Two nights after the initial landings, the US Navy experienced the worst open-water defeat in its history at the Battle of Savo Island. In addition to the action on the ground, the United States Navy and Imperial Japanese Navy fought several vicious and costly surface engagements at night in the waters of Savo Sound. William Manchester, Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War (1980), p. Why does the mere mention of the southwest Pacific cause the men who fought there to shudder? Why does so genteel an author as Herman Wouk, whipped into a white-lipped rage at the mere thought of Guadalcanal, write that it "was and remains 'that fucking island'"? Why was combat there considered - correctly – worse than Stalingrad? Three future commandants of the Marine Corps fought on "The Canal": Alexander A. Today, the unit's insignia features the word "Guadalcanal" superimposed on a large red numeral 1. The 1st Marine Division's struggle to take Guadalcanal from the Imperial Japanese Army achieved legendary status: the heat and mud, the malaria and dysentery, the giant tropical insects and the fanatical, often suicidal, resistance of the Japanese combined to create an immense amount of sheer suffering.
Patch declared the island secure on 9 February. Patch, US Army, who was named commander of the XIV Army Corps on 2 January 1943. On 8 December Vandegrift was replaced by Major General Alexander M. In recognition of his courage and extraordinary leadership during the Corps's four-month struggle, he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor the following year.įorces of the US Army began arriving to relieve the exhausted Marines on 13 October. The initial 7 August landings on Guadalcanal itself and Tulagi across Savo Sound (the site of a Japanese seaplane base) were carried out by US Marines under the command of Major General Alexander A. The campaign lasted from the initial American landings on 7 August 1942 until the final Japanese evacuation on 9 February 1943, a period of six months, far longer than was expected by Allied planners. The Guadalcanal Campaign, called Operation Watchtower, was the first major Allied offensive in the Pacific Theater of Operations in World War II. Marines landing unopposed on the north shore of Guadalcanal 7 August 1942.
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