Challenge for the Pacific

to the west of the perimeter, it could be supplied along the coastal road. It could also depend upon Marine artillery registered to fire anywhere along the entire defense.

In reserve, Vandegrift held one infantry battalion and most of the tank battalion. Regimental commanders all held a third of their strength in reserve, as did lesser commanders down through companies.

It was a neat and efficient cordon depending upon the mobility offered by interior lines, and it had, of course, that single exception on the Matanikau. But it was here, from the Japanese assembly area at Kukumbona, that Archer Vandegrift expected the main thrust.

And he was wrong.

Lieutenant General Haruyoshi Hyakutake still depended upon the Sendai Division then marching south to deliver the main blow in his three-pronged assault involving 22,000 men.

General Maruyama was to attack at a point a bit east of the area in which General Kawaguchi had met defeat. His seven thousand men were to seize the airfield, the very nerve center of the American defense.

To assist him, Hyakutake had arranged for a reinforced battalion of the 38th Division to land to the east of Koli Point. This “Koli Detachment” would be boated and ready to land on order.

On the west, Hyakutake planned a heavier distraction. Here he would use a tank-infantry-artillery unit under Major General Tadashi Sumoyoshi, commander of 17th Army artillery. Sumoyoshi’s guns had already been at work battering the enemy airfield and perimeter. Now they would support the remnants of Colonel Nakaguma’s Fourth Infantry Regiment as they charged across the Matanikau River mouth behind sixteen tanks. Farther inland, Colonel Oka’s composite force would cross the river to flank the Americans on Hill 67. Then, while Nakaguma was striking the enemy at the river mouth, Oka would turn north to come in behind the American battle position and isolate it.

In the meantime, Rabaul would mount sustained aerial attacks, covered by Zeros based on Buka and the new field at Buin on southern Bougainville. Combined Fleet’s battleships and heavy cruisers would crush the Americans with sustained bombardment. Once the airfield was captured, Yamamoto’s eagles would fly in to operate from it. His gunfire ships would cut off the American retreat.

All depended on the capture of the airfield, all depended on the peerless Sendai striking from their secret position to the south.

They would not, they could not fail. Guadalcanal airfield should again be Japanese by the morning of October 22.

October 22?

Isoroku Yamamoto was annoyed. What was wrong with the Army? First, the deadline had been moved back from October 17 to October 20. And now there was another postponement of two days. The huge Guadalcanal Supporting Forces had been at sea since October 11, at sea doing nothing; doing nothing and consuming fuel. Was the Army not aware that a fleet feeds on oil? All the Army had to do in Operation Ka was supply a few divisions of men; they had not contributed so much as a single airplane—and here they were dragging their feet again.

While they did, the Americans would surely reinforce. Isoroku Yamamoto did not subscribe to any of those wildly optimistic evaluations of the American change of command, especially not the one predicting “withdrawal of all American naval forces from the South Pacific.”¹ Yamamoto could only admire the daring skill which had brought off the Doolittle raid on Tokyo. He did not think that a rude, aggressive man like Halsey—with his insulting boast that he would ride the Emperor’s white horse down Pennsylvania Avenue—could have the slightest intention of withdrawing. Halsey would attack, he would reinforce; and the Army was playing into his hands.

And there, Yamamoto was exactly right.

The Big E was coming back to battle. The mighty proud flattop that had been in almost every action since the Pacific War began was whole again, the damage she had suffered August 24 during the Battle of the Eastern Solomons had been repaired. On October 16 she cast off her last lines and stood out to sea from Pearl Harbor.

On her flag bridge was Rear Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid, bareheaded and shirt-sleeved as always among his helmeted and jacketed sailors, pacing the deck with binoculars around his neck. Kinkaid was to take tactical command of South Pacific Force after his own carrier and screen had made rendezvous with Hornet and her screen. Then, for the first time since Wasp went down on September 15, the Americans would have two carriers to oppose the Japanese.

Enroute to the rendezvous area, Kinkaid received a message from his new chief, Halsey, urging him to proceed at all possible speed. Kinkaid obeyed. But he could never join Hornet before daybreak of October 24.

And that, according to Hyakutake’s timetable, was just two days too late.

Masao Maruyama was almost in tears. Kawaguchi had been right. The terrain was incredible. And that unspeakable Captain Oda, could he not have realized that if his lightly equipped trailblazers could very easily crawl up and down these terrible cliffs, heavily laden combat troops could not?

Every one of Maruyama’s men carried sixty pounds of personal equipment, besides machine guns or grenade launchers. Each man carried an artillery shell. They had no mules to pull the guns, 37-mm antitank pieces, 70- and 75-mm howitzers. All the division’s horses had been left in Rabaul. The only way to get the artillery up and down the cliffs was by hand and by ropes. It was impossible to do this in daylight because of the American aircraft. It had to be done at night; as a result, the artillery was dropping far behind.

Thirty-five miles, that was all that they had to go, and yet, after five days marching, the advance guard had gone only twenty-nine. Six miles of foul, impenetrable jungle still lay between them and the assembly area. And these were the Sendai! These were the men of Colonel Furumiya’s matchless 29th Infantry who had marched 122 miles in seventy-two hours.

But the men had been splendid. They had gone on half-rations without a murmur, and they plodded on inspired by the sight of officers who also were hungry, who also carried guns or artillery shells. Nor had the Sendai forgotten its heritage. Each morning the march was renewed with the memorable words:

“I am your Commander-in-Chief, you are my strong arms…”

Each time the men seemed to be on the verge of collapse their officers rallied them by turning them to face toward the Emperor, to sing:

“Corpses drifting swollen in the sea depths,
Corpses rotting in the mountain grass…”

They sang with tears streaking their mud-caked cheeks, uncaring if American patrols were in the vicinity. But for all their endurance, for all their sacrifice, General Maruyama knew by October 21 that he could not possibly make the deadline. He radioed General Hyakutake back in Kukumbona that he would have to postpone the attack until October 23.

It was October 22 and it was obvious that Admiral Kakuta’s flag carrier Hiyo was not going to be of use. Hiyo had developed engine trouble. Her power-plant, originally designed for a merchant ship, could not provide the speed required by a carrier. Kakuta sent Hiyo back to Truk at her top speed of six knots and took his flag, together with the Emperor’s picture, aboard his last flattop, Junyo.

On October 23, General Maruyama had reached the end of his march. He set up his headquarters on a rise called Centipede-Shaped Ridge and made his final dispositions.

The point he chose to attack was slightly to the east of the ridge at which General Kawaguchi had met defeat. Unknown to Maruyama, it was defended by the Marine battalions commanded by Chesty Puller and Herman Henry Hanneken.

Facing north toward the sea, the Japanese right consisted of the 29th Infantry, with antitank guns, mortars,