Islands of Destiny: The Solomons Campaign and the Eclipse of the Rising Sun (18 page)

The ultimate embarrassment came in the afternoon on September 14, when ammunition at a Rabaul dump ignited, driving everyone into bomb shelters for more than two hours. Munitions continued to brew up all night. Eighth Fleet headquarters sustained damage. A splinter struck next to the armchair where Ugaki had been sitting hours before. Finally a message from Kawaguchi admitted failure. The admiral drew several conclusions from the Imperial Navy point of view. There had been a critical lapse in naval communications when the radio on Guadalcanal tried to move prematurely to the area thought captured. Such movements had to be more cautious. The Navy had also erred by not having someone directly positioned on the battlefield, who could report independently of the Japanese Army. Ugaki could not understand why officers of the various commands at Rabaul—this applied to Tsukahara and Mikawa, exactly reprising Tanaka’s complaint, as well as to Navy and Army—could not simply walk down the street and visit one another. Time together meant better liaison. At air fleet headquarters Ugaki instructed staff to prepare a new plan, negotiating with General Hyakutake for modifications to their local cooperation agreement. Both had underestimated the Americans and overvalued their own strength. A serious effort needed to be made. Ugaki sent a dispatch to Yamamoto at Truk asking him to take the matter up with IGHQ and secure agreement on a plan for a real offensive.

One thing Admiral Ugaki did
not
do in his week at Rabaul was spend much time with Tsukahara Nizhizo. The air fleet leader was in bed with fever and intestinal problems. At first this seemed uncomplicated; then Tsukahara was diagnosed with dengue fever and malaria. He would have to be sent home. The Solomons consumed men as much as airplanes. In an allusion to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, naval writer Ito Masanori decided that Guadalcanal had become the Port Arthur of the Pacific war. As for the emperor, when told of the failed attacks, Hirohito encouraged his commanders, assuring them he remained confident the island could be held. He coupled that generality with a more pointed question to Army chief General Sugiyama as to whether the eastern tip of New Guinea could be seized. The emperor’s underlying purpose was to galvanize his military and naval leaders to greater action. On September 16 Hirohito told Lord Kido of the failure.

Colonel Tsuji now returned after weeks on Starvation Island. He was astonished at Rabaul’s transformation. Suddenly there were signs of battle everywhere. It was not just the burned-out houses. When Tsuji walked outside town he found munitions and tins of food scattered about that must have blown clear in the depot explosions. This was a base at war.

Search planes discovered the convoy carrying the 7th Marines on September 15. The U.S. task force, in fact, was steaming east of the Solomons precisely to protect this movement. That day Henderson Field was spared because the air fleet sent its bombers after the convoy. Bad weather turned them back. The sighting, however, led to the greatest Japanese submarine success of World War II.

Much as men had nicknamed the waters off Guadalcanal Ironbottom Sound, Allied seamen called those south and east of the Solomons, the waters separating SOPAC’s bases from its combat zone, “Torpedo Junction.” These seas were a regular hunting ground for I-boats and quite dangerous. On August 31, Lieutenant Commander Yokota Minoru’s
I-26
had put a torpedo into the carrier
Saratoga
that left her out of action for three months. A week later Commander Shichiji Tsuneo’s
I-11
took a shot at the
Hornet
, saved by an alert patrol plane that deflected the torpedo by dropping bombs in front of it.

Then came September 15. Lieutenant Commander Kinashi Takaichi, on station in the
I-19
, detected sound on the hydrophones powerful enough for a fleet. Kinashi’s boat had survived an air attack during the Eastern Solomons battle, diving quickly to escape the scout bombers. Now he sought revenge. The adversary was a task force with the
Wasp
and
Hornet.
The I-boat gave chase but, submerged, had no chance of catching up, except that the Americans zigzagged across his course. Then
Wasp
turned into the wind to launch aircraft, putting her right in front of Kinashi. The
I-19
emptied all six bow tubes and the torpedoes ran true. In an incredible act of fate, three hit the
Wasp.
Another ran past her stern and on to the other carrier group, passing under the keels of two destroyers to hit the battleship
North Carolina.
One torpedo hit the destroyer
O’Brien
, also part of the
Hornet
task group. Kinashi’s single spread sank a 15,000-ton aircraft carrier, damaging two more warships of 36,500 tons.

Chance and circumstance saved the mobile radio unit that might have been aboard the
Wasp.
Lieutenant Gilven Slonim led this group of five sailors, previously aboard the
Enterprise
and
Saratoga
, and they had been driven from pillar to post. Petty Officer Kenneth E. Carmichael had been standing in a chow line at Pearl Harbor when asked if he’d like sea duty. Carmichael was told to be on board in an hour, and sailed with Slonim in the
Enterprise.
The unit transferred to the
Saratoga
when “Big
E
” suffered damage at the Eastern Solomons, and they had barely found their bunks when
Saratoga
got hit in Torpedo Junction. Slonim’s unit went ashore at Tonga, were shuffled among ships and planes to reach SOPAC, and were on a destroyer preparing to transfer to the
Wasp
when Kinashi’s torpedoes sank her.

With the damage to
Enterprise
and that to
Saratoga
, suddenly the
Hornet
became the only American aircraft carrier in the South Pacific. Dockyard workers at Pearl Harbor, where the
Enterprise
was by now under repair, raced more desperately than ever to return her to sea. The entire campaign could depend on it.

Admiral Ugaki reappeared at Truk on September 18. He huddled with communications specialists over plans to improve radio transmission in the southeast area, notoriously bad, and the procedures for which would be changed at the end of the month, and puzzled over how to improve the fleet’s fuel situation. The Navy burned oil at a rate of 10,000 tons a month, and this had become a problem. At Rabaul the scarcity of tankers limited
deliveries. The Army did not help with its antics to avoid drawing down troop strength in China, culling reinforcements for the South Seas by the regiment, battalion, even company, from places all over Southeast Asia. Finding escorts for these units bedeviled the Combined Fleet, and transporting them burned even more oil. In late September, when Rabaul begged for
Kido Butai
’s intervention because it feared the Americans were about to strike Shortland, there was a fuel shortage at Truk too. The Nagumo force stayed at anchor, because the
Zuikaku
had not quite attained combat readiness, but fuel played a role in that calculation.

Nevertheless the die was cast for a fresh operation on September 28, when a raft of staff officers flew up from Rabaul to confer with Combined Fleet. Its own operations chief, Commander Watanabe Yasuji, returned with them, as did Colonel Tsuji, representing the Army General Staff. Commander Ohmae Toshikazu attended for the Eighth Fleet, and Major Hayashi Tadahiko for the 17th Army.

Colonel Tsuji’s reactions visiting Truk were much like his first impressions of the Imperial Navy base at Rabaul. Warships filled the lagoon, though he was surprised to see only two aircraft carriers. Nearing flagship
Yamato
in a launch seemed like a fly approaching an elephant. Of course, Tsuji knew the Navy nicknamed her the “
Yamato
hotel” because the battleship never seemed to go into combat. Except for the hatches and the pipes that ran everywhere,
Yamato
might actually have been a hotel. But an organic one—a broken pipe, like a blood vessel, might drain its lifeblood. Anyone visiting the huge ship would fear getting lost, so Tsuji’s fantasy was not unusual. But when it came to dinner he was overwhelmed. The staff ate on nice china—fish made into sushi and also broiled, washed down with ice-cold beer. The Army man thought of Guadalcanal, where soldiers were “thinner than Gandhi himself.”

The key conversations took place in flag country, the area of
Yamato
reserved for fleet staff. The officers went there immediately upon boarding the huge battleship. Principals on the Combined Fleet side of the table were Admiral Ugaki and Captain Kuroshima Kameto, senior staff officer. Tsuji presented plans for a major offensive. The Army insisted on a high-speed convoy down The Slot to deliver a full division of troops with their heavy equipment. The 2nd Infantry Division would come from Java for this purpose, while the 38th, training on Borneo (today Sulawesi), could reinforce
if necessary. General Hyakutake would lead in person. Army heavy artillery would fire directly on Henderson Field. Kuroshima told the Army men of the Imperial Navy’s losses, pressing for agreement on moving by fast destroyers. Tsuji demanded transports—the only way to deliver big guns. The Navy did not agree. Seaplane carriers with their heavy-duty cranes were better suited for big artillery pieces. Kuroshima also emphasized that, once they were in motion, fuel would limit the Navy to a fortnight at sea. It is not clear that Tsuji appreciated the significance of that remark.

To break the impasse, Ugaki took Tsuji to Yamamoto’s cabin. The colonel found the admiral drawing Japanese characters in a letter. Tsuji described the plight of the men on Starvation Island. The Navy and Army united at last, in tears, according to Tsuji. Both Yamamoto and he cried. “If army men have been starving through lack of supplies,” Tsuji quotes Yamamoto, “then the navy should be ashamed of itself.” The admiral promised, “I’ll give you cover even if I have to bring the
Yamato
alongside Guadalcanal.” Here came his decision on the fleet staff’s earlier ruminations about battleship bombardments of Henderson Field. Yamamoto insisted on one thing—that General Hyakutake himself travel by fast destroyer, not vulnerable transport. The Navy would extend an air umbrella using the
Kido Butai
, and bombard Henderson Field this time with battleships—fulfilling Yamamoto’s promise.

Admiral Yamamoto had set in motion initiatives that led to the climax of the campaign. At Cactus, General Vandegrift and his colleagues were winding down, congratulating themselves on defeating a big enemy attack. At SOPAC the staffs were grasping at every straw to cobble together viable carrier forces. No Allied commander, whether on Guadalcanal, at SOPAC, or at Pearl Harbor, had any inkling of what was about to engulf them.

^*
There are important discrepancies over both whether Turner’s “extra” search was carried out, and the scope of the Task Force 61 afternoon scouting pattern. The accounts of Bruce Loxton with Chris Coulthard-Clark, on the one hand, and John B. Lundstrom, on the other, investigate these in the greatest depth. Lundstrom, in particular, maintains that Fletcher’s afternoon search reached to within thirty miles of Mikawa’s position, though he presents no direct evidence for that.

III.

A CRIMSON TIDE

Chester Nimitz had had a bellyful. There were the day-to-day frustrations of managing war across the far-flung Pacific and the pressures of finding ships and planes to sustain his line commanders. His Washington masters demanded answers Nimitz did not have, and forced him to defend subordinates in whom he had his own doubts. Both King and Nimitz had lost faith in Frank Fletcher as Pacific carrier chief. King was very critical of Admiral Ghormley in the South Pacific. Early in September the COMINCH and CINCPAC held another of their periodic get-togethers at San Francisco, joined by Navy secretary James Forrestal, just returned from the South Pacific. Ernie King wanted assurances on Ghormley. Forrestal backed the SOPAC, which pleased Nimitz, but returning to Pearl Harbor the CINCPAC found a letter from Ghormley that revived his concerns. Between diatribes on British colonials, dark expressions of suspicion about Ernest J. King, and fears of diminished carrier strength (at a time the
Wasp
had yet to be sunk), Ghormley defended his cautious tactics and suggested he needed no greater authority—where many agreed operational command was precisely what SOPAC lacked.

Admiral Nimitz decided to visit the South Pacific himself. The seaplane carrying his party alighted on the water at Nouméa on September 28. The CINCPAC boarded flagship
Argonne
. Also there were General Henry H. (“Hap”) Arnold, leader of the Army Air Force, returning from an inspection of MacArthur’s command, and General George Kenney, who had come with Arnold for the conference. Nimitz got an earful. Bob Ghormley had worked in his little office on the
Argonne
for months. He had not left the ship, not to visit Marines on Guadalcanal, not even to coordinate with MacArthur. When Hap Arnold chided Ghormley for his sedentary manner, the
SOPAC commander, his back up, told off the Army air boss in no uncertain terms. No one could question Ghormley on how he exercised command.

Nimitz and Ghormley both knew they had been pleading with the Army for planes. The CINCPAC also knew, even if Ghormley did not, that as an informal member of the Joint Chiefs, Arnold had resisted additional aircraft for the Pacific, even torpedoing already approved programs in favor of sending more to Europe. Only recently had Arnold agreed to provide some of the new, higher-performance P-38 fighters to the South Pacific. Antagonizing Hap Arnold was not smart, even less where Hap had a point. The SOPAC’s exhaustion was obvious even to George Kenney. “I liked Ghormley,” Kenney recorded, “but he looked tired and really was tired. I don’t believe his health was any too good and I thought, while we were talking, that it wouldn’t be long before he was relieved.”

There was more. Admiral Nimitz had discovered that the
Washington
, a new fast battleship assigned to SOPAC, had been left behind at Tongatabu, far from the battle zone. Ghormley pleaded fuel shortages. SOPAC
was
deficient on tankers, but the harbor was full of merchantmen awaiting cargo transshipment—theater logistics were a nightmare.
And
the admiral still resisted running warships up to contest the nightly Japanese dominance of Ironbottom Sound. Ghormley had been defensive on this when writing CINCPAC, and Nimitz nudged him now, suggesting he had been holding too tightly on to his cruiser-destroyer strike force.