Challenge for the Pacific

Tameichi Hara came to see him before he left Truk. Hara was surprised to see that the hero of Pearl Harbor looked so haggard.

“You don’t look good, Admiral,” he blurted.

Nagumo tried to make light of his appearance. “Just a touch of flu,” he said. “Once back home, I’ll be in good shape.”

Hara nodded. “Sasebo’s climate will cure you,” he said. “And you deserve a rest. Compared to your duty, sir, I’ve been on a pleasure cruise.”

“Well, you’ll have a tougher time from now on,” Nagumo said grimly, informing his visitor that all but two of Combined Fleet’s carriers were going home for repairs. Hara was astounded, and then dumfounded to hear Nagumo admit that although Santa Cruz had been a Japanese tactical victory, it was “a shattering strategic loss for Japan.” To offset American replacement capacity, Nagumo explained, Japan had to win every battle overwhelmingly.

“This last one,” he said, “was not an overwhelming victory.”⁴

Saddened, Commander Hara returned to Amatsukaze. He knew that he would soon be sailing his destroyer from Truk as part of the Guadalcanal bombardment fleet. And now, as Nagumo told him, Japan’s precious warships were to be risked without aerial cover.

The next day, November 3, Commander Hara stood on his bridge to watch cruisers Isuzu, Suzuya, and Maya and eight destroyers sortie from Truk. Standing on Isuzu’s flag bridge was Hara’s old chief, Rear Admiral Raizo Tanaka. He was taking his squadron to the Shortlands. Tanaka the Tenacious was returning to the helm of the Tokyo Express, and even as he sailed, the Express’s first run in the new reinforcement operation was making for Koli Point.

One cruiser, three destroyers and one transport were bringing more men and supplies to Colonel Toshinaro Shoji at Tetere. Shoji had arrived at this village east of Koli Point—the place where Mr. Ishimoto murdered the missionaries—after an agonizing march from the October battleground. He brought with him 2500 starving and exhausted men, the remnant of the Sendai Division’s right wing. He expected his badly needed supplies to arrive early in the morning of November 3.

Or roughly at the same time Admiral Kelly Turner’s airfield-building expedition would arrive farther east at Aola.

Martin Clemens was at Aola.

With him were a handful of Marines and his cook, Michael, who had just been discharged from the hospital, his dark face pocked with pink shrapnel scars as mementoes of The Night of the Battleships. Clemens had brought his party to his old headquarters to provide landing beacons for Kelly Turner’s Aola expedition. Three pyramids of logs twelve feet high were built on the beach at intervals six hundred feet apart. At three o’clock in the morning of November 3, in a pouring rain, they were set ablaze.

Clemens and his men stood watching the fire. Firelight made grotesque silhouettes of their lumpy, poncho- swathed figures. The cold rain made their teeth chatter. Then, from the east, Clemens saw the swell of high-speed ships washing over the beach. The wash continued west toward Koli Point. Clemens gazed at the beacons in apprehension.

“I hope they don’t draw crabs,” he muttered.

The Japanese ships had sailed north of Florida Island. They rounded its eastern tip and entered the Bay. Landing beacons were noticed at Aola, but they were considered an enemy trap—a very clumsy one—and the ships pressed west to anchor and unload at Gavaga Creek, midway between Koli and Tetere.

Colonel Hanneken was chagrined. He could see the enemy putting men and supplies ashore, but they were too far away for immediate action. He decided to attack at dawn.

He did, and his Marines collided with Japanese soldiers marching west to Koli. Both sides recoiled, but the Japanese snapped back faster. They struck the Americans with light howitzers and mortars, while working a force around to their rear.

Hanneken withdrew. He pulled back across the Metapona to the west bank of the Nalimbiu, where he had communications wire connecting him with the perimeter. He notified Vandegrift of his predicament and was told to expect aerial assistance.

It came, and it hit Hanneken’s men.

Hanneken called for an end to aerial “assistance,” and it was canceled. And then Vandegrift ordered Hanneken to hold while General Rupertus came over from Tulagi to take command.

Martin Clemens watched his second set of signal pyramids lose its brilliance with the arrival of first light of November 4. Then he saw a quartet of old American four-stack destroyers entering the Bay. Farther out were transports guarded by destroyers. Soon landing boats swung out from the four-stackers and the Raiders of Lieutenant Colonel Evans Carlson went down into them. They came roaring ashore, and the Raiders leaped out to go racing up the beach with fixed bayonets.

They had been told to land as though opposed, and they fanned out quickly into the jungle.

Martin Clemens watched them in amusement, for he was, by then, one of the Old Breed of American Marine. He had been there “when the stuff hit the fan,” and he had the right to say, as the first Marine in history is reputed to have said to the second Marine, “Lissen, boot, you shoulda been here when it was really rough.” And so he was prepared when a Raider racing toward him and Michael came to an astonished halt at the sight of the Englishman in his slouch hat and the native with the face full of scars.

“What kinda disease is that?” the Raider asked, pointing at Michael.

“Bomb disease!”⁵ Clemens snorted, turning to watch, with tolerant disdain, the arrival of the rest of Admiral Turner’s well-dressed and well-fed Johnny-come-latelies.

Not all of the American transports stopped at Aola. Some moved farther west to Lunga Point, bringing General Vandegrift a pair of welcome acquisitions: the Eighth Marine Regiment and two batteries of 155-mm “long Tom” rifles.

The long Toms meant that the days of Pistol Pete’s unchallenged reign were numbered, for the 155 rifles could outshoot the Japanese 150-mm howitzers. The Eighth Marines meant that the attack in the west could be renewed, as soon as Rupertus could clear up the situation in the east.

Listening to reports from Hanneken and Clemens’s scouts, General Rupertus wisely concluded that there were quite a few Japanese to the east. He decided to hold at the Nalimbiu until Chesty Puller’s battalion could come downcoast by boat to take the enemy in his seaflank while Colonel Bryant Moore took the 164th Infantry south to turn north and take the Japanese on his landward flank.

Late that day—November 4—the operation began.

To the west that same day—November 4—soldiers of the 228th Infantry Regiment of the Japanese 38th Division were marching to General Hyakutake’s rescue.

Seventeen destroyers had landed them at Kamimbo and Tassafaronga early that morning. As they came ashore, Major General Takeo Ito, the 38th’s infantry commander, turned them east to Kukumbona.

Meanwhile, General Hyakutake radioed Colonel Shoji at Tetere and ordered him to join him in the west.

Shoji was dismayed at having to forgo the chance to avenge the Sendai. Nevertheless, he left a rear guard of five hundred men at Gavaga Creek and began swinging around Henderson Field along the trail cut by the Kawaguchi Brigade.

Rupertus tried to cut him off with Colonel Moore’s two battalions of the 164th Infantry. But these units, having blundered into each other at night and fought a bloodless battle between them, were unable to halt more than a handful of Shoji’s men. The main body, perhaps three thousand men, had escaped.

Gung ho!