Hard to imagine now, but a remote stretch of South Pacific jungle was the site of one war-changing battle during World War II. Guadalcanal, a tiny island at the time unheard of outside its Pacific domain, was a fiercely fought battlefield where Allied forces and Japan battled in one of the war’s most pivotal campaigns during the Pacific War.
Both sides recognized the importance of the island by the summer of 1942. The island in Allied hands ensured important sea lanes between America and Australia and New Zealand. When the Japanese began building an airfield there, it threatened to cut Allied supply lines and remove Australia from the war. The stakes were huge, and neither side wanted to give in.
In August 1942, the United States launched its first massive amphibious assault of the war. The 1st Marine Division went ashore with less than anticipated resistance and captured the partially built airstrip, later to be named Henderson Field. The victory was too delightful to last, and the Japanese responded quickly. Severe fighting raged on land, in the skies, and at sea for months. The waters around them were so choked with wreckage that the sailors began referring to the place as Iron Bottom Sound.
The first naval battles were a bitter disappointment to the Allies. In the Battle of Savo Island, Japanese cruisers had slipped in under the cover of darkness and, using their lethal Long Lance torpedoes, destroyed four Allied heavy cruisers in mere minutes.
It was the worst defeat experienced by the U.S. Navy, and American forces responded by making changes. They improved radar use, conducted night air combat practice, and learned how to keep up with the Japanese in clumsy close-quarters naval combat.
On the island itself, Army and Marine forces suffered repeated raiding, bare rations, and disease. Henderson Field was their lifeline to safety, under the control of an ad-hoc squadron of pilots called the “Cactus Air Force.” Despite insurmountable odds, they held on. Legends like Chesty Puller and John Basilone became symbols of courage and resilience.
The fight continued in November 1942 in the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. Both parties hurled horrible firepower at close range at each other in brutal night fights with battleships and cruisers. Japan eventually lost two of its battleships, Hiei and Kirishima, and was no longer able to provide Guadalcanal. The Japanese Navy had been stopped for the first time definitively.
The cost was appalling. More than 20,000 men were lost, more than a hundred ships were lost, and more than a thousand planes were lost. The USS Juneau disaster, which claimed the lives of the Sullivan brothers, was employed in demonstrating the cost to humanity of the campaign.
But there were also stories of bravery of ingenuity,t y, and perseverance, such as the USS New Orleans, which reached the beach in one piece after a bow improvised from coconut logs was welded on in a hurry.
By February 1943, the Japanese had withdrawn the final forces, and Guadalcanal was in Allied hands. That was not one victory—it was the turning point of the Pacific. Japan could not afford to lose ships and men and replace them, but the U.S. Navy returned more confident, wiser, and stronger.
Today, the wreckage that lies under Iron Bottom Sound speaks of the horrors of the cost of the battle. Guadalcanal was not merely another battle; it was the dthe ay momentum in the Pacific started to shift irretrievably in the Allies’ favor.