Challenge for the Pacific

big plane’s motors coughed. It began thundering down the runway. Roy Geiger blanched. The Fort had not enough take-off speed. Suddenly the pilot shut off power and slammed the brakes, and the plane began to slide.

It slid almost the length of the strip and came to a halt with its distinguished nose hanging over the edge of the field not far short of the trees.

Admiral Nimitz went meekly to the back of the plane and the Fort finally took off safely.

It was not too soon. For the rain had stopped and clearing weather suggested that the noon raid in the enemy’s mounting aerial onslaught would be down on schedule.

It was on September 25 that Rabaul received the reinforcements required to crush the enemy to the south: one hundred Zeros and eighty bombers were brought to Vunakanau and Lakunai fields. Two days later the attack began.

Thirty-one bombers struck at Henderson in the raid that knocked out communications between Vandegrift and his Matanikau forces, but the Navy and Marine fighters who intercepted them shot down six Bettys and five Zeros at no loss to themselves.

Next day close to sixty of the Emperor’s eagles came winging down and the Americans shot down twenty- three bombers and one Zero. Jubilant, Vandegrift radioed Noumea: “Our losses: no pilots, no planes, no damage. How’s that for a record?”

When September came to an end, three of Henderson’s Marines were the top aces of America: Major John Smith had nineteen kills, Captain Carl had sixteen and Major Galer had eleven. Since aerial battle began, the Americans had shot down well over two hundred enemy aircraft against thirty-two of their own lost. And the Americans had lost fewer pilots. Japanese fliers, fighting over enemy territory, scorning parachutes as beneath the dignity of the samurai who cannot surrender, usually went down with their aircraft.

Nevertheless such staggering losses were suicidal for the Japanese, and they began October determined to wipe out American fighter strength. A few bombers were used as bait for swarms of Zeros. On October 2 the trick worked: four Americans were shot down, against only five enemy planes, and among them were Major Smith and Major Galer.

Galer had shot down a Betty when a Zero came up on his tail and riddled his Wildcat. Galer knew he would be forced to land, but he wanted to retaliate first. He dove into a cloud as though he was trying to get away. Instead of coming out below, he came out on top—and caught the Japanese waiting beneath him. He pressed his gun button, and both aircraft went down in flames.

It was the second time Galer had been shot down, but he landed safely in a field and walked home.

Major John Smith crashed in the jungle. He jumped from his Wildcat and began running west. His breath came as quickly as his perspiration but he kept running through the silent, eerie jungle, hastening to get out of it before dark.

It was dusk when Smith reached the Ilu. He forded the river and ran through a wood into a field of kunai grass. Across the field he saw two men in a vehicle. He thought they were Japanese. Then he heard them yelling in English and ran up to them.

It was Colonel Cates and his jeep driver. Cates had heard that Smith had been shot down. He had studied his map to calculate the route he would take if he were in Smith’s place, and he had driven to the field and waited there.

Smith poured out his thanks in an Oklahoma drawl, rueful, meanwhile, at the loss of his lucky baseball cap and his failure to destroy his plane. But even this was vouchsafed him by the solicitous Cates. A patrol from his First Marines found and burned Smith’s plane and brought back his baseball cap.

Next day, quickly recovering from the enemy’s stratagem, the Wildcats resumed their old team tactics, as well as their slaughter of enemy aircraft; while Dauntlesses and Avengers, joined by Flying Fortresses from New Hebrides, went ranging up The Slot to strike at the Tokyo Express again.

Even the pessimistic Admiral Ghormley sent Hornet and a screen against the enemy massing in the Shortlands, although the carrier strike was thwarted by the bad weather upon which Hyakutake and Mikawa had been counting.

Alone in August, the Marines had held; at bay in September they had fought the enemy off; but now the month of crisis was at hand: October was beginning with those monsoon rains and moonless nights which lay like a concealing cloak over troops of the Sendai Division then sailing steadily south.

PART FOUR Crisis

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

IN ALL the Imperial Japanese Army there was no unit more illustrious than the 2nd or Sendai Division. It had been founded in 1870 when the Emperor Meiji, making a modern Japan, organized a modern army. Into its ranks came sturdy peasant youths recruited from the Sendai region north of Tokyo, and although they were not samurai, they demonstrated, during the savage Satsuma Rebellion of 1877, that they could fight the warrior-caste on even terms or better.

The Sendai considered themselves the Emperor’s own, and their motto was a couplet taken from Meiji’s rescript to soldiers and sailors:

Remember that Death is lighter than a feather,
But that Duty is heavier than a mountain.

The Sendai fought in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95, and in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 the division distinguished itself by capturing Crescent Hill at Port Arthur in a bloody night attack. The Sendai were also distinguished for their ferocity during the Rape of Nanking in the Chinese War, they had fought the Russians at Nomonhan, and had had an easy time of their invasion of Java.

For two years between action in Manchuria and Java, the Sendai was at home replenishing its depleted ranks with young recruits. Many of its soldiers sailing south to Guadalcanal in this October of 1942 could remember, with swelling hearts and misting eyes, the day on which they went off to war. In each town the entire community assembled to honor the departing conscripts. The mayor read to them portions of the Imperial Rescript:

“I am your Commander-in-Chief, you are my strong arms. Whether I shall adequately fulfill my duty to the Ancestors depends upon your fidelity… If you unite with me, our courage and power shall illuminate the whole earth.”

Regimental commanders such as Colonel Masajiro Furumiya of the peerless 29th Infantry succeeded the mayors, bowing to the audience to say, in a typical speech delivered in ringing tones: “As the dying leopard leaves its coat to man, so a warrior’s reputation serves his sons after his death. You will see that these sons of yours will be nurtured by the Army. They will be given the courage that will impel them to leap like lions on the foe. In the moment of national crisis our lives are no more significant than feathers, and immense treasures are as valueless as the dust in your streets. Each subject, as each least handful of earth, is in the service and possession of the Emperor.

“Tomorrow,” he told the recruits, “you will report to your regiment, but today, before you leave, you will observe the ancient ritual of your fathers. You will say farewell at the cemetery before the tombs of your ancestors, and receive from them all the inherited loyalty for the Emperor that your family’s generations have cherished.”¹