October 24th, 1942. 2:30 in the morning. Guaddle Canal. Sergeant John Basselone is kneeling in the mud behind a Browning M1917 machine gun. The barrel is so hot he can smell the oil burning off the metal. His hands are blistered. His uniform is soaked with rain and sweat and something darker. He has not slept in 36 hours.
He has not eaten in longer than that. Through the darkness, he can hear them coming again. The sound starts low. A rustle in the elephant grass, a snap of vegetation, and then the screaming begins. Banzai, banzai. 3,000 Japanese soldiers from the Sendai Division are charging straight at his position.
They are running over the bodies of their comrades who charged an hour ago. They are running over the bodies of the men who charged at midnight. They are climbing over their own dead like they are stepping stones across a river. Basselone presses the trigger. The gun chatters. Red tracers slice through the rain. Men drop. More men take their place.
Somewhere behind the Japanese lines, Lieutenant General Harukichi Hayakutake is listening to the gunfire and waiting for the message that will announce the capture of Henderson Field. He has been promised that this attack will succeed. He has 15,000 soldiers on Guadal Canal. He has artillery. He has tanks. He has the full backing of the Imperial Japanese Navy.
He has Admiral Isuroku Yamamoto himself coordinating a massive fleet operation to support this ground assault. And he has the most important advantage of all. The Americans, everyone in Tokyo agrees, are soft. They are weak. They do not know how to fight. They have no stomach for the kind of brutal close quarters combat that is the specialty of the Japanese soldier.
Hayakutake is certain that by sunrise the American flag over Henderson Field will be replaced by the rising sun. He is wrong. In the next 72 hours, the attack on Henderson Field will become one of the most lopsided defeats in the history of the Pacific War. The Sendai Division, one of Japan’s most experienced combat units, will be virtually annihilated.
Bodies will stack so deep in the barbed wire that bulldozers will be required to bury them. Mying the kill ratio will be so extreme that analysts in Washington will initially refuse to believe the reports. The Japanese are walking into a meat grinder that has been calibrated with the precision of a Swiss watch, and they do not even know it.
To understand why the attack on Henderson Field was such a catastrophic mistake, you have to understand what that airfield meant. You have to understand why both sides were willing to throw everything they had at a single dirt runway carved out of the jungle on an island that most Americans had never heard of.
Henderson Field was not just an airfield. It was the key to the entire South Pacific. When the Japanese looked at a map in the summer of 1942, they saw an empire that stretched from the home islands to the Dutch East Indies, from Burma to the Marshall Islands. They had conquered more territory in 6 months than any military force in history.
They had humiliated the British at Singapore. They had driven the Americans out of the Philippines. They had destroyed the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. But there was a problem. The Japanese war machine ran on oil and the oil fields they had captured in the Dutch East Indies were thousands of miles from Japan. The tankers carrying that oil had to sail through waters that were increasingly vulnerable to American attack.
The Japanese needed to push their defensive perimeter farther south. They needed to cut the supply lines between the United States and Australia. They needed to threaten the last major allied base in the region. And to do that, they needed Guadal Canal. The island sits at the southern end of the Solomon Islands chain, a lush, green nightmare of jungle, mountains, and disease.
In May of 1942, Japanese construction crews began building an airfield on the northern coastal plane. They worked around the clock. They cleared the Kunai grass. They laid down coral and gravel. They imported heavy equipment from Rabbal. By early August, the runway was almost complete. If that airfield became operational, Japanese bombers could reach Australia.
Japanese fighters could intercept any Allied ship trying to resupply the South Pacific. The entire strategic balance of the war would shift. The Americans could not let that happen. On August 7th, 1942, 11,000 Marines of the First Marine Division splashed ashore on Guadal Canal in the first American amphibious assault since the Spanishamean War.
They caught the Japanese completely by surprise. The construction crews fled into the jungle. The Marines captured the half-finished airfield within 36 hours. They renamed it Henderson Field after Major Loftton Henderson, a Marine aviator killed at the Battle of Midway two months earlier. And then the real fighting began.
The Japanese could not accept the loss of Guadal Canal. It was not just a strategic setback. It was anembarrassment. The Americans, who were supposed to be weak and decadent, had actually gone on the offensive. They had actually attacked. Admiral Yamamoto understood immediately what this meant. He had spent years in America as a naval atache.
He had seen the automobile factories in Detroit. He had watched the shipyards on the West Coast. He knew that if the Americans were given time to build up their strength, Japan would be overwhelmed by sheer industrial might. The Americans had to be stopped at Guadal Canal. They had to be thrown back into the sea. The airfield had to be recaptured before the tide of war turned against Japan forever.
And so began a desperate monthsl long struggle for control of a single dirt runway in the middle of nowhere. The first Japanese counterattack came just two weeks after the American landing. Colonel Konao Ichiki led 900 men of the Ichiki detachment in a night assault across the Tanaru River on August 21st. The Japanese believed they would sweep the Marines aside.
The Marines were waiting with machine guns and artillery. The Battle of the Tenneroo lasted less than 12 hours. More than 800 Japanese soldiers were killed. Only a handful surrendered. The rest fought until they were dead. Colonel Ichiki burned his regimental colors to prevent their capture. Then he shot himself. The Americans thought the battle was a clear victory.
The Japanese thought it was a temporary setback. Neither side understood yet what Guadal Canal would become. The second counterattack came in September at a place the Marines would call Bloody Ridge. Major General Kiyotake Kawaguchi led 3,100 men through the jungle in an attempt to take Henderson Field from the south. It was a brilliant plan on paper.
The Japanese would avoid the marine defenses on the coast and strike at the airfield’s vulnerable rear. But the jungle was worse than anyone expected. It took Kawaguchi’s men 4 days to cover 8 mi. They arrived exhausted, dehydrated, and disorganized. Their radios were dead. Their coordination was non-existent.
Lieutenant Colonel Merritt Edson’s first Marine Raider battalion was waiting for them on the ridge. For two nights, the Japanese threw themselves at the Marine lines. For two nights, the Marines held. When it was over, more than a thousand Japanese soldiers were dead. The ridge was renamed Edson’s Ridge in honor of the commander who held it.
But the Japanese were not done. In Tokyo, the Imperial General staff was growing impatient. Two attacks had failed. The Americans were still holding Henderson Field. Something had to change. The decision was made to send an entire division. The Second Infantry Division, also known as the Sendai Division, was one of the most prestigious units in the Japanese Army.
Its soldiers were recruited primarily from Miyagi Prefecture in northern Japan, men known for their endurance and discipline. The division had fought in Manuria. It had participated in the conquest of Java. It was considered an elite formation. In early October, the Tokyo Express began delivering the Sendai Division to Guadal Canal.
The Tokyo Express was the nickname the Marines gave to the Japanese destroyers that ran down the slot every night, bringing reinforcements and supplies under cover of darkness. The destroyers were too fast for the American patrol boats to catch. They unloaded their cargo, shelled the marine positions, and were gone before dawn.
Night after night, the destroyers came. By mid-occtober, more than 15,000 Japanese soldiers were on Guadal Canal. Artillery pieces were dragged through the jungle. Tanks were landed on the beaches. Ammunition dumps were established in hidden positions. Lieutenant General Harukichi Hayakutake, commander of the 17th Army, arrived personally to take charge of the offensive.
This would not be another peacemeal attack. This would be a coordinated assault from multiple directions supported by naval bombardment and air strikes. Hayakutake set the attack for October 22nd. But first, the Japanese Navy had a surprise for Henderson Field. The bombardment began at 1:33 in the morning on October 14th.
Two Japanese battleships, Congo and Haruna, approached Guadal Canal under cover of darkness. They were escorted by a light cruiser and nine destroyers. Their mission was simple. Destroy Henderson Field. The battleships opened fire with their 14-in guns. Each shell weighed more than 1,400 lb. Each explosion could be heard for miles. For 83 minutes, the bombardment continued.
973 shells slammed into the Lunga perimeter. Most of them landed in and around the airfield. The Marines had never experienced anything like it. Pharmacist’s mate, First Class Lewis Ortega, was in a pillbox when the first shells hit. He would later describe it this way. A whistling noise and then boom.
What the hell was that? And then another one. For the next 4 hours, we were bombarded. Let me tell you something. You can get a dozen air raids a day, but they come and they are gone.But when these battleship guns start lobbing shells into you, they come one after another. By the time the Japanese ships withdrew, Henderson Field was in ruins. Both runways were cratered.
48 of the 90 aircraft on the field were destroyed. Almost all of the aviation fuel had been burned. 41 men were dead, including six pilots. The Cactus Air Force, the mly collection of Marine, Navy, and Army aircraft that defended Guadal Canal had been nearly wiped out. The Marines called it simply the bombardment.
It was the worst naval shelling American forces have ever endured, and it was only the beginning. In the days that followed, Japanese cruisers returned to shell the field again. Air raids came every day. The Tokyo Express delivered more troops every night. Everything was building toward the ground assault that would recapture the airfield and drive the Americans into the sea.
Hayakutake finalized his plan. The main attack would come from the south. Major General Masau Maruyama would lead 7,200 men of the Sendai Division through the jungle to strike at the airfield’s rear. It was essentially the same approach Kawaguchi had tried in September, but with more than twice as many troops. A secondary attack would come from the west.
Colonel Namasu Nakaguma would lead three battalions and nine tanks across the Matanika River to hit the Marine flank. A third force under Colonel Akinosuk Oka would attack from the southwest. The three forces would strike simultaneously. The Americans would be overwhelmed from multiple directions. Henderson Field would fall. The time of the decisive battle between Japan and the United States has come.
Hayakutake announced on October 22nd. This attack will determine the fate of the war. He set the assault for the night of October 23rd. But the jungle had other plans. The route Maruyama chose through the interior of Guadal Canal looked reasonable on a map. It was only about 15 mi from the assembly area to the American lines.
In normal terrain, that would be a single day’s march. But Guadal Canal was not normal terrain. The jungle was so thick that in places you could not see 10 ft ahead. The ground was a tangle of roots, vines, and rotting vegetation. Every step sank into mud. The hills were steep and slippery with rain. The heat was suffocating.
The humidity approached 100% and it was raining. It rained every day on Guadal Canal. Maruyama’s men hacked their way forward inch by inch. They dragged their artillery pieces behind them using ropes because the guns were too heavy for the terrain. They carried their ammunition on their backs because there were no mules.
They drank from stagnant pools because there was no clean water. Men collapsed from heat exhaustion. Men fell behind and were left in the jungle. Radios failed in the humidity. Units became separated. officers lost contact with their men. By the afternoon of October 23rd, Maruyama’s force was nowhere near the American lines.
The attack would have to be postponed for 24 hours, but the message never reached Nakaguma’s force at the Matanika. At dusk on October 23rd, right on schedule, Nakaguma launched his attack. Nine Japanese tanks charged across the sandbar at the mouth of the Matanika River. Behind them came two infantry battalions, bayonets fixed, screaming banzai. The Marines were ready.
37 mm anti-tank guns opened fire at point blank range. The first tank was hit before it reached the far bank. The second tank burst into flames. One by one, all nine tanks were destroyed. The crews that tried to escape were cut down by machine gun fire. Behind the burning tanks, the infantry was caught in the open. 40 marine howitzers opened fire.
6,000 shells fell on the Japanese positions in less than an hour. The Matanikau River ran red with blood. By midnight, the attack was over. 600 Japanese soldiers were dead. The Marines had suffered fewer than 50 casualties. Nakaguma’s diversionary attack had accomplished nothing except to alert the Americans that something big was coming.
The next night, October 24th, Maruyama finally reached the American lines. His men had spent two full days struggling through the jungle. They were exhausted. They were dehydrated. Many had thrown away equipment to lighten their loads. Their carefully coordinated attack had degenerated into a chaotic stumble through the darkness.
But Maruyama still had 7,000 soldiers and he was facing a single American battalion. Lieutenant Colonel Lewis B. Puller, known to his men as Chesty, commanded the first battalion of the Seventh Marine Regiment. His sector stretched for more than 2,000 yards along a series of ridges south of Henderson Field.
It was a frontage normally defended by an entire regiment. Puller had about a thousand men. At 9:30 on the night of October 24th, a Marine listening post reported movement in the jungle. Sergeant Ralph Briggs was on the field telephone. Colonel, there is about 3,000 japs between you and me. Puller asked if he was certain. “Positive,”Briggs replied.
“They have been all around us singing and smoking cigarettes heading your way.” Puller hung up the phone. He looked at his officers. “Let them come,” he said. At 1:15 in the morning, the first wave hit. The Japanese emerged from the jungle, screaming. They charged straight at the marine lines, climbing over the barbed wire, throwing grenades, firing from the hip. The noise was deafening.
Rifle shots, explosions, the chatter of machine guns, and above it all, the screaming. The Marines opened fire. On the right side of the line, a machine gun section commanded by Sergeant John Basselone was positioned at a critical choke point. If the Japanese broke through there, they would have a clear path to the airfield.
The Japanese came at Basselone’s guns in waves. The first wave was cut down within 50 yards. The second wave made it closer. The third wave reached the barbed wire. Bodies piled up in front of the guns. Baselone kept firing. When one of his guns jammed, he cleared it under fire. When another gun was destroyed by a grenade, he dragged a spare gun into position.
When his ammunition ran low, he fought through Japanese soldiers to reach the supply dump and carried belts of ammunition back to his men. At one point, he picked up the 90 lb machine gun and moved it to a new position, the barrel so hot it burned through his gloves. For hours, the assault continued.
Wave after wave, charge after charge. The Japanese kept coming because they had been told the Americans would break. They had been told the Marines were soft. They were not soft. By dawn on October 25th, the Marine lines were still intact. The ground in front of Basselon’s position was covered with bodies.
His section had killed so many Japanese soldiers that they could not count them all. When the Marines tallied the dead later that day, they found more than a thousand Japanese corpses within a few hundred yards of the perimeter. At Baselone’s position alone, 38 bodies were counted in a single heap where the machine gun had caught them in the open.
Basilone had not slept in 3 days. He had not eaten. When he finally rested his head against the edge of his foxhole, his men counted the ammunition. They had fired more than 26,000 rounds. For his actions that night, John Basselone would receive the Medal of Honor, the first enlisted marine to earn the award in World War II.
But the battle was not over. Maruyama still had thousands of soldiers in the jungle, and he was not ready to give up. On the night of October 25th, the Japanese attacked again. This time they came at the American lines from multiple directions. Parts of three battalions hit Puller’s sector. Another force attacked the ridge to the west.
A third force struck at the positions held by army troops from the 164th Infantry Regiment, the first Army unit to see combat on Guadal Canal. The fighting was even more intense than the night before. At Puller’s command post, the colonel was on the radio coordinating fire missions while bullets cracked overhead. When a staff officer suggested they pull back, Puller’s response became legend.
We do not retreat. Marines do not retreat. We stay here and die if necessary. They did not die. They held. The Army soldiers of the 164th National Guardsmen from North Dakota were fed peacemeal into the Marine lines throughout the night. They had been on Guadal Canal for less than 2 weeks.
Most of them had never been in combat. They were scared and confused and operating in complete darkness in unfamiliar positions. They fought anyway. By morning, the second assault had failed. More Japanese bodies littered the jungle. More Japanese wounded crawled back toward their lines. The Sendai division was being bled white against defenses it could not break.
On October 26th, Mararyyama ordered one final attack. It was a desperate gamble. His men were exhausted. His units were shattered. He had lost contact with most of his commanders. But Tokyo was demanding results. The Navy was waiting offshore with transports full of reinforcements. The honor of the emperor demanded that the attack continue.
The final assault came at night, as all Japanese attacks did. Colonel Akinosuk Oka’s force, which had been delayed even more than Maruyama’s main body, finally arrived at the marine lines. 2,000 men charged the positions held by the second battalion of the seventh Marines. The Marines had been fighting for three straight nights.
They were running low on ammunition. Their barrels were worn. Their hands were shaking from exhaustion. They held anyway. OK’s attack disintegrated in the barbed wire. The survivors retreated into the jungle, leaving hundreds of dead behind. On the morning of October 27th, Maruyama finally admitted defeat. He ordered his surviving troops to withdraw to the west, away from Henderson Field, away from the slaughter. The battle was over.
The mathematics of Henderson Field were staggering. In three nights of fighting,the Japanese lost between 2,000 and 3,000 soldiers killed. The exact number was impossible to determine because many bodies were never recovered from the jungle. The Marines and Army soldiers who defended the airfield lost fewer than 100 men.
The kill ratio was at least 20 to1. The Sendai Division, which had arrived on Guadal Canal as an elite combat unit, was effectively destroyed as a fighting force. Its commander, Major General Nasu, was killed by artillery fire during the second night’s attack. Its regimental colors were captured by the Marines. More than half of its combat strength was gone.
When burial details went out to count the bodies, they used bulldozers. The corpses were stacked so deep in some places that they had to be loaded into mass graves like cordwood. The tropical heat was already causing decomposition. The smell was indescribable. A few days after the battle, one of the burial details counted 1462 bodies in Puller’s sector alone.
The Japanese had walked into a killing ground that was perfectly designed to destroy them. The Marines had artillery that the Japanese could not match. 40 howitzers were ranged on every approach to the airfield, and they had unlimited ammunition. Every time the Japanese masked for an attack, the guns opened fire. The Marines had machine guns that the Japanese could not suppress.
The Browning M1917 could fire 500 rounds per minute. A single gun, properly positioned, could stop a battalion. The Marines had barbed wire that channeled the attackers into predetermined kill zones. The Japanese had to climb over it or cut through it while under fire. Either way, they were exposed.
And the Marines had something else. They had men like John Baselone and Chesty Puller who refused to retreat, who held their positions through three nights of hell, who proved that Americans could fight as hard and as long as any soldier on Earth. The Japanese had been told that the Americans were soft. They learned the truth in the mud and the wire and the blood of Henderson Field, but the significance of the battle extended far beyond the body count.
Henderson Field survived. The Cactus Air Force, battered and depleted, continued to operate from the cratered runway. Within days of the bombardment, aircraft were taking off again. Within weeks, the airfield was stronger than ever. And that meant the Japanese plan for Guadal Canal was finished. The entire premise of the Japanese strategy was that Henderson Field could be neutralized and recaptured.
Without the airfield in American hands, there would be no Cactus Air Force. Without the Cactus Air Force, Japanese ships could operate freely around Guadal Canal. The island could be reinforced at will. the Americans could be driven off, but Henderson Field would not fall. The battleship bombardment had failed to destroy it permanently.
The ground assault had failed to capture it. And every day that the airfield remained in American hands, the Japanese position became more precarious. The Cactus Air Force controlled the daylight hours around Guadal Canal. Any Japanese ship that approached during the day risked being attacked by dive bombers and torpedo planes.
The Tokyo Express could only operate at night and destroyers could not carry enough supplies to sustain a major ground force. The Japanese soldiers on Guadal Canal began to starve. They called the island starvation island. They boiled grass and ate it. They killed and ate the horses that had been brought to carry artillery.
They caught rats in the jungle and roasted them over fires. Malaria swept through their ranks. Dysentery killed more men than American bullets. Every night the Tokyo Express brought more soldiers. Every day those soldiers consumed more food that was not arriving. The mathematics were inexurable. In November, the Japanese tried again to knock out Henderson Field.
Admiral Yamamoto sent two more battleships, Hy and Kiroshima, to bombard the airfield. But this time, the American Navy was waiting. In the brutal naval battle of Guadal Canal on November 12th through 15th, American cruisers and battleships intercepted the Japanese force. The fighting was savage and confused. a brawl in the darkness of Iron Bottom Sound.
Both sides suffered terrible losses. The Americans lost two light cruisers and seven destroyers. More than 1,700 American sailors died, but the Japanese lost the battleship he sunk by aircraft from Henderson Field. They lost another battleship, Kiroshima, sunk by the guns of the American battleship Washington. They lost most of the transport convoy that was supposed to reinforce Guadal Canal.
Never again would the Japanese Navy attempt to knock out Henderson Field from the sea. The battle for Guadal Canal dragged on through December and January, but the outcome was no longer in doubt. The Japanese could not supply their forces. They could not reinforce their positions. They could not take the offensive. In late January 1943, Tokyomade the decision to evacuate.
Over three nights in early February, Japanese destroyers crept down the slot one final time. But this time, instead of delivering troops, they were taking them away. More than 10,000 survivors of the Guadal Canal campaign were rescued from the island. They left behind more than 20,000 dead.
The American victory at Guadal Canal was complete. Japan would never go on the offensive again in the Pacific. From that point forward, they would be retreating, defending, falling back. The tide of war had turned, and it turned at Henderson Field. The significance of what happened on that muddy airirstrip in October of 1942 cannot be overstated.
If the Japanese had captured Henderson Field, the entire course of the Pacific War would have changed. The Americans would have been pushed back. Australia would have been threatened. The buildup for the island hopping campaign would have been delayed by months or years. But Henderson Field held. It held because of marine artillery that broke up every Japanese attack before it could gain momentum.
It held because of machine gunners like John Basselone who refused to abandon their positions. It held because of commanders like Chesty Puller who understood that the airfield had to be defended at any cost. When Baselone received the Medal of Honor in Australia in May of 1943, he said something that captured the spirit of the men who fought at Henderson Field.
Only part of this medal belongs to me. Pieces of it belong to the boys who are still on Guadal Canal. He could have stayed in the United States. The Marine Corps offered him a commission and a desk job. He could have spent the rest of the war selling war bonds and giving speeches. He refused. I ain’t no officer, he said, and I ain’t no museum piece.
I belong back with my outfit. In February of 1945, Sergeant John Basselon landed on Eoima. On the first day of the assault, while leading his men off the beach under heavy fire, he was killed by a Japanese mortar round. He was 28 years old. He received the Navy Cross postumously. He is the only enlisted Marine to earn both the Medal of Honor and the Navy Cross in World War II.
The battle for Henderson Field ended more than 80 years ago. The jungle has reclaimed most of the battlefield. The runway where Bascelone fought is now Hunara International Airport, serving the capital of the Solomon Islands. Tourists fly in on commercial jets and have no idea what happened there. But the lesson of Henderson Field remains.
The Japanese believed they could not be stopped. They believed their spirit would overcome American machines. They believed their willingness to die would break American resolve. They were wrong. At Henderson Field, the Americans proved that they could match Japanese courage with courage of their own.
They proved that industrial might and military skill could defeat human wave attacks. They proved that a defensive position, properly prepared and stubbornly held, could destroy an attacking force, no matter how determined. The Sendai division learned this lesson in the barbed wire south of the airfield. They learned it in the mud in front of Baselon’s machine guns.
They learned it in the craters left by Marine artillery. By the time they finished learning, most of them were dead. In 1942, Japan attacked America’s Henderson Field. They threw their best division against a single Marine battalion. They expected to sweep the Americans aside and recapture the airfield that threatened their empire.
It was a huge mistake and it cost them the
