Challenge for the Pacific

had an earlier and human existence elsewhere. These young Marines thought of themselves as the best fighters in the world, although the only fighting they had done had been with an occasional soldier or sailor unfortunate enough to come home on leave to New River or nearby Jacksonville, or with each other in the unpainted shacks which followed them to the boondocks and sold them beer at fifteen cents a bottle and canned patriotic ballads such as “Goodby Mama, I’m Off to Yokohama,” at five cents per sentimental song. Sometimes moonshiners visited the pine woods where the First Marine Division lived in pup tents and slept on the ground. The moonshiners sold the Marines jugs of that potent corn whisky called “white lightning.” Navy medical corpsmen and physicians who operated the battalion aid stations known as “sick bays” always could tell when the moonshiners had been around: there were twice as many men on sick call and the gentian violet had to be spread thin to cover all that bruised and battered flesh.

Even so, the interfamilial brawling was a good sign. The men were developing an esprit. Each squad thought itself the best in the platoon, each platoon the best in the company and so on up through battalions and regiments. Riflemen regarded machine gunners as second-wave softies, the gunners looked down upon mortarmen as “rear-echelon bastards,” while the sight of clerks and technicians—to say nothing of artillerymen, about as common as a colonel in a pup tent—filled them all with stuttering rage. This is what is called the mystique of the Marine: the one man who might possibly have been the point in a battalion attack contemplates everyone else not so engaged with withering contempt. A man perhaps as much as five yards behind the lines is asked, “Where were you when the stuff hit the fan?”

All of this, nevertheless, was mere training; it was all very lighthearted, and the real thing, the fiery crucible of combat, seemed far away.

It seemed to General Vandegrift to be very far away, for he still considered his division many months short of combat-readiness. None of the new arrivals—and few of the battalion commanders—had been through a full-dress ship-to-shore landing maneuver. They had to be content with a wooden mock-up of a ship built beside Onslow Beach. Cargo nets were thrown over the side of this ungainly Trojan seahorse and the men clambered down them in full gear. Worse than this, far worse, were the mid-April levees on the division.

Lieutenant Colonel Merritt (“Red Mike”) Edson had arrived from Washington with authority to comb Vandegrift’s division for the best officers and men to fill his First Raider Battalion. Vandegrift could only fume— silently. He knew that President Roosevelt fancied having an American counterpart of the British commandos, although the Marine Corps Commandant, General Thomas Holcomb, shared Vandegrift’s aversion to making an elite out of an elite. Unfortunately, FDR had become infected by Winston Churchill’s penchant for military novelty, and because Roosevelt was actually very fond of the Marine Corps—he sometimes said “We Marines” in conversations with Holcomb⁶—he conferred this unwelcome enthusiasm on his favorite service. FDR’s oldest son, James, was to be executive officer of the Second Raiders under the famous Lieutenant Colonel Evans Carlson.

After Edson departed from New River, leaving the Fifth Marines[2] slightly skeletonized, the worst blow fell. Vandegrift was ordered to beef up the Seventh Regiment with his best men, weapons and equipment and to send it to the Samoan Islands. The general despaired. Into the Seventh had gone many of his finest battalion commanders, tough and aggressive patrol officers from Haiti and Nicaragua, Marines such as Chesty Puller and Herman Henry Hanneken who knew how to handle troops in jungle warfare. Now Vandegrift had to build again. For what? More raids? Was he to spend the war training troops for other men to command?

On April 15—five days after the Seventh shipped out—Vandegrift’s gloomy doubts were joyously dispelled. He was notified that he was to take the rest of his division to New Zealand. He was to train there preparatory to going into action as the Landing Force of the newly established South Pacific Amphibious Force.

The South Pacific Area and Force had only just been established. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had already divided the Pacific Theater into the Southwest Pacific Area, commanded by General Douglas MacArthur from Australia, and the Pacific Ocean Area, commanded by Admiral Chester Nimitz from Hawaii. But because Nimitz’s area was so vast, it was decided to subdivide it. The South Pacific Area was therefore created, with its commander responsible to Nimitz. This commander was to be Vice-Admiral Robert L. Ghormley. On April 17, Ghormley received this vague and hardly inspiring message from Admiral King.

“You have been selected to command the South Pacific Force and South Pacific Area. You will have a large area under your command and a most difficult task. I do not have the tools to give you to carry out that task as it should be. You will establish your headquarters in Auckland, New Zealand, with an advanced base at Tongatabu. In time, possibly this fall, we hope to start an offensive from the South Pacific. You will then probably find it necessary to shift the advanced base as the situation demands and move your headquarters to meet special situations.”

For a striking force a single untrained and understrength Marine division, for support a shortage of ships and airplanes and hundreds of other invaluable items such as bulldozers and runway matting—and yet, Admiral Ernest King was already preparing the Pacific counteroffensive. He was adhering to his own admonition, “Do the best with what you have,” and he was waiting for the Japanese to overreach.

Unknown to King, he had already set in motion the operation that was to force the Japanese hand next day.

The lookout on the Japanese picket boat sighted airplanes overhead. He could not make out their identity, but surely, only 700 miles from Tokyo they could not be enemy. Nevertheless, he went below to wake the captain.

“Planes above, sir,” he shouted.

The skipper was not interested. He stayed in his bunk. The lookout went topside. An hour or so later he stiffened. He saw a pair of carriers on the horizon. Strange. He went below to wake the skipper again.

“Two of our beautiful carriers ahead, sir.”

The captain came on deck and studied the ships through his glass. Color drained from his face. “They’re beautiful,” he said. “But they’re not ours.” He went below and shot himself in the head, for he had failed in his duty to protect the homeland and the Emperor.⁷

The carriers he had seen were Enterprise and Hornet, under command of Admiral Bull Halsey, and the planes were Jimmy Doolittle’s Mitchell bombers speeding for Tokyo and other Japanese cities. Once they had dropped their bombs, they would fly on to Chinese airfields. Meanwhile, Enterprise and Hornet were streaking for home at top speed.

A few hours later, the American ships tuned their radios to Tokyo. An English-speaking propagandist came on the air. He explained that of all the countries then at war, only Japan was free from attack. Admiral Yamamoto and the invincible Combined Fleet would utterly destroy anyone foolish enough to approach the shores of the sacred homeland. How fortunate the sons and daughters of Nippon, enjoying today not only the Festival of the Cherry Blossoms, but two fine baseball games as well.

It was then that Bull Halsey heard the air-raid siren.

Japan was stunned. Not only Bull Halsey heard the sirens, but the haggling officers of Naval General Staff and Combined Fleet as well. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto burned with shame. He put on dress whites and called on Emperor Hirohito to apologize. And he came into Naval General Staff headquarters with his sword in his hand.

The Midway operation must be executed.⁸ Obviously, the threat from the east was more urgent than the operation to isolate Australia. The Americans must be pushed back so far that the possibility of another such insult to the Emperor and the Navy would be ended forever. This time Staff agreed without reserve. Its pride had been wounded and its chief, Admiral Osami Nagano, was also full of remorse.

With all obstacles removed, the Midway invasion was set for early June. But then, with a characteristic inflexibility so baffling to westerners, acting upon the national conviction that a course undertaken must be followed, Naval General Staff blandly continued its own operation against Australia.

Port Moresby and Tulagi were to be invaded and captured in early May. Once again, without being aware of it, Japan’s Naval General Staff was drawing closer to the island named Guadalcanal.