Islands of Destiny: The Solomons Campaign and the Eclipse of the Rising Sun (60 page)

On the American side, Chester W. Nimitz, a superb leader of men, made a huge difference to Allied efforts. Nimitz listened to subordinates, gave leeway to his intelligence people, integrated their reporting into his battle plans, and provided the example that others followed to victory. His finely honed notion of calculated risk made the difference in several important battles. With good sense, flexibility, and patience, Nimitz held the line in the fall of 1942, when Allied commanders in the South Pacific might have inclined to panic. The CINCPAC’s willingness to commit extra carriers to SOPAC for repeat strikes on Rabaul a year later, even with the timing so close to his Central Pacific offensive, is characteristic of his aggressive pursuit of success. Nimitz and Yamamoto were well-suited adversaries.

One of Nimitz’s strengths—his loyalty to subordinates—while in general a desirable trait, could be detrimental if the people he protected were not pulling their weight. This was the case with Admiral Robert Ghormley, the first SOPAC. Ghormley’s detached method, his diffidence, and his indecisiveness failed to energize the South Pacific command at a key time. Nimitz left him in place too long. But the CINCPAC’s selection of William F. Halsey as Ghormley’s successor was excellent. Aggressive to a fault, an inspirational leader, Halsey was the very tonic SOPAC needed. Had Ghormley remained in command, the aftermath of the Battle of Santa Cruz might have turned out quite differently. Another officer Nimitz protected was Vice Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher. The CINCPAC appreciated Fletcher’s experience as a carrier commander while apparently discounting his excessive caution. Fortunately a cadre of new carrier commanders, including
Marc A. Mitscher of SOPAC fame, but also such others as Raymond A. Spruance and Bill Halsey himself, were coming to the fore and making it unnecessary to employ Fletcher.

Admiral Nimitz served within a command structure that was supportive. Though not without its faults, the Allied high command successfully integrated strategy with operational control, furnished good logistical support, and provided for excellent intelligence. It adjudicated disputes between theater commands such as those between Nimitz and MacArthur. President Roosevelt managed with a very light hand, intervening only very occasionally. Emperor Hirohito actually seems to have concerned himself more directly with military activities, but was hampered by the constraints of court etiquette as well as the rigidity of the high command, which reflected the semifeudal clan origins, fierce independence, and jealous prerogatives of the Japanese armed services. Interservice cooperation and joint planning remained distant dreams, while the services’ sense of ownership—as in the allocation and control of merchant shipping—actually created obstacles to efficient military operations and even the expansion of the war economy. All that was magnified by the limited resources available to Imperial Japan. Jealous military and naval satrapies underestimated the dimensions of the Allied threat to the Solomons, exaggerated their capability to deal with the adversary, concealed their weaknesses from one another, and minimized the requirements of an extended campaign in the Outer South Seas.

The Japanese high command had two major moments of opportunity during the Solomons campaign. The first took place at and following the Battle of Savo Island. If Frank Fletcher had stayed at Guadalcanal and engaged with the aggressiveness of a Halsey or a Mitscher, Savo would not have been an enemy victory. If Fletcher had even pursued the retreating Mikawa with any energy, Savo could at least have been a Mexican standoff. The Allies’ salvation lay in the Japanese not being prepared for the Watchtower landings and dismissing the Americans on Guadalcanal as raiders.

The Japanese did not follow through on the logic of their own policy. This is especially puzzling in the aftermath of Midway, since the critical losses there put the Imperial Navy on notice that its margin of superiority had much diminished. If Midway had been a failed decisive battle, afterward the need was a do-over to get it right. Yamamoto’s formula of
“running wild” required that. Anything else meant handing over a discreet portion of advantage every day. To a certain degree this fault can be traced to the peculiarity of Imperial General Headquarters—a joint command of independent fiefdoms, not really a common leadership at all. But the truth is also that the Imperial Navy was slow to appreciate that the Solomons could be its arena of decision, and loath to flood the theater with its forces. The Japanese could perfectly well have begun constructing an airfield at Munda in August 1942, rather than December, and that would have made a huge difference in, say, October.

Though bound by their Decisive Battle doctrine, oddly enough the Japanese did not follow that logic either. Once Imperial forces engaged at Guadalcanal, the Navy enmeshed itself in a succession of actions to control the sea and air off that place. The constant drain of losses among the light units, beset by the Cactus Air Force and SOPAC’s scratch battle groups, induced Yamamoto and his fleet commanders to feed in their heavy ships in order to achieve results. This flew in the face of the husbanding presupposed by doctrine. Yet even the heavy units did not solve the Guadalcanal supply problem—in some measure due to effective Allied intelligence—and mounting frustration led to accepting ever greater risks. Mutual attrition the Imperial Navy could not afford. And this was even truer of air forces than of the surface fleet. Yet every day made it clearer that aerial superiority had become prerequisite to any other action.

Japan’s second great opportunity came with the Battle of Santa Cruz and in the weeks thereafter. This time the Japanese had generated their forces and prepared for the fight. But they failed to prepare for exploitation at that critical moment. The fault was Yamamoto’s. He appreciated the situation and hastened to throw forces at Cactus but still did not fully commit, sending home his best aircraft carrier and planning new offensives far in the future. The days lost afforded Halsey the chance to regroup, and the Japanese Army’s inability to generate offensive traction on Guadalcanal completed the failure.

While Allied intelligence—Ultra especially—contributed every day to the success of SOPAC operations, arguably it rendered its greatest service in the five weeks or so from Santa Cruz to Tassafaronga. During that interval Halsey’s legions stood on a knife’s edge. Cactus might yet have been isolated—as Rabaul would be later. Halsey’s inferior surface forces could
have been swept from the sea, and his single, weakened aircraft carrier overwhelmed from the sky. Intel enabled Halsey to block the enemy. That the Halsey fleet did not always succeed—Tassafaronga being a notable calamity—is no reflection on the pillars’ performance.

Yamamoto’s error in planning for the future rather than acting in the moment stood revealed before the end of the year, when the Japanese on Guadalcanal had become so starved they were incapable of offensive action in any event, and by which time Allied naval forces had begun to grow powerful. Careful Japanese offensive plans had to be scrapped in favor of ones to save the men on Starvation Island. By then major Japanese air operations yielded small effects. The attrition of Japanese air, in turn, made ground and naval sallies increasingly ineffective. Halsey’s South Pacific command first inched up The Slot, then advanced at an accelerating pace.

Allied intelligence still furnished key information—its failure to detect the Japanese evacuation from Guadalcanal at least balanced, if not eclipsed, by the Ultra breakthrough on the Yamamoto ambush—but as SOPAC’s raw power grew, the value of secret information diminished. Intelligence continued to multiply force but by a lesser factor—although it had a last great contribution still to make: the secret knowledge that led to the slaughter of the Imperial Navy’s heavy ships at Rabaul.

The logic of the Japanese approach would be completely vitiated after Guadalcanal, when the focus turned from whittling down the adversary to force protection. The decisive battle doctrine had prevailed. Suddenly the Japanese rarely committed big ships—never their battleships—and sent carrier air groups to fly from land bases, never their flattops. The Imperial Navy’s light forces, already addled by virtual attrition, were left unsupported against an increasingly capable and technologically sophisticated SOPAC fleet. So deplorable did the situation become that a Rabaul staff officer publicly remonstrated with his superiors for the high command’s attitude. Forty Imperial Navy destroyers were lost in the Solomons campaign, more than a third of its prewar strength. New construction did not make good those losses. The Americans (in all theaters) also had forty destroyers sunk to the end of 1943—but added two hundred. The Japanese fleet so carefully husbanded for decisive battle lacked escort protection when it did emerge.

When Admiral Koga finally sent in the heavy ships, they suffered a Pearl
Harbor in reverse. Soon after that Fortress Rabaul itself became powerless against the Allied aerial armada. From Pearl Harbor to Rabaul the war had gone full circle in just under two years. The rapidity with which the Solomons transformed from arena to backwater is a measure of Allied triumph and Japanese failure. There would be no Japanese dictation of terms at the White House. Instead there would be a Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay.

ENDNOTES

PROLOGUE

“We realize our own fault”:
(p. 2) Ugaki Diary, June 10, 1942, p. 162.
“I am the only one who must apologize”:
(p. 3): Fuchida and Okumiya,
Midway
, quoted p. 188.
“This
present setback”:
(p. 3): Ugaki Diary, op. cit.
“America’s Enemy no. 2”:
(p. 7):
Harper’s Magazine
, April 1942.
“What we need…is numbers”:
(p. 8) Ugaki Diary, June 21, 1942, p. 166.
“Small success”:
(p. 9) Ugaki Diary, June 30, 1942, p. 167.
“The Japanese Navy still had”:
(p. 10) Fuchida and Okumiya,
Midway
, p. 186.

1. ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER

“If ever a sledgehammer”:
(p. 22): Fuchida and Okumiya,
Midway
, p. 46.
“To invade strategic points”:
(p. 24): Navy General Staff Directive No. 47, January 29, 1942, Headquarters, Far East Command, Military History Section,
Imperial General Headquarters Navy Directives
, p. 20; U.S. Navy Microfilm J-27 (hereafter cited as IGHQ Directives).
“Our biggest loss”:
(p. 25): Robert J. Cressman, “Carrier Strike Through Mountain Passage,”
World War II
Magazine, December 1986, quoted p. 41.
“The farthest advanced base”:
(p. 30): 8th Base Force Secret Order No. 1, April 28, 1942. Captured document translated and disseminated by the Combat Intelligence Center, Pacific Fleet, October 5, 1942 (SRH-278, War Diary, Combat Intelligence Center, Pacific Fleet, 1942, pp. 56–57. NARA: RG-457).
“The tea in this cup”:
(p. 31): John Toland,
The Rising Sun
, quoted p. 346.
Baird is truly scathing:
(pp. 37–39): These reminiscences can be found in “The Pacific War Through the Eyes of Forrest R. ‘Tex’ Baird,”
Cryptolog
, v. 10, no. 2, Winter 1989, pp. 4–18. Historian John R. Lundstrom, who has mounted the broadest defense of Admiral Fletcher (
Black Shoe Carrier Admiral: Frank Jack Fletcher at Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal.
Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2006), completely fails to take Baird’s recollections into account.
“This enemy employed a huge force”:
(p. 41): Ugaki Diary, August 7, 1942, p. 177.
“Exercise strategic command”:
(p. 52): George C. Dyer,
The Amphibians Came to Conquer: The Story of Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner.
Washington: Government Printing Office, 1971, v. I, quoted p. 303.
“Forces of the
United States Pacific Fleet”:
(p. 54): CINCPAC Communiqué No. 6, August 8, 1942. USN Communiqués Nos. 1–300, p. 73.

2. UNDER THE SOUTHERN CROSS

“[It] is evident that [Allied] operational commanders were aware”:
(p. 56): Commo Intel in Pac War SRH.
“A real bull’s eye”:
(p. 60): Kenney,
A General Reports
, p. 59.
“Someone told me that an air raid”:
(p. 61): Herbert L. Merillat,
Guadalcanal Remembered
, p. 57.
“INDICATIONS POINT STRONGLY”:
(p. 71): COMSOPAC-CTF61, 220910 Aug 1942. Nimitz Command Summary: Running Estimate and Summary (hereafter cited as CINCPAC Greybook), December 7, 1941–August 31, 1942 (declassified May 3, 1972), Reel 1, p. 808. Date-time groups (“220910”) in U.S. message traffic are given in Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). The Solomons were twelve hours ahead of GMT.
“We were completely unable to see”:
(p. 76)
:
Barrett Tillman, “The Carrier War Remembered,”
Naval History
Magazine, October 2010, quoted p. 33.
“INTERCEPTS INDICATE”:
(p. 77): CINCPAC-COMINCH 242305 Aug 1942. CINCPAC Greybook, Reel 1, p. 809.
“A frightful blast”:
(pp. 77–78): Tanaka Raizo, “The Struggle for Guadalcanal,” in David C. Evans, ed.,
The Japanese Navy
, p. 168.
“Like a broken record”:
(p. 87): Harold L. Buell,
Dauntless Helldivers
, p. 138.
“At this rate we can whip ourselves”:
(p. 88): Samuel B. Griffith, II,
The Battle for Guadalcanal
, quoted p. 136.
“The ridge you insist on putting your new CP behind”:
(p. 95): Vandegrift,
Once a Marine
, quoted p. 151.
“Thinner than Gandhi himself” et seq:
(pp. 100–1): Agawa Hiroyuki,
The Reluctant Admiral
, quoted p. 328. Agawa (and Tsuji in the original) dates this on September 24, but it is clear from Ugaki’s diary that this meeting took place four days later.

3. A CRIMSON TIDE

“I liked Ghormley”:
(p. 103): George Kenney,
General Kenney Reports
, p. 116.
“Will hold what they have”:
(p. 104):
Time
, October 26, 1942, quoted p. 30.
“This is the decisive battle”:
(p. 106): Morison,
Struggle for Guadalcanal
, quoted p. 143.
“The operation to surround and recapture Guadalcanal”:
(p. 106): Kenneth Friedman,
Morning of the Rising Sun
, quoted p. 243.
“For the past six or seven weeks” et seq: (
p. 110): CINCPAC, “Estimate of Enemy Capabilities, October 1, 1942 (declassified August 12, 1976). CINCPAC Greybook, Reel 1, p. 1072.
“The impression is gained that the enemy”:
(p. 111): CINCPAC Fleet Intelligence Summary, October 10, 1942 (declassified July 11, 1985). NARA: Records of the National Security Agency (RG-457): SRMN-009, CINCPAC Fleet Intelligence Summaries, 22 June 1942–8 May 1943. [Hereafter the National Security Agency records will be cited only by their “SR” numbers.]
“What are we going to do”:
(p. 112): James B. Hornfischer,
Neptune’s Inferno
, quoted p. 171.
“Where is the mighty power of the Imperial Navy”:
(p. 115): Morison,
Struggle for Guadalcanal
, quoted p. 143.
“There’s a million of ’em” et seq:
(p. 116): C. Raymond Calhoun,
Tin Can Sailor
, quoted p. 63.
“All at once the murmuring night exploded”:
(p. 119): Nikolai Stevenson, “Four Months on the Front Line,”
American Heritage
, October–November 1985, p. 53.
“The shelter shook”:
(p. 119): Herbert Merillat,
Guadalcanal Remembered
, p. 175.
“It now appears that we are unable to control the sea” et seq:
(p. 123): CINCPAC Greybook, October 15, 1942; Reel 2, p. 1093.
“From all indications”:
(p. 126):
CINCPAC Greybook, October 22, 1942; Reel 2, p. 1100.
“Impatiently” et seq:
(p. 129): Hara Tameichi,
Japanese Destroyer Captain
, p. 124.
“STRIKING FORCE WILL PROCEED”:
(p. 131): Hara, quoted pp. 126–27.
“THIS COMMAND HAS THE WHOLE RESPONSIBILITY:”
(p. 132): Ugaki Diary, October 24, 1942, p. 245.
“I admit I’ve objected to your suggestions”:
(p. 136): John Toland,
The Rising Sun
, quoted p. 460.
“What you said before was true”:
(p. 137): Ibid., quoted p. 461.
“The crescendo of the fighting ashore”:
(p. 138): William F. Halsey with J. D. Bryan,
Admiral Halsey’s Story
, p. 121.
“ATTACK—REPEAT—ATTACK”:
(p. 138): Quoted, ibid.
“OPERATE FROM AND IN POSITIONS”:
(p. 147): John Lundstrom,
The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign
, quoted p. 409.
“Our men have become quite proficient”:
(p. 149): Okumiya and Horikoshi,
Zero
, quoted p. 193. “
Damn fool!”:
(p. 151): Ugaki Diary, October 26, 1942, p. 250.
“Again? Am I to fly
again
today?”:
(p. 152): Okumiya and Horikoshi,
Zero
, quoted p. 195.
“Apprehend and annihilate any powerful forces”:
(p. 154): Basil Collier,
The War in the Far East, 1941–1945
, quoted p. 299.
“I got the impression”:
(p. 155): Kondo Nobutake, “Some Opinions Concerning the War,” in Goldstein and Dillon, eds.,
The Pacific War Papers
, p. 314.
“Halfhearted advance” et seq:
(p. 155): Hara Tameichi,
Japanese Destroyer Captain
, p. 133.
“Largest part” et seq:
(p. 156): Imperial Navy, Destroyer Squadron 10 Records (Washington Document Center no. 160985), Naval Historical Center, Records of the Japanese Navy and Related Translations, box 37, folder: “WDC 160875.”
“The Combined Fleet is at present striking heavy blows”:
(p. 157): Imperial Rescript of October 29, 1942. Samuel E. Morison,
The Struggle for Guadalcanal
, quoted p. 224.