Now the fox was in the hen house. At 1:38 A.M. on the 9th the torpedoes hissed from their tubes, and at 1:43 the cruisers’ main batteries opened fire. At the same moment, spotter planes dropped flares silhouetting the Allied ships, and the Japanese flagship Chokai’s searchlights snapped on. They revealed a scene of surprise and confusion—guns still trained in, sailors scrambling frantically about the decks of the screening warships.
In six devastating minutes Mikawa ravaged the South Force, guarding the shipping off Guadalcanal. The cruiser Chicago had her bow blown off; the Canberra turned into a blazing, sinking wreck. Then he wheeled left and headed for the North Force, protecting the transports off Tulagi. About 1:50 the hail of torpedoes and shells began again, shattering the cruisers Astoria, Quincy and Vincennes.
Another twenty-five minutes, and it was all over. Continuing to bear left, Mikawa rounded the north side of Savo and headed back up the Slot. At trifling cost, he sank four cruisers, badly damaged a fifth, and turned the screening force into a shambles.
Kelly Turner had originally planned to unload all night and leave at 7:30 A.M., but Mikawa’s visit upset that timetable. Now they unloaded all morning and began pulling out in the afternoon.
By 7:00 P.M. the whole force was gone—eighteen transports escorted by what was left of the screening force. Still in their holds were half the Marines’ food, all their barbed wire and sandbags, all their heavy earth-moving equipment, except for one bulldozer that somehow reached shore. As they watched the last of the ships disappear to the southeast, the Marines needed no one to remind them that they were now alone.
The Coastwatchers on Guadalcanal were blissfully unaware of this sudden change in the fortunes of war. In the early hours of August 9 Don MacFarland saw flares, gun flashes, and occasional searchlights from an observation post he had established on Mount Jonapau. It was clearly a sea fight, but he had no clue as to the outcome. At Vungana Martin Clemens saw and heard gunfire too, but he was equally mystified. “May be a naval battle off Savo,” he noted laconically in his diary.
Snowy Rhoades knew even less. At his cave on the other side of the island, he could only hear the rumble of distant guns. He guessed correctly that he was cut off from the landing area by the Japanese garrison retiring westward, and there was really nothing he could do at the moment.
MacFarland and Clemens, on the other hand, now had to decide whether to stay put or come down and join their liberators. For MacFarland the choice was easy. His naval orders said to remain in the bush, and that’s what he would do. For Clemens it was not so simple. Like MacFarland, he was a Coastwatcher working for the Navy, but he was also district officer, the only government official on the island, and he wanted to be near the center of authority. Beyond that, there was his yearning to be where the action was. What seemed dangerous but strangely satisfying work yesterday now struck him as drearily tame. “It’s too anticlimactical sitting here like birds in the wilderness,” he complained in a note to Ken Hayonthe 13th.
Late that afternoon he found the solution. A U.S. Marine Corps Field Message arrived from his friend Charles Widdy, manager of the Lever Brothers plantations in the Solomons, who was serving the expedition as a guide:
American Marines have landed successfully in force. Come in via Volonavua and along the beach to Ilu during daylight—repeat—daylight. Ask outpost to direct you to me at 1st Reg. C.P. at Lunga. Congratulations and regards.
Hardly official instructions, but good enough. Clemens packed up the teleradio, organized his carriers, and at 7:35 on the morning of August 14 started downhill for the beachhead.
The guard at the Marine outpost just east of Volonavua raised his rifle but held his fire. The little group marching down the beach toward him on the morning of August 15 was like no military formation he had ever seen. Two rows of nearly naked natives, closed up and rifles at the slope, were stepping along with smart precision. Leading them, accompanied by a small dog, was a white man in tattered shirt and shorts, but wearing an immaculate pair of black dress oxfords.
Martin Clemens was entering the American lines. It had taken two days to come down from Vungana, because there were isolated Japanese units roaming about, and he didn’t want to run into them. Then, when he finally reached the coast, he realized he still wasn’t safe. He was about to face the biggest danger of all—trigger-happy Marine sentries.
He had no identification, knew no password. The best course, he decided, was to put on as snappy a show as possible. He hoped the Marines would be convinced that whoever he might be, no Japanese would approach in this way. So he closed the column, dressed his ranks; and as his own contribution he squeezed into the oxfords, which MacFarland had sent him some time ago. They were much too small—hurt his feet dreadfully—but if it contributed to the overall effect, no sacrifice was too great.
The strategy worked. The Marine guard, after what seemed a lifetime, lowered his rifle and beckoned the group in. As he came forward, Clemens suddenly felt a queer lump in his throat and wondered what it would be like to speak to some one in his own tongue again. He had tried to rehearse what he would say before he got there, but now the words wouldn’t come. He could only whisper his name.
The guard relaxed, gave him a cigarette and a piece of chocolate. In seconds a mob of Marines milled around, every one asking questions at once. Later he visited D-2, the division intelligence post, and finally had a meeting with General Vandegrift himself. The General was quite taken by this urbane newcomer who had appeared so casually from nowhere, and assigned him to his intelligence staff. From now on Clemens would supply the Marines with scouts and guides, while continuing to collect information through his innumerable native contacts.
That evening he had a sentimental reunion with Charles Widdy, helped along by a bottle of sake and two miniatures of brandy. Clemens was still so excited that he didn’t feel the liquor at all as he and Widdy talked the night away. But they did grow louder and louder, until finally at 3:00 A.M. a weary Marine yelled at them to knock it off.
Then the letdown. As he turned in at last, Clemens suddenly felt a surge of emptiness and disappointment. He had looked forward to this day for months, and in his misery had even conjured up visions of a beer, a hot bath, a soft bed. Now here he was without any of these pleasures; only a foxhole in a coconut grove that he had to share with Widdy. It was ludicrous to have expected more, yet it was still an anticlimax.
Clemens soon learned there were other things too that fell short of the high hopes he held on his mountaintop. The Allied force, which looked so triumphant from Vungana, turned out to be a beleaguered garrison. With the loss of sea and air support, and so much equipment, General Vandegrift had pulled his troops into a compact beachhead designed mainly to protect the airstrip. From the center of the strip it was never more than two and a half miles to the perimeter in any direction, and to the south it was only a few hundred yards. Overhead, the shallow V-formation of the Japanese bombers was an all too familiar sight. The promptest warnings from Mason and Read did little good as long as there were no fighters to intercept them.
The first step was to get the airfield in flying shape. Marine engineers worked day and night filling the gap in the center of the strip, lengthening the runway, chopping down trees that blocked the approach. Captured Japanese trucks and grading equipment proved a godsend, as did stores of rice and “liberated” sake.
The engineers were still hard at it on the evening of the 15th, when four U.S. destroyer-transports slipped in from the New Hebrides—the first ships to arrive since Kelly Turner’s departure. Banking on assurances that the strip was ready, they brought 400 drums of aviation gas, 300 bombs, 120 maintenance personnel, and an air operations staff.
Looking slightly out of place among the rest came Lieutenant Commander Hugh Mackenzie, Eric Feldt’s deputy for the area. Mackenzie had graduated from naval college with Feldt, then retired in the ’20s for a life in the South Pacific. Back in the Navy in 1940, he became Feldt’s assistant and la
ter served with credit during the disastrous retreat from New Britain. Brave and cheerful, he hated routine. As a friend later put it, “He knew no fear, and no organization either.” Yet he had a good overall grasp of things, and most important of all, he knew how to get along with Americans.
Now he had come to set up a Coastwatcher headquarters right on Guadalcanal. The network could then receive and disseminate emergency messages direct, rather than rely on the somewhat cumbersome relay system currently used. To help him, Mackenzie brought along a naval assistant, a civilian radio expert, and a native refugee from New Ireland named Henry Rayman Martin, who had attached himself to Mackenzie at Vila as the only person he could find who spoke his brand of pidgin English. It proved a fortunate association, for Rayman was a skilled and intuitive mechanic.
They got their first taste of the tense atmosphere on Guadalcanal a few minutes after landing. A Marine sentry almost bayonetted the dark-skinned Rayman when he couldn’t pronounce the password “Lilliputian.”
Next morning Mackenzie started looking for the right location for the teleradio. All the good places were already taken, and he was finally stuck with a spot nobody else wanted—a dugout built by the Japanese just north of the airstrip. It would obviously be on the receiving end of every enemy raid.
The dugout itself also left much to be desired. It was really a narrow covered trench about 50 feet long, but only five feet deep. No one could stand up straight in it. Along each side ran a ledge cut into the soft black earth. This was used both for sitting and for storing equipment, including the precious teleradio. The roof was of coconut logs covered with Japanese sandbags, and Mackenzie soon discovered it leaked.
Alongside the dugout he erected a Japanese tent, ripped and torn by shrapnel. It too was available because nobody else wanted it. The tent served as both an office and a refuge when the air in the dugout got too thick. Three radio operators, lent by the Marines, slept here; while Mackenzie himself bunked in a Japanese shack about a half mile away.
It took only a day to install the teleradio, string the aerial between two palms, and plug a field telephone into the central exchange, called “Texas Switch.” On the morning of August 17 Mackenzie proudly opened for business, using the call letters HUG for local traffic and KEN when contacting the outside. This proved confusing, and eventually the station became simply and universally known as KEN.
It came on the air none too soon. On the 18th the Japanese staged their first air raid aimed directly at the strip, now christened “Henderson Field” in honor of a Marine squadron leader lost at Midway. Jack Read, as usual, gave nearly two hours’ advance warning. KEN phoned the alert to Air and Division headquarters; warning flags fluttered; a bicycle siren wailed; and everything ran like clockwork—except that there were still no fighters to intercept.
As the Japanese bombers unloaded, the staff of KEN had their first experience with Hugh Mackenzie in an air raid. He wouldn’t take cover. Fascinated, he stood on the steps of the dugout watching the show. Even though a Marine was cut in two about 50 yards away, he seemed oblivious to the danger. The staff concluded that here was a fine leader, if only some miracle kept him alive in the days ahead.
That night the embattled Marines learned they faced a brand-new peril. Sometime after 11:00 P.M. outposts along the beach noticed a break in the soft, steady rhythm of the sea lapping the sand. Heavy waves came rolling in—obviously the wash of ships passing eastward at high speed. The sharpest eyes could see nothing, but three hours later the outposts heard the wash again—this time the ships were passing westward.
A Japanese night landing to the east seemed a good bet, and early on the morning of August 19 Martin Clemens was asked to supply native guides and scouts to help find out. Daniel Pule was assigned to a Marine patrol, and a little later Sergeant Major Jacob Vouza led out a native patrol on his own.
Vouza was a colorful character. Physically big by Solomons standards, he had served for years as a police constable on various islands in the chain. Autocratic and headstrong, he had been reprimanded more than once for taking the law into his own hands. Most recently he had been stationed on Malaita, but with the outbreak of war he had been sent back to his home island, Guadalcanal, without explanation. At first Clemens feared the effect such a stormy personality might have on his own team of natives, but his worries were groundless. Vouza rose to the occasion and quickly became a valuable addition to the scouting network. After the Allied landings, he entered the Marine lines proudly wrapped in a Union Jack, still working for Clemens as a scout and a guide.
Leaving on the 19th, Vouza led his patrol south, then circled east and back north to the coast. He was carrying a small American flag that some Marine had given him as a souvenir, and he decided that it might be a dangerous thing to have on him if he should run into any Japanese. He turned off alone for Volonavua, planning to hide it in a house there and then rejoin his group.
Too late. He walked right into a Japanese patrol. They found the flag and took him to the village of Tanevatu for interrogation. Here Ishimoto appeared and began asking questions about American troop strength and dispositions. When Vouza just shook his head, the guards tied him to a tree and beat him with rifle butts. Still no answer, so they stabbed him in the chest with their bayonets, and an officer slashed his throat with a sword. Again, no answer. Finally they left him for dead, still tied to the tree, and hurried on west. It was getting dark now, and they had serious business to attend to.
Their goal was no less than the recapture of Henderson Field. They had been landed as the advance echelon of a much larger force, and their commander, Colonel Kyono Ichiki, thought they could do it all alone. Now he was approaching from the east with 800 men, hoping to take the Americans by surprise. It was one of his patrols that caught Vouza.
Another had considerably less luck when it was ambushed by a party of Marines, and soon General Vandegrift had enough information to guess what was up. He quickly adjusted his defenses, then got an unexpected boost around sunset on August 20. Flown in from a carrier, twelve Marine dive bombers and nineteen Marine fighters bounced down on Henderson Field.
About 1:30 A.M. on the 21st a bright green flare announced the start of the enemy attack. From the operations dugout at Lunga, Martin Clemens listened to the bedlam and watched the tracers ricochet across the sky. The guns were still blazing when, just before 7:00, he got an urgent telephone call from Lieutenant Colonel Edwin A. Pollock’s command post at the front. A badly wounded native had staggered through the enemy lines and was asking for him. Clemens grabbed a jeep, and taking along Daniel Pule, raced to the scene.
It was Vouza. Somehow he had wriggled loose from the tree, then stumbled and crawled three miles back to a Marine outpost. Now he lay on the ground, nearly fainting from loss of blood, too weak even to sit up. Still, he refused any treatment until he could report everything he had seen.
Clemens and Pule dragged him behind the jeep, and Vouza poured out the best information yet received on the Japanese strength and weapons. Clemens relayed it on by field telephone, while the fighting continued around him. Even as he talked, a bullet smacked into the jeep.
Vouza had more to say, but now it was personal. He firmly believed he was dying and dictated a long last message to his wife and children. Clemens took it all down, writing with one hand and holding Vouza’s hand with the other. As he finished, Vouza collapsed and was rushed to the field hospital.
Banking on his information, a Marine force now crossed the Ilu River to the south, falling on Ichiki’s left flank and rear. Surprise was complete. The Japanese found themselves hopelessly trapped in a coconut grove, pinned against the sea and the main Marine line.
By 5:00 P.M. it was over. The Marines always called it the “Battle of the Tenaru,” mistaking the river. But whatever the name, the first Japanese attempt to retake Henderson Field ended in disaster. At a cost of only 43 killed, the Marines virtually wiped out Ichiki’s whole force. The Colonel himself survived long enough to contem
plate briefly the price he had paid for overconfidence. Then he burned the regimental colors and committed hara-kiri.
Amazingly, Jacob Vouza lived. At the Marine field hospital the doctors sewed him up, pumped him full of new blood, and in twelve days he was back on his feet. But for the first few hours it had been touch and go, and he was unconscious most of the time. Just before being placed under the anesthetic, he came to long enough to mutter, “I didn’t tell them anything.”
After Colonel Ichiki’s disaster the Japanese began a steady build-up of their scattered forces on Guadalcanal for a new try at dislodging the Marines. Major General Kiyotaki Kawaguchi, a magnificently mustachioed infantry officer, was put in charge of the attack. He drew up a complicated plan calling for separate landings east and west of the perimeter, to be followed by a coordinated assault from both directions.
Starting August 28, Rear Admiral Raizo Tanaka began ferrying the men south from the Shortlands. He relied on quick, darting destroyer thrusts which he appropriately called “Rat operations”—and which the Americans, with equal flair, called the “Tokyo Express.”
At his lookout on Malabita Hill near the southern tip of Bougainville, Paul Mason had a magnificent view of the Japanese anchorage in the Shortlands, and on August 29 he radioed unusual activity: 5 WARSHIPS, EITHER CRUISERS OR LARGE DESTROYERS, SUDDENLY STARTED FOR THE SOUTHEAST AT HIGH SPEED AT 1245.
From time to time Mason reported more of these forays, and the overworked flyers at Henderson Field did their best to intercept. Tanaka, a smart tactician, quickly learned to gear his departures so he’d remain beyond the range of the Marine bombers until dark. Then he’d barrel in at flank speed, land the troops, and be on his way back home, again out of range, by sunrise. But if it wasn’t always possible to capitalize on Mason’s messages, they were no less important. They clearly indicated another attack was coming soon.
These were busy days for Jack Read too. He managed to borrow one of Lieutenant Mackie’s radiomen, Corporal H. L. Sly, to help on the routine traffic, but plane sightings he always handled himself. The Japanese air command at Rabaul was doing its best to neutralize Henderson Field, and every morning when the weather was right, flights of bombers and fighters passed over northern Bougainville. Perched in his observation post at Porapora, Read would meticulously count them … then open up on the teleradio, now linked directly to KEN: