Edson stood with his hands on the butt of the big six-shooter he wore, Western style, smiling his cold smile while making sure that the men were stripped down for battle.
“Don’t worry about the food,” he told a company commander fretting about the absence of rations. “There’s plenty there. Japs eat, too. All you have to do is get it.”1
Edson was not leading the attack personally. Lieutenant Colonel Sam Griffith would do that. Griffith was another hard professional, but with an intellectual side. He was a Chinese scholar, a Marine who could write as well as fight. Shortly before eight o’clock, with the British Residency and other buildings on the southeastern tip enshrouded in smoke, Griffith and the Raiders sped for the northwestern end of the little, boot-shaped island. At eight o’clock their Higgins boats grated to a halt on coral shoals and assault riflemen leaped into the surf.
They sank into waist-deep water. Many of them floundered beneath heavy loads and went under. Others slipped on slimy coral underfooting and also sank. Yanked to their feet by their buddies, they struggled shoreward. They emerged with blood streaming from hands and knees torn by cruel coral. Fortunately, no enemy fire spat from the jungle and they plunged into its murk. At 8:15 A.M. Griffith signaled:
“Landing successful, no opposition.”
Now the Raiders moved swiftly. They were two thirds up the island. They scaled a steep grim cliff to their front and wheeled right. They drove southeastward along the cliff’s spine and sloping sides. Behind them, the Second Battalion, Fifth Marines, under Lieutenant Colonel Harold Rosecrans crossed the same landing beaches and swung left. Rosecrans’s men were to clear the northwestern third. They struck out quickly and found the territory undefended. They turned again and moved in behind Griffith in support.
Throughout the morning the Raiders moved over rough, jumbled ground, working through rocks and trees, keeping clear of shore trails covered by enemy cliffs. At noon they spilled into the former Chinese settlement on the island’s north coast, and there the Japanese struck back.
Mortar shells began to fall. Marines toppled. Lieutenant (j.g.) Samuel Miles, a physician, rushed to help three badly wounded men and fell dead, the first casualty of the campaign. A company commander was wounded. The Marines moved more warily against these rickety Chinese shacks and the tempo of their advance slowed. Late in the afternoon, Edson, who had come ashore, called a halt.
The Marines held a line running roughly from Carpenter’s Wharf on the north to a small clubhouse south of the Residency. It was not really a continuous line, rather a position held by Raiders in hastily scooped two- or three-man foxholes—sometimes connected with each other, more often not—with the Second Battalion, Fifth, backing them up.
Red Mike Edson calculated that there were about three hundred Japanese defenders in front of his men, and he expected that they would counterattack that night.
Rabaul’s counterattack was already underway.
Upon receipt of the Tulagi message, Vice-Admiral Gunichi Mikawa had ordered the 25th Air Flotilla to send twenty-four Betty bombers bound for New Guinea to Tulagi-Guadalcanal instead. Then he called in the Tainan Group’s fighter leader, Commander Tadashi Nakajima. He showed him the target area. Nakajima was thunderstruck. Six hundred miles to the target and six hundred back! Even if his Zeros could land at Buka on Bougainville on the way back, they would still be flying the longest fighter mission ever. Mikawa did not care.
“Take every Zero that will fly,” he said.
Nakajima protested. “This is the longest fighter mission in history. Not all of my men are capable of making it. Let me take only my twelve best pilots.”2
His eyes blazing, Mikawa shoved the Tulagi farewell over the table. Nakajima read it and stiffened. Very well, then: eighteen Zeros for Guadalcanal. Nakajima left the shack and told an orderly to recall the men waiting in cockpits for the New Guinea mission. They came back—Sakai, Nishizawa, Ota, Lieutenant Sasai—the best of Japan’s aces, and they wondered at the anger on Nakajima’s face. Handing out maps of the Solomons, he told them quickly of the American strike. Lieutenant Sasai’s face blanched. He stared straight ahead and said softly: “My brother-in- law was assigned to Tulagi.”3 Nakajima ignored him and rapped out the distance to the target. The men gave low whistles of disbelief. Nakajima ignored them too and snapped: “We will take off at once for Guadalcanal.”
The pilots broke up into trios. Saburo Sakai turned to his wingmen, Yonekawa and Hatori. “You’ll meet the American Navy fliers for the first time today. They are going to have us at a distinct advantage because of the distance we have to fly. I want you both to use the greatest caution. Above all, never break away from me. No matter what happens, no matter what goes on around us, stick as close to my plane as you can. Remember that— don’t break away.”4
Yonekawa and Hatori nodded. Why break away anyway? Saburo Sakai had never lost a wingman.
Turning, the three pilots joined the others sprinting for their Zeros. They climbed into cockpits and watched two dozen Bettys go thundering down the runway ahead of them. At last Commander Nakajima lifted his hand over his head. Within ten minutes all of his fighters were airborne.
In Tokyo, reports of the American invasion did not unduly disturb Imperial General Headquarters. Army General Staff’s chief reaction was one of surprise to find that the Navy had been building an airfield on “this insignificant island in the South Seas, inhabited only by natives.”5 An intelligence report from the Japanese Military Attache in Moscow claimed that there were only 2000 Americans involved and that they intended to destroy the airfield and withdraw.6 The enemy operation was nothing but a reconnaissance-in- force. The report was believed, although both Army and Navy agreed that the Americans should be ousted before they could put the airfield into operation.
General Gen Sugiyama, chief of Army General Staff, spent the morning hunting for a unit to do the job.
Admiral Osami Nagano, chief of Naval General Staff, passed a more active day. First, he had received Admiral Mikawa’s radioed request for approval of his proposal to launch a night surface attack against the American fleet. Nagano had been appalled. A night attack in the narrow, uncharted water of The Slot seemed too risky. But his staff, arguing that this was a chance to hit the Americans hard, persuaded him to approve Mikawa’s plan. He signaled:
“Execute.”
Next, Nagano directed Combined Fleet to give first priority to the recapture of Guadalcanal. Admiral Yamamoto immediately set up a supreme Southeast Area Force and notified Vice-Admiral Nishizo Tsukahara on Saipan to take charge of it. Tsukahara, commander of the Eleventh Air Fleet, quickly made provisions to lead the cream of his command to Rabaul for action next day. Tsukahara now superseded Mikawa.
Admiral Yamamoto also began gathering all available ships and planes for a massive sortie. Characteristically, he considered the Solomons invasion as one more chance to destroy the enemy fleet. It was not Guadalcanal that was important to him; it was the fact that the American Navy was gathered there in force and could be annihilated in decisive battle.
Thus the importance of Guadalcanal to Japan’s military leaders: General Sugiyama, echoed by General Hyakutake, thought it a mere nuisance which might interfere with the Port Moresby operation and must therefore be quickly squelched, Admirals Nagano and Yamamoto saw it as an opportunity to regain the naval edge lost at Midway.
Nevertheless, Nagano thought enough of the event to report it to Emperor Hirohito. Putting on dress whites, Nagano went to the Emperor’s summer villa at Nikko. Alarmed, more prescient than his admirals, Hirohito said he would return to Tokyo.
“Your Majesty,” Nagano protested, “it is nothing worthy of Your Majesty’s attention.”7 Nagano showed the Emperor the report from Moscow, and Hirohito stayed in Nikko.
Gunichi Mikawa was overjoyed to receive Naval General Staff’s order to attack. He had already ordered Rear Admiral Aritomo Goto to sortie from New Ireland with Eighth Fleet’s big sluggers, heavy cruisers
Mikawa had also attended to reinforcements for the Solomons garrisons. Hyakutake had been of no help, as Mikawa had expected, insisting that he could not spare a man from the Port Moresby operation. So the admiral had
