Guadalcanal: 100 Questions Answered

It was the six-month struggle between the Allies and Japan for Guadalcanal and the neighboring islands of the southern Solomons, fought from 7 August 1942 to 9 February 1943. It began with U.S. Marine landings meant to seize a Japanese airfield under construction and grew into a contest of land, sea and air forces that neither side had planned for. The story is told chapter by chapter from the Guadalcanal hub, starting with Operation Watchtower and the landings.

Marines landed on Guadalcanal and Tulagi on the morning of 7 August 1942 (local time, GMT+11). Organized Japanese resistance ended on 9 February 1943, when U.S. columns met at Tenaro after the last Japanese evacuation run of 7–8 February. See Operation Ke, the cost and the memory.

Guadalcanal is one of the larger islands of the Solomon Islands in the southwest Pacific, east of New Guinea and northeast of Australia. In 1942 it was part of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate; today Honiara, the capital of the independent Solomon Islands, stands on the ground where much of the fighting took place, between Point Cruz and the old Henderson Field.

The Allies. Japan’s Imperial General Headquarters decided at the end of December 1942 to give up the island, and in Operation Ke (1–8 February 1943) its destroyers withdrew more than 10,000 surviving soldiers, according to the Naval History and Heritage Command. The Allies kept Henderson Field and used Guadalcanal as the base for the advance up the Solomons.

The National WWII Museum gives about 7,100 Allied dead and about 31,000 Japanese dead. The Navy alone lost just under 5,000 sailors in the waters around the island, according to NHHC. Most Japanese deaths came not in battle but from starvation and disease; figures and sources are compared in Chapter 9.

It was the first major Allied offensive in the Pacific, launched only two months after Midway, and it ended with a Japanese withdrawal. More importantly, six months of attrition cost Japan ships, aircraft and experienced aircrew it could not replace, while American production and training were only beginning to reach the Pacific. After Guadalcanal, Japan was mostly on the defensive in the South Pacific.

Watchtower was the Allied code name for the landings on Guadalcanal, Tulagi, Gavutu–Tanambogo and Florida Island in August 1942. The amphibious force was commanded by Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner, the 1st Marine Division by Maj. Gen. Alexander A. Vandegrift, and the covering carriers by Vice Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher. Chapter 1 tells the story.

Broadly: the landings and the naval defeat at Savo Island (August); the Marines’ defense of the airfield perimeter against piecemeal Japanese counterattacks and the growth of the Cactus Air Force (August–September); the October crisis of battleship bombardment and a major Japanese ground offensive; the decisive November naval battles; and the Army-led offensives of December–February that ended with the Japanese evacuation.

The National WWII Museum counts seven major naval battles: Savo Island, the Eastern Solomons, Cape Esperance, the Santa Cruz Islands, the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal (12–15 November), Tassafaronga and Rennell Island. Dozens of smaller night actions involving destroyers, PT boats and submarines were fought as well. Each is summarized in the battles table on the Guadalcanal hub.

Casualty, ship and aircraft counts for Guadalcanal vary from source to source because records were lost, units counted differently, and later historians revised wartime figures. Where official histories, the Naval History and Heritage Command and later scholars such as Richard B. Frank differ, this collection gives the competing figures and says who gives them, and positions on the maps are labeled approximate where they are reconstructions.

Japanese forces occupied Tulagi, across the sound, on 3 May 1942 and set up a seaplane base there. In July construction units landed on Guadalcanal and began building an airfield on the flat grassland near Lunga Point. Land-based bombers flying from it could have covered the sea lanes between the United States and Australia and supported further advances toward New Caledonia, Fiji and Samoa.

The Joint Chiefs had already planned an offensive in the southern Solomons; the discovery of the Japanese airfield made Guadalcanal the priority. If the field were finished and stocked with aircraft, it would threaten the line of communication to Australia. Admiral Ernest J. King pressed for an early offensive despite thin resources, which is why Watchtower was mounted in haste. See Chapter 1.

Whoever held the field controlled the skies over the southern Solomons by day. American aircraft at Henderson Field made daylight movement of Japanese ships within range extremely dangerous, which forced the Japanese to supply their army at night by destroyer. Almost every land and sea battle of the campaign was, in the end, a fight for the use or denial of that airfield.

Tulagi was the prewar capital of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate and had a good sheltered anchorage. The Japanese built a seaplane base there and on Gavutu and Tanambogo. After the Marines took it, Tulagi became a U.S. anchorage, repair base and the home of the PT boats that fought the Tokyo Express.

It was the wry nickname participants gave Watchtower because it was launched with too few ships, aircraft, supplies and shipping. The 1st Marine Division had expected months of training in New Zealand before any operation and was sent in after only weeks, and some of its supplies had to be reloaded in a hurry at Wellington.

Japan’s loss of four fleet carriers at Midway in June 1942 removed much of the striking power that had protected its advances and gave the U.S. Navy a short window in which an offensive was conceivable. The carriers that covered the Guadalcanal landings, Saratoga, Enterprise and Wasp, would have been badly outmatched before Midway. See the Battle of Midway collection.

Prewar estimates varied widely. Henry Shaw’s official Marine Corps history puts the actual figure at 3,457, of whom 2,571 were on Guadalcanal, most of them naval construction workers rather than combat troops. The defenders of Tulagi and Gavutu–Tanambogo were naval troops and seaplane personnel who fought almost to the last man. See Shaw, First Offensive and Chapter 1.

‘The Slot’ was the Americans’ name for New Georgia Sound, the long channel between the two parallel chains of the Solomon Islands. It ran from the Japanese anchorages at Shortland and Buin in the north down to Savo and Guadalcanal, about 270 nautical miles by the usual route. It was the highway of the Tokyo Express; the interactive day/night clock of the Slot shows how it worked.

Rabaul, on New Britain, was Japan’s great base in the South Pacific, home of the 8th Fleet, the 17th Army and the land-based bomber and fighter units that attacked Guadalcanal. It lay about 565 nautical miles from Henderson Field, so Japanese fighters escorting bombers spent most of their fuel just getting to the target and had little time over it.

On the Allied side: Admiral Chester W. Nimitz in Pearl Harbor; Vice Admiral Robert L. Ghormley, then from 18 October Vice Admiral William F. Halsey Jr., as South Pacific commander; Vandegrift ashore, then Maj. Gen. Alexander Patch from 9 December. On the Japanese side: Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto’s Combined Fleet, Vice Admiral Gunichi Mikawa’s 8th Fleet and Lt. Gen. Harukichi Hyakutake’s 17th Army. Profiles appear throughout the Guadalcanal hub chapters.

After a dawn bombardment, the 1st Marine Division landed on Guadalcanal at Red Beach, east of Lunga Point, against almost no opposition, and the Japanese construction troops fled inland. Across the sound, Marines landing on Tulagi and on Gavutu–Tanambogo met fierce resistance from naval troops in caves and dugouts. Japanese bombers from Rabaul attacked the shipping the same afternoon. See Chapter 1.

Shaw counts 10,900 Marines on Guadalcanal and 6,075 on Tulagi and the nearby islets by 8 August. The airfield was taken on 8 August. See Shaw, First Offensive and Chapter 1.

Very, for their size. The 1st Raider Battalion on Tulagi had 99 casualties according to Shaw, and the Gavutu–Tanambogo fight cost 144 Marines dead and 194 wounded. Nearly all the Japanese defenders were killed; only about two dozen were taken prisoner, and published Japanese death tolls for the three islands range from under 800 to about 1,500. See Edson’s Raiders.

On 8 August a Japanese G4M bomber crashed into the transport during a torpedo-plane attack off Guadalcanal. Fires spread below decks, she was abandoned, and the hulk sank that evening with much of the cargo still aboard. Photos of her burning appear in Chapter 1.

Vice Admiral Fletcher, worried about fuel and fighter losses and about Japanese land-based torpedo bombers, requested permission on the evening of 8 August to withdraw his three carriers. Without carrier cover, Turner decided his transports would have to leave too. The decision, and the Savo Island defeat that night, left the Marines alone on the island. See Chapter 2.

In the early hours of 9 August, Vice Admiral Gunichi Mikawa’s five heavy cruisers, two light cruisers and a destroyer passed the Allied radar pickets unseen and attacked the cruiser groups guarding the transports. In little more than half an hour they sank USS Quincy, Vincennes and Astoria and HMAS Canberra; NHHC counts 1,077 Allied sailors killed. Japanese losses were minimal. See Savo Island: the Navy’s worst night.

Investigators and historians point to several failures together: the pickets’ early radar missed the Japanese; sighting reports from aircraft were delayed; crews were exhausted after two days at general quarters; the cruiser groups were divided and their senior officer, Rear Admiral Victor Crutchley, was away at a conference with Turner; and the Japanese were highly trained in night fighting with torpedoes. Chapter 2 weighs each factor.

Mikawa had scattered his ships during the battle, feared that American carriers would catch him in daylight, and chose to withdraw toward Rabaul rather than reform and attack the anchorage. It was a missed opportunity: the transports and their cargoes were the real prize. On the way home one of his cruisers, Kako, was sunk by the submarine S-44 off New Ireland. See Chapter 2.

Shaw writes that the forces ashore had 17 days’ rations and four days of ammunition when the transports sailed on 9 August. Captured Japanese rice, trucks and engineering equipment helped the Marines finish the airfield and survive the first weeks. See Chapter 3.

The Australian cruiser was hit by some two dozen shells in the first minutes of Savo and lost power, then burned all night. She was scuttled at 8 a.m. on 9 August by torpedoes from the U.S. destroyer Ellet. Robert Ballard found her in 1992 standing upright about 760 meters down, and the Royal Australian Navy has held memorial services over the site.

The Marines named it for Maj. Lofton R. Henderson, a Marine dive-bomber squadron commander killed while leading an attack at the Battle of Midway. The field is now Honiara International Airport. See Henderson Field and the Cactus Air Force.

A Navy PBY patrol plane landed on 12 August. The first combat aircraft, 19 F4F Wildcats of Marine Fighting Squadron 223 and 12 SBD Dauntlesses of Marine Scout-Bombing Squadron 232, flew in from the escort carrier Long Island on 20 August 1942. See the Cactus Air Force.

‘Cactus’ was the Allied code name for Guadalcanal, and the mixed Marine, Navy and Army Air Forces squadrons flying from Henderson Field became known as the Cactus Air Force. Under Brig. Gen. Roy Geiger and his successors they fought daily Japanese raids from Rabaul and attacked ships approaching the island. See Cactus Air Force.

Fighter One was a grass strip built east of the main runway in September 1942 so that fighters could operate when Henderson was cratered or flooded. Fighter Two was built near Kukum, west of the Lunga, later in the campaign. Photographs of both appear in Chapter 3.

Australian and British officers and Solomon Islanders hidden on Bougainville, New Georgia and other islands radioed sightings of Japanese aircraft flying south from Rabaul and Buka. Their warnings usually gave Henderson Field enough time for Wildcats to climb above the incoming bombers. The interactive coastwatcher radio log shows the timing, and the Coastwatchers page tells their story.

On 24–25 August 1942 American and Japanese carrier forces fought north of the Solomons over a convoy carrying Japanese reinforcements. Saratoga’s aircraft sank the light carrier Ryūjō; Japanese dive bombers hit Enterprise, which survived. The next day Cactus aircraft and B-17s damaged the convoy and sank the destroyer Mutsuki, forcing it to turn back. See Chapter 3.

On 15 September 1942 the submarine I-19 fired a spread of torpedoes at a U.S. carrier group southeast of the Solomons. Three hit Wasp, which burned and was scuttled with 193 men lost; others struck the battleship North Carolina and the destroyer O’Brien, which later broke up and sank on her way home. See USS North Carolina at Guadalcanal.

Shortly after 1:30 a.m. on 14 October, Japanese floatplanes dropped flares and the battleships Kongō and Haruna opened fire on the airfield. Pacific Wrecks counts 918 14-inch shells (435 and 483); NHHC says almost 1,000. Forty-one men were killed, most aviation fuel burned, and only 7 of 39 dive bombers and 24 of 42 Wildcats remained flyable. See the bombardment playback in Chapter 6.

Marine fighter pilots such as Maj. John L. Smith, Maj. Robert E. Galer, Capt. Joseph J. Foss and Lt. Col. Harold W. Bauer were credited with many victories over Japanese aircraft, and each received the Medal of Honor. Foss was eventually credited with 26 victories, tying Eddie Rickenbacker’s World War I record. Claims on both sides were often higher than actual losses.

The National WWII Museum gives 615 Allied and 683 Japanese aircraft lost from all causes. Shaw adds that at least 600 Japanese planes were shot down and about 2,300 Japanese pilots and aircrew died, a loss of trained men Japan could not replace. See the aircraft chart on the Guadalcanal hub.

On the night of 12–13 August 1942, Lt. Col. Frank Goettge, the division intelligence officer, led about 25 men by boat west of the Matanikau, hoping to accept the surrender of Japanese reported willing to give up. The patrol was ambushed on landing; only three men made it back. See The Tenaru, the Goettge patrol and the Matanikau.

In the early hours of 21 August 1942 Col. Kiyonao Ichiki’s first echelon, 917 men by the usual count, attacked across the sandbar at the mouth of Alligator Creek and was destroyed; about 800 died. Shaw gives Marine losses of 34 killed and 75 wounded; Wikipedia, citing Frank and Smith, gives 41–44 killed. See Chapter 4.

The Marines’ 1942 maps were inaccurate, and the stream known to Islanders as the Ilu, nicknamed Alligator Creek, was marked as the Tenaru. The real Tenaru River lies farther east. The name stuck to the battle, and many accounts still use it.

On the nights of 12–13 and 13–14 September 1942, Maj. Gen. Kiyotake Kawaguchi’s brigade attacked a low grassy ridge just south of Henderson Field held by Lt. Col. Merritt Edson’s 1st Raider Battalion and the 1st Parachute Battalion. The line bent but held. Shaw counts 59 Marines killed, 10 missing and 194 wounded, and more than 600 Japanese bodies. See Edson’s Ridge.

The Matanikau River, west of the perimeter, saw repeated fighting: small Marine raids in August, a failed attack on 23–27 September in which Marines were trapped near Point Cruz, and a successful 7–9 October attack in which, Shaw says, the Japanese lost more than 700 men and the Marines 65 dead. On 23 October Japanese tanks attacked across the mouth of the river and were destroyed. See Chapter 4.

Between 23 and 26 October 1942 the Japanese 2nd (Sendai) Division, under Lt. Gen. Masao Maruyama, made the largest ground attack of the campaign after a long march through the jungle south of the perimeter. Its assaults on the Marine and Army lines failed with heavy losses: about 3,500 Japanese dead by Shaw’s estimate, 2,200–3,000 in other accounts. See The October crisis.

Beginning in early November 1942, Lt. Col. Evans Carlson’s 2nd Raider Battalion, guided by Solomon Islander scouts, pursued Japanese troops retreating from Koli Point through the jungle behind the perimeter for about a month. Shaw says the Raiders killed nearly 500 Japanese and lost 16 killed and 18 wounded. See Carlson’s Raiders and the Long Patrol.

In early November 1942 a Japanese force landed near Koli Point, about 13 miles east of the Lunga. Marines of the 7th Marines and Army troops of the 164th Infantry attacked it between 3 and 12 November; most of the survivors who broke out were then hunted down by Carlson’s Raiders. See Chapter 6 and Chapter 8.

Mount Austen was a jungle-covered hill mass southwest of Henderson Field that overlooked the perimeter. From mid-December 1942 the Army’s 132nd Infantry and then the 25th Division fought for it; the Japanese built a horseshoe of dozens of log-and-earth pillboxes there that the Americans called the Gifu, which fell on about 23 January 1943. See Chapter 8.

XIV Corps under Patch attacked westward along the coast in January 1943, taking Kokumbona on 23 January, while the Japanese fell back toward Cape Esperance. The Japanese rear guard bought time for the evacuation, and when American columns met at Tenaro on 9 February the island was secure. See Chapter 9.

On the night of 11–12 October 1942, Rear Admiral Norman Scott’s cruisers surprised a Japanese bombardment force under Rear Admiral Aritomo Gotō northwest of Savo, sinking the cruiser Furutaka and the destroyer Fubuki; Gotō was mortally wounded. The Americans lost the destroyer Duncan and 163 men (NHHC). A Japanese convoy still landed troops and artillery that night. See NHHC H-011-1 and Chapter 6.

On 26 October 1942, while the Japanese army attacked Henderson Field, carrier forces met far to the east, north of the Santa Cruz Islands. Japanese aircraft sank Hornet and damaged Enterprise, leaving the Americans briefly without an operational carrier in the Pacific. But Japan lost so many experienced aircrew that, as NHHC notes, it was a costly victory. See Chapter 6.

In the darkness between Lunga and Savo, Rear Admiral Daniel Callaghan’s cruisers and destroyers ran into Vice Admiral Hiroaki Abe’s force, built around the battleships Hiei and Kirishima, which was coming to bombard Henderson Field. The battle was fought at ranges down to a few hundred yards. Callaghan and Rear Admiral Norman Scott were killed, and NHHC counts 1,439 American sailors lost, but the bombardment was stopped. See Chapter 7.

Rear Admiral Willis A. Lee took the new battleships Washington and South Dakota into the sound to stop another bombardment. The Japanese sank three of his four destroyers and battered South Dakota, but Washington, using radar fire control, wrecked Kirishima, which capsized at 3:25 a.m. It was one of only two battleship-against-battleship actions in the Pacific War. See NHHC H-Gram 012.

Rear Admiral Raizō Tanaka escorted 11 transports carrying the 38th Division toward Guadalcanal. On 14 November aircraft from Henderson Field and Enterprise sank or crippled seven of them in the Slot; the four that remained were run aground near Tassafaronga at dawn on the 15th and destroyed. NHHC says only about 2,000 troops reached the island, with almost none of their supplies.

On the night of 30 November 1942, Rear Admiral Carleton Wright’s five cruisers and six destroyers, warned by radar, opened fire on Tanaka’s eight destroyers carrying supply drums. The Japanese answered with 44 Long Lance torpedoes that hit Minneapolis, New Orleans, Pensacola and Northampton; Northampton sank. NHHC’s per-ship figures add to 395 American dead. See NHHC H-013-1.

On 29–30 January 1943, Japanese torpedo bombers attacked Rear Admiral Robert Giffen’s cruiser force south of Guadalcanal, hitting USS Chicago at dusk and sinking her the next afternoon. The attacks helped keep U.S. attention away from the Japanese preparations to evacuate the island. See Chapter 9.

It was the Americans’ name for the Japanese destroyers that ran down the Slot at night to land troops and supplies on Guadalcanal and get back out of air range by daylight. The Japanese called it ‘rat transportation’ (nezumi yusō). See the Tokyo Express record page.

From late November 1942 Japanese destroyers carried food and medicine in steel drums, roped together and pushed overboard off the coast so that troops ashore could haul them in. NHHC describes the method in its Tassafaronga H-Gram. Many drums were lost or sunk by strafing aircraft and PT boats, and the soldiers ashore remained hungry.

So many ships of both sides sank in the waters between Guadalcanal, Savo and Florida Island that sailors called it Iron Bottom Sound; its formal name was Savo Sound. Pacific Wrecks gives an average depth of about 600 meters. The wreck sonar in Chapter 9 plots the known and approximate positions of the ships lost there.

Maj. Gen. Alexander A. Vandegrift commanded the 1st Marine Division from the landings until he handed over to the Army on 9 December 1942. He received the Medal of Honor for his leadership on Guadalcanal and later became Commandant of the Marine Corps. A short biography appears in Shaw’s First Offensive.

Col. Merritt A. ‘Red Mike’ Edson commanded the 1st Raider Battalion on Tulagi and on the ridge south of Henderson Field that took his name. He received the Medal of Honor for the defense of the ridge and later commanded the 5th Marines. See Edson’s Raiders and Chapter 5.

Sgt. John Basilone of the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, led machine-gun sections that held part of the southern line during the Japanese attacks of 24–25 October 1942, and he received the Medal of Honor. He was later killed on Iwo Jima. See Chapter 6.

Lt. Col. Lewis B. ‘Chesty’ Puller commanded the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines. His battalion was trapped west of the Matanikau on 27 September, when Douglas Munro died covering its evacuation, and it held the southern perimeter, with Army troops of the 164th Infantry fed into its lines, during the October attacks. See Chapter 4 and Chapter 6.

Signalman First Class Douglas A. Munro of the U.S. Coast Guard led landing craft evacuating trapped Marines near Point Cruz on 27 September 1942 and was killed placing his boat between the enemy and the beach. He received the Medal of Honor posthumously, the only Coast Guardsman ever to do so. See Douglas Munro.

Lt. Col. Evans F. Carlson commanded the 2nd Raider Battalion, whose month-long patrol behind Japanese lines in November–December 1942 was one of the campaign’s most successful operations. He had learned guerrilla methods observing Chinese forces in the 1930s. See Carlson’s Raiders.

George, Francis, Joseph, Madison and Albert Sullivan of Waterloo, Iowa, enlisted together and served aboard the light cruiser Juneau. All five died when I-26 sank the damaged Juneau on 13 November 1942; the Navy afterward discouraged family members from serving on the same ship. See USS Juneau and the Sullivan brothers.

Rear Admirals Daniel J. Callaghan and Norman Scott were both killed on 13 November 1942, Callaghan on San Francisco’s bridge and Scott aboard Atlanta, which was hit by American as well as Japanese fire. Both received the Medal of Honor posthumously. See Chapter 7.

Lt. Gen. Harukichi Hyakutake commanded the 17th Army; Col. Kiyonao Ichiki, Maj. Gen. Kiyotake Kawaguchi and Lt. Gen. Masao Maruyama led its successive offensives; Vice Admiral Gunichi Mikawa commanded the 8th Fleet; Rear Admiral Raizō Tanaka led the destroyer runs. Tanaka’s own account, ‘Japan’s Losing Struggle for Guadalcanal’, appeared in U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings in 1956.

The 164th Infantry, a North Dakota National Guard regiment of the Americal Division, landed on 13 October 1942 and fought in the October battle. The rest of the Americal, the 25th Infantry Division and the 2nd Marine Division formed XIV Corps under Patch in January 1943. See the 164th Infantry and Chapter 8.

The coastwatchers were a network, organized by the Royal Australian Navy before the war, of officials, planters and missionaries who stayed behind Japanese lines with radios, supported and protected by Solomon Islanders. They reported ship and aircraft movements and rescued downed airmen and sailors. See Coastwatchers of the Solomon Islands.

Martin Clemens was the British district officer on Guadalcanal. He withdrew into the hills when the Japanese arrived, kept watch with a small group of Islander police and scouts, and walked into the Marine lines on 15 August 1942, after which his scouts worked with the Marines throughout the campaign. See Chapter 8.

Sgt. Maj. Jacob Vouza, a retired member of the Protectorate police serving as a scout, was captured by Ichiki’s men just before the Tenaru battle, tied up, questioned and bayoneted. He refused to talk, freed himself and reached the Marine lines to warn them. He received the Silver Star and was later knighted; Shaw gives his death as 15 March 1984. See Jacob Vouza and the Solomon Islands scouts.

Islanders served as scouts, guides, carriers and laborers, hid and fed coastwatchers, and brought downed Allied airmen and shipwrecked sailors to safety. Many worked in the labor corps that unloaded ships and built roads. Their contribution is a central theme of Chapter 8.

Wartime American captions and reports routinely called Solomon Islanders ‘natives’, a term that today reads as dismissive. This collection names Islanders as people where sources allow and uses ‘Solomon Islanders’ or ‘Islanders’ otherwise, keeping the 1942 wording only inside quoted captions.

Fighting, bombing and the movement of tens of thousands of troops destroyed gardens, villages and mission stations, such as the Catholic mission at Visale near Cape Esperance, and many families fled into the hills. Islanders were killed by both sides, and Japanese troops desperate for food took what they could find. The war also brought new roads, wages and contacts that shaped the postwar Solomon Islands.

Paul Mason in the south and Jack Read in the north watched the Japanese airfields at Buin and Buka and radioed warnings of bombers heading for Guadalcanal. Their reports, relayed through the coastwatcher network, often gave Henderson Field’s fighters time to climb to altitude before the raids arrived. See Chapter 3.

Donald Kennedy was a Protectorate official who ran a coastwatching station at Segi on New Georgia, with a force of Islanders who rescued downed Allied airmen and fought Japanese patrols. His post watched the Slot and the Japanese build-up in the central Solomons. See the Coastwatchers page.

Yes. Islanders recruited into the Protectorate’s defense force and police served as scouts with Marine and Army units, including Carlson’s Raiders, and in later Solomons campaigns. Their knowledge of the terrain and languages was essential in jungle where maps were poor.

Vouza has a statue in Honiara, and Solomon Islanders take a leading part in the anniversary ceremonies on Bloody Ridge and at the Guadalcanal American Memorial, as photographs from the 80th anniversary in 2022 show. See Chapter 9.

Malaria disabled more men than Japanese bullets. Shaw reports more than 1,000 new cases of malaria and related diseases each week by November and more than 3,200 men of the 1st Marine Division on the sick list with malaria that month. Atabrine suppression was introduced but was unpopular and unevenly used. See Shaw, First Offensive and Chapter 8.

Yes, especially in August and September. With the transports gone, the division lived on short rations stretched with captured Japanese rice, and many men lost a great deal of weight. Supply improved slowly as convoys and destroyer-transports got through, but fresh food remained scarce until late in the campaign.

Because so many of them starved. American air and naval power cut off most supplies after October, and the troops ashore lived on tiny rations, roots and whatever they could find while suffering from malaria, dysentery and beriberi. They called the island Gatō (餓島), ‘starvation island’. See Chapter 8.

Exact figures do not exist. Shaw says Japan lost close to 25,000 men on Guadalcanal, about half of them killed in action and the rest dead of illness, wounds or starvation; the National WWII Museum gives about 31,000 Japanese dead. By December, according to Wikipedia’s summary, Hyakutake’s forces were losing about 50 men a day. See Chapter 9.

NHHC says ‘over 10,000’. Wikipedia gives 10,652 but notes the three nightly totals add to about 10,828, and other published totals are 11,083 and 11,706. Shaw writes of about 11,000 taken off on the three nights and 13,000 evacuated overall. Many evacuees were too sick to walk. See Chapter 9.

Shaw gives 1,598 American ground-force dead, 1,152 of them Marines, and 4,709 wounded, plus 147 Marine aviators killed. Navy losses were far higher: NHHC says just under 5,000 sailors. The National WWII Museum’s total for Allied dead is about 7,100. See Shaw, December and the Final Stages.

NHHC lists two aircraft carriers, five heavy cruisers (plus the Australian Canberra), two light cruisers, 15 destroyers, three destroyer-transports and one transport. The National WWII Museum counts 29 Allied and 38 Japanese ships lost overall. See the ships chart on the Guadalcanal hub.

Japanese losses included the battleships Hiei and Kirishima, the light carrier Ryūjō, the heavy cruisers Kako, Furutaka and Kinugasa, the light cruiser Yura, 11 destroyers, several submarines and many transports, among them the 11 of Tanaka’s November convoy and the transports beached at Tassafaronga in October.

Very few, on either side. Japanese soldiers were trained not to surrender, and most fought to the death or died of illness; Wikipedia’s campaign summary gives about 1,000 Japanese captured, many of them construction laborers. Photographs in this collection show small groups of prisoners on Tulagi and Guadalcanal.

Many survivors carried recurring malaria, other tropical diseases and what was then called combat fatigue home with them. The 1st Marine Division needed months of rest and recovery in Australia before it could fight again, and its next campaign was at Cape Gloucester at the end of 1943.

Yes. Honiara has an international airport on the site of Henderson Field, and local guides lead visitors to Bloody (Edson’s) Ridge, the Matanikau, Alligator Creek, the Gifu area on Mount Austen and the beached wrecks along the northwest coast. Visitors should use local guides: wartime ordnance is still found in the area.

It is a memorial on Skyline Ridge above Honiara maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission, with a central pylon and walls describing the land, sea and air battles. It is the site of anniversary ceremonies each August attended by Solomon Islanders, Americans and representatives of other nations.

Several wrecks lie in diveable water. Pacific Wrecks lists the beached transports at Bonegi (Hirokawa Maru to about 55 m and Kinugawa Maru to about 27 m), the submarine I-1 off Kamimbo (about 14–27 m) and the tug Seminole at about 33 m. Most warship wrecks lie far deeper, at 600–1,400 m. See Pacific Wrecks: Iron Bottom Sound.

Many have. Robert Ballard’s 1992 expedition found Quincy, Canberra, Atlanta, Kirishima and others; Paul Allen’s ships mapped the sound in 2015 and found Hiei, Juneau, Wasp and others in 2018–2019; and Ballard’s E/V Nautilus surveyed 13 sites in July 2025, including the first sightings of Teruzuki and the lost bow of USS New Orleans. See the 2025 expedition report.

Both lie outside Iron Bottom Sound. RV Petrel found Juneau on 17 March 2018 about 4,200 meters deep off San Cristobal, and Wasp on 14 January 2019 at about 4,345 meters in the Coral Sea. See the Juneau page.

RV Petrel announced the discovery of Hiei, the first Japanese battleship sunk by U.S. forces in the war, on 6 February 2019. She lies upside down about 900 meters deep northwest of Savo. See USNI News, 2019.

Shaw notes that the 1st Marine Division left 681 dead in the island cemetery near Lunga Point and the 2nd Marine Division 263. After the war American remains were moved home or to national cemeteries such as the Manila American Cemetery, where the Tablets of the Missing list men lost at sea, among them the Sullivan brothers. Japanese remains are still being recovered. See Chapter 9.

The battleship USS North Carolina, now a memorial ship in Wilmington, escorted the carriers off Guadalcanal, fought at the Eastern Solomons and was torpedoed by I-19 on 15 September 1942. See USS North Carolina at Guadalcanal and Battleship North Carolina.

Yes. The Vilu War Museum, west of Honiara, displays aircraft and artillery left from the campaign, including an SBD-5 Dauntless; photographs appear in Chapter 9. Honiara itself grew up after the war around the wartime base.

The official histories are free online: John Miller Jr.’s Guadalcanal: The First Offensive (Army, 1949), Zimmerman’s The Guadalcanal Campaign (Marines, 1949) and Hough, Ludwig and Shaw’s Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal. Richard B. Frank’s Guadalcanal (1990) is the standard modern account. Start with the Guadalcanal hub.