The Matanikau offensive and Koli Point

On 1 November 1942 the US Marines crossed the Matanikau River on Guadalcanal for the fourth time in the campaign. This time the aim was neither reconnaissance nor forestalling a Japanese attack: after the victory in the Battle for Henderson Field, the commander of the 1st Marine Division, Major General Alexander Vandegrift, wanted to push the Japanese west, out of range of the artillery that was shelling the airfield, and to cut off the remnants of the Sendai Division from the village of Kokumbona, where the Japanese 17th Army had its headquarters. In three days the Marines surrounded and wiped out the Japanese troops holding out west of the Point Cruz headland. On 4 November, however, the attack was halted, because a new threat had meanwhile appeared in the east, at Koli Point. There, on 3–12 November, the Americans tried to encircle the regiment of Colonel Toshinari Shōji. They killed several hundred Japanese soldiers, but Shōji himself and most of his men slipped away into the jungle. Both operations showed that the Americans on Guadalcanal were moving from defence to attack – and how hard such an attack was in the jungle.

After the Battle for Henderson Field

On the nights of 24/25 and 25/26 October Lieutenant General Masao Maruyama’s Japanese 2nd Division bled itself white in attacks on the southern sector of the American perimeter around the airfield. More than 1,500 of its men were killed, and on the morning of 26 October the commander of the 17th Army, Lieutenant General Harukichi Hyakutake, ordered a retreat. The remnants of the division’s left wing and reserve were to make their way back across the mountains to the west, beyond the Matanikau. The right wing – chiefly the 230th Infantry Regiment of the 38th Division, which Shōji had commanded since 23 October in place of the sidelined General Kiyotake Kawaguchi – was to head east to the Koli Point area, some 20 kilometres east of the Lunga River. These troops had taken no part in the attack at all.

On the Matanikau itself the line was held by Colonel Nomasu Nakaguma’s badly depleted Japanese 4th Infantry Regiment, the same regiment that at the beginning of October had lost its positions on the east bank of the river and on 23 October had attacked its mouth with tanks to no avail. Its men held a sector running from the shore to about a kilometre inland; beyond that, along the river and on the slopes of Mount Austen, stood Colonel Akinosuke Oka’s 124th Infantry Regiment. On paper the two regiments had six battalions between them, but after the fighting, hunger and disease they were down to half strength or less.

The Americans were in a much better position than a few weeks earlier. After the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands the damaged USS Enterprise was admittedly the only American carrier in the South Pacific, but the area’s new commander, Vice Admiral William Halsey, had resolved to hold the island at all costs and was sending reinforcements there. On 4 and 5 November the 8th Marine Regiment landed on Guadalcanal from American Samoa. Vandegrift wanted to exploit the moment when the enemy was shattered and push him away from the airfield before Japanese reinforcements arrived.

Edson’s plan

Seven battalions were assigned to the attack. Its core was formed by the three battalions of the 5th Marine Regiment under Colonel Merritt Edson, who also took tactical command of the whole operation, and by Colonel William J. Whaling’s group – a reinforced 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines. Two battalions of the 2nd Marine Regiment were held in reserve. The attack was supported by Marine and Army artillery, aircraft of the Cactus Air Force from Henderson Field and warships. The aim was twofold: to push the Japanese beyond the range of the guns with which they were shelling the airfield, and to take Kokumbona.

On the night of 31 October/1 November Marine engineers built three footbridges across the Matanikau. At 6.30 a.m. on 1 November some 36 guns from nine batteries, the heavy cruiser USS San Francisco, the light cruiser Helena and the destroyer Sterett opened fire on the west bank of the river, and aircraft – among them 19 B-17 bombers – bombed the same area. At the same time the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines crossed the river at its mouth, while the 2nd Battalion and Whaling’s group crossed further inland.

The pocket at Point Cruz

Inland the Marines met almost no resistance and by early afternoon had taken several ridges south of Point Cruz. By the sea it was a different story. Facing them was Major Masao Tamura’s 2nd Battalion, 4th Infantry, whose 7th Company put up a stubborn defence near the headland. In several hours of fighting Company C of the 1st Battalion lost three officers and many men and was driven back towards the river. The retreat was stopped only by further companies of the 1st and 3rd Battalions, 5th Marines; it was then that Corporal Anthony Casamento distinguished himself by manning a machine gun despite multiple wounds (he received the Medal of Honor only in 1980).

In the evening Edson and Vandegrift’s staff officers – Colonel Gerald Thomas and Lieutenant Colonel Merrill Twining – decided to encircle the defenders of the headland. The 1st and 3rd Battalions were to keep up the pressure along the coast, while the 2nd Battalion was to swing north and reach the sea west of Point Cruz. The Japanese understood the danger they were in: Tamura’s companies were down to a dozen or so effectives each, and the 17th Army staff sent everything it had to hand to help – the 2nd Anti-Tank Battalion with twelve guns and a road-construction company. These took up previously prepared positions south and west of the headland.

On the morning of 2 November the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, covered by Whaling’s group, reached the shore west of Point Cruz and closed the ring. The Japanese held out in a ravine between the coastal track and the beach, in bunkers of coral, earth and palm logs, in caves and in trenches. They were shelled by artillery all day, and in the afternoon Company I of the 2nd Battalion made a bayonet charge on the northern part of the pocket and overran it. Meanwhile the two battalions of the 2nd Marine Regiment, committed to the fight, passed Point Cruz and pushed on westwards.

At 6.30 a.m. on 3 November some of the encircled troops tried to break out but were driven back. Between 8 a.m. and noon five Marine companies finished off the pocket with small-arms fire, mortars, demolition charges and artillery, including guns firing over open sights. One of those present, Richard Nash, recalled how an anti-tank gun towed up by a jeep began firing canister into a palm grove from which came the wailing song of the trapped soldiers, and how afterwards rows of bodies were found there – “perhaps three hundred young Japanese soldiers”. According to American figures, 239 dead were counted, 28 of them officers, and twelve 37 mm anti-tank guns, a field gun and 34 machine guns were captured. It was one of the most one-sided actions of the whole campaign.

That same day the 2nd Marines and Whaling’s group advanced along the coast and by nightfall had reached a point about 3.2 kilometres beyond Point Cruz. Ahead of them were now only some 500 men of the 4th Infantry, reinforced by the remnants of units shattered in August and September and by starving sailors of the island’s original garrison. The Japanese command feared that it could not hold Kokumbona, the loss of which would cut the line of retreat of what was left of the 2nd Division and threaten the 17th Army’s entire rear area. Nakaguma is said to have considered taking the regimental colour and seeking death in a final attack; officers of the army staff talked him out of it. A few days later he was killed by an artillery shell.

Alarm in the east

It was at this very moment that events on the other side of the perimeter drew the Americans’ attention away. The Japanese had decided to support Shōji’s force, which was making its way through the jungle towards Koli Point: for the night of 2/3 November they scheduled a run of the Tokyo Express to land there some 300 men of a fresh company of the 230th Regiment, two 75 mm mountain guns, food and ammunition. American radio intelligence intercepted Japanese signals about the operation. As most of his forces were fighting beyond the Matanikau, Vandegrift could send only one battalion east: Lieutenant Colonel Herman Hanneken’s 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines set out from Lunga Point at 6.50 a.m. on 2 November, reached Koli Point after dark, crossed the mouth of the Metapona River and took up positions in the woods along the beach.

Koli Point: 3–12 November

Early on the morning of 3 November five Japanese destroyers began unloading about a kilometre east of Hanneken’s positions. The Marines stayed hidden but were unable to notify headquarters by radio. At dawn a Japanese patrol discovered them and a firefight broke out; soon the Japanese had set up both landed mountain guns and brought them into action. Hanneken, still without communications, with mounting losses and running out of ammunition, fell back by bounds across the Metapona and then across the Nalimbiu River, some 4.5 kilometres further west. Only at 2.45 p.m. did he manage to send a report. Meanwhile Shōji’s soldiers were beginning to arrive at Koli Point, on Gavaga Creek. Towards evening 31 aircraft from Henderson Field attacked their concentration, inflicting about a hundred killed and wounded – but some of the aircraft also mistakenly strafed Hanneken’s men.

The report of the Japanese landing coincided with information from another source. Vandegrift’s staff had a captured Japanese document according to which the rest of the 38th Division was to land at Koli Point and attack the Lunga perimeter from the east. The Americans did not know that the Japanese had already abandoned this plan. On the morning of 4 November the Marine commanders conferred on what to do. Twining wanted to continue the attack in the west, but Edson, Thomas and Vandegrift himself judged the threat from the east to be more serious. That same day the 5th Marines and Whaling’s group returned to Lunga Point. West of Point Cruz, about 1.8 kilometres beyond the headland, two battalions of the 2nd Marine Regiment and the 1st Battalion of the 164th Infantry Regiment dug in with orders to hold the ground gained. Kokumbona remained in Japanese hands, and the remnants of the Sendai Division began to reach it that same day.

The operation at Koli Point was commanded by Vandegrift’s deputy, Brigadier General William Rupertus. On 4 November he landed with Lieutenant Colonel Lewis “Chesty” Puller’s 1st Battalion, 7th Marines from boats at the mouth of the Nalimbiu, while two battalions of the 164th Infantry Regiment – National Guard soldiers from North Dakota – set off on foot towards the Nalimbiu. Heat, humidity and difficult terrain meant that the eleven-kilometre march took them all day. Meanwhile the cruisers Helena and San Francisco and the destroyer Sterett shelled Shōji’s positions, killing many men of two companies of the 230th Regiment. On 5 November the Army battalions crossed the Nalimbiu inland to outflank the enemy from the south; that same day the men landed by destroyers joined Shōji. On 7 November the Marines and Army soldiers linked up by the sea and advanced to within a kilometre and a half of the Metapona.

Hyakutake, meanwhile, ordered Shōji to abandon Koli Point and return west to Kokumbona. The withdrawal was covered by a strong rearguard dug in on Gavaga Creek near the village of Tetere; its mortars and both mountain guns kept the Americans under constant fire. On 8 November the battalions of Puller and Hanneken and the 164th Regiment tried to surround the Japanese, approaching overland from the west and landing from boats on the east. Puller was wounded several times and evacuated, and Rupertus, ill with dengue fever, handed over command to the Army’s Brigadier General Edmund Sebree. By 9 November the ring was almost closed, and the pocket was under constant fire from artillery and aircraft. In its southern part, however, a gap remained – a swampy creek that the 2nd Battalion, 164th Regiment was supposed to seal. It was by this route that Shōji’s soldiers began to escape from the encirclement.

The gap was closed on 11 November, but by then Shōji and – according to American estimates – between 2,000 and 3,000 of his men were already in the jungle to the south. On 12 November Sebree’s troops cleared the rest of the pocket and killed the Japanese remaining in it. Between 450 and 475 bodies were counted, and most of Shōji’s heavy weapons and supplies were captured. The Americans lost about 40 killed and 120 wounded in the whole operation.

A qualified victory

The fighting at Koli Point is sometimes presented as an American victory, and in tactical terms it was one: the Japanese lost several hundred men, weapons and supplies, and the threat to the perimeter from the east was removed. The main objective, however, was not achieved – Shōji’s regiment had not been destroyed. Sergeant John Stannard of the 164th Regiment, later a general, called the operation the most complex land action the Americans had carried out on the island since the landing, and observed that they had learned once again that attacking the Japanese in the jungle was far harder than defending against them. In the same way, the Matanikau offensive destroyed Nakaguma’s 4th Regiment but did not take Kokumbona, and breaking it off gave the Japanese time to strengthen their defences.

The pursuit of Shōji was taken up by the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion of Lieutenant Colonel Evans Carlson, which had landed on 4 November at Aola Bay, some 60 kilometres east of Lunga Point, to cover the construction of a new airfield. For almost a month the Raiders, guided by local scouts, tracked Shōji’s columns through the interior of the island. Of the several thousand soldiers who had escaped from Koli Point, according to American studies only 700–800 reached the Japanese positions beyond the Matanikau.

Place in the war

The first days of November closed the period in which the Americans on Guadalcanal had merely been defending the airfield. On 8 November Halsey flew to the island for the first time; Vandegrift described to him the situation of his exhausted division and its needs, and the admiral promised all the support available. Having dealt with Shōji, the Marines resumed the attack on Kokumbona on 10 November with three battalions under Colonel John M. Arthur, but on 11 November Vandegrift abruptly called it off and withdrew his troops to the east bank of the Matanikau. Coastwatchers, air reconnaissance and radio intelligence indicated that the Japanese were trying to bring the rest of the 38th Division, some 10,000 men, to the island together with heavy equipment. This attempt led on 12–15 November to the great Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, in which the American fleet, at heavy cost, turned back the Japanese convoy.

After that battle the Americans crossed the Matanikau once more. From 18 November Army units advanced slowly westwards, but on 23 November the attack stalled just beyond Point Cruz. Both sides remained on this line for the next six weeks; the Americans took Kokumbona only in the final phase of the campaign, in January 1943. The remnants of Shōji’s force fought on in December and January on Mount Austen. The 1st Marine Division, worn out by malaria, was relieved in December by the Army troops of General Alexander Patch.

The November fighting on the Matanikau and at Koli Point did not decide the fate of the island – that was settled at sea a few days later. It did show, however, that the initiative on land had passed to the Americans. The Japanese 17th Army, which in October had still been storming the airfield, was by November only defending itself, hungry, sick and cut off from supplies. For the United States it was a school of offensive jungle warfare whose lessons – and costs – would be repeated on island after island across the Pacific until the end of the war.