENSIVE
Seventeenth Army contained many veterans of the conquests of Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, currently the best jungle fighters in the world. The 1st Marine Division in August 1942 included about one man in ten who had seen previous combat, typically in Central America. The great majority of the Marines were green recruits or newly commissioned lieutenants who had joined the Corps in the wave of patriotism that swept the nation at the news of Pearl Harbor. Vandegrift figured to divide his landing force on D-Day. The 1st Marines and most of the 5th Marines would seize Guadalcanal’s airfield. The 1st Marine Raider Battalion, 1st Parachute Battalion, the 2d Marines, and the remainder of the 5th Marines would capture Tulagi and the nearby islets of Gavutu and Tanambogo. The airfield became the first and final key to the battle for Guadalcanal, and Vandegrift never wavered in his appreciation of its operational value. He would hold on to the grassy strip against the howling forces of hell. Shortly after 6 A.M. the cruisers and destroyers opened a noisy fire against both sets of landing objectives. Eight months to the day after Pearl Harbor, the United States Navy and Marines had launched a major amphibious offensive against the startled Japanese garrisons in the southern Solomons. The 5th Marines led the way at Guadalcanal, splashing ashore at 9:09 A.M. from their hodgepodge assortment of landing boats. An eerie silence prevailed. So total had been the surprise that only a handful of rikusentai guarded the whole island. The 5th Marines, hardly trusting their good fortune, pressed on, crossed the river by means of an improvised bridge thrown along the broad backs of LVT-1 Alligators, then headed guardedly toward the airfield.
As General Vandegrift studied his crude maps of the area, he could vividly see the emergency that prompted the Joint Chiefs of Staff to order an amphibious assault so precipitously. New aerial photographs revealed ominous evidence of Japanese construction troops busily carving a long runway out of Guadalcanal’s jungles. Japanese bombers flying out of Guadalcanal would jeopardize tenuous American positions for hundreds of miles, from New Caledonia to New Guinea. Such a forward base would create a giant “bulge” in the vital sea-lanes between the United States and Australia, further constricting the flow of war materials being shipped to the South Pacific. Vandegrift’s division, the cutting edge of the Fleet Marine Force, would go into combat equipped with World War I weapons and equipment – the same Springfield ’03 rifles, tin hats, and crude gas masks that their fathers may have worn at Belleau Wood. The Imperial Navy had suffered an irreversible defeat at Midway, but the Combined Fleet still commanded the sea and air in the South Pacific. Attaining strategic surprise in launching the attack would be crucial to the Marines’ success since the unsuspecting Japanese currently maintained only modest forces in Guadalcanal and Tulagi. The problem was this: The islands could be reinforced rapidly by the Imperial Navy forces steaming down a line of islands (The Slot) from the great naval fortress at Rabaul. Likewise, from its welldeveloped circle of tactical airfields around Rabaul, the Japanese air arm could launch day and night attacks throughout the Solomons. Rabaul also served as headquarters for the Seventeenth Japanese Army, commanded by Lieutenant General Haruyoshi Hyakutake. The
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