World Battlefronts: Why Guadalcanal?

People began to ask questions about the campaign in the Solomons. Had it been wisely planned and wisely executed? Had the men behind the lines given the men on Guadalcanal a fair chance to hold and to win? From Congressman John Costello, a member of the House Military Affairs (Army) Committee, came an extreme expression of such doubts and questions: “Whether the unified board of strategy in Washington determined upon this invasion of the Solomons I know not, but if they determined upon that invasion and did not work out a better program of conducting that attack than has been evidenced during the past two months, they are certainly subject to criticism.”

In a week when the news from Guadalcanal was bad (see above) criticism could easily obscure one fact which in the end would count for more than the possession or loss of the lower Solomons. The fact: the U.S. invasion had compelled the Japanese to divert great forces of warships, planes and men to a campaign which the Japanese neither planned nor wanted. The Navy had forced a U.S. plan upon the Japanese. When the enemy plans were thus disrupted, the Navy knew that the Japs were concentrating great forces in the north; there was reason to believe that they were then plotting an invasion of Siberia. And 73 days after the Marines landed in the Solomons, Siberia had not been invaded. If the reason was the Solomons campaign, then the U.S. landing in the Solomons was the cheapest second front the Allies could have bought.

Heroes Also Tire. Despite the great naval defeat at the start of the Solomons campaign (the midnight surprise sinking of the heavy cruisers Astoria, Quincy, Vincennes, revealed 65 days later), the Navy and the Marines recovered. Two serious threats, a sea attack in late August and a land assault on Guadalcanal in mid-September, were beaten back.

The Marines had fought well. TIME Editor John Hersey, who left Guadalcanal last week, wrote: “The men have spent themselves as if they were as worthless as the Jap occupation currency they found on the beachhead. It is impossible to say who deserves most credit. Certainly the command has been alert and tough. It has anticipated every Jap stroke, including the present push.

“General Vandegrift, who can be seen in the evenings stretched out meditatively in a canvas deck chair in front of his heavily fly-sprayed cabin, has been cool, softspoken, crafty, hard and wonderfully cheerful. The Air Commander . . . wears his cigar and chooses his tactics with a jaunty air. The colonels who command Marine regiments and battalions lie in coral-crusted mud with their men, dodge the soprano-chattering Jap 25-caliber guns. . . . A private, a wire-stringer, carried a heavy steel spool of telephone wire eight miles up & down 60° slopes. . . . There are great squads of anonymous heroes. . . . Perhaps the flyers are the greatest. They have made a record equal to anything aerial anywhere. . . .

“All these men are tired. If they work by day, they are kept up by bombing or shelling at night; if at night, there is always a midday raid. They risk sickness, and some have succumbed despite synthetic medicines. . . . And yet they are cheerful.”

Whose Fault? Why replacements and reinforcements had been so long in arriving was one of the questions which went unanswered last week. The 6,000,-mile supply line from the U.S. may have been one answer. Other questions:

Was the Solomons campaign one more example of the still-divided U.S. command in the Pacific? (General MacArthur is responsible for attacking Rabaul; Vice Admiral Ghormley for Guadalcanal, 700 miles to the south.)

Had the Navy planned the campaign without taking U.S. world strategy and the demands of other war theaters into sufficient account?

Had the strategists counted on having to maintain a continuous offensive, once the invasion began? Or had unforeseen events upset careful plans for just such an offensive? It might have been expected that the Japs at their nearby bases would give the U.S. forces no rest, once the Solomons were invaded. Had the Navy expected to draw the Japs into another Midway, instead of the dispersal and infiltration by sea which the Japanese actually practiced? Said Admiral Ernest J. King, in explaining the Solomons invasion last August: “Considerable losses, such as are inherent in any offensive operation, must be expected as the price to be paid for the hard-won experience which is essential to . . . far-reaching results.”

Why was Army cooperation so long delayed? Air Forces Lieut. General Henry H. Arnold made a hurried trip to the South Pacific late in September, seven weeks after the invasion began. The arrival of ground forces was announced last week.

There were questions to be answered, lessons to be learned from the Solomons.