After the devastating defeat at Pearl Harbor, the Americans put their prewar plans in action. However, these plans did not formally include the South Pacific as a major theater of operations. Following their War Plan Orange work that began before World War I, the current American Rainbow Five plan assumed that Japan would capture the Netherlands East Indies, Guam in the Marianas, and the Philippines. The path to defeating Japan would go through the Central Pacific and capture the Japanese possessions in Carolines, Gilberts, and Marshall Islands on their way to capture the Mariana and retake the Philippines.

Nonetheless, the Americans did not anticipate that the Imperial Japanese Navy would extend their naval bases into Rabaul on New Britain (now part of Papua New Guinea) and into the Solomon Islands. The Japanese needed to protect their eastern flank as they prepared to conquer New Guinea, at least neutralize Australia, or, at worst, occupy that continent. After General Douglas MacArthur escaped from the Philippines to Australia with the vow, “I shall return,” Australia became strategically more important than the Americans originally thought it would be. The Japanese eastern flank now extended to the Solomon Islands.

Using their newly acquired advanced base at Rabaul, the Japanese occupied Bougainville, the largest island in the Solomons, and created a naval and air base on Shortland Island off Bougainville’s southern tip. Soon it became clear to them that if the Americans began sending men and materiel to Australia and New Zealand, the southern Solomon Islands became vitally strategic targets for both sides. Guadalcanal, the largest island in the southern Solomons, lay directly across supply route between the continental United States and Australia. If either side successfully placed long-range bombers on that island, the Japanese could seal off Australia or the Americans could establish a direct threat to Rabaul.

Admiral Ernest J. King, the American Chief of Naval Operations, began lobbying the political and military power structure in Washington, D. C. to attack Guadalcanal. Nevertheless, the Americans had pledged to their British ally that the defeat of Hitler’s Nazi Germany was their top priority. Part of that commitment was the invasion of North Africa in late 1942. That required significant resources that many believed were not enough to open a full-fledged two-front war in 1942.

King and the American naval senior commanders recognized Guadalcanal’s strategic importance well before most others in Washington. King never relented in his insistence that the Americans must launch offensive operations against the Japanese in the South Pacific. He literally camped outside the office of General George C. Marshall, the American Army’s Chief of Staff, major power broker in Washington, and King’s fellow officer on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, until he got the army’s approval of an offensive in the Pacific. King assigned Vice Admiral Robert L. Ghormley as the commander of the South Pacific Theater of Operations just to the east of MacArthur’s Southwest Pacific command. Ghormley arrived in New Zealand on May 20, 1942 to assume command.

Meanwhile, as the Japanese occupied the British possessions in the South Pacific, the Australians established a chain of coastwatchers responsible for spying on Japanese ships and air movements and reporting these to Allied headquarters in Brisbane. These reports soon began to bear fruit.

The Japanese arrived in the southern Solomons, occupied Tulagi Island (a small island just north of Guadalcanal), forced the Australians to evacuate all the southern Solomons on May 1 through May 4, 1942, and began building a seaplane base there. On May 28, the Japanese occupied Guadalcanal. Soon, an airfield began to take shape there.

Martin Clemens, the coastwatcher on Guadalcanal, observed an American B-17 bomber fly over the island on July 4. Two days later, the Americans knew the Japanese realized Guadalcanal’s strategic importance first and acted on that fact. On July 10, 1942, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz ordered Ghormley to invade and capture Guadalcanal and Tulagi in the beginning of August.

Frantic planning began at all levels of the American Navy. An invasion fleet began assembling from many ports in the Continental United States led by Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner. The American First Marine Division commanded by Major General Alexander A. Vandegrift had the responsibility to go ashore, destroy what Japanese forces occupied both islands, capture Guadalcanal’s airfield, and hang on by their fingernails as the power of the Japanese empire descended upon them. An American naval battle fleet commanded by Vice Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher would provide the vitally necessary air cover over the skies of Guadalcanal. Ghormley was still in overall command but, for reasons known only to him, remained on his flagship, the transport Argonne, in Nouméa, New Caledonia’s harbor.

Thus, the greatest amphibious operation ever launched by the U.S. Navy to date took place on August 7, 1942. What followed was the one of the longest, bloodiest, and pulse-pounding series of battles in the history of warfare. The fate of the Pacific war hung in the balance.

Copyright Kenneth I. Friedman © 2007-2008 - All rights reserved