Guadalcanal was one of the most brutal campaigns of the Pacific War,
as the US Marines not only had to fight the relentless assaults of the enemy in that jungle
hell, they also had to fight malnutrition, lack of supplies and tropical diseases
that would eventually disable nearly two-thirds of General Vandegrift’s force.
Yet after the Battle of Savo Island, these problems were only starting to emerge for the
Marines, as they were soon to face a true baptism of fire at Alligator Creek. At the same time,
the 2nd Raider Battalion was preparing to launch a deadly raid against the heart of the Gilberts,
an attack that would have deadly consequences for the Americans in the future.
Join us as we cover the Raid on Makin Island and we also take a look at the Battle of the Tenaru
and some other developments in the Guadalcanal Campaign.
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The Battle of Savo Island had been a disaster for the US Navy. The loss of four heavy cruisers,
with one more damaged and two damaged destroyers, had crippled Admiral Turner’s surface forces,
forcing the American commander to follow in Admiral Fletcher’s stead
and order an early withdrawal from the Savo Sound, thus leaving the weary Marines on the
shore alone against whatever the enemy was about to throw at them.
Only a fraction of the supplies and virtually none of the heavy equipment had been landed,
so General Vandegrift would immediately start to work to improve the situation.
He rapidly set out to form a defense perimeter around the recently-captured airfield, hoping
to finish its construction so that it could be employed to improve the air situation in the area.
Vandegrift perceived that the Japanese may attempt a counter-landing at Lunga Point
to retake the incomplete airstrip, so he decided to stop any enemy landing at the water’s edge,
employing most of his Marine units for the coastal defense.
Yet the southern half of the oval perimeter amounted to another 9000 yards of dense jungle,
so artillery and support units would be bivouacked by the Lunga and by some coral ridges to provide
a rudimentary defense of these inland positions. During these first few days ashore, the Marines
would not only work to complete the construction of their airfield, but they would also move their
supplies from their exposed site at Red Beach into some dispersed dumps within the perimeter.
By August 12, all the supplies had been moved and the runway now reached some 2660 feet,
getting renamed to Henderson Field after the hero of Midway, Major Lofton Henderson.
A week later, Henderson Field would stretch its full 3778 feet, receiving its first few aircraft
from Marine Air Group 23 two days later and thus forming the Cactus Air Force. Back on August 9,
however, probes from the 5th Marines ran into firm resistance at the Matanikau River as they searched
for the original Japanese garrison. Many Korean laborers had already been found and captured,
with one of them remarking that there were a number of Japanese west of the Matanikau that
were willing to surrender, something that prompted Lieutenant-Colonel Frank Goettge to form a 25-men
patrol with the objective of securing much of the island without significant fighting.
Departing Kukum by boat on the night of August 12, the Goettge Patrol then landed on the western
mouth of the Matanikau and was later ambushed by the Japanese soldiers while scouting the jungle
ahead. As Goettge was rapidly killed during the fire, the patrol got pinned down on the beach
and was quickly decimated, with the Japanese killing off the Marines one by one. Only
Platoon-Sergeant Frank Few managed to escape by swimming approximately four miles through
shark-infested waters. In retaliation, on August 18, Vandegrift decided to send three
companies of the 5th Marines west towards the Matanikau, inflicting around 100 casualties on
the enemy during this first action at the valley. Meanwhile, after his amazing victory at Savo,
Admiral Mikawa continued to work hard to recapture the lost territories on the Southern Solomons,
especially that of Guadalcanal. From August 11 onwards, the Marines had to suffer a series of
daily air raids about noon, which failed to cause much damage but severely affected the morale of
the defenders. The American positions would also be boldly shelled by Japanese submarines
and destroyers during these first few days; and a total of 113 SNLF marines would be dropped at
Tassafaronga Point as the first reinforcements for the Japanese garrison at Guadalcanal.
Yet at the same time, Mikawa was also working with General Hyakutake of the 17th Army,
who had by now been ordered to immediately retake Tulagi and Guadalcanal with the Kawaguchi and
Aoba Detachments. These forces, however, were too far away to be immediately available for
the operation, so Hyakutake would be reinforced with the 28th Regiment of Colonel Ichiki Kiyonao,
which was at Truk after being earmarked for the invasion of Midway. At this point, Japanese
commanders believed that the bulk of the Marine division at Guadalcanal had been withdrawn during
Admiral Turner’s retreat, so they determined that only a small force remained on the island.
In that regard, Ichiki was ordered to spearhead a 900-men detachment to land at Taivu Point
and recapture the airfield, while some 250 SNLF marines would land at Kokumbona as a diversion.
On the morning of August 16, the elite, battle hardened Ichiki Detachment would finally depart
Truk escorted by the 2nd Squadron of Admiral Tanaka, although Tanaka himself in his cruiser
Jintsu would actually remain behind to escort the remaining 1100 men from the 28th Regiment,
leaving only his six destroyers under Captain Sato Torajiro to protect Ichiki.
During the early hours of August 19, the Ichiki Detachment would
land at Taivu Point and would immediately march westward towards the airfield
with full confidence in his success, stricken by the so-called Victory Disease . At the same time,
upon getting rumors from native patrols of a Japanese radio station at Gurabasu, 60 Marines
under the command of Captain Charles Brush were sent forward to destroy the enemy at Gurabasu.
About noon, they would intercept an advance party of 38 men from the Ichiki Detachment,
launching a frontal attack while a part of Brush’s force hooked around the Japanese left flank.
During this intense firefight, the Marines would kill 33 enemy soldiers at a cost of only three
losses, with the remaining Japanese escaping into the bushes. Upon inspecting the dead bodies,
Brush found men that belonged to the IJA and not to the IJN as they were accustomed, with
fresh clothes, large amounts of communication gears and an accurate map of the Marine line at
Alligator Creek, all of which indicated that a new enemy force of unknown size had landed
with the intention to reconquer Guadalcanal, so he immediately set out to alert Vandegrift.
In the meantime, Ichiki discovered the fate of his advance party
and, without pause to reflect on this disaster, he decided to press forward with his entire force
and not rest until the next morning after he had crossed the Nalimbu River.
By noon, he started to prepare his men for a night assault on the beaches, intending to recapture
the old Japanese camp between Alligator Creek and Lunga, from where he would then seize the
airfield. Under the cover of darkness, Ichiki’s men finally began to approach Alligator Creek,
where Lieutenant-Colonel Edwin Pollock’s 2nd Battalion of the 1st Marines routinely stood watch
over the east bank. Soon, minor affrays erupted along the Marine line, but it was shortly after
midnight when Ichiki ordered a strong shock unit to start the assault under the covering fire of
his other forces . About 02:00, the Marines were surprised with the charge of the enemy over the
sandbar, but they immediately started to open fire, leaving a thick wake of dead and dying.
Nonetheless, the Japanese survivors managed to topple the barbed-wire fence and other obstacles
and soon engaged the Marines in hand-to-hand combat. As the defenders resisted, Pollock rapidly
counterattacked with a reserve platoon and, within an hour, the line had been restored and
the enemies expelled. As artillery from the 11th Marines soon joined the battle and began to cause
havoc among the invaders, Ichiki continuously tried to infiltrate the Marine positions
or prepare a second assault, but to no avail, his efforts were always thwarted by the defenders.
Ichiki, who was a reckless and stubborn commander with a fiery spirit, and who had actually ordered
the assault that ignited the Second Sino-Japanese War during the Marco Polo Bridge Incident,
had no intentions to withdraw from the battle; he’d rather die fighting. With day breaking on
August 21, Vandegrift decided to send his reserve battalion , under the command of
Lieutenant-Colonel Leonard Cresswell, with a tank platoon inland across Alligator Creek to encircle
and destroy the Japanese near the sand pit. Before 07:00, the crossing of the 1st Battalion of the
1st Marines commenced, and by 09:50, Cresswell started to swing north against the enemy.
The Marines rapidly defeated a Japanese charge with fire and got to compress Ichiki’s men into
a triangle by the mouth of the lagoon. Soon, as Pollock began to press from the west, the American
tanks were put forward and they completely ran over the Japanese soldiers, which lacked
any anti-tank weapons . About 16:30, the situation was desperate for the invaders, with many soldiers
trying to escape swimming into the sea and getting cut down by the overwhelming American fire.
At this point, seeing the hopelessness of the situation, Ichiki and many others would commit
seppuku. By 17:00, with Cresswell’s men closing in on Alligator Creek, the battle was over. The
Marines lost a total of 44 men and had 71 injured, but their victory was total, as
the entire Ichiki Detachment had been decimated, and this was a huge morale booster for the Allies
at this point of the war, finally defeating Japanese invincibility on land . By August 29,
only 128 survivors would manage to regroup at Taivu Point to await further reinforcements.
But now, we’ll divert our attention to the Gilbert Islands, where the Americans were preparing to
conduct a diversionary raid aiming to distract the Japanese and force them to send reinforcements to
the area, thus preventing their use in the Guadalcanal Campaign. For this operation,
the US Navy commanders wanted to employ a special unit of commando-style raiders that had been
raised specifically for this purpose: the Marine Raiders. Although we’ve already seen them in
action during the occupation of Tulagi, this time, the 2nd Raider Battalion of Lieutenant-Colonel
Evans Carlson was going to be employed in the type of operation for which it had been created.
Carlson had trained his battalion in a very unorthodox way and with an emphasis on teamwork,
taking inspiration from the Chinese Communits guerrillas and their Gung ho philosophy
to establish a decentralized decision making and a concept of leadership that favoured merit over
rank. On the morning of August 9, his training methods were going to be put to the test when two
companies of his Raider battalion, totaling 211 men, departed Pearl Harbor on board the cruiser
submarines Nautilus and Argonaut, heading towards their unknown target: Makin Island.
The plan was to perform a pincer maneuver during the night of August 17, attacking from
both flanks and from the enemy’s supposed rear and aiming to capture Butaritari Village and to
destroy as many vital installations as possible before retreating back into the submarines.
At this point, it’s important to note that American intelligence on
the Gilberts was very much incomplete, as they believed Makin to be their main base,
when in reality, Tarawa’s airfield to its south held much more importance. It was expected to
find some 250 enemy troops there, including SNLF marines, but there were only 73 IJN personnel
from the 61st Guard Force on the island, under the command of Warrant Officer Kanemitsu Hisasaburo.
During the next few days after their departure, the two submarines would traverse over 4000 miles
in separate zigzag courses, finally rendezvousing off Little Makin on the evening of August 16.
Under heavy rain, Carlson’s Raiders then jumped into some 20 rubber boats during the
early hours of August 17, getting underway while battling the swells, wind and current by 04:15
and successfully landing an hour later, although all the Raiders would come ashore
on the same beach and thus could not execute the planned pincer maneuver.
Immediately, Carlson ordered Company A to advance across the island to the lagoon,
while Company B held back to deploy to either flank for security or reinforcement. The
Government House was rapidly secured without resistance, and a platoon would then set up an
ambush at the lagoon, creating a fire pocket that would trap the unsuspecting Japanese.
At about 06:30, the Japanese walked into the trap and the Raiders opened fire at close range,
chopping down most of the enemy. Although a large portion of the Japanese garrison had been killed,
well-camouflaged snipers would manage to keep the Raiders pinned down for two hours.
As American casualties started to mount , the Japanese unexpectedly executed two banzai charges,
resulting in the deaths of most of the Japanese as they were cut down by automatic fire. Organized
resistance then evaporated by midday, but Carlson was overcautious and refused to
advance further inland as he believed he faced a large force, thus allowing the Japanese snipers
to continue to harass his Raiders though the enemy had already been wiped out.
At the same time, First-Lieutenant Oscar Peatross and some 11 men, who had landed a mile to the
southwest and had ventured inland, soon found the rear of the enemy force and started to open fire.
In the ensuing firefight, Officer Kanemitsu would be shot down and Peatross’ squad would become a
constant thorn in the side of the Japanese. At 07:10, the Nautilus was also ordered to open
fire on the lagoon, and they would unexpectedly sink two Japanese ships. At this point, however,
the Japanese had reported the invasion to higher headquarters and air attacks were being prepared,
with 14 planes dropping bombs and strafing the island for an hour. Remarkably, the Raiders would
manage to shoot down a floatplane and a flying boat while they were trying to land. Yet the
air attacks managed to rattle the Raiders, and with night coming, Carlson decided to withdraw
in a disorganized fashion. While Peatross’ squad was already returning to the Nautilus, there was
chaos on the beach as Carlson’s Raiders failed to adequately organize and prepare the boats.
At 19:30, the boats were launched and the exhausted Raiders attempted to return to the
submarines still under bad weather, with many furiously paddling without making any headway.
Only 7 boats with 80 men would successfully withdraw during this first attempt, with the
rest eventually giving up and establishing a thin defensive line to spend the night there, incapable
of making another attempt against the unrelenting surf. The demoralized Raiders believed that they
were stranded, and Carlson Carlson dispatched a note to the Japanese offering to surrender,
but the Japanese messenger was allegedly killed by other marines who were unaware of Carlson's plan.
Yet the Raiders held on, and in the morning of August 18, they attempted a second exit.
Four boats would successfully reach the submarines, and they would communicate
that Carlson was moving towards the lagoon’s entrance with his 30 remaining men. By 08:30,
the Raiders reached King’s Wharf, where they ignited 1000 drums of aviation fuel
and destroyed the radio station nearby. Enemy air raids continued throughout the day and the
Raiders would be forced to hunker in foxholes. By afternoon, a makeshift craft was assembled
and the submarines began to surface on the lagoon’s northwestern entrance.
At 20:30, Carlson and his remaining men finally departed Makin and successfully arrived at the
Nautilus by 23:10, so the Raiders at last started their trip back to Pearl Harbor.
Carlson’s Raiders had suffered 21 losses and 17 injured, with a further 9 men getting stranded and
then executed by the Japanese. They had inflicted around 80 casualties on the enemy but had failed
to cause much damage to local installations, and the raid would also fail to divert reinforcements
to the Gilberts, as the Japanese quickly recognized the small scale of the American attack.
In fact, the only meaningful consequence of the raid is that the vulnerabilities in the Japanese
islands were exposed, so the invaders would then set out to strengthen their fortifications and
defenses in the Central Pacific. But that is all for this week, and in the next episode,
we have much to cover as the Battle of the Eastern Solomons erupts and Japanese forces prepare for
offensives on Milne Bay and the Kokoda Track. If you don’t want to miss any of our episodes,
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