10 Things You Don't Know About Guadalcanal

Today marks the 70th anniversary of the first offensive land operation taken by the United States in World War II. On August 7, 1942, the U.S. Marines landed at Guadalcanal. The general outlines of that battle which lasted which lasted 6 months until February 9, 1943 are known by many but here are 19 things about Guadalcanal that you might not know.

This is the first of my regular "20 Things You Don't Know" posts that I hope will encourage the History Channel to bring back that series. You can read my full mission statement about this in my introductory blog post here. And now on to 10 Things You Don't Know About Guadalcanal:

1. Most of the enemy force on Guadalcanal when the Marines landed on August 7, 1942 were actually ordinary laborers, not combat troops. Of the 2800 enemy personnel on the island, 2200 were laborers, of whom many were Korean, not Japanese.

2. The most hated uniform of WWII met its demise at Guadalcanal. It was the one-piece coverall jungle uniform issued to army troops. The main defect was that when the dysentery suffering troops, of which there were many, had to relieve themselves (or what they called the “Tulagi Trots”), the entire uniform had to be removed. One improvised solution was to use a razor blade to cut the thread in the crotch area and make sure not to wear skivvies. Ultimately the one-piece coverall was replaced by a more practical two-piece jungle uniform.

3. Malaria caused many more American casualties than Japanese bullets on Guadalcanal. One estimate is that every American who served on Guadalcanal between the landing on August 7, 1942 until the official end of the campaign in February 1943 had been infected to one degree or another by malaria.

4. As a result of the many Japanese ships sunk trying to resupply their troops, the waters off Guadalcanal are among the most popular scuba diving sites in the world. Many of these scuba tourists are Japanese.

5. On the morning of August 7, 1942, a Japanese radio operator on Tulagi off of Guadalcanal answered his own question when he keyed off this message to the Japanese base at Rabaul:

LARGE FORCE OF SHIPS, UNKNOWN NUMBER OR TYPES, ENTERING THE SOUND. WHAT CAN THEY BE?

The answer he sent shortly afterwards followed by silence, due to intense shelling:

ENEMY FORCES OVERWHELMING. WE WILL DEFEND OUR POSTS TO THE DEATH, PRAYING FOR ETERNAL VICTORY.

6. The best equipment and supplies that the Marines had in the early days following their landings on Guadalcanal were provided by the Japanese themselves. The landings so surprised the Japanese they did not have time to destroy their equipment at the airstrip which was soon named Henderson Field. Among the supplies left behind were construction equipment, lots of food, and even an ice making machine. The latter must have been very welcome in that tropical environment.

7. The U.S. Navy suffered its worst naval defeat of WWII outside of the Pearl Harbor attack (which can be considered peacetime) at Guadalcanal. On the night of August 8-9 a Japanese force of seven cruisers and one destroyers sank one Australian and three American cruisers near Savo Island off of Guadalcanal. Ironically the Japanese commander, Vice Admiral Gunichi Mikawa was later strongly criticized for not destroying the unprotected American invasion transports following his naval victory. Had he done so, it would have removed the tenuous American foothold on Guadalcanal.

8. A New Zealand longshoreman’s union almost caused the cancellation of the Guadalcanal campaign. Even though New Zealand was facing a dire threat from the expanding Japanese Empire, the unionized dockworkers of Wellington went on strike rather than load American naval vessels with supplies during poor weather for the Guadalcanal invasion. The union refused to budge despite the pleas from the navy so finally the dock workers were ordered off the docks and their places taken by Marines. Unfortunately the loading situation was a mess. The food supplies were packed in thin cardboard and the rains made a soggy mess of much of it. The dock was covered with soggy cornflakes and mushed up chocolate bars. Meanwhile the Marines covered much of Wellington’s walls with profane graffiti describing what they thought of the Wellington dock workers.

9. The marines on Guadalcanal became quite skilled in counterfeiting red “meatball” Japanese flags which they traded to sailors unloading supplies on the beach for candy bars and other products.

10. The number of warships lost by each side during the Guadalcanal campaign was precisely equal: 26 with almost exactly the same amount of tonnage. The big difference was that the Japanese could not replace such losses due to their decreasing industrial output while the Americans were able to vastly increase their supplies and equipment over the course of the rest of the war.

The naval engagement you described took place in the early morning hours of November 15. Two days earlier, on the morning of Friday, November 13, a small US task force of two heavy cruisers, three light cruisers, and eight destroyers went up against two battleships, a light cruiser, and eleven destroyers of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

The battle has often been described as a "barroom brawl after the lights had been shot out". Due to confusion in the American ranks (the senior admiral's flagship did not have radar) they allowed the Japanese to get to almost point-blank range before the battle began. The two formations actually penetrated each other's lines, resulting in one of the most confusing naval engagements in history. There were several occasions when US ships would be engaging multiple Japanese warships on all sides.

The US destroyer Laffey got so close to the Japanese battleship Hiei that the Japanese could not depress their guns low enough to engage her, and she shot up the battleship's bridge with her machine guns.

One of the great tragedies of the battle was when the heavy cruiser San Francisco accidentally shelled the light cruiser Atlanta, hitting her over twenty times with 8-inch rounds, mortally wounding Rear Admiral Norman Scott, and inflicting such heavy damage that the ship had to be scuttled the next day to prevent capture.

In the end, the US force was successful in turning back the Japanese bombardment fleet, but at high cost. The heavy cruisers San Francisco and Portland were heavily damaged, the light cruisers Atlanta and Juneau (sunk by a submarine while limping home) were lost, the light cruiser Helena was lightly damaged, four destroyers (Cushing, Laffey, Barton,and Monssen) were sunk, three (Sterett, O'Bannon, and Aaron Ward) were heavily damaged, and the brand new destroyer Fletcher actually managed to weave through the entire battle without a scratch. Rear Admirals Daniel Callaghan and Norman Scott were killed, as was Captain Cassin Young, who'd received the Medal of Honor at Pearl Harbor.

The Japanese had taken quite a pounding as well. The battleship Hiei was so badly damaged that she was unable to escape and was sunk by US aircraft the next day (some reports suggest that she might have been scuttled), two destroyers were sunk, and most of the other ships were damaged to one degree or another.

As you know, Milne Bay is on the eastern end of New Guinea. My bay is in the central part of the northern shore of New Guinea. If you look on the map we are just west of Vanimo, in PNG, then Jayapura, which used to be called Hollandia, and then Tanah Merah and the village on the inside of the bay is Depapre.

That is so cool about the bracelet. I bet he accompanied the SeaBees because while they built, they needed protection. The fighting was fierce!

BTW, the Japanese even today are regarded with distrust and suspicion by the older people here.

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Thanks PJ-Comix. Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.