INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT GUADALCANAL

1. Guadalcanal is located in the Solomon Islands. It was unknown to American planners until air reconnaissance discovered the Japanese were building an air field on it. The air base would be a threat to the supply line to Australia. Adm. Ernest King, the head of the Navy, decided the island must be taken.
2. The island was invaded exactly 9 months after Pearl Harbor – August 7, 1942. The invading force consisted of 16,000 men from the 1^st Marine Division. They were armed with the bolt-action M1903 Springfield rifle. The landing was unopposed as the shore bombardment took the Japanese by surprise and they abandoned the air field to take refuge in the jungle. There were only about 2,000 Japanese soldiers on the island at the time. There was also a number of Korean forced laborers. The Japanese sent over 30,000 more soldiers over the course of the battle. Two thirds will die on the island.
3. All the branches of the US military took part in the battle – Marines, Army, Army Air Force, Navy, and Coast Guard.
4. The code name for the invasion was Operation Watchtower, but because of the supply problems, the Marines called it Operation Shoestring.
5. Americans learned a lot about their Japanese foes in this battle. They were fanatical and refused to surrender. Sometimes wounded Japanese would attempt to blow up Marines who came to help them. This is going to result in Marines refusing to take prisoners. For the first time, Americans encountered banzai attacks, which were basically frontal suicide attacks. In the Battle of the Tenaru River, 789 of 917 Japanese were killed.
6. The Tokyo Express was the name given to Japanese ships that would make night raids to drop off supplies and soldiers and to bombard the American air field. On the night of October 14, 1942, two battleships bombarded the air field for 83 minutes. They fired 970 fourteen inch, two ton shells the size of Volkswagon Beetles. The concussions made many Marines incapacitated for days.
7. The air field was named Henderson Field in honor of a pilot killed in the Battle of Midway. The air force was called the Cactus Air Force. The fighter pilots flew the F4U Wildcat, which was inferior to the Japanese Zero, but the pilots developed tactics that overcame the Japanese advantages. Capt. Joe Foss shot down 26 Japanese planes during the Guadalcanal Campaign. He was the first American ace to equal Eddie Rickenbacker’s total in WWI. It could be argued that considering the quality of his opponents, Foss was America’s best ace in WWII. He was awarded the Medal of Honor.
8. The only Coast Guardsman to receive the Medal of Honor was Signalman First Class Douglas Munro. He was killed trying to rescue members of the Goettge Patrol. The patrol had been landed behind enemy lines because it was believed that a Japanese unit wanted to surrender. It was a trap and the patrol was almost completely wiped out. Munro was piloting a landing craft that attempted to rescue the survivors.
9. There were several naval battles fought near Guadalcanal. The first was the Battle of Savo Island. In this night battle, a Japanese fleet sank three American cruisers and one Australian cruiser. It was one of the worst defeats in American naval history. Because of all the ships lost in battles off the island, the area became known as Iron Bottom Sound. Over the course of the campaign, the US Navy lost 29 ships and the Japanese had 38 ships sunk.
10. One of the biggest heroes of the battle was a native scout named Jacob Vouza. He was captured while scouting out the Japanese. They tied him to a tree and tortured him, but he would not talk. When they gave up, they bayonetted him numerous times and left him for dead. He ate threw the ropes and managed to get back to the American lines just in time to give a ten minute warning of a Japanese attack. The attack was defeated with heavy losses.
11. The US suffered 7,100 deaths, but the Japanese lost 19,200 (only 8,500 were combat deaths). Most of the Japanese died due to disease or starvation. The Japanese called it “The Island of Death”. Americans were ravaged by dysentery and malaria. The Marines were given a drug called Atabrine which was somewhat effective against malaria, but a rumor that the drug reduced sexual potency caused many Marines to spit out the pills. Some Marines lost 40 pounds.

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2016/02/09/7_things_you_didnt_know_about_guadalcanal_109005.html

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/guadalcanal-campaign-facts.html

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/solomon-islands-campaign-guadalcanal

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-ii/ed-ok-battle-guadalcanal.html