Challenge for the Pacific

pressed the gun button. No response. He was out of ammunition. Undaunted, Conger still flew at the Zero. He hung on his nose and brought his propeller under the enemy’s tail. The Zero swerved, and broke in two.

Now Conger’s plane was going over in a vertical dive. He fought wildly to bring it out. It still fell. Conger strained at his escape hatch. He could see Iron Bottom Bay rising up toward him, growing larger. It was as though a great steel-gray griddle had been catapulted upward, flying up, up, and up, expanding until it was a monstrous obliterating roundness. Conger struggled with the hatch. He thought he would never get out, that the huge griddle would shatter him, and then, at 150 feet, he was out in the air, his parachute was blooming overhead, and he was into the griddle, his body jarred as though he had been slammed on the soles of his feet with an iron bar.

Just before he went under, Conger saw his Wildcat crash in the coconuts. Then he was going down deep, only to have his swift descent arrested by his rigging. He surfaced, treading water, slashing with a knife at the smothering shroud of the parachute. Twenty feet away another pilot floated gently down into the water.

He was Japanese.

A rescue boat sped toward Conger. It reached him and reduced speed. Conger was hauled aboard. Then the boat came about and headed for the Japanese pilot. Conger called to him to surrender. The Japanese pilot held his breath and sank out of sight. He came up beside the boat, kicked at it, and tried to shove himself away. Conger grabbed a boathook and snared the man by his jacket. The man struggled, snarling with hate. Conger leaned forward to boat him. The Japanese dug his hand under his armpit and whipped out a huge Mauser pistol. His malevolent eyes only inches from Conger’s startled ones, he pressed the pistol to his benefactor’s temple and pulled the trigger.

Click!

Conger tumbled backward, thinking: I’m dead! He was not, nor was his enemy who, failing to return death for life, attempted to take his own by placing the pistol to his own head, producing only a second exasperating click. Conger seized a water can and slammed it down on the man’s head. Unconscious, he was dragged into the boat and taken to Guadalcanal.

Where the two enemies became good friends.

Mitchell Paige’s men had found their peaches. Dugout Sunday’s sun had picked it out in the jungle beside the ridge. The moment the men had seen it glinting there, like a lost jewel, they whooped and went scrambling down to retrieve it. Men with American names—Leiphart, Stat, Pettyjohn, Gaston, Lock, McNabb, Swanek, Reilly, Totman, Kelly, Jonjeck, Grant, Payne, Hinson—they squatted on their haunches in the drying mud and ate with great relish the only food they would get that day.

Then they dove for their foxholes, for Admiral Kakuta’s Junyo had turned south again and her dive-bombers and Zeros were overhead.

To the east, almost exactly between Chesty Puller’s position on the left and Paige’s ridge on the right, Lucky and Juergens squatted on a ridgetop talking. They, too, heard the sound of motors—and almost too late.

A Zero came skimming down their ridge like a skier. They sprawled flat, bullets spurting dust around them. The Zero thundered over them and banked. Juergens dove into his dugout and dragged out his machine gun. He began setting it up, cursing. Lucky ran toward him. But the enemy fighter-plane was coming in to strafe again, and Juergens went sprawling again while Lucky whirled and ran for the edge of the ridge. The Zero pursued, roaring, spitting bullets, shedding tinkling cartridge cases. Lucky jumped and fell six feet, rolling down the hillside while the Zero went roaring out over the jungle roof. Then he scrambled back up the ridge and ran to squat beside Juergens.

Again, the Zero turned and made for the ridge.

“C’mon, you son of a bitch,” Juergens swore. “You won’t find it so easy this time.”³

In came the enemy plane, again spitting bullets, and the Marine gun was hammering its reply—and then a pair of Airacobras rose like genies from Henderson Field to the rear, catching the unsuspecting Zero full in their cannon sights and blasting him into a shower of debris.

One more of a total of twenty-six Japanese planes had fallen to Henderson’s fliers—while out beyond Florida Island Henderson’s bombers had caught Yura and were pounding her beneath the waves.

Before sunset the Japanese cruiser was a wreck. Naval and Marine dive-bombers had flown four attacks against her, Flying Fortresses had come up from Espiritu to multiply her wounds—and she was finally abandoned and sunk by her own destroyer, Yudachi. Destroyer Akizuke was also racked, and had to be beached on Santa Isabel Island. Her four sisters fled.

Dugout Sunday had seen the complete rout of the attempt to put the Koli Detachment ashore on eastern Guadalcanal.

It was not Sunday but Saturday in the United States. On the East Coast it was a sunny autumn afternoon. Football crowds flocked to the stadiums along sidewalks bordered by yellowing maples. In Washington the Joint Chiefs of Staff were in session. One of the first matters to be discussed was a message from the Commander-in- Chief. It said:

“My anxiety about the Southwest Pacific is to make sure that every possible weapon gets into that area to hold Guadalcanal, and that having held it in this crisis that munitions and planes and crews are on the way to take advantage of our success.”⁴

President Roosevelt had taken a direct hand. But he had taken it on the very day on which a vast concourse of ships and men had departed East Coast ports bound for North Africa.

Even though Roosevelt requested the Joint Chiefs to canvass the entire armaments situation over the weekend, even though Admiral King might be pleased that the White House was now so concerned over Guadalcanal, all of the Joint Chiefs realized that there was at that moment very little to be spared for the South Pacific.

And by nightfall there would be one valuable ship less.

President Coolidge was sliding into Segond Channel at Espiritu Santo. The big Army transport carried the 172nd Infantry Regiment of the 43rd Division. Her civilian skipper kept her straight on course toward a minefield. Patrol craft signaled desperately, shore blinkers winked wildly—but Coolidge sailed on.

Then she blundered into two mines and began to sink. She went down slowly; all but two men were rescued. But the 172nd’s guns and gear were gone, together with the ship that was to have taken them to Guadalcanal.

Admiral Nagumo’s turnaround and run north had widened the gap between his fleet and Admiral Kinkaid’s carriers. By midday of Dugout Sunday Hornet and Enterprise were west of the Santa Cruz Islands and about 360 miles southeast of Nagumo.

Kinkaid was uncertain of the enemy’s position. A Catalina had detected Nagumo’s ships at noon, moving southeast again, but had lost them in a squall. Rather than await the enemy’s pleasure, Kinkaid decided to launch both searching and striking flights from Enterprise.

They found nothing. When planes of the strike returned after dark, the first one crashed on the flight deck and six others were lost in the water.

It was a bad beginning.

Masao Maruyama did not think that a poor start necessarily presaged a bad finish.

At Centipede-Shaped Ridge that afternoon he called for a “final death-defying night attack.” He was committing the 16th Infantry, led by Colonel Hitoshi Hiroyasu, to replace the slaughtered 29th. Both his wings were in place. Colonel Shoji on the right was at last in position. On the left, Major General Nasu was prepared to lead the charge, just as Colonel Furumiya had done the night before.

General Maruyama was sorrowful over the loss of Furumiya. It had been because of him that he had ordered his second and third attacks. Commander of the proud Sendai, Maruyama could not turn his back on an officer who had carried a Rising Sun banner into enemy lines.⁵ Even today he had sent out search parties for the colonel. They had not found him, and Maruyama reluctantly concluded that Furumiya was dead.