Battle of the Tenaru

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Battle of the Tenaru
Part of the Pacific Theater of World War II
Dead Japanese soldiers, killed assaulting United States Marine positions, lie on the sandbar at the mouth of Alligator Creek, Guadalcanal after the battle on August 21, 1942.
Date August 21, 1942 Location Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands Result Allied victory
Combatants
United States, Australia, Solomon Islands	Empire of Japan
Commanders
Alexander Vandegrift, Clifton B. Cates	Harukichi Hyakutake, Kiyonao Ichiki †
Strength
1,500[1]	917[2]
Casualties
44 killed[3]	777 killed, 15 captured[4]

The Battle of the Tenaru, also known as the Battle of the Ilu River, took place August 21, 1942 on the island of Guadalcanal, and was a land battle of the Pacific campaign of World War II, between Imperial Japanese Army and Allied (mainly United States (U.S.) Marine) ground forces. The battle was the first major Japanese land offensive during the Guadalcanal campaign.

In the battle, U.S. Marines, under the overall command of U.S. Major General Alexander Vandegrift, successfully repulsed an assault by the "First Element" of the "Ichiki" Regiment, under the command of Japanese Colonel Kiyonao Ichiki. The Marines were defending the Lunga perimeter, which guarded Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, that was captured by the Allies in landings on Guadalcanal on August 7, 1942. Ichiki's unit was sent to Guadalcanal in response to the Allied landings with the mission of recapturing the airfield and driving the Allied forces off of the island. Underestimating the strength of Allied forces on Guadalcanal, which at that time numbered about 11,000 personnel, Ichiki's unit conducted a nighttime frontal assault on Marine positions at Alligator Creek on the east side of the Lunga perimeter. Ichiki's assault was defeated with heavy losses for the Japanese attackers. After daybreak, the Marine units counterattacked Ichiki's surviving troops, killing many more of them. In total, all but 128 of the original 917 of the Ichiki Regiment's First Element were killed in the battle.

The battle was the first of three separate major land offensives by the Japanese in the Guadalcanal campaign. After Tenaru, the Japanese realized that Allied forces on Guadalcanal were much greater in number than originally estimated and thereafter sent larger forces to the island for their subsequent attempts to retake Henderson Field.

[edit] Background

On August 7, 1942, Allied forces (primarily U.S.) landed on Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and Florida Islands in the Solomon Islands. The landings on the islands were meant to deny their use by the Japanese as bases for threatening the supply routes between the U.S. and Australia, and to use them as starting points for a campaign with the eventual goal of isolating the major Japanese base at Rabaul while also supporting the Allied New Guinea campaign. The landings initiated the six-month-long Battle of Guadalcanal.

Taking the Japanese by surprise, the Allied landing forces accomplished their initial objectives of securing Tulagi and nearby small islands, as well as an airfield under construction at Lunga Point on Guadalcanal, by nightfall on August 8.^[5] That night, as the transports unloaded, the Allied warships screening the transports were surprised and defeated by a Japanese warship force of seven cruisers and one destroyer, commanded by Japanese Vice Admiral Gunichi Mikawa. Three U.S. and one Australian cruisers were sunk and one other U.S. cruiser and two destroyers were damaged in the Battle of Savo Island. Turner withdrew all remaining Allied naval forces by the evening of August 9 without unloading all of the heavy equipment, provisions, and troops from the transports, although most of the divisional artillery was landed.^[6]

The Marines ashore on Guadalcanal initially concentrated on forming a defense perimeter around the airfield, moving the landed supplies within the perimeter, and finishing the airfield. Vandegrift placed his 11,000 troops on Guadalcanal in a loose perimeter around the Lunga Point area. In four days of intense effort, the supplies were moved from the landing beach into dispersed dumps within the perimeter. Work began on the airfield immediately, mainly using captured Japanese equipment. On August 12, the airfield was named Henderson Field after Major Lofton Henderson, a Marine aviator who had been killed at the Battle of Midway. To conserve the limited food supplies, the Allied troops were limited to two meals a day.^[7]

Japanese Colonel Kiyonao Ichiki, commander of the 28th Infantry Regiment.

In response to the Allied landings on Guadalcanal, the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters assigned the Imperial Japanese Army's 17th Army, based at Rabaul and under the command of Lieutenant-General Harukichi Hyakutake, with the task of retaking Guadalcanal from Allied forces. The 17th Army, currently heavily involved with the Japanese campaign in New Guinea, had only a few units available to send to the southern Solomons area. Of these units, the 35th Infantry Brigade under Major General Kiyotaki Kawaguchi was in the Philippines, the 4th (Aoba) Infantry Regiment was in Palau, and the 28th (Ichiki) Infantry Regiment, under the command of Colonel Kiyonao Ichiki, was at Guam. The different units began to move towards Guadalcanal immediately, but Ichiki's regiment, being the closest, would ultimately arrive first.^[8]

An aerial reconnaissance of the US Marine positions on Guadalcanal on August 12 by one of the senior Japanese staff officers from Rabaul sighted few US troops in the open and no large ships in the waters nearby, convincing Imperial Headquarters that the Allies had withdrawn the majority of their troops. In fact, none of the Allied troops had been withdrawn.^[9] Hyakutake issued orders for an advance unit of 900 troops from Ichiki's regiment to be landed on Guadalcanal to immediately attack the Allied position and reoccupy the airfield area at Lunga Point. At the major Japanese naval base at Truk, which was the staging point for delivery of Ichiki's regiment to Guadalcanal, Colonel Ichiki was briefed that only 2,000 U.S. troops were holding the Guadalcanal beachhead.^[10]

Ichiki and 916 of his regiment's troops, designated the "First Element", were successfully delivered to Taivu Point, about 22 miles east of Lunga Point, by six destroyers on the night of August 18.^[11][12] The U.S. Marines at Lunga Point suspected that a Japanese landing had occurred and took steps to find out what was happening.^[13]

[edit] Battle

[edit] Prelude

Australian coastwatcher Martin Clemens (center standing) with members of the Solomon Islands police force, who served as scouts and guides for Allied forces throughout the Guadalcanal campaign.

Reports to Allied forces from patrols of native Solomon Islanders, including retired Sergeant Major Jacob C. Vouza of the Native Constabulary, under the direction of Martin Clemens, an Australian coastwatcher stationed on Guadalcanal, along with Allied intelligence from other sources, indicated that Japanese troops were present east of Lunga Point. To investigate further, on August 19, a Marine patrol of 60 men, commanded by U.S. Marine Captain Charles H. Brush, marched east from the Lunga Perimeter.^[14][15] At the same time, Ichiki sent forward his own patrol of 38 men to reconnoiter Allied troop dispositions and establish a forward communications base. Around 12:00 on August 19, Brush's patrol sighted and ambushed the Japanese patrol, killing all but three of its members. The Marines suffered three dead and three wounded.^[16] Papers discovered on the bodies of some of the Japanese officers in the patrol revealed that they belonged to a much larger unit and showed detailed intelligence of U.S. Marine positions around Lunga Point.^[17] The papers did not, however, detail exactly how large the Japanese force was or whether an attack was imminent.^[18]

Now anticipating an attack from the east, the U.S. Marine forces, under the direction of General Vandegrift, prepared their defenses on the east side of the Lunga perimeter. Several official U.S. military histories identify the location of the eastern defenses of the Lunga perimeter as emplaced on the Tenaru River. The Tenaru River, however, was actually located further to the east. The river forming the eastern boundary of the Lunga perimeter was actually the Ilu River, called Alligator Creek by the local inhabitants. Alligator Creek wasn't really a river, but a tidal lagoon separated from the ocean by a sandbar about 25 to 50 feet in width and about 100 feet long.^[19] Along the west side of Alligator Creek, Colonel Clifton B. Cates, commander of the 1st Marine Regiment, deployed his 1st and 2nd battalions.^[20][21] To help further defend the Alligator Creek sandbar, Cates deployed 100 men from the 1st Special Weapons Battalion with 37mm anti-tank guns equipped with cannister ammunition. ^[22] Marine divisional artillery, consisting of both 75mm and 105mm guns, pre-targeted locations on the east side and sandbar areas of Alligator Creek and forward artillery observers emplaced themselves in the forward marine positions.^[23] The Marines worked all day on August 20 to prepare their defenses as much as possible before nightfall.^[24]

Learning of the annihilation of his patrol, Ichiki quickly sent forward another advance element and followed with the rest of his troops, marching throughout the night of August 19 and finally halting on the morning of August 20 within a few miles of the U.S. Marine positions on the east side of Lunga Point. At this location, he prepared his troops to attack the Allied positions that night.^[25]

Sometime after nightfall on August 20, a seriously injured Jacob Vouza approached the Marine defenses on Alligator Creek. He recounted to the Marines that he had been captured by an element of Ichiki's troops, bound, interrogated, and, when he refused to divulge any information, tortured, bayonetted, and left for dead. After the Japanese troops left him alone, Vouza was able to free himself and make his way to the Marine lines while evading the rest of Ichiki's force that was preparing for their night assault on the marine positions.^[26] Vouza informed the Marines of the approximate size of Ichiki's force and that the Japanese would be attacking shortly.^[27]

[edit] Action

Map of the battle of August 21.

Just after midnight on August 21, Ichiki's main body of troops arrived at the east bank of Alligator Creek and began setting-up for their attack. Nearby U.S. Marine listening posts heard "clanking" sounds, human voices, and other noises before withdrawing to the west bank of the creek. At 02:40 Ichiki's force opened fire with machine guns and mortars on the Marine positions on the west bank of the creek and a first wave of about 200 Japanese soldiers charged across the sandbar towards the Marines.^[28][29] Marine machine gun fire and canister rounds from the 37mm cannons killed most of the Japanese soldiers as they crossed the sandbar. A few of the Japanese soldiers reached the Marine positions, engaged in hand to hand combat with the defenders, and captured a few of the Marine front-line emplacements. Also, Japanese machine gun and rifle fire from the east side of the creek killed several of the marine machine-gunners.^[30] At this time, a company of Marines, held in reserve just behind the front line, attacked and killed most, if not all, of the remaining Japanese soldiers that had breached the front line defenses, ending Ichiki's first assault about an hour after it had begun.^[31][32]

As Ichiki's troops regrouped east of the creek, Japanese mortars bombarded the Marine lines.^[33] The Marines answered with 75mm artillery barrages into the areas east of the creek where the Japanese were assembling for a second assault.^[34] About 05:00, a second wave of Japanese troops attacked, this time attempting to flank the Marine positions by wading through the ocean surf and attacking up the beach into the west bank area of the creek bed. The Marines responded with heavy machine gun and artillery fire along the beachfront area, again causing heavy casualties among Ichiki's attacking troops, and causing them to abandon their attack and withdraw back to the east bank of the creek.^[35][36] For the next couple of hours, the two sides exchanged rifle, machine gun, and artillery fire at close range across the sandbar and creek.^[37]

In spite of the heavy losses his force had suffered in both night assaults, Ichiki's troops remained in place on the east bank of the creek, apparently making no effort to withdraw.^[38] At daybreak on August 21, the commanders of the U.S. Marine units facing Ichiki's troops conferred on how best to proceed, and decided to counterattack.^[39] The 1st Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, under Lieutenant Colonel Lenard B. Cresswell, crossed Alligator Creek upstream from the battle area, enveloped Ichiki's troops from the south and east, cutting off any avenue for retreat, and began to "compress" Ichiki's troops into a small area in a coconut grove on the east bank of the creek.^[40] Aircraft from Henderson Field strafed Japanese soldiers that attempted to escape down the beach and, later in the afternoon, four Marine light tanks attacked across the sandbar into the coconut grove. The tanks swept the coconut grove with machine gun and cannon fire, as well as rolling over the bodies, both alive and dead, of any Japanese soldiers unable or unwilling to get out of the way. When the tank attack was over, Vandegrift wrote that, "the rear of the tanks looked like meat grinders."^[41]

Two dead Japanese soldiers lie on the east bank of Alligator Creek near the machine gun that they crewed during the battle.

By 17:00 on August 21, Japanese resistance had ended. Colonel Ichiki was either killed during the battle, or committed ritual suicide (seppuku) shortly thereafter, depending on the account. As curious Marines began to walk around looking at the battlefield, some injured Japanese troops shot at them, killing or wounding several Marines. Thereafter, Marines shot or bayonetted all of the Japanese bodies that they encountered, although about 15 injured and unconscious Japanese soldiers were taken prisoner.^[42] Only a few of the Japanese escaped to rejoin their regiment's rear echelon several miles east of the battle area.^[43]

[edit] Aftermath

For the U.S. and its allies, the victory in the Tenaru battle was psychologically significant in that Allied soldiers, after a series of defeats to Japanese army units throughout the Pacific and east Asia, now knew that they could defeat Japanese troops in a land battle.^[44] The battle also set another precedent that would continue throughout the war in the Pacific, which was the reluctance of defeated Japanese soldiers to surrender and their efforts to continue killing Allied soldiers, even as the Japanese soldiers lay dying on the battlefield. On this subject Vandegrift remarked, "I have never heard or read of this kind of fighting. These people refuse to surrender. The wounded wait until men come up to examine them...and blow themselves and the other fellow to pieces with a hand grenade."^[45]

On August 22, Ichiki's survivors reached Taivu Point and radioed Rabaul to tell 17th Army headquarters that Ichiki's detachment had been "almost annihilated at a point short of the airfield." Reacting with disbelief to the news, Japanese army headquarter's officers proceeded with plans to deliver additional troops to Guadalcanal to reattempt to capture Henderson Field.^[46] Although unsuccessful in their first attempt to recapture Henderson Field, the Japanese were determined to try again. The next major Japanese attack on the Lunga perimeter occurred at the Battle of Edson's Ridge about three weeks later, this time employing a much larger force than had been employed in the Tenaru battle.

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Guadalcanal Campaign

[edit] References

[edit] Notes

[edit] Books

• Frank, Richard (1990). Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-394-58875-4.
• Griffith, Samuel B. (1963). The Battle for Guadalcanal. Champaign, Illinois, USA: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-06891-2.
• Hammel, Eric (1999). Carrier Clash: The Invasion of Guadalcanal & The Battle of the Eastern Solomons August 1942. St. Paul, MN, USA: Zenith Press. 0760320527.
• Leckie, Robert (2001 (reissue)). Helmet for my Pillow. ibooks, Inc.. ISBN 1596870923. First-person account of the battle by a member of the 1st Marine Regiment.
• Morison, Samuel Eliot (1958). The Struggle for Guadalcanal, August 1942 – February 1943, vol. 5 of History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0-316-58305-7. Online views of selections of the book:[1]
• Tregaskis, Richard (1943). Guadalcanal Diary. Random House. ISBN 0-679-64023-1.

[edit] External links

• Anderson, Charles R. (1993). GUADALCANAL (brochure). U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. Retrieved on 2006-07-09.
• Cagney, James (2005). The Battle for Guadalcanal (javascript). HistoryAnimated.com. Retrieved on 2006-05-17.- Interactive animation of the battle
• Chen, C. Peter (2004 - 2006). Guadalcanal Campaign. World War II Database. Retrieved on 2006-05-17.
• Flahavin, Peter (2004). Guadalcanal Battle Sites, 1942-2004. Retrieved on 2006-08-02.- Web site with many pictures of Guadalcanal battle sites from 1942 and how they look now.
• Hough, Frank O.; Ludwig, Verle E., and Shaw, Henry I., Jr.. Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal. History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II. Retrieved on 2006-05-16.
• Miller, John Jr. (1949). GUADALCANAL: THE FIRST OFFENSIVE. UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II. Retrieved on 2006-07-04.
• Shaw, Henry I. (1992). First Offensive: The Marine Campaign For Guadalcanal. Marines in World War II Commemorative Series. Retrieved on 2006-07-25.
• Zimmerman, John L. (1949). The Guadalcanal Campaign. Marines in World War II Historical Monograph. Retrieved on 2006-07-04.

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