The battle for Henderson Field

At dusk on 23 October 1942 Japanese tanks moved across the sandbar at the mouth of the Matanikau River against the positions of the US Marines on Guadalcanal. So began the third and last great Japanese land offensive on the island, aimed at recapturing Henderson Field airfield. The attack from the west, along the coast, was meant only as a diversion, however, and it came a day too early. At that moment the main body of Lieutenant General Masao Maruyama’s 2nd Infantry Division was struggling through the jungle to strike the airfield from the south. It attacked on the nights of 24–25 and 25–26 October, and each assault broke against the barbed wire, machine guns and artillery of the marines and Army soldiers. On 25 October, which the Americans called “Dugout Sunday”, Japanese aircraft, ships and guns attacked the perimeter all day long. On the morning of 26 October the Japanese command called off the offensive. Estimates of Japanese losses range from 2,200 to 3,000 killed; the Americans lost about 80–90.

Hyakutake’s plan

At the beginning of October the commander of the Japanese Seventeenth Army, Lieutenant General Harukichi Hyakutake, resolved this time not to repeat the mistakes of August and September, when units too weak to break the American defences had been thrown onto the island. Between 1 and 17 October the Tokyo Express and convoys carried some 15,000 troops to Guadalcanal – the rest of the 2nd “Sendai” Division and a regiment of the 38th Division – as well as artillery and tanks. The most valuable cargo was landed at Tassafaronga by a convoy that got through because, on the night of 13–14 October, Japanese battleships had all but destroyed Henderson Field. Hyakutake, who had arrived on the island on 9 October, now had some 20,000 men under his command. The Japanese reckoned that the airfield was defended by at most 10,000 Americans; in fact there were about 23,000.

Hyakutake considered an attack along the coast too difficult after the marines had defeated the Japanese 4th Infantry Regiment on the Matanikau on 7–9 October and driven it from its positions east of the river. The main blow was therefore to be delivered by Maruyama’s 2nd Division – some 7,000 men in nine battalions – from the south, out of the jungle, at a point the Americans did not expect, near the east bank of the Lunga River, not far from Bloody Ridge. The left wing was commanded by Major General Yumio Nasu, the right by Major General Kiyotake Kawaguchi, who had been defeated on the same ridge in September. From the west, along the coast, Major General Tadashi Sumiyoshi with heavy artillery, tanks and five infantry battalions, about 2,900 men, was to pin down the defenders at the mouth of the Matanikau. The attack was set for 22 October.

The Maruyama Road

From 12 October Japanese engineers cut a path through the jungle, called the Maruyama Road, leading from the Matanikau to the south of the American perimeter. It was about 24 kilometres long and ran through the most difficult terrain on the island: steep ridges, deep muddy ravines, countless streams and dense rainforest. The 2nd Division set off along it between 16 and 18 October. Besides his weapon and pack, every soldier carried one artillery shell, and the heavy guns had to be hauled by hand; most of them were abandoned along the way. The march took far longer than planned. Food was running out, and Maruyama put his men on half rations.

On 20 October Maruyama reached the Lunga and estimated that he was about six kilometres from the airfield; in reality he was twice that distance away. The attack was postponed to 23 and then to 24 October. Kawaguchi, convinced that the Americans were weaker further east, began on his own initiative to shift the right wing in that direction. When he refused to keep to the plan, Maruyama relieved him of command and on 23 October replaced him with Colonel Toshinari Shōji. From 18 October Japanese 150 mm howitzers shelled the airfield from the west, and aircraft from Rabaul bombed the perimeter every day. The Americans knew nothing of the column approaching them through the jungle from the south.

The perimeter around the airfield was held by four regiments, 13 infantry battalions in all: the 1st, 5th and 7th Marines of the 1st Marine Division and the Army’s 164th Infantry Regiment, which had arrived on 13 October. Two battalions under Lieutenant Colonel William McKelvy held forward positions at the mouth of the Matanikau, separated from the main line by a gap watched only by patrols. The commander of the 1st Division, Major General Alexander Vandegrift, was in Nouméa at the time, where on 23 October he conferred with the new commander of Allied forces in the South Pacific, Vice Admiral William Halsey, who a few days earlier had replaced Vice Admiral Robert Ghormley. Halsey asked whether the marines could hold the island. Vandegrift said they could, but that he needed far more effective support than he had been getting.

23 October: tanks on the Matanikau

Hyakutake’s staff informed Sumiyoshi that the attack had been postponed to 24 October, but failed to pass the news in time to the commander of the 4th Regiment, Colonel Nomasu Nakaguma. At dusk on 23 October, after an artillery bombardment, nine tanks of the 1st Independent Tank Company moved in pairs across the sandbar at the mouth of the Matanikau, followed by two infantry battalions. The marines were waiting. Their 37 mm anti-tank guns destroyed every tank, and four Marine artillery battalions, some 40 howitzers, fired more than 6,000 rounds into the area between the river mouth and Point Cruz, where the Japanese infantry was assembling. By 1.15 a.m. on 24 October Nakaguma’s attack had petered out. The Japanese suffered heavy losses, the Americans light ones. An attack that was supposed to pin down the Americans in concert with the main assault had come on its own and given the defenders advance warning.

The night of 24–25 October

On 24 October, when Colonel Akinosuke Oka’s Japanese troops were spotted to the south, the Americans moved Lieutenant Colonel Herman Hanneken’s 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines to the Matanikau. On the southern sector of the perimeter, east of the Lunga, Lieutenant Colonel Lewis “Chesty” Puller’s 1st Battalion, 7th Marines was left on its own – about 700 men on a line more than two kilometres long. In the late afternoon Marine patrols detected the approaching Japanese, but it was too late to regroup.

Between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. there was a downpour. The Japanese columns, exhausted by the march, lost their way in the darkness and mud. Shōji’s right wing turned parallel to the American line, and only one of its battalions made contact with Puller’s defences, at around 10 p.m.; it was beaten off. Nevertheless, for reasons that have never been explained, Maruyama’s staff reported that the right wing had captured the airfield. At 12.50 a.m. on 25 October Hyakutake signalled to Rabaul that “shortly before 11 p.m. the right wing took the airfield”. According to some accounts the agreed victory signal, “Banzai”, was already in circulation. The report at once set in motion the fleet and the air forces, which were waiting for news that Henderson Field had fallen.

Meanwhile Nasu’s left wing reached Puller’s line. At 12.30 a.m. Captain Jirō Katsumata’s company struck Company A, was caught on the barbed-wire entanglements and within half an hour had been almost wiped out by machine-gun, mortar and artillery fire. Further west, at 1.15 a.m., another company ran straight into the positions of Company C. Sergeant John Basilone’s section of heavy machine guns killed almost all the attackers within minutes. For the rest of the night Basilone moved weapons between positions, cleared jammed guns himself and brought ammunition to his gunners through the Japanese lines. For that night he received the Medal of Honor in 1943; according to the Marine Corps he was the first enlisted Marine to receive it in the war.

Puller, who realised that he was facing the main assault, asked for reinforcements. Lieutenant Colonel Robert Hall’s 3rd Battalion, 164th Infantry was sent from reserve. In darkness and rain the North Dakota National Guardsmen were fed into the marines’ positions one after another, platoon by platoon, and by dawn they had filled out the line. At around 3.30 a.m. Colonel Masajirō Furimiya, commander of the 29th Regiment, broke through the curtain of fire with two companies and his staff. About a hundred of his men penetrated the centre of Puller’s line and opened a gap in it. At 7.30 a.m. Nasu pulled the rest of his units back into the jungle to prepare another attack. During the day the Americans closed the gap and rounded up individual enemy soldiers. More than 300 Japanese were killed in front of Puller’s and Hall’s line that night. At 4.30 a.m. Hyakutake withdrew the report of the airfield’s capture, and at 7 a.m. he announced that the outcome of the attack was unknown.

Dugout Sunday

Because of the false report that the airfield had been taken, on 25 October – a Sunday – the Japanese Eighth Fleet sent ships to Guadalcanal to sink American vessels offshore and give fire support to the troops on land. In the morning three destroyers chased away from Lunga Point two old destroyers converted into minesweepers, the Zane and the Trever, which had brought in aviation fuel; they sank the tug Seminole and the patrol boat YP-284 and then shelled American positions. When a Marine coastal gun hit the destroyer Akatsuki, the force withdrew under attack by Cactus Air Force fighters. A second force, with the light cruiser Yura, came under attack from Dauntless dive bombers. After further air attacks the badly damaged cruiser was abandoned and scuttled that evening.

All day long waves of Japanese bombers and fighters from Rabaul and from the carriers Jun’yō and Hiyō came in over the airfield, more than 80 aircraft in six waves, while the howitzers beyond the Matanikau kept shelling the runway. The previous night’s downpour had softened the grass fighter strip, so that in the morning the Americans had trouble getting airborne. The Japanese lost a dozen or more aircraft that day and most of their crews; the Cactus Air Force lost two fighters, whose pilots survived. The airfield suffered little damage. The soldiers, who had spent almost the whole day in foxholes and shelters, called 25 October “Dugout Sunday”.

On the southern sector the Americans used the day to regroup. Puller’s battalion took over the western part of the sector and Hall’s men the eastern part, with the divisional reserve, the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines, positioned behind them. On the Matanikau Hanneken and the 5th Marines closed the gap between their positions.

The night of 25–26 October

Maruyama threw in his last reserve, the 16th Infantry Regiment. From 8 p.m. on 25 October until dawn the next day it and the remnants of Nasu’s units made repeated frontal attacks on Puller’s and Hall’s line. Rifle, machine-gun, mortar and artillery fire, together with canister from the 37 mm anti-tank guns, massacred wave after wave of attackers. The commander of the 16th Regiment, Colonel Toshirō Hiroyasu, was killed along with most of his staff and four battalion commanders. General Nasu, hit by a rifle bullet, died a few hours later. Small groups, among them Colonel Furimiya’s men, got through the American lines but were tracked down and killed over the following days. Shōji’s right wing took no part in the attack.

At 3 a.m. on 26 October Oka’s force at last attacked on the Matanikau. The Japanese assaulted the ridge held by Hanneken’s battalion, above all its Company F on the extreme left flank. Platoon Sergeant Mitchell Paige’s machine-gun section inflicted heavy losses on the attackers, but almost all its men were killed or wounded; Paige, who kept his gun firing to the end, was also later awarded the Medal of Honor. At 5 a.m. the Japanese broke onto the ridge. The battalion’s executive officer, Major Odell Conoley, hastily gathered a dozen or so men – signallers, a cook, a bandsman – and, together with the remnants of Company F and soldiers from neighbouring companies, counter-attacked and drove the enemy off the ridge before they could dig in. On the ridge and in the ravine in front of it the marines counted about 300 Japanese dead; Hanneken’s battalion lost 14 killed and 32 wounded.

Retreat

At 8 a.m. on 26 October Hyakutake called off further attacks and ordered a retreat. In front of Puller’s and Hall’s lines the Americans buried or burned the remains of some 1,500 of Maruyama’s soldiers. The left wing was to return along the Maruyama Road to beyond the Matanikau, while the right wing – Shōji’s – was to move east towards Koli Point. Men who had been without food for several days carried their wounded through the same mountains and ravines they had crossed a week earlier on their way to the airfield; many of the wounded died and were buried along the track. Lieutenant Keijirō Minegishi wrote in his diary that he had never imagined he would be retreating along the same mountain path he had marched with such enthusiasm, and that after three days without food he had to rest every two metres on every climb. The first units of the 2nd Division reached Seventeenth Army headquarters at Kokumbona only at the beginning of November. Ravaged by fighting, hunger and tropical disease, the division was no longer capable of attacking.

Estimates of the losses on both sides vary. By American reckoning the Japanese lost from about 2,200 to 3,000 killed, along with thousands of wounded and sick; American losses amounted to about 80–90 killed and, in the air and at sea, a few aircraft, a tug and a patrol boat. The Imperial Navy lost the cruiser Yura and a dozen or more aircraft with their crews.

The reinforcements keep coming

War chronologies record under 29 October that the Japanese were continuing to ship reinforcements to Guadalcanal. This was not a single event on that day but the course the Japanese command adopted immediately after the defeat. The staffs in Rabaul and Tokyo had no intention of giving up the island: they decided to bring in the rest of the 38th Division, and later the 51st Division as well, and to launch another offensive in November. The night runs of the Tokyo Express destroyers continued without a break, and at the turn of October and November they landed troops at Tassafaronga and around Koli Point. At the same time the Americans, encouraged by their victory, went over to the attack west of the Matanikau on 1 November.

Place in the war

The battle for Henderson Field was the last serious Japanese land offensive on Guadalcanal. In it the Japanese repeated the mistakes of September: they underestimated the number of Americans, sent infantry through the jungle without artillery or supplies – the jungle itself proving a formidable enemy – and their attacks, spread over several nights and made without communication between the wings, broke one after another against the same defences. On the American side, marines and Army soldiers fought shoulder to shoulder on Guadalcanal for the first time: the North Dakota National Guardsmen, fed into Puller’s positions at night, helped to hold the most threatened sector. Basilone and Paige became national heroes in the United States.

The fighting on land coincided with a battle at sea. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was waiting with his carrier fleet north of the Solomon Islands for news of the airfield’s capture, ready to destroy the American fleet when it came to the rescue. On 26 October, as Hyakutake was calling off the attack, the carriers of both sides clashed in the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands. The Japanese sank the carrier Hornet, but lost so many experienced airmen that their advantage at sea began to melt away.

Maruyama’s defeat did not end the struggle for the island. In November the Japanese tried to bring the rest of the 38th Division to Guadalcanal and to shell the airfield with battleships once more, but in the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal on 13–15 November the American fleet and the aircraft from Henderson Field destroyed most of the convoy. From then on the initiative on the island lay with the Americans. In December 1942 the Japanese command decided to evacuate Guadalcanal, and at the beginning of February 1943 Tokyo Express destroyers took off the last surviving soldiers of the Seventeenth Army.