 Good afternoon and welcome to the National Archives in Washington, D.C. and welcome to all our guests that are tuning in online on our YouTube channel. My name is Nick Cottington. I'm the director of education and public programs here at the National Archives. And it's my pleasure to welcome you to today's discussion. The Guadalcanal Campaign 1942 1943 defining moment in American history. We are pleased to present this program in collaboration with the United States Army Heritage Center Education and the United States Marine Corps. Before we get to those programs, I want to tell you about a few virtual programs we have coming up in the next few weeks. On Monday, February 27 at 1pm, we'll continue our series of programs in conjunction with our exhibit All American, The Power of Sparts, with serving herself the life and time of Althea Gibson. A new biography author Ashley Brown narrates the public career and private struggles of this tennis Hall of Famer. On Tuesday, February 28 at 1pm, author Philip Levy will discuss the book, The Permanent Resident Evacuation and Exploration of George Washington's Life, which discusses the principal archaeological sites of Washington's life, revealing what they say individually and collectively about him. To find out more about National Archives programs and exhibits, please visit our website at www.archives.gov. It's now my pleasure to welcome our panel to the stage. Moderating the discussion will be Jeff Hux, Education Director at Army Heritage Center Foundation. Joining him in discussion will be Richard Frank, Historian and author of Guadalcanal, The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle. Michael Morris, Historian, United States Marine Corps, and joining us remotely will be Alan Knickman, Archivist, United States Army Heritage and Education Center. Please welcome me to join the panel on the stage. Guadalcanal, at 2047 square miles, is roughly halfway between Rhode Island and Delaware in size. Initially ignored by American planners, Guadalcanal eventually became the focus of the first major land offensive against the forces of Imperial Japan, an offensive that became a turning point in the war. Thank you for joining us today for this historical retrospective, which also marks the anniversary of this pivotal battle, which ended 80 years ago as February 9, just a few days ago. My name is Jeff Hux, and I'm the Director of Education and Veteran Outreach for the Army Heritage Center Foundation. As the moderator of this panel, I'm honored to be among such esteemed company, both on the panel and in the audience here and at home. And I'm mindful of the awesome responsibility that historians have to honor the sacrifices of American servicemen and women, while simultaneously upholding the standards of the historical disciplines. It is critical that we seek to understand, even as we seek to commemorate. Guadalcanal was a long and complex operation, and we have a lot of ground to cover. I will therefore conclude by my welcoming remarks and introduce today's panelists. We have with us today Dr. Mike Morris, an associate professor of military history at Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia, where he teaches in the School of Advanced Warfighting. Dr. Morris served as a Marine officer for 30 years in a variety of tactical training, education, and planning assignments. Joining him on stage is Richard B. Frank, an internationally recognized scholar on the Asian Pacific War, who published his first book, Guadalcanal, in 1990. His volume, Downfall, the end of the Imperial Japanese Empire, appeared in 1999 and has been called one of the six best books in English about World War II. The first volume of his trilogy on the Asian Pacific War, Tower of Skulls, was published on March 2020. He serves on the board of the Presidential Counselors of the U.S. National World War II Museum. And joining us online, Mr. Alan Neckman is the Deputy Director of the Academic Library Division and the Chief of the Analysis and Research Team of the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, or USAHEC as we call it. Before that, he was Chief of the Archives Branch Military History Institute, also at USAHEC. Before coming to Carlisle, he served as the Deputy Branch Head of the Archives Branch, Histories and Archives Division, Naval History and Heritage Command at the Washington Navy Yard, concurrently serving as Acting Branch Head. He's also a U.S. Army veteran of the late Cold War era and holds advanced degrees from Georgia State University and San Jose State University. Mr. Frank will begin our program with an overview of the campaign. Good afternoon. I want to thank you all for coming, both those of you who are physically present, those of you who are online. I want to particularly thank the National Archives for making this opportunity possible. I'm going to start off my presentation with literally a bang. This is one of the most remarkable photos of World War II. I fell from my motion picture camera that was filming the aft end of the flight deck of the carrier Enterprise. There were three bomb hits, and this is the third one. And what's remarkable, of course, is you are literally looking down into the explosion. I'm not aware of any photograph from World War II that has that perspective. You'll be happy to know that the cameraman who did this had hit the deck and just left the camera to run. Unfortunately, it survived. What we're going to do today is, first of all, provide global context for the Guadalcanal campaign. We're going to talk about how we got to Guadalcanal and then we're going to do effectively what's almost a rocket sled ride through the campaign itself. So with that, let me get going. One of the most difficult tasks we have today when you're dealing with World War II is to convey to later generations just how dismal the outlook was for the Allied forces through the mid-summer of 1942. In the European theater from October 35 when Italy rolled into Ethiopia until the mid-summer of 1942, the Axis forces of Germany and Italy were almost universally triumphant. The only two major exceptions to this were the British winning at the Battle of Britain in 1940 and the Russians holding out against the Germans in December 1941. At the time, by mid-1942, however, neither one of those events clearly was more than a reprieve from what later may have been an absolute defeat. So the situation was extremely contingent. Meanwhile, in the Pacific Asia Pacific Theater, Japan had been waging war in China from 1937. And by mid-1942, the tremendous damage that Japan had done to the nation state and people of China, a matter to, in a death toll, probably about 7.5 million deaths, about 6 million of them were Chinese. In the opening six months of Japan's offensive from December 1941, Japan created one of the greatest empires in history, stretching across seven time zones. And by the end of that, Japan held an empire that had 516 million people. The Germans never succeeded in getting more than 360 million. There was a clinical ramifications on the Allied side for this record up to mid-1942. Winston Churchill's leadership underwent the most severe tests during the entire war. The view was not that he should step down as prime minister, but that he should delegate a lot more of the war direction to others. And this infection across the Atlantic. On June 25, 1942, the New York Times, the leading paper in the U.S., and normally a stalwart supporter of the Roosevelt administration, created a lead editorial, urging that the president turn over as it put it, quote, strategic decision making and management of the war to some uniformed officer or officers that the president should be commander in chief in name only. By the date of the landing on August 7, 1942, a New York Times article carried a Gallup poll that said when a representative sample of the American people were asked about war direction. 62% believed that Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill should not be making what they call military decisions. So that is the basic context of all of this, just exactly how grim events looked into the middle of 1942. Richard Overy and a wonderful comment and one of his works remarked that if you are an average person and Western allies and you only knew what you had the information available at that time, you would not have been able to project the outcome of the war through the spring of 1942. So here we are on August 7, 1942. This is the extent of the Japanese Empire. You see this enormous expanse across the Pacific as well as areas of China that included by far the largest part of the population and the economically developed areas. So how did we get to Guadalcanal? Well, among historians, you know, when you come to causal explanations of events, they tend to give a lot of rewards for the more causal explanations you come up with, the better historian you are. In this case, it's quite simple. It really all came down to the will of this man, Ernest J. King, the chief of naval operations. I selected this photograph because it's fairly widely believed that this is the only photograph of King taken during World War II in which he's smiling. He was a notorious, very difficult person to get along with, but he was also a brilliant strategist. And after the battle in Midway, he insisted that it was essential to follow up that victory and not give the Japanese any respite. He also believed that the resources were available for offensives in both the Pacific and as well as in the European theater. And he got agreement from General George C. Marshall, chief of staff of the Army, who believed that at least this effort would keep the Japanese tied down in the Pacific and keep them off the backs of the Soviets. And finally, General MacArthur had suggested that he take command of any offensive in the Pacific, and Ernest J. King was adamant that this was going to be a naval theater and the Navy should be in charge. Now, let me get us to the theater. This is a normal map of the Pacific area. I put a star down there for where Guadacan now is in the Solomon Islands the star is much bigger than Guadacan now but if you use the proportional star you would hardly be able to see it. You'll see that by this time we divided the Pacific command command into two components. Down to your lower left hand side you'll see the Southwest Pacific, which is what General MacArthur commanded it was essentially Australia and the area on up to the Philippine islands. The Pacific was called the Pacific Ocean areas it was under Admiral Justin W. Nimitz at Pearl Harbor, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet. And this is the immediate operational area that the campaign revolved around. If you look down to your lower right side you'll see the island of Guadacan now on it is the airfield called Henderson Field, and that's going to become the pivot point of the entire campaign. Operations in the Pacific were both were a combination of both air land and sea, but air was really the Trump whoever had air superiority was going to be able to do what they wanted to do, and usually deny the opportunity of the opponent to do what they wanted to. American aircraft on Guadacan Island can be a decisive factor in the whole campaign, because they protect the ability of the Navy to bring in supplies and reinforcements and simultaneously deny the Japanese an equal opportunity to reinforce their forces on Now, on the upper left hand side, you'll see the location is Rebal, which is the main Japanese base in the South Pacific, a terrific harbor and air bases, including some with concrete runways which are unheard of in this theater at this time. Now, the campaign is involved, this continuous struggle both land sea and air. I think to see, however, is the component time going to emphasize my colleagues and talk more about the land aspect and also touch on the air. The operation is authorized on the 2nd of July. The landing takes place on the 7th of August. There's only five weeks, half of this period is concerned, consumed in transit times to get to the operational area. It's extremely rugged and quick, and it's very obviously a lot of defects in it that are going to catch up with us during the campaign. However, initially, for the first 72 hours of fortune enormously favors the Americans, we achieve surprise we sees both Guadacanal in the airfield the following day August 8. The landing seems to be going our way when it abruptly completely reverses a Japanese eyebrow named Makawa Genuchi push to the scratch task force sales down to Guadacanal and achieves the most humiliating humiliating defeat the US Navy has suffered in its history at the battle of Savile Island. This is forces withdrawal of the naval covering forces and the Marines are left alone without adequate supplies on Guadacanal essentially besieged. Immediately after this the Japanese grossly underestimate how many Americans are on Guadacanal and they first send what's amounts to a reinforced battalion about 900 men down to Guadacanal. And they are annihilated at this battle called the Battle of the Teneru. A second component of that reinforcement effort is in a convoy that gets coverage by the combined fleet that's the main element of the Japanese Navy, including the carriers. This leads to the battle of the Eastern Solomon's, which is the third major carrier class of World War two and it essentially is an American victory. Now after this, the Japanese reassess, and this time they decide to up the ante and they send what's essentially a reinforced brigade or we would call it a regiment down to Guadacanal. The enemy forces under a German name Caligucci will stage an attack two nights in September. It will probably come as close to overrunning the airfields as any event during the campaign, however they're repulsed by great valor and tremendous artillery support. Now, while this is going on. The Japanese are also convincing an intense air campaign against the American enclave and to try to prevent American reinforcements. As September rolls into October the Japanese now decide that this is what they call a decisive battle, which in Japanese strategic thinking is a very big deal. So they up the ante again this time they're going to send a full division down to Guadacanal to deal with the American garrison and to get them down there they need to clear American air power on Guadacanal. They have an extensive air campaign by the 13th of October by uncount 38 days in the campaign the Japanese have already rated Guadacanal 61 times to clear the path further however they send down to battleships to bombard the American perimeter on Guadacanal. These two battleships will fire 973 14 inch shells now 14 inch shell that's the diameter of the shell not the length, each one weighs about 1500 pounds, and in 82 and a half minutes they pummel the American holdings on a rock out all of our attack aircraft destroy most the fuel. It's an extremely grim situation. The Japanese then move their convoy down six ships and they come and start unloading in broad daylight off Guadacanal. Up to this point in Washington, there was to say the least undue optimism about how things were going. But after this bombardment and the convoy. There is a very severe reassessment and now there's great fear that the campaign is going to end in an humiliating defeat. The news releases that come out at this point become much more candid about what the situation is it is and, as a result of that reporter asked the secretary of Navy fat knocks, can we hold Guadacanal. And he does not give a emphatic affirmative answer he says everyone hopes we can hold on hope, however is not a plan. He is the one man who can really do something more than hope. He has come down from Pearl Harbor to inspect the South Pacific. He actually got up to Guadacanal he was almost killed both ways on that trip. He sees the local South Pacific commander of Vice Admiral Robert L. Gormley and decides that Gormley is literally about to crack up and decides to replace him with Admiral William F. Halsey Jr. Admiral Halsey's finest hour during the war as far as I'm concerned. Now, the Japanese have landed reinforcements, and in October, they launched a surprise attack against the southern part of the American perimeter. They come close to success but they're repelled by the Marines in an action that my colleagues will be covering. Shortly after this, Admiral Halsey sends his two carriers the Hornet and the Enterprise to engage all the Japanese fleet carriers that are out with our four of them. And in this battle called the battle of Santa Cruz. I'm sorry I missed one thing was naval action covering American reinforcement run just before the bombardment that got there. And we actually win that it's a small action and then fortunately is immediately reversed by the Japanese bombardment. Next action is another carrier action the battle of Santa Cruz the carrier Hornet is sunk the Enterprise is very close to being sunk. We're very fortunate that Enterprise survives. The one positive aspect about the battle is we shred the Japanese air group so coming into a showdown battle in November is going to be one carrier our damaged enterprise against one Japanese carrier. The Japanese at this point have done a reassessment after the actions in October, and pause to think about whether Guadalcanal is still worth all the effort. However, they go ahead for two reasons. First of all, the Imperial Navy is much more optimistic about what they've achieved at Santa Cruz and is in fact a case. And secondly they have been monitoring American news accounts which present a very dire situation and believes that they came very close to victory in October. So if they try again in November they should prevail. And November's action is essentially a reprise of what didn't happen in October, except this more on steroids is going to be more troops, more ships, more planes, heading out to Guadalcanal to attempt to finally redress the balance and sees Guadalcanal. This leads to the naval battle of Guadalcanal which takes place from the 12th to the 15th of November 1942. Now immediately before this action takes place. The Assistant Secretary of the Navy James Forestall will point out later that the tension level in Washington at that point reaches a level that will only be exceeded in the entire war on the eve of the Normandy landing in June 1944. But one of the naval officers out in the South Pacific at that time will later come at that later accounts of the campaign contain rich factual detail. The one element he feels they lacked was the sense of urgent necessity that everyone in the South Pacific at that time felt as they hit it into the showdown battle. The Japanese send down a bombardment force, and it's met in a sacrificial battle by an American cruiser destroyer force, which suffers very severe losses both the American cruisers and that task force are killed in action. However, they keep the Japanese from bombarding Henderson field and it by that time satellite fields and preserves American air power that air power then is going to also survive a cruiser bombardment, and eventually savage this large reinforcement convoy the Japanese have set down from her ball. But the Japanese are going to try again. They try another bombardment action. They send down another task force featuring a battleship. The next one of his most difficult and boldest decisions of the war he decides to send in basically his last ships and sends in two fast battleships and four destroyers to confront the Japanese. Fortunately they're commanded by Admiral Willis Augustus Lee, who is the ideal officer to command because he really understands radar and gunnery, and Lee will lead his task force to triumph in this action, although he loses three of his four battleships out to cause damage. The battleship Washington itself prevails. And under Lee's guidance keeps the Japanese from bombarding. And the Japanese convoy is decimated. There's only four of the 12 transports left to try to reach quite a canal their beach and destroyed there. At this point, one Japanese officer is going to later say that this is the fork in the road between victory and defeat and the war. This is not immediately apparent however to the Americans. There's one further naval action that takes place battle of Tasawaranga at the very last day of November 1942. And in this action, the Imperial Navy again humiliates the US Navy when destroyer squadron defeats on paper much more powerful American cruiser destroyer group. But in Tokyo, there's yet again an urge to try one more time, a fifth successive effort to retake Guadalcanal. At this point, however, as they do the planning, they realize logistics of sending as many forces down to the South Pacific are going to basically mortgage Japan's entire war effort. And in December they decide to withdraw. That's going to be the most effective action during the campaign. They eventually will extract about 10,000 survivors of the soldiers and other personnel they've sent to Guadalcanal. We don't really fully pick up on this because we've been so conditioned to the Japanese making four prior efforts is very hard to figure that the Japanese are actually going to withdraw. By this point also the marine first marine division which has held the line from August is withdrawn and simply riddled by malaria and starvation, and it's no longer combat effective. And as we go over, as you will learn, General Alexander patch will have that 14th core, which will be primarily army units with submarine units which will carry the campaign to the end. And the campaign will finally end in February 1943, after six months and two days. Now let me talk about a couple other points here bear in mind that, besides the seven major naval battles, they're going to be really countless clashes between the ground forces of Imperial Japan and the US Marine Corps and later the US Army. This campaign is marked by such continuous fighting in Ireland and see that I think there's really no exact parallel, certainly an American experience in World War Two. The other aspect is, I can't begin to itemize these but there's this continuous air attrition campaign that runs from August to November 1942. This campaign is embarked upon by the Japanese under adverse circumstances, they're much further away from Guadalcanal, and they suffer a tremendous attrition just in getting to and from Guadalcanal and in the weather conditions there. The final scorecard indicates that both sides lose over six of the aircraft. And the combat losses among those 600 as you see the Americans lose about 43% to Japanese 65%. Both sides will replace those aircraft many times over the problem is going to be aircrew. The Japanese aircrew losses are going to have a severe effect on their entire ability to prosecute the rest of the war. In terms of naval actions. It's a tremendous struggling which the waters out across Guadalcanal become referred to as iron bottom sound. There are 25 US warships that are sunk 24 Japanese warships that are sunk. This is a rate of attrition that we can sustain because of our industrial power that Japan cannot. And finally, when you look at fatal casualties, you'll find that, of course, Japanese separate tremendous losses of the forces ashore. This is primarily due to starvation and disease not due to direct combat. As you go down the itemized of land air and sea, you'll notice that the count is about three Japanese for every American airman who's lost that probably low for Japanese aircrew casually because that number has never been really definitive set as far as I'm concerned. What's really eye opening is when you look at sea casualties you'll see that there are 4,900 American sailors as well as some range who aboard some of the ships and a few Australians and New Zealanders who are in this mix. And if you look at that you'll see that for every soldier and sailor that serves on water soldier and marine who serves on Guadalcanal about three sailors top. So Navy's price and blood for victory at Guadalcanal is very severe. As you can see also that the Japanese suffer about four times as many fatal casualties as the US did. Now, in terms of the legacies of Guadalcanal there were many I'm sure we're going to get into a lot more but these are the highlight aspects of it. Well, the Japanese plan and establishing an air base on Guadalcanal was part of a larger scheme that's aimed to cut off the sea lanes of communication to Australia so the US can't use Australia as a base for future offensive operations. And the Guadalcanal campaign puts the end to that Japanese plan. So it serves to prevent a link up of Japan and Germany across the Indian Ocean. This is one option that the Axis had in 1942 that promise possibly very dire results. If not, I believe victory for the Axis powers, certainly a prolongation of the war, and a lot of nuance here in terms of what the Japanese really be capable of doing. But we were rightly fearful that if the Japanese projected naval power into the Indian Ocean and interdicted the sea lanes of communication running up from the Cape of Good Hope that it would cut off supplies to the British Army in the Middle East. So if it could cut off the oil supply from Iraq to the British Empire area, East of the Suez, it would probably collapse British rule in India and with India gone so probably would be China so those were the dire implications of that link up. And this action at Guadalcanal as well as Midway is what kept the Japanese from doing this in conjunction with the Germans, and I should add the Germans were very much mindful of this. Hitler in October 1942, told his foreign minister who relayed this to the Japanese that at that point he thought they were going to win at Stalingrad. And after that the next step was going to be this link up across the Indian Ocean. The more I studied this the more I thought that one of the things for Americans about Guadalcanal that stands out is that up to the point where we embarked on the Guadalcanal campaign. Now, the Japanese have pretty much had it all their own way. And there was no American who had fought the Japanese on land up to that point. It was not at that point dead or a prisoner war. So this was the first real test of that generation of young Americans who were going to have to carry the burden of actually fighting the war. And just the way it was viewed by the American public, the First Marine Division history emphasizes that this is really a really core of visceral aspect about the Guadalcanal campaign is whether the youth of democracy could stand up to the youth of these access powers and for Americans, and for all the Americans are going to serve thereafter. This was the emphatic yes answer to that fundamental question. Thank you. Fantastic. Mike, we're seeing what's going on at sea. And meanwhile the Marines are sure. What is their experience what's happening or sure with Marine Corps. Let me just say I have to make my obligatory caveat that my remarks today are my own views and not reflecting the official positions of my school Marine Corps University or of course the Marine Corps. There's a lot going on with the Marines, while this is playing out. One of the things that has has been sort of tribal wisdom within the Marine Corps for many, many years and has has corrected somewhat over the last I would argue decade is this notion that they were, you know, they were dropped off at Guadalcanal and just abandoned as an active profidity by US Navy and it was unexcusable and so on. We've gotten well beyond that in terms of both the scholarship and and the way that these kinds of issues are dealt with and covered in professional military education for for sure as well as civilian scholarship. There were reasons why what happened happened with regard to Gormley and and his subordinates pulling out when they did. And we can get into that but but in essence what happens with the Marines is they are left with much less than they anticipated in terms of both material and personnel to begin this campaign. And the rest of their experience there over the next four or five months, depending on First Division or Second Division, actually trying to recover from this, this getting off on the wrong foot, if you will. There's a whole host of things that they are struggling with the environment the enemy, and in just the logistic situation for sure is is a real challenge for you. What is the army going to experience coming up into this campaign. I think you are on 1942. I'm sorry, but we got you now. Okay, the army up to the summer of 1942 was basically tasked in the South Pacific with securing the islands that were crucial to the lines of communication between the United States and Australia and New Zealand. The army forces that were committed to these garrisons were predominantly National Guard forces. They were for the most part the the cast offs of a National Guard divisions that had just been triangularized in the United States they were shipped out very hurriedly after Pearl Harbor. The first army division that actually arrived in Guadalcanal was the vision that was assembled overseas the American division, so called because it was Americans but they were formed as a division in New Caledonia so General Patch who was division commander, to find American New Caledonia into America Cal the division would later serve in Vietnam as well. So, the army forces originally were not earmarked in any meaningful way for reinforcing the Marines. Before the big Japanese offensive in October, the Americans had a very cocky attitude towards how the campaign was going and they were even discussing withdrawing part of the Marine garrison to go take a small island in the Santa Cruz islands which was part of the U.S. Army's operational plan, but which have become pretty clear to wise observers such as the U.S. Army commanding general in the South Pacific area, Major General Millard F. Harmon was a waste of effort and resources that needed to be stored up on Guadalcanal. He saw Guadalcanal as being a very crucial point if we could develop it into a proper air base and equip them at a quick amount of time, get air power in there, and then we could basically have stopped the Japanese cold on the strategic level for the foreseeable future. So he was very, very disturbed when you heard that they were going to withdraw part of the Marine forces from Guadalcanal to go take this little island out of the Santa Cruz islands. And as a compromise, Admiral Gormley said, okay, well, you know, we're not going to drop this thing just yet, but we'll let you bring your army unit in. So one regiment of the American Division, the 164th Infantry, arrived in Guadalcanal on October 13th. About a week later, they're in battle with the Marines against the major Japanese ground offensive. The third battalion of the 164th, it's sent in to reinforce the first battalion of the 7th Marines at a critical point in the battle. And the army troops are brought in and they have the M1 Garand rifle, which has a higher rate of fire than the 1903 Springfields that the Marines have. And that battalion with their Marine brother and are able to stop the Japanese attack, General Vandergrift wrote a letter of commendation to General Patch saying that that action by the army saved the Marine perimeter. And the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Robert K. Hall, got an 80 cross for that action. So, you know, moving into the critical period, you know, basically the army has barely shown up. Now army Air Force units have arrived at Henderson Field as of late August of 1942. But they're in small numbers. They're mainly fighter pilots, you know, P-400s, which is the export version of the P-39. So they're only really useful for ground attack. They're not very useful as interceptors. So the Navy and the Marines are doing the bulk of the air to air fighting up to that point. Although General Harmon, who was an Air Corps officer, wanted to start reinforcing the Army Air Force units there with P-38s. I'll go right into early contact. You know, when 1st Marine Division was notified of this, they had about five weeks, basically. And they were in New Zealand, the headquarters. They had one regiment there. One was at sea. One was on Samoa. They were not solidified. And so they had to pack their transports, close the force, do a rehearsal, and then land in the space of five weeks. And that's really the important part about some of the challenges that they faced just starting this campaign early in August. So for all the services, to what extent, you know, how well prepared are they for this? To what extent are they operating with knowledge and experience fighting the Japanese? And to what extent are they going into this just saying, well, we'll apply what we know good military principles and prevail? For the Marine Corps, this is the first experience fighting at a division level. They fought in World War I as a brigade and received, you know, perhaps more attention than they deserved. But nonetheless, they covered themselves with glory in World War I. But this is a new experience for them. This is a whole different echelon of command. And before this campaign is done, they will actually stand up their first core level command, although it will play no real part on the operations in Guadalcanal later in the Central Solomon's and so forth. But this is all new. What they do have going for them is a lot of experience from the, you know, the small wars experience in Central America, Philippines, China to some extent. They have some very seasoned leaders, but the vast majority of their troops are brand new. They've been through basic training. They know what they know. They're very confident, but they're not well seasoned. How about the Navy? The Navy is the only service that actually has a fair portion of people that actually been in action against the Japanese, particularly the carrier task forces who've been carrying the ball since March of 42. I'd have to emphasize that as well as the Marines of the Army units that are going ashore on Guadalcanal. They're all green together, whatever here. One of the point I would like to emphasize is one of the interesting aspects about the campaign is that we ad hoc the movement of aircraft squadrons into Guadalcanal. Eventually we're going to have a Marine Corps Navy Army Air Force squadrons operating and by really by circumstance not designed, they're put together and what's called the Cactus Air Force Cactus is the code name for Guadalcanal. And what's interesting about this is that as far as I can discern in the entire history of the American Armed Forces up to 1942, there'd never been an occasion where the services army and Navy had agreed to subordination when they was all by cooperation. The Cactus Air Force and it's followed on later by air soles aircraft Solomon's where it's the first time in American military history where you have a command where you have an officer it could be the Navy the Marines or the Army Air Force who's in command and he has joint service units under him, and this is became became very popular when jointness became a thing, because I could talk about how that came about. But once again, we had to be forced into it this was not something that simply obviously was evident before we went into Guadalcanal. And the first leader of that really was Roy Geiger he went on to become a core commander and if you go down to Norfolk today you'll find a building name for Roy Geiger needless to say there is no building down their name for howling mad Smith, who didn't play a role on Guadalcanal per se other than in any practical way but but it really is a showcase of jointness up and down the chain of command throughout this entire six month period I would argue. I'll pass to that in a moment but Alan I want to get your thoughts. You touched a little bit on the armies readiness but Alan I want to get your thoughts on on how ready was the army for this. I think with regard to the National Guard because of the seven army infantry regiments that wound up fighting on Guadalcanal five of them were National Guard Regiments. They made the National Guard Regiments that went abroad later in the war. They had not had time to have been homogenized to the same level as the wartime units that were being established in the continental United States. They basically they went abroad in their in their National Guard configuration. And one of the most of a poignant sort of example of this in the first army offensive on Guadalcanal against Mount Austin, one of the battalion commanders of the 132nd infantry, which was basically the Chicago National Guard Regiment. One of the battalion commanders was killed by a Japanese machine gun, his brother was the, was the officer who recovered his body. And that's, I think sort of points to, you know, the kind of the the cohesion of a particular sort that army units had on Guadalcanal the National Guard units even though they had not been you know, seasoned in battle. They did have the advantage of knowing each other had known each other for a long time. Many of the officers who served were combat officers in World War One for instance the regimental commander of the 132nd Colonel Nelson had been a field artillery major in World War One he had been given the distinguished medal, you know, for, you know, for what he had done in World War One. So, you know, in terms of combat readiness you know they weren't really any better off than anybody else but I do think they had a cohesion element which sort of got them through the campaign in a way which if you look at a sort of contemporaneous battle, the Battle of Cazarin Pass in February of 1943 in North Africa, the regular army units that fought there, you know, they didn't have that kind of cohesion and the battle didn't go as well for them as it did for the National Guard troops on Guadalcanal. But for the Army Air Force units, however, a large percentage of the ones that were serving in the Guadalcanal campaign actually had fought the Japanese before. The P-400 pilots that were first sent to Guadalcanal, many of them had been pilots in the Philippines at the start of the war and have been evacuated out. The strategic bombers that were sent down to provide support for the Navy's search and bombardment operations in the area, they were veterans of the Battle of Midway. So I think the Army Air Force in terms of its combat experience behind the Navy were for the best season going into the campaign. So compare and contrast, what do we know about the Japanese and their level of readiness and experience? Well, the Imperial Navy was at the peak of its powers. They had trained rigorously before the war, especially for night combat, as we found out. Their carrier operations were also first class. In many ways, they exceeded our abilities at that time. The Imperial Army had been home by combat since 1937 in China. Their units were highly experienced. The Second Sendai Division, for instance, was a famous unit in the Imperial Army. So in terms of experience levels, the Japanese, by and large, had a much higher level of overall experience than the American news. We're going to fight a Guadalcanal. Their aviators in particular, the Imperial Navy aviators were also absolutely first class battle season. One of the original Japanese naval fighter units was in fact one of the stellar Japanese fighter units of the war that had fought very extensively in the first eight months of the war. So we were matching our guys, most of whom were really green and against them, and they were mostly veterans. However, whether you're green or whether your veterans, if you're not eating affected, this is going to be severely depleted. Also malaria. Japanese ground forces had defeated the British. They had defeated the US Army and the Philippines with, in fact, a smaller force. They had been victorious, not completely, but they had certainly made a lot of progress in their Chinese campaign. So really, their largest defeat up to this point was by the Russians, which in an action that doesn't get a lot of attention. But beyond that, they were really swelled with victory. The last eight months have been nothing but one victory after another. In fact, some say they were guilty of sort of victory itis at this point and they discovered that the hard way and some of the actions that took place in Guadalcanal. Alan, any thoughts? I mean, I would certainly echo what Mike and Rich have said. You know, the Japanese Army, you know, certainly had a lot more combat experience in recent years than US forces had. I would say with regard to task cohesion, the Japanese probably weren't too better off than our forces were. In fact, they may have been somewhat worse off in the sense that what they were committing to the battle were essentially task organized units that were designed to do much smaller operations and island hopping campaign. They had been operating. So, for example, the first unit they sent the Chiki battalion, it had been detached from its parent regiment, cobbled together with some supporting units and then was being sent to one place. Then got diverted to Guadalcanal and wound up, you know, you know, doing its its its death charge and leading to its annihilation. Later, Japanese forces were, you know, better organized, but I don't think the Japanese ever really were able to put a force to shore that had the offensive organization capability to have carried the day defensively. You know, the, the Sendai Division, you know, fought quite well and and had the US Army actually stymied for a while until we finally figure on how to how to start dealing with their defensive positions but the US Army, you know, they had gone into the campaign, having seriously revamped its tactics, its organization, it had just triangularized the divisions from the old square divisions with two brigades or two regiments each to division with three regiments. They, the best that can be done with them was to test them and field exercises and the summer and fall of 1941. And it was, you know, it was, it was a system was in need of validation and, you know, it could have gone a lot worse for us. It really could have. So, this is a really complex operation you've got naval battles with air battles you got land battles. How do you achieve unity of command we talked a little bit about how the cactus Air Force was was organized but how is the overall campaign being organized and led. The overall commander in the Pacific Ocean areas is Admiral Nimitz backup at Pearl Harbor, but he is expressly told that he must appoint a subordinate commander for the South Pacific. This leads the appointment of Vice Admiral Robert L. Gormley that a sterling reputation based on his peacetime record, he becomes a South Pacific commander. He deserves a lot of sympathy when the situation goes as far south. But like I said, Nimitz, Nimitz believes that it finally got the point where Gormley is cracking up Gormley in turn, got a lot of sound advice from Millard Harmon who never gets the attention and this matter that I think he deserves he was. He was the best friend the Marines had in the most trying times or whatever here because he could see exactly what was really going on and wanted to emphasize Guadalcanal, when they were naval officers and Gormley we're thinking about something else. On Guadalcanal itself, initially from August until into December, effectively, the leader of the first Marine division, Arthur Alexander. Arthur Alexander was effectively the leader, even if he didn't have a formal core title over there. He was senior got their first river. His air commander, Geiger was another Marine. But the cooperation level that they had was extremely good. Likewise on Guadalcanal the Army units the Marine units there was no, there was no big friction with respect to what was going on. The Army was very respectful of the of the Marines for their experience. The Marines were very thankful that the Army had arrived. You have a lot more difficulty on the naval side where you had some very contentious figures, Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner who headed the amphibious force. He ran a pretty close neck and neck race between what he was helpful or harmful to the whole campaign. Well, Halsey came in and I think, as I said, I think Halsey as an operational commander, he was at his peak in terms of coordinating things here. He basically he had to be better than Japanese and he certainly was and by a goodly margin. Just to pick up on the comment on terrible Ted Turner. One of the issues that was resolved through this operation at Guadalcanal was the issue of who's in charge, sure. And it started off with a construct that Turner was a Kelly Turner was was the man, because he was the attack force commander to use a term that came into a little bit later. And so he was actually making decisions tactical decisions about employing a battalion here or there even on Guadalcanal against the judgment of General Vandegreff. This quickly elevated and it was decided pretty by mid fall or so decisions were made that this was not the way to fight the war and so doctrine was was adjusted and we came to what we now think of as more of a cat of a uplift, meaning a Navy, either Army or Marine ground commander in a in a hand off of responsibilities that's very delineated such that once it occurs, the Navy becomes a support for an amphibious operation as opposed to calling the shots for sustained operations ashore. And that was a very important doctrinal shift that took place based off of the experience on Guadalcanal. And Turner came up again, thinking he was wielding not only a trident but his Field Marshals Battan to tell the Marines what to do on Guadalcanal. He was there overnight and got shelled by the Japanese Navy. And the following morning he was much more amenable to what the Marines wanted to do. This had a rather come to Jesus moment for Kelly Turner. Let's let's focus a little bit on on the terrain, the weather, what are the major factors here that are affecting other than enemy action that are affecting the ability of the Marines on on shore and the Navy and the Army on shore to operate. So the ground definitely drives the action. In some ways you could hardly pick a worse place to fight a war. It's the worst combination of swamp and jungle and mountain. The, there's coral that will cut you there's bladed grass that will cut you there's every possible combination of insects and varmints that will they just want to eat you and kill you. Disease is a huge factor throughout the entire operation for everybody that goes ashore. By November the Marines are losing, you know, that they're at 1000 a week that are being rehabilitated by malaria and all the other dysentery and all the other ailments. Overall they're losing like five to one but just between disease versus combat actions. So, all of this is is pertinent that the ground itself though is probably the biggest thing is in the in the areas that were fought over is just the fact that the visibility is is, you know, maybe 10 yards and a lot of places there are open patches in the airfield in certain places but in general, their visibility is right up in front of you and that affects the tactics in important ways and including the defensive delineation for the initial lay out to defend the airfield, and then certainly subsequently when allied forces shift to the offense on the ground. Question for Alan. We all know that that no plan survives the first shot. How closely does the execution of these plans. Believe it was it was army war plans orange rainbow. How closely does the operation match those plans and the various plans that were drawn up for what we're going to do. The planning of war plan orange which was the decades long iterative process of planning or go to war with Japan the army and started working on it right after the rest of Japanese work. The basic premise was the Philippines was going to be our bastion in the Far East. The goal was hold the Philippines until the Navy with the army and toe can make their way across the Pacific and reinforced and then from there, use the Philippines as the base of operations against Japan. This drives general McArthur's entire strategy during the war he's basically trying to carry out the premise of war plan orange get back to the Philippines and use as a base of operations. Now the interesting thing about war plan orange is that it didn't envision going in deep into the South Pacific envision going to the Central Pacific. So the Navy had its own ideas about how to, you know, find his way across the Pacific. That's how you get the Central Pacific Drive which Admiral Nimitz ran versus the Southwest and South Pacific drives which Admiral Halsey ran in the Solomon's and which he also ran in New Guinea. With regard to sort of operational concepts that were being worked out during the course of the iteration of war plan orange. It became obvious that US forces would have to establish forward operating bases as they progressed. I'll let Mike speak on this but the Marines, you know, basically put the lead on the lead on establishing these four operating bases and they even created special customized units designed to to operate them and to defend them. And with the demise of war plan orange around 1939 is replaced by rainbow. And rainbow is an interesting thing because basically at that point the United States Thursday okay well we're not just going to be finding the Japanese and Iceland shall be fighting a war in Europe as well. And the Army officer who comes up with the rainbow war plans Leonard Jarrow he's later a four commander in the European theater. He works on these from 39 through March of 42 and as he's transitioning out. The United States military establishes makes the decision that okay we're going to do your first specific second. And the rainbow plan sort of dovetail right into that concept. So the army, which under orange have been looking at essentially you know sort of a strategically unfettered offensive capability finds itself thrust onto into a defensive posture, hold the lines of communication supply to Australia. The army forces and absolutely necessary in our army posture in the Pacific theater at this point is what the army will call economy of force operation. Top it off. As the army is looking at local now, they're likewise looking at it from an economy of force mode. We only have a limited number of forces that are available for this operation. We do not intend to reinforce them. So whatever we can cough up initially is what is going to have to go. The turning point in that ironically is at the time of the big Japanese offensive ground offensive in October. President Roosevelt in conjunction with Harry Hopkins writes a memorandum to Admiral King and General Marshall say, Okay, I realize we're putting Europe first, but we cannot afford to lose this battle. We need to reinforce the bottle for now with whatever you can. On the army side, this leads to agreement by Marshall they're going to commit more air units to the to the battle. And they're also going to divert the 25th Infantry Division which was supposed to go to general MacArthur. Instead it's being diverted to the South Pacific instead. And to sort of follow up on what Rich was saying about General Harman's leadership, General Harman saw that the way that the army was sending the 25th Infantry Division they're going to ship to New Caledonia and then they're going to combat loaded in New Caledonia and set up to go out and he said okay that's going to add six weeks to its arrival we can't afford that they're going to have to go to Glock and now directly loaded as they are. And that was a very risky operational decision which could have turned out very badly. But fortunately, you know, luck was on our side and we were able to get the 25th ashore without serious incident. And that was the 25th that provided the mass that the army needed in order to switch over to the offensive the, the regiments the American division by mid off by mid December 1942. They were just as decimated from disease as the marine units were. So the army was in no position to go the offensive until the 25th arrived. I want to talk about this because you mentioned forward bases mentioned the importance of the Philippines. Why are these four bases so important for the war effort. Essentially, no major offensive effort was possible without these forward bases. The Pacific is so vast. The distances are so enormous that even the fleet itself has an operational reach. It depends on these bases in order to be able to sustain itself in the fight by 1944 and 45 the American fleet has reached a peak of proficiency in being able to do that, but even the fleet train which was enormous and very impressive, and its sophistication and its effectiveness depended entirely on these advanced bases. And, and in essence what happens is that the series of places that are either seized or secured because we've been able to bypass other bases that the Japanese could oppose us from enables them to establish really robust infrastructure on these otherwise nearly deserted islands that allow ships to be repaired ammunition depots to be established fuel depots on Guadalcanal for example by 1943, they're storing about almost a million and a half gallons of aviation fuel. And so it immediately turns into this vast bastion of, of rearm refuel refit including forces several divisions are staged at Guadalcanal marine and army for further use in the Solomon's the cartwheel campaign to reduce reball etc. So, that's the name of the game and without that the stuff that we tend to focus on which are the combat actions are simply impossible. So, why is Guadalcanal important to study today. What do the lessons of Guadalcanal teach us about situations we might be facing in the future. Well the first thing is don't appoint Admiral Turner to command anything that was one important lesson. No, it was, it was a enormous school of lessons for all the American services about how to how we're going to fight the Japanese, what fighting the Japanese was really alike. It really set the template to Marines and their early encounters learned the Japanese are not surrendering. The Japanese did not take prisoners. And that from those small actions early on in August of 42 that message got out to and set exactly the attitude of American servicemen of all services for the rest of war that was one thing. And of course, obviously was, we learned all these lessons about, for instance on carrier warfare there were lots of problems with communications and radar and control, same with surface warfare. The lessons we learned there would carry on and make the Navy this enormously triumphant force by 1944 45. And I would just add briefly that one of the things about war plan orange is a famous quip once at the Imperial Navy, prepared for a battle, a decisive battle, the US Navy in war plan orange prepared for a war, which made the Navy think comprehensively about not only combat actions but also logistics actions, advanced bases, all these components of what it was necessary to fight across this enormous expense of the Pacific. It's difficult to convey to most Americans just how big the Pacific will use it is so out of scale, even with the continental United States that it's, it's just in bread with us that we just can't begin to understand it, like any commentary. I think one of the reasons why it's still relevant and important for us to study is because it's a case study in, in learning and adapting as you encounter new circumstances, some of which were anticipated and things like war plan orange and many others that weren't fully anticipated. And so there's a lot of that going on. This is a clash and essentially a meeting engagement between peer rivals. And in that sense, it should fascinate us in terms of any potential peer rivals that are out there today. It is absolutely laden with insights and cautionary tales, like the danger of being overconfident, for example, which frankly both sides were guilty of the danger of being fully prepared to execute the kinds of operations that you're going to encounter. I would argue that the ground forces doctrine was in pretty good shape. And I think the actions on Guadalcanal seem to validate that. Less so for the Navy, perhaps, especially with surface actions night torpedo, etc. It took the Navy about a year from the summer of 42 to summer of 43 to get its act together in that sphere in particular. And that's the sort of thing some of that could have been predicted and probably should have been. So those are the sorts of things that when we look in the mirror, we should be asking ourselves, what are we overlooking now as a joint force that we shouldn't be that's going to come back to bite us in the middle of the night and a place that we hadn't anticipated that we are going to be fighting under terrible conditions. Your thoughts, I would say from the army standpoint the army in recent years has been concerned with the concept of winning the first fight that by doing so it sets into motion. An operational tempo that will lead to further victories. So I think the Guadalcanal as an example of the of a of a first fight has a lot of lessons to impart regarding, you know, having forces ready to fight that fight, having forces available to fight that fight. And as Mike just pointed out, having you know the joint structure in place to enable all branches of the service to cooperate in that first fight because we don't know where that fight can be. If we have some questions, I think we have one one question from our online audience. All right, they would like to know if they will, they want to learn more about the Guadalcanal campaign. Can you recommend any books or journal articles. I'll start with a shameless plug to save Richard from doing it for itself. I think his book on Guadalcanal is the gold standard right now from across all domains, air ground and sea. I think that's a that's a wonderful book. It's a great place to start there. The literature on this campaign is very deep so that's the good news. More recently, in addition to Richard's work, I think the from a Navy perspective. Now, sadly deceased. Neptune's Inferno, Horn Fisher's book is wonderful. It's very well written very evocative. It's a great scholarship and just a great read. And the last one I would recommend is one that I recommend to our students. We love at the school events were fighting we love memoirs and, and one of the memoirs that is particularly useful from a ground forces perspective is He was a basically started out as an assistant operations officer for First Marine Division. And so you get the story from what it was like almost through vandegraff's eyes through his immediate staff of how this campaign played out very, very useful source. I would just add to that for those looking for just sort of a graphic sense of what it was like. The great book by Richard Grascus, Guadical Diary, still has this tremendous immediacy to it and conveying what it was like when you don't know what tomorrow is going to bring. When I was doing my book, one of the things I did that I didn't intend to do but it turned out to do was I was fact checking to ask this. And I found the guy was absolutely flawless on anything he saw and wrote about. He was sometimes told things that were not right. But when to ask us was there observing things. He was absolutely gold standard in terms of a journalist. Well, I mean it's kind of hard to top what rich and Mike have put forward but you know the army's, you know, official account of campaign by by Miller, which is available through the, you know, Government Printing Office would be, you know, that's that's the standard army source. The US Army Heritage Education Center has archival material, nothing especially comprehensive on the campaign but you know there's a lot of very interesting stuff particularly related to the activities the American Division. We have a collection on it, it has been digitized. So I encourage anyone who is interested in examining the army aspects of water canal to visit our website and search our archives online. I would also point out that on the website of the Army Heritage Center Foundation, you go to army heritage.org click on the research link. We have finding aids for the use of a collection. They've they've got a little dated but they're still excellent introductions. There's there's thousands of them listed by subjects. Now we'll point out that in addition to use a hack usually gets attention for its archival collections, but also as a world class library collection in conjunction with the war college. So that finding aid also has tremendous secondary resources as well in articles books, what have you so it's a tremendous a good starting place as well. Let me add one more thing. The Great Victory at Sea series that was came out in 1952. The episode on water canal is arguably one of the best if not the best of the entire series. It is very emotional. It was made by people who had fought the war and had the sense of what water canal meant to their generation. It ends with this fantastic parolation the last 90 seconds about the importance of the battle. And there's this narration that goes and now the what's left the first Marine division is leaving what canal, and to them go the honors of the Greeks at Tomopoly. The Colonials at Valley Forge, the British at Waterloo and now the Americans at water canal. It shows you where what canal was ranked in terms of the generation that fought the war. Some also say in terms of official histories that Samuel Elliott Morrison's work on water canal is the best of his 15 books on the US Navy and World War two. That's another great source. And it's also connected to his emotional and everyone who was connected to that campaign at that time had the sense that this had been a really important traumatic event that had set the course for the war. Thank you. I'm sure audience found that very enlightening as they did this whole discussion so thank you gentlemen for being here today. Thank you.