By Arnold Blumberg
The strategic defeats suffered in the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway checked Japan’s advance in the Pacific. The engagements, which cost the Japanese over 400 carrier and landbased aircraft and five aircraft carriers, forced Tokyo to assume a defensive posture.
As part of its new military reality in the Pacific, Japan still relied on its plan to secure its strongest naval bastion in that area, Truk in the Caroline Islands some 1,600 miles northeast of New Guinea, by strengthening its recent acquisition of Rabaul on New Britain in the Solomon Islands, and building a major base there. To safeguard Rabaul, forces were landed in eastern New Guinea, Guadalcanal, and Tulagi in the southern Solomons chain.
By holding fortified air bases at these locations, the Japanese could meet Allied air and amphibious attacks by shuttling their own air assets from base to base. This strategy was employed in anticipation that the United States might push its inevitable counterattack through Port Morseby, Rabaul, and Tulagi as an alternative or complement to its obvious strategy of attacking across the Central Pacific toward the home islands of Japan.
By mid-June, the Japanese program designed to establish airfields in the Solomons, including Guadalcanal (construction commencing there on July 6), Florida, and Savo Islands, was authorized. Its primary purpose was to use airpower to cut communications between the United States and Australia and forestall American offensive operations. The threat to vital American supply bases in New Caledonia, the New Hebrides, and Fiji was also an important reason for the expansion of the Japanese defensive perimeter.
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Good reading
Thoroughly enjoyed that. I’ve been to Guadalcanal and I was somewhat aware of Tulagi, Gavutu and Tanambogo, but I am certainly much more informed now thanks to your article. Those first days of USMC operations were a steep learning curve on how to deal with the Japanese and the environment. When I was a boy my Dad (combat veteran) had a Friend who had been in the 1st Division on Guadalcanal – he’d been wounded and sent to Australia where he returned to live after the war – his name was Oscar – I wish I had known more about all this back then so I could have asked Oscar all about it. How rightfully proud all Marines must feel.