MIKAWA BROKE OFF THE MAIN ACTION AND TURNED NORTH...

Mikawa  broke off the main action and turned north, completely disregarding a precious opportunity to get at the American transport. But Japan had gained a great see victory and Yamamoto was properly grateful. He messaged: "Appreciate the courageous and hard fighting of everyman of your organization. I will expect you to expand your activities . . ." Mikawa did not escape all together unscathed, however.  Submarine S-44 was on warpatrol off the coast of New Ireland the following morning and as the homeward bound task force passed close abroad, Lieutenant Commander John R. "Dinty" Moore fired a spread of torpedoes at cruiser Kako at down she went within five minutes.

     Meanwhile, Fletcher with his three carriers began a retirement towards Noumea and Turner followed a few hours later with the other ships at Guadalcanal.   Vandegrift was furious. He had been left with barely enough supplies for thirty-seven days; had been left in his own picturesque language, "bare ass." The only thing he did have was the Navy's solemn promise to bring reinforcements and supplies as soon as possible.   But now the unpalatable prospect facing the Marines was apparent: Japanese air, surface and submarine forces would shortly manifest themselves in great numbers, and the Marine General braced himself. On August 15 Ghormley's promised reinforcements arrived in part. The Marines were cheered by the site of destroyer-transports Calhoun, Gregory, Little, and McKean closing the beach through Ironbottom Sound (the dolorous nickname for Savo sound.) Aboard  were bombs, aviation gasoline and approximately one hundred and fifty men of Cub One, a Navy Construction Battalion, who were to help build the airstrip which the Marines subsequently named Henderson Field, in memory of a pilot lost at Midway. Much of the Corps' bitterness since Turner's pull out evanesced in a welter of full stomachs and feverish unloading of cargoes. Again, on the 20th, three APD's steamed it to Guadalcanal waters to bring the Marines one-hundred tons of supplies.

 In Rabaul, meanwhile, Lieutenant General Haroushi Hyakutate had arrived fresh from Tokyo's tea houses to command the Nineteenth Imperial Army. Unlike Vandegrift, Hyakutate was a book soldier who lived by the Imperial manual. The manual told him that "the character of the American is simple and lacking in tenacity and battle leadership . . ." and "if they have a setback, they have a tendency to abandon one plan for another . . ." The Japanese general was then gathering his army. It was to be  composed of crack combat units stationed in China, the Philippines, Singapore and Borneo, and on paper at numbered some 50,000 troops. Already on hand was Colonel Kyono Ichiki's detachment of nine hundred and sixteen men. By the process of simple deduction, this appeared enough to begin chewing up the estimated 10,000 Marines.

      On August 21 Marine patrols found thirty-one soldiers of a Ichiki's force along the sandy banks of the Tenaru river; thirty-one were killed. This was only the beginning of the first of many great Marine battles fought on Guadalcanal. It opened at 1:30 A.M. along a narrow sandbar barely fifty yards long, two-hundred bayonet-fixed Japanese raged across towards marine positions, screaming and shouting at a typical banzai charge. They were led by saber-waving officers who charged I previously across the shallow into the teeth of rifle, machine gun and grenade fire-withering fire which cut down a number of the officers and map but did not stop the charge from crossing the river. Marines fought bayonet to bayonet,  knife to knife, smashing at hurling back the insanely shrieking enemy.  By daylight, every enemy soldier who attained the Marine position was dead, and those who managed to crawl away into a nearby Coconut Grove were later killed by a Marine charge late in the afternoon. Ichiki, found dead with a bullet in his brain, had burned his colors at the end of the battle. Fletcher Pratt, biographer of the Marine Corps, remarks that in the colonel's diary a precise schedule was found: "August 17. The landing. August 20. The March by night at the battle. August 21. Enjoyment of the fruits of victory . . ."  The Tenaru river battle was written into Corps history as a model of coordination, firepower and marine fortitude. . .

      On August 20 the converted merchantmen Mormacmail, now the jeep carrier Long Island, steamed in with two Marine squadrons of Wildcats and Dauntless dive-bombers. On August 24 carrier Enterprise contributed her entire complement a dive-bombers. And by the end of the month still another air group of the Combat Air Transport flew in. The pitched an often-lopsided battles of these few against countless Zero's and Betty's were many.  Yet the marine at Navy pilots somehow held their own, for everything depended on keeping Henderson Field operational. On August 24 another see battle, which had been threatening since Mikawa's victory, took place in the eastern Solomons. It was an unqualified American victory, which not only consolidated our position on Guadalcanal but saw the end Of Japanese carrier Ryujo and a 10,000 ton transport brimming with troops.

      But the very next day the destroyer-transports Calhoun and Little were sunk by Japan's 25th Air Foltilla from Rabaul, while it was covering a run, down through The Slot, of the so-called Tokyo Expres–the enemy's destroyer-transport ferrying service to Guadalcanal.  The raison d'etre of the Express was to being in troops–despite American efforts to the contrary, but never ending supply. Usually coming down on the dark of the Moon (nights were normally of 12 hours' duration), the Express became the nemesis of our destroyers and PT boats patrolling in The Slot.

     For the Navy this was a period of parry and thrust, with the third major naval engagement looming on the horizon. For the Marines it was a time of waiting, for Vandegrift fully anticipated a large scale attack from the 4,000 enemy troops estimated to be on the island. The generals list of grievances was growing in inverse  proportion to his dwindling aircraft and human casualties, and he was not only angered but alarmed. So was the Naval high command under whom he operated. We had started this desperate campaign on a shoestring, with less strength than the Japanese, and our losses had made the unfavorable margin even greater. Everything possible was being done and would be as the Navy took blow after blow, punching hard in return. The bitterly fought campaign of knock-down, drag-out battles on the sea, ashore and in the air, had  no parallel in the war. No more gallant epic can be found in the Navy's long role of heroic service to the country.

     Although Vandegrift strengthened his eastern flank, a major enemy attack developed on the night of September 12 along the Lunga River, which pushed back Captain John B. Sweeney's company to within 1,500 yards of Henderson Field. The screaming charges  or punctuated with cries of "Roosevelt die! Marine pigs!" The demoniacal fury of the attacks against a curtain of Marine fire ended in death for most, while survivors were hauled off into the jungles before daylight. (Coincidental with banzai charges, Japanese warships roamed the waters off Guadalcanal with impunity, lobbing in shells and dropping green flares for the troops.)

     At sea,  September 15 was a bad day. Carrier Wasp was torpedoed by an enemy submarine and was given a coup de grace by a destroyer went all attempts to save the ship failed.

     Reinforcements for both sides steadily poured into Guadalcanal: Hyakutate with the first of 25,000 men, and the United States Army's 164th infantry Regiment of the Americal division, which had been stationed in New Caledonia.   To cover the arrival of the 164th, Ghormley scraped together everything he could find to provide an escort of three task groups; one of these was the cruiser and destroyers under Rear Admiral Norman Scott. Simultaneously, the enemy stepped up his air raids on Henderson Field. On the afternoon of October 11 Scott's Task Force 64  received intelligence indicating that a large cruiser-destroyer force was moving down The Slot at high speed.  WE WILL INTERCEPT.  ALL SHIPS PREPARE FOR ACTION, signaled the admiral.

     The enemy force coming down was Rear Admiral Arimoto Goto's Bombardment and Guadalcanal reinforcement groups aggregating three heavy cruisers, eight destroyers and two seaplane tenders, packed with reinforcements and supplies for the Imperial Army.

      At 10 PM Scott's force was patrolling in the waters off Cape Esperance, the northernmost tip of Guadalcanal.  The flagship, San Francisco, was at the head of the cruiser column, followed by Boise, Salt Lake City and Helena; in the van were destroyers Duncan, Laffey, and Fahrenholt; and Buchanan and McCalla brought up the rear.   At 10:28 PM, Scott ordered a course change which put task force 64 on a line with Savo island, where he hoped to intercept. At 10:52 PM, the first of a series of sighting reports from Scott's floatplanes reached the flagships bridge: ONE LARGE AND TWO SMALL VESSELS X WILL INVESTIGATE X

      Scott closed steadily, confident in his battle plan. At 11:52 PM, during a night described in dispatches as "black as spades, punctuated by occasional flashes of heat lightning," Helena's new radar reported a contact 27,000 yards distant. This was swiftly  followed by Boise's report of five "pips." Helena's Captain Gilbert C. Hoover requested permission to fire, at the moment later Captain Edward C. "Iron Mike" Moran of Boise asked the same. Permission was granted instantly, and the battle broke out.

     Helena's first salvo drew blood, her 8-inch shells raining down in profusion on the unsuspecting Japanese force; Salt Lake City took on a cruiser four thousand yards off her starboard bow and had the satisfaction of seeing her shells rip into Goto's flagship at almost point-blank range, while the destroyers flailed away at anything they could find, big or small.  The story of Boise's battle is told by Frank D. Morris, the biographer of the celebrated warship.

-S. E. Smith