for the first time in the war American and Japanese grounds troops face each other.
from the Victory at sea video documentary. part 6
http://youtube.com/watch?v=qWUOAELKTOs
Remember Bataan!
The Solomons fighting was not the first time for a “face off”, nor was it the first defeat for the Imperial Army/Navy.
Some hard fighting occured for the beaches of the Bataan Peninsular…people often forget the Americans involved there…cut off from anything to resist with in the end.
Macarthur left more troops behind than were present in Australia when he landed at Melbourne…he called that his “Greatest shock and surprise of the entire war…”
no but the Solomon campaign was a victory. the first. for the first time Japan was forced to give up and abandon it. it was their will against ours. but the PI campaign did force Japan off its time tabe of conquest and gave us time to rearm at home. known as the battling bastards of Bataan. “no moma no papa no uncle sam. and no one gives a good god damned.” many were rescued from those horrible camps when we took back the PI. and the filllipino army suffered right along with the Americans. a slaute to them all.
Concur…those “battlin bastards” were the toughest troops of the war, by virtue of the fact that they had, really, not much to defend with…and then the “Death March”, and incarceration in camps…
The Pacific War really was a fight to the finish…
The condition of Macarthurs old fighters on their return home brought many to tears…
Loved the comment from an American child prisoner in Manila, liberated and watching a file of camp guards trailing down the street…
“Make them bow, boys…”, she said,
“Make them BOW…”
the death march was potographed and filmed by the Japs. then repleased to foreign media’s to be certain they would be seen by Americans back home. it was the final insult
[link
[[URL=“http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Philippines/Bataan/blog-65735.html”]death march](death march)](http://history.sandiego.edu/GEN/st/~ehimchak/death_march.html) memorials mark the way
this almost happened again on Guadalcanal. Washinton gave a minimum of supplies and men for this battle. everything was being saved for the Germans. faced with superior jap forces the marines ashore came close to running up the bed sheet. when Halsey took command he told Washinton and the joint chiefs if he didn’t get men and supplies Americans would see another Bataan death march. the supplies and men poured in to win it.
Namvet, thanks for posting the link to that blog. It was a really moving story. I wrote to the grandson to find out more.
I’d like to know more about the provenance of this picture.
It doesn’t look like a Death March picture, not least because of all the civilians happily wandering around in the background, but more like the result of a formal execution or bodies being arranged or displayed for some other reason.
what units served on the canal besides the 1st marines
Guadacannal’ by Richar B Frank is recomeded.
Major Units
US
1st Marine Divsion
1st Mar Regiment
5th Mar Regiment
7th Mar Regiment
11th Mar Artillery Regiment
Raider battalion, parchute battalion, base defense battalion, antiaircraft battalions
Two regiments were withdrawn in late October due to severe casualties from tropical diseases. They were replaced with regiments from the 2d Marine Divsion
25th Army Divsion (Tropic Lighting Divsion)
27th Regiment
16th Reg
35th Reg
Artillery & engineer battalions
Americal. Army Divsion
164 Regiment
132 Reg
182 Reg
Artillery & engineer battalions
(‘American Caledonian Division’ was formed in New Caledonia from National Guard regiments sent to the Pacific theatre as a emergency reinforcement)
147th Reg - Independant. (Another stray NG regiment)
XIV Corps HQ & corps support units
This corps HQ & units arrived in December
1st Marine Air Wing
A large number of Marine, Navy, and USAAF aircraft squadrons were sent to Guadacannal. For most of the campaign HQ 1st Marine Air Wing (Maj Gen Geiger) commanded to air units on Guadacannal.
Japan
17th Army HQ & support units
This included parts of four artillery regiments, two antiaircraft regiments. and engineer units
2d Divsion
4th Reg
16th Reg
29th Reg
2d Artillery Regiment
38th Divsion
228th Reg
229th Reg
230th Reg
38th Artillery Reg (Mountain Gun)
35th Brigade
124th Reg
Ichiki “Detachment”
(note the Ichiki Detachment was originally trained for the amphibious assualt on Midway Island.)
There were also approximatly six shore units of the Japanese Navy landed to serve the 17th Army. These were mostly construction and ‘port’ or cargo handling units. Two small combat units were included.
Guadalcanal –- Operation Shoestring
During the first six months of the war in the Pacific, the Navy had blunted Japanese expansion into Australia and New Zealand at the Battle of the Coral Sea and had cut the mighty Japanese carrier navy down to size at Midway. Finally, U.S. forces were taking the first tenuous step in their bloody, island-hopping march toward Tokyo.
The Marines’ primary objective was a rudimentary landing strip constructed by the Japanese on Guadalcanal in the weeks preceding the invasion. Although poorly supplied and undermanned, the Leathernecks captured the airstrip in one day, dubbed it Henderson Field in memory of a Marine Corps pilot killed at Midway, then dug in. For the next four disease-ridden months they defended it against repeated naval, air and land assaults by a determined enemy.
The regional balance of air and naval forces strongly favored the Japanese. As a consequence, tons of supplies including food and other provisions that were to have come ashore did not. Intelligence about the island was lacking. Reinforcements were not immediately available. Hence, the unofficial name “Operation Shoestring.”
Living and working conditions on Guadalcanal were miserable as well as dangerous. Mosquitoes, leeches, chiggers and flesh eating ants gnawed at the men in the field, while rats spread typhus. Malaria, dysentery and various other jungle diseases were so rampant that anyone with a temperature of 103 degrees or less was considered fit for duty. In his book Victory at Guadalcanal, author Robert Edward Lee records one Marine’s cynical observation: “If the world needed an enema, this would be the right place to put in the hose!”
A month after losing possession of their airfield to the Marines, the Japanese decided not only to take it back, but to reclaim Guadalcanal itself. They concentrated an assault force of more than 6,000 troops in the jungle south of Henderson Field and in mid-September began their northward thrust. The attack was well coordinated, supported by deadly Japanese naval and air bombardment.Against this onslaught, 800 Marines, under the command of future Medal of Honor winner LtCol Merritt A. “Red Mike” Edson, established a line of defense on a grassy ridge 1,700 yards south of Henderson Field. Ultimately, the Japanese would push to within 1,000 yards of the airstrip
Sixty-seven days after the Marines stormed the beaches of Guadalcanal, they were reinforced by units of the U.S. Army. Two months later, the Marines, weary from battle and wasted by disease, departed, their capture-and-hold mission accomplished. The formidable task of driving the remaining 13,000 Japanese troops from the island became the responsibility of the Army. Before the job was done, however, fresh Marine elements arrived in such numbers that their presence actually exceeded that of the Army. Guadalcanal was finally declared secure on February 9, 1943.The six-month battle for control of Guadalcanal would cost 1,592 American lives on the ground with 4,183 wounded. The Japanese would tally 14,800 killed in battle, another 9,000 dead from disease and 1,000 taken prisoner. However, when the results of related—and similarly valiant—air and naval engagements are included, the hundreds of aircraft shot down and dozens of ships sunk by each side during the Solomons Campaign account for substantially greater numbers of casualties.
This is what bugged me most about “Thin Red Line” they captured nearly as many Jap prisoners in that one little engagement in the movie than in the whole real campaign.
I’ll be glad to see “The Pacific” when it comes out so we can see the “real” battle of Guadalcanal…
i didn’t realize that many units were there
Most of those arrived November-January. Through October it was mostly the 1st Marine Divsion and the 163rd National Guard Regiment in the battles around Henderson Field. The balance of the Marines and Army fought in the series of attacks that drove the Japanese back to the western end of the island.
Lt General Patch commanded the 14th Corps. He was transfered to the ETO and commanded the 7t Army 1944-45. Maj Gen Collins had command of the 25th Army Divsion. He was also later transfered to the ETO where he commanded a corps in Normandy & beyond. Maj Gen Vandigrift commanded the 1st Marine Divsion, then returned to Washington DC & was appointed Commadant USMC. Maj Gen Geiger was the ‘air boss’ at Henderson field making the critical tactical decsions of the air battle. he went on to become the commander of the 10th Army Airforce for the battle of Okinawa, and stood in as acting commander of the 10th Army when Lt Gen Buckner was killed.
Milne Bay was a decisive defeat of a Japanese force that occured just after th USN put its Marines ashore on Gudacannal. Some 2000+ Japanese Army and SNLF men were put ashore with light artillery and a tank company in Milne Bay on 25 August. In a three day battle the 18th Australian Brigade with reinforcements defeated the japanese attempt to capture the complex of airfields there, then drove the Japanese back to their landing beach. A few hundred Japanese were evacuated on the last night of this battle.
Had this Japanese attack achived suprise then the critical airfields may have fallen and the Australian defense of New Guniea undercut. As in so many cases the Allied radio signal analysists predicted a Japanese attack in late August and the Australians reinforced the defense.
My father was part of the 3rd Defense Battalion as an anti-aircraft machine gunner protecting Fighter Strip One (the Cow Pasture). He said his finest day was in October after the Japanese had the mistakenly thought they might have control of the airfields, they sent a reconnaissance plane in to check it out and when it flew in low over the airfield “we all opened fire on it. I know that I hit it because I could see my tracers going right into the engine, but I think others hit it too. Those on the plane included a high ranking Japanese Naval Officer.” He saved a piece of sheet metal from it as a keep sake.
One more thing: I still have that piece of the plane.
No, the Japanese time table was not affected by the defense of Bataan/Corregidor, nor was the US rearmament effort.
The Japanese actually finished their program of conquest months earlier than they had expected. The crack Japanese 48th. Division was withdrawn from the Philippines on schedule to participate in the NEI campaign, and all of the other Japanese offensives were either on schedule or had their dates advanced.
As for US rearmament, the US Navy actually began an accelerated construction program in 1938, but the US rearmament program really got underway upon the Fall of France in July, 1940. That was when Congress passed the “Two-Ocean” Navy Act which authorized massive naval construction programs, and legislation to spend similar sums on rebuilding the Army and the Army Air Force. The Defense of Bataan had absolutely no effect on these programs which were well under way by 1942.
The Marines on Guadalcanal never faced “superior [J]ap[anese] forces”. The Japanese forces ashore on Guadalcanal were, from the beginning seriously outnumbered by the US Marines and this situation continued throughout most of the campaign, according to Richard B. Frank in his book “Guadalcanal”. Moreover, the Marines were better fed, better equipped, better supported, and one might add, better led, than the Japanese forces which were subsequently landed.
The only Japanese forces which could be in any way described as “superior” were the Japanese air resources in the initial stages of the battle, and this superiority quickly faded. The Japanese occasionally deployed “superior” naval squadrons such as the one that inflicted the severe defeat on the Allied naval force at the Battle of Savo Island on 8-9 August, and the one that was driven off by an inferior American naval squadron on 13 November in the First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal.