CHAPTER 2
A Japanese fighter is shot down during the battle of the Coral Sea; and (below) the Shokaku is on fire and taking evasive action during the same battle.
Victories had secured Japan three-quarters of the world’s natural rubber reserves, two-thirds of the tin, and vital supplies of oil. Japan now tried to protect its economic gains by reinforcing its perimeter to the south, capturing Port Moresby in New Guinea, and cutting off Australia. U.S. intelligence, having decoded Japanese messages, knew that an invasion force would pass through the Coral Sea. A task force of aircraft carriers and battleships was assembled to intercept and attack the Japanese convoys. The stage was set for the first naval battle in history in which the opposing sides never sighted one another, but relied on scout aircraft to direct attacks against one another’s warships from the air.
The battle of the Coral Sea was fought May 4 – 8, 1942 between U.S. and Japanese navies.
The Japanese carriers Shokaku and the Zuikaku were sister ships that, along with destroyers and cruisers, protected the invasion convoys planning to land men at Port Moresby and Tulagi in the Solomon Islands. The convoys also had their own light carrier, the Shoho. On May 5, 1942, the U.S. force assembled about 404 miles (650 km) south of Guadalcanal. Two days earlier, Japanese ships landing at Tulagi had been attacked, but the U.S. plan now was to head for the Jomard Passage and to intercept the main Japanese invasion convoy.
BATTLE AT SEA
On May 7, 1942, U.S. scout aircraft spotted the convoy, which then turned back to wait and see what would happen. The Shoho was attacked and sunk by aircraft from the USS Lexington and Yorktown. Japanese scout planes, like U.S. scouts earlier that day, could not find the enemy aircraft carriers, but they did find and sink the destroyer USS Sims.
On May 8, both sides located one another and launched full air strikes from their carriers. While equal in numbers, the Japanese had the superior Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter and sank the Lexington by striking it with bombs and torpedoes. The Yorktown was damaged. The Shokaku was also damaged but the Zuikaku was never located.
In one sense, the result of the haphazard battle of the Coral Sea was a tie––both sides suffered losses but neither side was dealt a knockout blow. In the long run, however, the U.S. forces could be pleased with the result: The enemy’s attempt to capture Port Morseby was blocked and, with one carrier sunk and another badly damaged, the Japanese were weakened in advance of the next and more decisive sea battle that was about to take place.
BATTLE OF THE CORAL SEA
The scale for this map of the battle for Midway gives some idea of the enormous distances over which the battle was fought.
The badly damaged USS Yorktown on June 5; two days later the ship was sunk by a submarine.
Admiral Yamamoto knew that U.S. naval power had not been destroyed at Pearl Harbor. After the battle of the Coral Sea, he pressed ahead with a daring plan to finish the job. Since Midway Island, over 994 miles (1,600 km) northwest of Pearl Harbor, was capable of acting as a base for attacks on the Pacific coast of the United States, it would surely be defended by the U.S., if threatened. Yamamoto planned to use Midway in order to distract the U.S. fleet. Once drawn in, the larger number of Japanese aircraft carriers, battleships, and destroyers lying in wait could destroy the enemy fleet. The plan also called for a smaller attack on the Aleutian Islands, north of Midway, as a diversion to split the U.S. fleet.
THE CODE HAD BEEN CRACKED
What Yamamoto did not know was that coded Japanese radio messages had been cracked, and Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, was aware of the plan. Early on June 4, 1942, Japanese carrier aircraft attacked Midway. Their carrier fleet was located by U.S. aircraft from the Yorktown, but their early attacks failed and thirty-five U.S. planes were lost. Then U.S. Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, with the Enterprise and Hornet, took the opportunity for a surprise attack. Three Japanese carriers were caught while they were refuelling after attacking Midway. A small group of U.S. dive-bombers targeted the carriers. Their defenders were in disarray, and they were quickly turned into burning wrecks.
A Farewell Drink
Japanese Admiral Kusaka recalled the last moments on board Hiryu: “When it was ascertained that the ship was in a sinking condition, Admiral Yamaguchi and Captain Kaku decided that they would go down with the ship. They all shared some naval biscuits and drank a glass of water in a last ceremony. Admiral Yamaguchi gave his hat to one of his staff officers and asked him to give it to his family; then there was some joking among them—the captain and the admiral—that their duties were finished when the ship sank.”
–From The Pacific Campaign, Dan Van der Vat
A fourth Japanese carrier, Hiryu, escaped and was able to join in an attack on the Yorktown on the afternoon of the same day. The seriously damaged Yorktown would later be sunk by a Japanese submarine, but Hiryu was also damaged beyond repair. Spruance then chose to withdraw, which was just as well because there was another Japanese force advancing on Midway under Admiral Yamamoto.
In the end, the battle of Midway was the first decisive defeat of the Japanese in the Pacific. It signaled a shift in the balance of power in favor of the U.S., although this was not recognized at the time. The Japanese lost four carriers, 225 aircraft, and a cruiser; the U.S. lost one carrier, 146 planes, and a destroyer. Hundreds of lives were lost on both sides.
Carrier-based torpedo bombers, such as these U.S. Navy Avengers, played an important part in the naval battles of the Pacific War.
The Solomon Islands (see page 14) stretch for about 621 miles (1,000 km) across the South Pacific. The Japanese had a base there at Rabaul and a smaller presence on Tulagi and Guadalcanal. After the battle of Midway, neither side had gained control of the South Pacific and so the island of Guadalcanal became a battleground for the continuing struggle between Japan and the U.S.
The battle started on August 7, 1942, when 10,000 U.S. troops landed on Guadalcanal. Then Japanese warships from Rabaul appeared unexpectedly off neighboring Savo Island and sank four cruisers sent there to protect the landings. More than 1,000 Allied seamen lost their lives in the Slot, a seaway area between the Florida Islands and Guadalcanal that became known as Ironbottom Sound because of all the ships that were sunk there. The Japanese then chose to withdraw rather than stay and attack the transport ships, to avoid the risk of counterattacks from the air.
The land battle for Guadalcanal was mostly restricted to a relatively small area around Henderson Field.
U.S. Marines rush ashore from a landing craft to join the battle on Guadalcanal.
U.S. Marines examine a Japanese machine-gun emplacement in the malaria-ridden jungle on the island of Guadalcanal.
THE BATTLE FOR GUADALCANAL
The island of New Guinea (see page 20) and its capital Port Moresby, north of Australia, also became part of the struggle for control of the southwest Pacific. Troops on Guadalcanal were left unprotected and undersupplied, but they did complete an unfinished Japanese airfield on the north coast. Named Henderson Field, it became a target for the Japanese when they landed their own troops on the island. Between September and November, each side was reinforced with thousands more soldiers who fought desperately in a series of engagements, with Japanese troops advancing to within about 985 yards (900 m) of the airfield in the battle of Bloody Ridge in September.
The land battles were accompanied by a series of seven naval engagements. In November, a three-day sea battle unfolded as the Japanese attempted to land fresh troops while aircraft from Henderson Field attacked them. No single engagement proved conclusive over five months of fighting, but the U.S. forces gradually took control. By January 1943, they had about 50,000 troops on the island. Finally, the remaining Japanese, more than 10,000 of them, were evacuated from the island at night without being spotted by their enemy.
With the battle for Guadalcanal, close-combat fighting in tropical jungle conditions become a feature of the Pacific War. The island, in its own right, was not worth the losses that both sides suffered, but in the long run this was the first successful U.S. land battle in the Pacific, and it marked a turning point in the war. Australians became heavily involved in the fighting, in part because their own country was coming under Japanese threat. By October 1943, nearly half a million Australian infantry were in the Pacific, under U.S. control, compared with fewer than 200,000 U.S. land troops.
LOSSES AT GUADALCANAL
New Guinea was divided into a Dutch half (part of the Netherlands East Indies) and an Australian-controlled half.
Japanese forces had landed on the northern coast of New Guinea in March 1942. They intended to move overland and capture Port Moresby, but the Battle of the Coral Sea interrupted this operation. After the Battle of Midway, the U.S. felt confident enough to try to clear this Japanese force. General MacArthur was in command as Australian troops moved north from Port Moresby to engage the enemy. Meanwhile, on July 12, 1942, more Japanese landed on the northern coast and moved south. There was only one route across the 13,124 foot (4,000 m) high Owen Stanley mountains that divided Port Moresby from the north coast. It was an almost impassable mud track through jungle and over high ridges known as the Kokoda Trail. It became a desperate battleground as Japanese and Australian soldiers fought one another and struggled to survive in the jungle. Soldiers who lost the trail died and many Japanese also starved to death because of inadequate supplies of food.
General MacArthur passes Australian troops on their way to fight in northern New Guinea.
Fighting over the Kokoda Trail lasted until the Japanese withdrew in September. Australians and U.S. troops then attacked Gona and Buna, but it was not until January 1943 that the area was cleared of Japanese troops. Meanwhile, from Lae and Salamaua on the northwest coast, another Japanese advance on Port Moresby got under way. By the end of February, it had been driven back. Japanese forces had been stretched in New Guinea because the battle for Guadalcanal was taking place at the same time.
MARCHING IN THE JUNGLE
Ogawa Masatsugu, a Japanese soldier, remembers the campaign in New Guinea and the terrible conditions that drove many soldiers to suicide: “It rained for more than half a year straight. Our guns rusted. Iron just rotted way. Wounds wouldn’t heal … You slipped and fell, got up, went sprawling, stood up, like an army of marching mud dolls. It went on without end, just trudging through the muddy water, following the legs of someone in front of you … All battlefields are wretched places. New Guinea was ghastly. There was a saying during the war: ‘Burma is hell; from New Guinea no one returns alive.’
… In the army, anyone over thirty was an old man. Twenty-six or twenty-seven, that was your peak. The young soldiers, serving for the first time, didn’t know how to pace themselves and died quickly, though there were many strong men, fishermen and farmers, among them.”
—From Japan At War, Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook
The bodies of slain American soldiers lie on the beach at Buna on the northeast coast of New Guinea, January 1943.