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
U.S. portable flamethrowers were first used in combat during the Guadalcanal campaign in January 1943. It quickly became apparent that the exposed flamethrower operator was vulnerable to Japanese small arms fire. Read more
Guadalcanal
On August 2, 1945, two weeks prior to Japan’s surrender, the highest ranking Japanese officer captured during the war in the Pacific was taken on the island of Morotai, Dutch New Guinea. Read more
Guadalcanal
Major Evans Carlson stood on a rickety platform built from wooden crates, the kind their rations came in. Read more
Guadalcanal
Marine Captain Frank Farrell stood in the open door of the Army Air Corps C-47 waiting for the “green light,” the signal to leap into space, on a mission that could mean life or death for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people. Read more
Guadalcanal
The popular conception of the struggle in the air over northern Europe during World War II is of squadrons of sleek fighters racing over the German heartland to protect contrailed streams of lumbering bombers stretching beyond sight. Read more
Guadalcanal
In mid-December 1941, during the thick of the Battle of Wake Island, the 400 U.S. Marines who called the island outpost home stood a lonely sentinel in the watery Central Pacific wilderness, like a cavalry fort in an oceanic version of the Western frontier. Read more
Guadalcanal
As in thousands of other homes across America, there was an air of tension in the living room of the modest frame house at 98 Adams Street, Waterloo, Iowa, on the afternoon of Sunday, December 7, 1941. 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
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
If there is an American combat airplane that has achieved an ill-deserved reputation, no doubt it would be the much-maligned Bell P-39 Airacobra, a tricycle landing gear single-engine fighter whose reputation was greatly overshadowed by the more famous, and of more recent design, Lockheed P-38 Lightning, Curtiss P-40 Tomahawk, Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, and North American P-51 Mustang. Read more
Guadalcanal
Spanish Legionaries charged into battle crying, “Long Live Death.” They sang of being “the Bridegrooms of Death” and proved they meant it with over 10,000 killed and 35,000 wounded. Read more
Guadalcanal
In the long and distinguished history of the U.S. Marine Corps, thousands of marines have been awarded medals for meritorious service on the battlefield. Read more
Guadalcanal
With bond clerk Marge Henning standing by as a witness, Colonel Frank Eldridge removed the first piece of the puzzle. Read more
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
American soldiers of Japanese ancestry made remarkable contributions to the Allied victory during World War II. 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
November 13, 1942, was a Friday, which sailors aboard the cruiser USS San Francisco noted with anxiety. Read more
Guadalcanal
By Dick Camp (Colonel, USMC, Retired)
The war in the Pacific was a bloody, protracted struggle between the Empire of Japan and the United States and her allies. Read more
Guadalcanal
No foreign army in the 5,000-year history of Japan had ever successfully conquered Japanese territory. In late 1944, American war planners were about to challenge that statistic on the tiny Pacific island of Iwo Jima. Read more
Guadalcanal
As the 33 men of his machine-gun platoon set up their four s along the ridge facing south toward a jungle-shrouded ravine on Guadalcanal where the Japanese were massing for an attack on the evening of October 25, 1942, Marine Sergeant Mitchell Paige crawled in front of their position and rigged a makeshift trip wire designed to alert his troops should Japanese forces approach their line. Read more
