Challenge for the Pacific

All of these landmarks these men could see in that last long searching look made half of hatred and half of a warrior’s poignant love for the battlefield that made him. And they could see also, while motors throbbed beneath their feet, while the transports made the customary sunset departure for the covering darkness of the open sea, they could see a round red sun beginning to set behind Cape Esperance.

It was sinking, like the Rising Sun of Japan, into the dark Pacific. 

NOTES

PART ONE: THE CHALLENGE

CHAPTER ONE

1. Morison, Samuel Eliot, The Two-Ocean War: A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World War (Boston: Little, Brown, 1963), p. 35.

2. Fuchida, Capt. Mitsuo, and Okumiya, Masatake, Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan (Annapolis: United States Naval Institute, 1955), p. 48. (Imperial General Headquarters was composed of two sections or divisions. The Navy Section was presided over by the Chief of the Navy General Staff and the Army Section by the Chief of the Army General Staff. These two sections “consulted” on strategy, operations, and allocation of forces. After an agreement was reached, a “Central Agreement” was drawn up and signed by the section Chiefs. Each Chief issued orders to his subordinates and they, in turn, were to consult each other at the lower, implementing level. Thus, the Japanese military operated on the basis of “cooperation” rather than on the American basis of “control” or “unity of command,” and this, as will be seen, was not always conducive to clarity.)

3. Ibid, p. 11.

4. Clear, Lt. Col. Warren J., Close-up of a Jap Fighting Man (Infantry Journal, November 1942), p. 16.

5. Sakai, Saburo, with Caidin, Martin, and Saito, Fred, Samurai: Flying the Zero in WW II with Japan’s Fighter Ace (New York: Ballantine Books, 1963), p. 72.

6. Feldt, Cmdr. Eric A., R.A.N., The Coastwatchers (New York and Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1946), p. 78.

7. Clemens, Martin, A Coastwatcher’s Diary (Unpublished manuscript on file at Research & Records [R&R], Historical Branch, G-3, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps), p. 4. (In this passage, and all other quotations in pidgin English, I have taken the liberty of altering Clemens’s faithful presentation of that lingua franca as it is spoken by the Solomon Islanders to what I believe may be a more readable form of pidgin.)

8. Halsey, Fleet Adm. William F., and Bryan, Lt. Cmdr. J., III, Admiral Halsey’s Story (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1947), p. 101.

9. Vandegrift, General Alexander A., and Asprey, Robert B., Once a Marine: The Memoirs of General A. A. Vandegrift (New York: Norton, 1964), p. 61.

10. Pierce, Lt. Col. P. N., The Unsolved Mystery of Pete Ellis (Marine Corps Gazette, February 1962), pp. 34, 40.

11. Smith, General Holland M., Coral and Brass: Howlin’ Mad Smith’s Own Story of the Marines in the Pacific (New York: Scribner’s, 1949), p. 177; and Davis, Burke, Marine!: The Life of Chesty Puller (Boston: Little, Brown, 1962), pp. 71, 72.

12. Davis, op. cit., pp. 71, 72.

13. Vandegrift and Asprey, op. cit., p. 25.

14. Author’s recollection.

15. Ibid.

CHAPTER TWO

1. Ito, Masanori, The End of the Imperial Japanese Navy (New York: Norton, 1956), p. 18.

2. Ibid, p. 19.

3. Ibid, p. 36.

4. Fuchida and Okumiya, op. cit., p. 57.

5. Ibid, p. 60.

6. Vandegrift and Asprey, op. cit., p. 100.

7. Halsey and Bryan, op. cit., p. 103.

8. Fuchida and Okumiya, op. cit., p. 71.

CHAPTER THREE

1. Clemens, op. cit., p. 17.

2. Ibid, p. 34.

3. Hara, Cmdr. Tameichi, with Saito, Fred, and Pineau, Roger, Japanese Destroyer Captain (New York: Ballantine Books, 1961), p. 97.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid, p. 99.

6. Morison, Samuel Eliot, Coral Sea, Midway and Submarine Action, Vol. IV. “History of the United States Navy in the Second World War” (Boston: Little, Brown, 1960), p. 98.

7. Clemens, op. cit., p. 43.

8. Ibid, p. 50.

9. Butterfield, Roger, Al Schmid: Marine (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1944), p. 57.

10. Ibid, p. 58.

11. Vandegrift and Asprey, op. cit., p. 102.

12. Ibid, p. 105.

13. Ibid, p. 111.

CHAPTER FOUR

1. Clemens, op. cit., p. 52.

2. Fuchida and Okumiya, op. cit., p. 75.

3. Ohmae, Capt. Toshikazu, The Battle of Savo Island (United States Naval