Guadalcanal, an island in the Solomons archipelago in the South Pacific, was the scene of the first U.S. offensive land action against Japan in World War II. American Marines landed on Guadalcanal in August 1942 and were later supported by U.S. Army troops. The Japanese defended Guadalcanal tenaciously, and the Americans did not declare the island secure until February 1943, and the victory was a turning point in the Pacific War. Numerous naval battles occurred off the shores of Guadalcanal as well.
Guadalcanal
On the humid morning of August 19, 1942, infantrymen from Company A, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines carefully eyed the landscape for any signs of Japanese soldiers as they slowly made their way through the thick jungle on the island of Guadalcanal, located in the Solomon Islands. Read more
Guadalcanal
Scanning over the maps unfolded before him in the division operations room, Colonel Gerald C. Thomas, 1st Marine Division G-3 officer, turned and muttered: “They’re coming.” Read more
Guadalcanal
Two weeks after Pearl Harbor, coast watcher Cornelius Page, a plantation manager on Tabar Island 20 miles north of New Ireland in the South Pacific, reported by teleradio that Japanese planes were making reconnaissance flights over New Ireland and New Britain. Read more
Guadalcanal
The Grumman F4F Wildcat is usually described as chunky, “square,” squat, or stubby—not exactly adjectives that suggest grace or elegance. Read more
Guadalcanal
Lieutenant David C. Richardson spotted the four-engined flying boat silhouetted against the ocean by the late morning sun. Read more
Guadalcanal
By June 1942, the military might of Imperial Japan threatened Australia. The string of spectacular Japanese conquests in the South Pacific menaced lines of supply and communication between the United States and its allies and bases in the region. Read more
Guadalcanal
November 13, 1942, was a Friday, which sailors aboard the cruiser USS San Francisco noted with anxiety. Read more
Guadalcanal
The bogey man of the U.S. Navy during the Guadalcanal campaign was not the Zero fighter or the I-class submarine. Read more
Guadalcanal
Admiral Ernest King could not believe what he was reading. The graying 63-year-old chief of U.S. naval operations had been awoken from his sleep. Read more
Guadalcanal
“One large, two small vessels, one six miles from Savo off northern beach, Guadalcanal. Will investigate closer.” Read more
Guadalcanal
Japanese military successes in 1941 and 1942 shocked the West. Behind those successes lay a logistics effort not often appreciated, that of shipping. Read more
Guadalcanal
American soldiers of Japanese ancestry made remarkable contributions to the Allied victory during World War II. Read more
Guadalcanal
Rear Admiral Keiji Shibasaki, commander of the elite Japanese garrison entrenched on tiny Betio Island in the central Pacific Ocean, boasted in mid-1943 that his heavily fortified island redoubt could hold out “against a million Americans for a thousand years.” Read more
Guadalcanal
In November 1941, the U.S. Asiatic Fleet weighed anchor in Shanghai, China, for the last time. Alarmed by the growing hostility and aggressiveness of the Japanese, Admiral Thomas Hart ordered the outnumbered and outgunned American vessels moved to the relative safety of Manila Bay in the Philippines. Read more
Guadalcanal
World War II gave us many stories of aerial warfare, men and their machines fighting their way to victory and glory in the name of humanity. Read more
