GUADALCANAL
The achievements of the Imperial Japanese Navy between Pearl Harbour and the Battle of Midway rank as one of the classic campaigns of naval history. Following Admiral Yamamoto's meticulous strategic plan, Japanese naval air power knocked out the United States' surface fleet, and then bundled the British, Dutch and Americans out of the East Indies, the Philippines and Malaya in a matter of weeks.
The resulting 'island chain' of forward bases was intended to act as a defensive perimeter to protect the new Japanese conquests from any Allied counter-stroke. That counter-stroke was sure to come, for despite their humiliating losses the Allies had not been totally disabled. The American aircraft carriers were still very much a force to be reckoned with.
The problem for the Japanese was that their impressive victories had not given them the secure perimeter that they needed. They needed bases in New Guinea if they were to pose a serious threat to Australia. To meet this latter threat the US Navy took over responsibility for the Southwest Pacific, and it was in this theatre that the first big battle between the Japanese and American carriers took place. The Battle of the Coral Sea checkmated the Japanese attempting to capture Port Moresby in New Guinea.
In early June 1942, Midway proved to be a disaster for the Japanese. They lost four aircraft carriers and well-trained crews against the US's one carrier. Midway was the end of the Japanese Navy's dominance in the Pacific, for the ships and aircrew could never be fully replaced, whereas the American losses were replaced many times over. Nor was the counterattack long in coming, but the question was, where to strike? Although there were two schools of thought about how to defeat the Japanese in the Pacific, there was fortunately total agreement that the Solomon Islands in the Southwest Pacific were to be the objective. This was because the area dominated New Guinea and Australia, and once in Allied hands it would make a good springboard for further operations, while removing the threat of a Japanese invasion of Australia. The Japanese, however, with the same advantages to themselves in mind, drew up their own plans to capture the Solomons. As a result they were moving powerful forces into the area at the same time as the Americans.
The Solomons group of islands situated on the north-eastern approaches to Australia were in early 1942 of key strategic importance. The Japanese could use them to sever the supply routes between America and Australia. In Allied hands they could be used as a springboard for pushing the Japanese out of the South Pacific. Amidst the Solomons, lay Guadalcanal, a humid, remote, jungle-covered, hilly tropical island.
The Americans did not attack sooner, simply because in early 1942 there were not enough ships, aircraft, men, and guns required for other theatres in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the Pacific. Consequently, Roosevelt and Churchill laid it down that the war against the Axis in Europe had to take priority, and that no more men and resources were to be allocated to the Pacific than were absolutely essential to prevent further Japanese expansion.
There was also some hesitation in Tokyo about whether to advance further. The army, deeply committed in China, with one million men deployed against the possibility of a Russian move into Manchuria and Korea, and the occupation of recently conquered vast new territories, considered their resources already severely strained. Many senior staff officers argued that Japan's best course at that stage of the war was to go over to the strategic defensive, consolidate and integrate the newly-won territories into the 'Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere'. Japan, they maintained, now had enough rice, oil, and rubber to fight a long war. Why take on further commitments. Let the Americans and their allies exhaust themselves in their efforts to eject the Japanese from the territories they had recently conquered.
The Imperial Japanese Navy held a different point of view. Exuberant with confidence after the heavy defeats they had inflicted on the allied navies in a series of successful engagements, and proud of the precision with which they had transported huge armies and their equipment safely to different battle areas across enormous expanses of ocean, the admirals argued that to stand still was an admission of defeatism. By thrusting forward further immediately, Japan was in a position to deprive her enemies of any hope of ever striking back effectively.
Eventually the navy's view prevailed, and Imperial General Headquarters authorised a series of offensive operations in the island's north and north-east of Australia, including the establishment of air and naval bases in the Solomons. But these plans were soon to be drastically revised and scaled-down by the severe defeat which the navy suffered during the attempt to invade Midway.
Tulagi in the Solomons, an island with a magnificent a nchorage, and a few adjacent islands were seized at the beginning of May, and it was not until the end of the month that