VI.

WAR OF ATTRITION

Already the tentacles of Allied power had begun to wrap around Japan’s Central Solomons outposts, replicating the headaches of Guadalcanal. Well might Admiral Yamamoto want to change the rhythm. Chief of staff Ugaki records that the Combined Fleet had concluded that if the big offensive did not work, “[T]here will be no hope of future success in this area.” Admiral Ugaki wondered whether the point had been driven home sufficiently to the sailors and airmen who were about to fight. The entire I Operation was fraught with consequence.

At the end of March a Munda-bound Tokyo Express had recoiled in the face of fierce aerial attacks. Twenty-four hours later, April Fools’ Day, the Express tried again, with six destroyers to Kolombangara. This action took place simultaneously with a big AIRSOLS raid on Munda. Japanese fighters intercepted the attackers and pursued them toward the Russells, over which nearly sixty JNAF fighters furiously battled a hundred Americans. Kusaka’s fighter groups claimed to have destroyed about half of the enemy aircraft but incurred nine losses. American records note only six planes lost. Meanwhile the destroyers completed their voyage undisturbed. But the Americans had been tougher than ever and the JNAF achieved little.

The Allies quickly struck back. On April 3, hours after Yamamoto flew into Rabaul, the 43rd Bombardment Group bashed Kavieng, where Captain Yamamori Kamenosuke’s heavy cruiser Aoba lay anchored outside the port. Especially upsetting about this attack was that the B-17 aircraft skip bombed—the Americans had found a way to make their heavy bombers effective at sea. Japanese officers also cringed because the Aoba had just returned from repairing damage taken at Cape Esperance. She had yet to get back into action. A 500-pound bomb made a direct hit, cooking off two of the cruiser’s torpedoes. Though Yamamori’s crew extinguished the resulting fire within an hour, he had to beach Aoba to prevent steady flooding from sinking her. It took two weeks to pump her out and apply a temporary patch. The Imperial Navy could not afford incidents like this.

The events at Kavieng put a dark cloud over the I Operation. Already misgivings had sprung up in the ranks. The dogfight over the Russells had been another mission for the Eleventh Air Fleet fighters, which had battled over the islands twice in the previous month. Kusaka’s fighter strength, though powerful, was increasingly limited. The 204th Air Group had a full complement of forty-five Zeroes, the 253rd some thirty-six, while the fighter component of the 582nd Group possessed twenty-seven planes. Admiral Yamamoto’s plan depended on massive reinforcements. The air groups of Carrier Division 2—the Hiyo and Junyo—just up from Empire waters, formed one major source of augmentation. The carrier planes flew from Ballale when attacking and withdrew to Rabaul when not in action. Air staff officer Okumiya Masatake accompanied Rear Admiral Kakuta. Full of foreboding, Okumiya saw young men, many just out of flight school with barely a month of carrier training before this aerial offensive. The pilots—supposed to be Japan’s best—were proof positive of the decline. He feared for both crews and aircraft. “More than once this lack of experience cost us our valuable warplanes, as the unqualified pilots skidded, crashed, and burned on takeoff,” Okumiya wrote.

Ozawa of the Third Fleet, Kido Butai’s boss, arrived at Rabaul on April 2, his Carrier Division 1 planes alighting there from the Zuikaku and Zuiho. The latter’s fighters were actually returning to the Solomons less than a month after a previous stint there. The carrier air groups added more than 180 aircraft to the JNAF deployment. Of Kusaka’s land-based air fleet, the 21st Flotilla set up shop at Kavieng with half its seventy-two Betty bombers, the rest at Vunakanau. The 26th Air Flotilla concentrated at the complex of fields around Buin on Bougainville. With the 25th Flotilla, Kusaka’s fleet brought 190 warplanes to the table. The concentration was huge for the Japanese, the biggest since the Kido Butai at Pearl Harbor—but a measure of the changing war was that at Pearl Harbor the carriers by themselves had fielded a force of practically this size.

Admiral Yamamoto was not to be deflected. But sometimes determination is not enough. With Yamamoto and his staff at Rabaul, a weather front closed in over the northern Solomons. Yamamoto and Ugaki were pelted with rain their first night and into the morning, but more than that, delay became necessary to dry out runways and obtain better flying conditions. By midmorning the C-in-C had pushed back the onset of his offensive by twenty-four hours, to April 6. As the awful weather continued into the fifth, Ugaki considered changing the initial target from Guadalcanal to Port Moresby, but finally agreed to another twenty-four-hour postponement. Yamamoto and Ugaki inspected Lakunai Airfield, the Zuikaku planes there, and Captain Sugimoto Ushie’s 204th Air Group Zeroes. Ozawa deployed the Zuikaku and Zuiho aircraft to Bougainville later that day. Yamamoto directed Kakuta to move his carrier aircraft to Buin also, and the latter followed suit the next morning. On April 6, Admiral Mikawa handed the Eighth Fleet command over to his successor, Baron Samejima.

Yamamoto’s assembly of forces did not go unnoticed. An Allied reconnaissance flight over the Buin complex returned photos of 114 aircraft at Kahili, where there had been forty the day before. At Ballale were ninety-five JNAF planes where the field had been bare. Quackenbush’s Photographic Interpretation Section, now installed on Guadalcanal, quickly generated a report. Meanwhile, on April 2, Pearl Harbor intelligence predicted possible imminent attacks in the central Solomons. By April 4 the CINCPAC fleet intelligence summary had refined this to anticipate “increased air activity expected soon.” Two days after that the intelligence had hardened: “Large air action by land-based planes, possibly supplemented by carrier planes [is] expected within one week.”

Yamamoto launched the thunderbolt of Japan’s “sea eagles.” The air assault began with a night raid on Guadalcanal. Some of the soldiers there were watching the heroics of the recent film Wake Island when the night stalkers struck. Movie antics were forgotten as GIs dashed for cover. The raid lasted nearly an hour. The JNAF inflicted barely any damage, but they disrupted sleep and relaxation very well. The intruders dropped flares at intervals, using the tactics of “Washing Machine Charlie” so familiar to the Marines of Cactus.

Kusaka’s dawn scout over Guadalcanal on April 7 reported Pug Ainsworth’s cruiser-destroyer group on its way to another bombardment of Munda. Fourteen merchantmen were also counted. Yamamoto hurled an armada of seventy-one bombers and 117 Zero fighters. The lead wave were fighters of the 253rd Air Group, closely followed by those of the 204th. Lieutenant Miyano Zenshiro personally led his 204th Group fighters. Behind them Ozawa’s carrier Zeroes escorted Val dive-bombers. Next in were Vals of the 582nd Air Group, with its own fighters plus some from the Zuiho. Cloud cover frustrated this attack unit. Rear Admiral Kakuta’s bombers struck in two last waves. Kakuta’s aircraft flew from Rabaul and refueled at Buka or Buin before heading on, affording them maximum air time over Guadalcanal. Yamamoto went to Lakunai to encourage the “sea eagles.”

Making up for Santa Cruz, Zuiho fighters participated in nearly every attack unit.

Coastwatchers duly reported the aerial stream. But the Allies seem to have had multiple warnings derived from Ultra. Lieutenant Ray Calhoun of the destroyer Sterett remembers a message foreseeing an air raid with at least a hundred planes for April 7. Aboard another tin can, the Maury, escorting a nearby convoy, Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Russell S. Crenshaw comments on the work of both the aerial spies and the codebreakers, and assumes Captain H. E. Thornhill, the convoy commander, was being appraised of their results. Ashore, notice of the air raid had percolated so far down the food chain that GI journalist Mack Morriss was aware of it. Through the morning, men hurried preparations. As the raid approached, at 12:20 p.m. Cactus control issued Condition Red.

Destroyers and other ships milled around in Ironbottom Sound. The Aaron Ward, escorting supply vessels to the Russells, left them off Savo Island to pick up the arriving LST-449 and shepherd her out of Ironbottom Sound. The LST, a new-type large landing ship, carried a couple of hundred Army soldiers and naval officers for Guadalcanal assignments. One of them, Lieutenant (Junior Grade) John F. Kennedy, bound for the PT-boat base at Tulagi, was a long way from his native Boston. Destined to be a future president of the United States, Kennedy began his combat career with an eye-opening display of the violence of war. Several dive-bombers dropped out of the clouds to cripple the Aaron Ward right in front of him. Flak gunners were powerless to stop them. The tin can sank that night.

As usual Carney Field—the former Henderson—had had enough notice to loft an ample number of interceptors. Of course, the Japanese were in huge numbers also. “There’s millions of ’em!” exclaimed Lieutenant James E. Swett, on his first mission leading a division of four Wildcats of Marine Fighter Squadron 221. Lieutenant Swett waded into a flight of Val dive-bombers about to hit Tulagi and quickly shot down three. He followed another formation right into their attack, flaming four more even as U.S. flak damaged his F-4F. Swett’s engine seized and he had to ditch off Tulagi, nose broken by the water impact and face lacerated from glass shards when bullets shattered the windshield. Swett, an instant ace, earned the Medal of Honor. He went on to sixteen and a half kills and nine more probables in the war, starting with this dogfight.

The Condition Red notice did not last long. An unprecedented Condition Very Red followed. The sky filled with AA shell bursts, flashes of swirling planes catching the sun, smoke, flames, or explosions as aircraft were damaged or disintegrated. Some seventy-six fighters met the Japanese, and fifty-six of them engaged. Army Captain Thomas G. Lanphier, with his flight of three twin-tailed P-38s, claimed seven planes smoked. Air intelligence credited twenty-seven Zeroes and twelve Vals destroyed. In his memoirs Bull Halsey would gush that as many as 107 JNAF birds were clipped. Halsey was usually more careful about his claims, and this one bore no correspondence either to Air Intelligence findings or the numbers contained in the Navy’s own communiqué, public knowledge at the time. The Japanese recorded nine Zeroes and twelve Vals destroyed. The Americans lost seven warplanes.

Again damage was minimal, especially for such a huge effort. The Japanese concentrated on Tulagi, about twenty miles across the sound. Reporter Morriss saw AA shells detonating over the island, the tall water spouts of bombs exploding in the sea, a few columns of smoke, and the flash of something pulverized. Near him the only damage was a tree limb dislodged by muzzle blasts of the AA guns. In Tulagi harbor the New Zealand corvette Moa, refueling, did not get the warning and could not cast off quickly enough. She was holed and sank in minutes, perhaps a measure of retribution for Moa’s role in the capture of the Japanese codes from the I-1. The tanker Kanawha also went to the bottom. A number of other ships were attacked, threatened, and sometimes suffered lightly, but there were no huge disasters either to vessels off Guadalcanal or to Ainsworth’s cruiser group. The early news disappointed Combined Fleet headquarters, but Admiral Kusaka had sent a scout to the battle area just to observe proceedings, and it confirmed the Tulagi result, though misidentifying the ships. Overall claims were much more optimistic (and inaccurate): a cruiser and a destroyer sunk, ten merchantmen (two large) put down, two more damaged. That seemed more satisfactory. When Admiral Nagano reported it to the emperor, Hirohito seemed pleased.

The next day in Rabaul passed with reviews of New Guinea events. The responsible Army general, plus Navy staff officer Ohmae, had both done surveys. The military situation appeared better than in the Solomons. On the other hand, the need to cross high mountains complicated air attacks. Bad weather crossed the Bismarcks toward Papua. At the final briefing on April 9, with admirals Kusaka and Ozawa both pleading for more preparation time and the weather still uncertain, Yamamoto approved a delay. As the planes were prepped, staff chief Ugaki visited the command posts of the 21st and 26th air flotillas. Plans were altered again to protect the vulnerable Betty bombers, postponing their participation so as to arrange stronger fighter escorts. The initial New Guinea strike took place on April 11 against Oro Bay.

It was a Sunday, like Pearl Harbor. Oro Bay, a dozen miles south of Buna, was one of MacArthur’s supply centers for the area. Milne Bay, the other, not far away, was stuffed with shipping. Kusaka’s Eleventh Air Fleet had been flying against Oro Bay for a month, and the raid of April 11 had been preceded by a half dozen others. This strike would be carried out by carrier aircraft alone, with Zuiho fighters in an initial sweep, a Zuikaku formation following, and Kakuta’s warplanes bringing up the rear. Without Guadalcanal’s extensive warning net, the defenders got just a few minutes’ notice. Fighter interceptors scrambled from nearby Dobodura, but many engagements occurred only as the enemy retired. Ozawa’s Kido Butai air groups contributed a swarm of seventy-two Zeroes and twenty-two Vals. The “sea eagles” sank a 2,000-ton freighter and damaged another merchantman plus an Australian minesweeper. They lost four dive-bombers and two fighters, though Allied claims amounted to seventeen JNAF aircraft. General Kenney could not understand why the enemy had not hit Milne Bay, and ordered most of his interceptors, more than a hundred fighters, to Dobodura, north of the Owen Stanleys, where they would be in ideal position.

Admiral Yamamoto rose early the next morning, at Lakunai by 4:30 a.m. to send off the medium bombers for their ambitious Port Moresby strike. Next to Guadalcanal, Moresby, having endured more than a hundred air raids since the war started, was undoubtedly the favorite Japanese target. It was also the most heavily defended, with many airfields and many Fifth Air Force warplanes. Forty-three Betty bombers, directly escorted by seventy-six Zeroes of the land-based air groups and the carriers, made the hit. They were in two assault formations led by Commander Nakamura Tomo of the 705th Air Group and Lieutenant Commander Suzuki Masaichi of the 751st. Some fifty-five Zeroes of the Zuikaku, Hiyo, and Junyo conducted a roving fighter sweep. Warrant Officer Morinio Hideo claimed three planes flamed, a substantial contribution to the nineteen planes believed destroyed with six probables that day.

This time the Allies had warning. The CINCPAC intelligence summary predicted an air attack. Radar picked up the attackers northeast of New Guinea. General Kenney scrambled his Dobodura fighters to defend Milne Bay, the supposed target. But radar lost the Japanese, only to reacquire them near Port Moresby. There the Fifth Air Force had just eight P-38s and twelve P-39s. Allied airmen could not stop the bombers, which attacked from 18,000 feet, but they inflicted losses. Despite direct escort by thirty-two Zeroes from the Zuiho and the 253rd Air Group, Commander Nakamura’s unit lost half a dozen Betty bombers. Suzuki’s second wave, covered by forty-four Zeroes of the 204th and 582nd air groups, had several Bettys damaged. Kenney, meanwhile, ordered the mass of his fighters toward Lae, where he assumed the JNAF would land. When the strikers headed for Rabaul instead, fewer than two dozen interceptors had the fuel to catch them and flame a few more enemies. The Japanese believed they had damaged eleven airfields. While that was exaggerated, as usual, even American accounts concede injury to four, with nineteen aircraft hurt or wrecked on the ground and two shot down, against the loss of six Bettys and two Zeroes (Fifth Air Force claimed fifteen bombers and nine to ten fighters downed). This success did not prevent American B-17s from harassing Rabaul with a bombing of their own.

Then came the Milne Bay attack, on April 14 shortly after noon. The CINCPAC intelligence summary, partly right, partly off, tentatively predicted a strike, but not on the scale of Guadalcanal or Moresby. Dobodura was fog-bound at the critical moment, and most of Kenney’s fighters were unable to launch. Out of more than a hundred planes, eight P-38s and thirty-six P-40s engaged. Not enough, though only a couple were lost. Two of the P-38s that fought were those of the 9th Fighter Squadron’s Lieutenant Richard Bong and his wingman. Befogged early on, Bong managed to catch the later wave and thought he bagged at least one before a Zero damaged his plane and sent him home. Analyzing historical data, aviation historian Henry Sakaida concluded that Bong had actually destroyed three JNAF bombers. Lieutenant Bong soon ranked among the top American aces of the Pacific war.

In waves totaling 187 aircraft, a third of them bombers, the Japanese attacked. The lead strike unit comprised Bettys accompanied by fifty-six land-based fighters. The follow-on force consisted of Ozawa’s carrier planes, Vals, plus no less than seventy-five Zeroes. The raiders claimed to have sunk six transports, damaging nine; and to have set afire land targets, destroying forty-four aircraft. A gasoline dump was indeed blown up, and a ship sunk. Two merchantmen suffered damage. These results were paltry. Under the circumstances, the statement that day from Emperor Hirohito, which lauded the I Operation, seemed overdone. Ten JNAF aircraft never came back. SOWESPAC informed Washington it had downed ten bombers and five fighters, with eight more bombers and a fighter as probables, plus four bombers and two fighters damaged, a total of thirty planes.

At this juncture, mindful of the need to preserve the air units, Admiral Yamamoto curtailed his offensive. Possibly the main impact was on morale. Petty Officer Igarashi Hisashi of the 705th Air Group told his diary that the carrier pilots had been “a good stimulus to our land-based attack units as they tend to be in low spirits.” Yamamoto ordered Ozawa’s carrier planes back to their ships on April 16. Chief of staff Ugaki, ill with dengue, recovered enough to preside over an operational review at Eighth Base Force headquarters. The Japanese believed they had destroyed ninety-five aircraft (plus thirty-nine probables), sinking a cruiser, two destroyers, and twenty-five transports. The true results were a tiny fraction of that. Ugaki praised the “sea eagles” but observed that airpower remained the key long-term problem. He exhorted everyone to greater effort. In the audience Commander Okumiya listened as officers fussed that just four missions had cost fifty planes. In particular the bomber losses could not be sustained. The aircraft needed more protection. Allied air was better—and stronger. Japanese striking power was waning. “The meeting concluded in a pessimistic air,” Okumiya recalled.

Before returning to Truk, Yamamoto Isoroku wished to visit Bougainville. The C-in-C knew that Army troops from his hometown had been evacuated there after Guadalcanal. A trip to the bases could also buck up the airmen. Yamamoto broached the idea on his second day at Rabaul and later reaffirmed his intention. Admiral Ugaki desired to inspect outposts as far afield as Munda and Vila. That was simply not practical. He put Commander Watanabe Yasuji to work on the arrangements. Ugaki concerned himself with the public relations aspect—he wanted pictures of Yamamoto in the Imperial Navy’s combat utility uniform—all existing photos of the fleet commander had him in service blues or whites, more formal garb. The afternoon of April 17, Ugaki also fretted over whether the travel party should go in neckties or with open-necked shirts (not regulation uniform). He decided the former.

That evening Yamamoto dined at the officers’ club with Kusaka and Ozawa along with several other classmates of Etajima 1909. Yamamoto was not of that class, but he had been on their training cruise. Yamamoto brought a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label Scotch, his favorite drink since living in America. Perhaps it was fitting that the admiral should enjoy some before meeting his destiny. Ozawa begged Yamamoto not to fly, or at least to take along a cloud of his carrier fighters. The C-in-C brooked no change. Not just Yamamoto and Ozawa had an inkling of disaster—two more men warned the C-in-C that very day. General Imamura went to Yamamoto and recounted how, several months earlier, his plane had been accosted by a pack of American fighters and had escaped only by hiding in a cloud bank. Imamura intended this as a warning, and encouraged Yamamoto to go by boat. Rear Admiral Joshima Takatsugu of the R Area Force had also warned Yamamoto not to fly. Joshima had seen the cable traffic on the Bougainville visit. Disturbed at the large number of addressees, plus the detailed schedule and itinerary, Joshima became apprehensive when he learned that two bases had exchanged the identical trip information in a less secure aviation code (it remains unclear whether this was the one the Americans possessed). Admiral Joshima hopped a seaplane to Rabaul and laid his fears before Yamamoto. The C-in-C shrugged it off. Yamamoto invited Joshima to breakfast together upon his return. Yamamoto’s bravura gesture proved empty.

“WE’VE HIT THE JACKPOT!”

Commander Watanabe took a little more than a week to complete Yamamoto Isoroku’s itinerary. The admiral would fly from Lakunai, first stop Ballale in the Buin complex. Five days in advance, on April 13, Watanabe put details into a dispatch he sent to all concerned commands. The message included a schedule, specified what transportation Yamamoto would use at each stage, and noted the admiral’s intention to inspect facilities and see the sick and wounded. Helpfully, Watanabe noted that if the weather was bad the trip would be postponed a day. Watanabe took such care that he calculated the extra time required to boat back from one location due to running against the tide. Watanabe specified that the travel party would be escorted by six fighters. Almost the only detail he left out was to note the fleet staff’s practice of putting C-in-C and chief of staff in different aircraft so the top leadership could not be wiped out by a single plane crash. As far as radio intelligence was concerned, Commander Watanabe had some doubts about the security of Army codes, so he ordered that the message be sent only in the D Code—that is, JN-25. The dispatch went out from Southeast Area Fleet late that afternoon.

The Yamamoto trip notice promptly found its way to Allied codebreakers. FRUPAC and Negat picked it up immediately, and FRUMEL obtained a later retransmission as well as the text recirculated by U.S. intelligence on the Copek circuit. Both Pearl Harbor and Washington immediately plunged into recovering this message. Though the Imperial Navy had changed its additive table on April 1, complicating work with JN-25, many values had already been recovered, especially oft-repeated terms like names of commands and places.

Lieutenant Roger Pineau at FRUPAC later recorded that the large number of addressees for Watanabe’s dispatch had instantly drawn attention. The cryptanalysts—at FRUPAC the aces were Tommy Dyer and Ham Wright—worked to strip the additives off the code groups. Traffic analysts—here the experts included Tom Huckins and Jack Williams—established the address information and geographic locator designations, assisted by Jasper Holmes. Then the code groups of the underlying message were revealed. By now the codebreakers were using new technology, the IBM mechanical card-sorting machines, to help break messages. Each code group in a message would be punched onto a card, and the sorter would run the cards against another set containing known JN-25 meanings. Experts penetrated the unknowns by considering their position in sentences, and comparing the appearance to their usage in other messages. Once a basic version of the original—or “plaintext”—had been recovered it was ready for the language experts, in this case Marine Major Alva B. “Red” Lasswell and Lieutenant Commander John G. Roenigk. The Navy officer saw the Marine leap to his feet.

“We’ve hit the jackpot!” Lasswell exclaimed.

Red Lasswell remembers, “I personally did the whole thing overnight.” Having been a key participant on the Midway decrypts, Lasswell contributed to possibly the two greatest radio intelligence achievements of the Pacific war. “I didn’t feel, somehow or other, the joy in this [the Yamamoto decrypt] that I did in the other, because I sort of felt more of a snooper,” Lasswell remembered. He was glad he did not have to make the call. Lieutenant Donald M. Showers plotted the itinerary and checked times and distances on maps to verify plausibility.

The same thing happened in Washington. At Negat, Lieutenant Commander Prescott Currier had the predawn watch when the intercept arrived. He took it to the “Blitz Additive Room.” In the morning, code maven Commander Redfield “Rosie” Mason practically skipped through the office, yelling at everyone to double-check everything. He assigned linguists Phillip Cate, Dorothy Edgars, and Fred Woodrough to make the translation. Rosie Mason, whose private passion was Greek and Roman mythology, was hard to please, but decided the result was “good”—high praise. A touch of spring hung in the air and the weather was mild, recalled linguist Edward Van Der Rhoer, on watch when the final version appeared. It stunned Van Der Rhoer, who read it with growing excitement, realizing that the intelligence was “actionable”—it offered the opportunity to kill Yamamoto Isoroku. Such a death would rise to the Olympian heights of Rosie Mason’s favored mythological tales.

Both units put their versions of the decrypt on Copek on April 14. Pearl Harbor was out of the starting gate a bit faster—about an hour and a half. FRUMEL contributed a decrypt of another message between Japanese subordinate commands—possibly one of the dispatches Admiral Joshima had worried about. OP-20-G reported the result to Admiral King and Navy Secretary Knox. At CINCPAC Red Lasswell and Jake Holmes took the message file to Eddie Layton.

The fleet intelligence officer immediately realized the importance of this message and carried it to Nimitz. Captain Layton met with Admiral Nimitz shortly after 8:00 a.m. Nimitz asked whether Layton thought it worthwhile to take a shot at the enemy commander, and the latter responded that Yamamoto’s death would shock Japan. Nimitz worried that the enemy might be able to bring in a better commander, but when they discussed the possibilities—Nimitz was surprisingly well acquainted with the enemy’s senior officer corps—they agreed the Imperial Navy had no one better than Yamamoto. Another consideration was the danger that such action would confirm to the Japanese their codes had been breached. Admiral Nimitz decided to proceed, then wrote a cable to SOPAC commander Halsey ordering him to try the ambush. This chronology is confirmed in the CINCPAC war diary for April 14, which records that Yamamoto would inspect Buin four days hence, arriving from Rabaul by plane—and on April 16 the diary notes, “[A]n attempt will be made to intercept an enemy high commander when he makes a projected visit to the Buin area the 18th.”

Because several authors, including Nimitz biographer E. B. Potter, have written that this move was cleared with President Roosevelt and Secretary Knox due to Yamamoto’s stature, the question of approval is worth comment. This writing is very shortly after the May 2011 U.S. commando raid into Pakistan to kill the terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, personally ordered by President Barack Obama. The Yamamoto ambush is an obvious parallel. Roger Pineau spent decades attempting to determine whether FDR made an affirmative decision on Yamamoto. Pineau came up empty. This writer walked the same path with a similar result. There is no evidence in Roosevelt’s papers, the records of COMINCH, CINCPAC, or the National Security Agency; and, in fact, the president was traveling during this period and out of touch. Nimitz’s cables were routinely copied to King and Knox for information, and in the records there are no answering messages on April 14 or 15 that comment on the Yamamoto kill order either pro or con. Certain books have printed quotations of an alleged message from Secretary Knox, but this appears to have been fabricated. The SOPAC mission planner recalls seeing a cable from Knox, but the document has never materialized and the timing given suggests it may have been an exhortation to the field forces, not an execute message. There seems little reason to doubt that Nimitz, at his own level, made the decision to get Yamamoto, and higher authority did not impede him. The world was simpler then.

Be that as it may, it was up to Admiral William F. Halsey’s South Pacific forces to do the deed. A few argued for hitting Yamamoto’s boat en route to one or another inspection site, but he might survive a boat sinking more easily than an air crash. Halsey convened his aviation specialists, including his new air boss, Rear Admiral Marc A. Mitscher, who had arrived just days before. It happened that April 18, the day of the trip, was the anniversary of the Doolittle Raid, and Mitscher wanted to do something special. The ambush, soon called the “Y-Mission,” seemed just the thing. Marine Major John P. Condon, the AIRSOLS fighter staff officer, planned the operation starting on April 17. Condon decided that Army twin-engine P-38 fighters, if given extra fuel tanks, could fly to Bougainville with enough gas to afford them time for the interception. The 339th Fighter Squadron, the “Sun Setters,” got the assignment.

Under Major John Mitchell, then the leading ace on Guadalcanal, the force consisted of a covering unit of fourteen P-38s, and an attack unit of four planes led by Captain Thomas G. Lanphier Jr. Mitchell distrusted the compasses in the Lightning aircraft, important because Condon had planned an indirect approach, taking a route west of New Georgia until heading northeast, then north to make Bougainville. Condon found Mitchell a nautical compass, eliminating the problem. Mitchell chose the intercept point; then Condon calculated the necessary parameters. Dissatisfied with Condon’s planned course, Mitchell recalculated it. Departure from Fighter Two was timed precisely to bring Lanphier to the intercept point just as Admiral Yamamoto’s planes reached there. Mitchell’s group would fly very low—as low as ten to thirty feet altitude—to avoid detection by Japanese radars.

Palm Sunday, April 18, dawned clear and humid. Mitchell’s planes took off at 7:25 a.m. One of Lanphier’s attack group blew a tire on takeoff and another found its extra fuel tanks were not feeding properly. Those aircraft returned to base. Thus sixteen P-38s winged toward Bougainville.

At Rabaul/Vunakanau, Captain Konishi Yukie of the 705th Air Group selected two of his best pilots to fly the Bettys that would carry Admiral Yamamoto’s traveling party. For security reasons the crews were not told until after bedtime. They were shaken awake and given detailed instructions. Petty Officer Hayashi Hiroshi thought this just a routine mission until Konishi warned him to wear full uniform. He had been used to utility gear. Hayashi was told they would fly to Buin—not Ballale, as the Americans had decoded—and that bothered him, since he had never landed there. The six Zero pilots of the 204th Air Group at Lakunai, also carefully selected, had a similar experience. Captain Sugimoto Ushie, however, informed his fliers the previous afternoon. The escort might not be strong but they were good men. Petty Officer Hidaka Yoshimi was an ace with twenty victories. The Bettys would shuttle over to Lakunai, closer to Yamamoto’s billet; then the entire sky train would leave from there.

Admiral Yamamoto’s group assembled for an 8:00 a.m. departure. At the last moment senior air staff officer Commander Toibana Yurio convinced Watanabe to give up his place. Though Toibana’s assistant was already going, the air officer was anxious to speak to frontline aviators. Commander Watanabe had a myriad of matters to take care of before the fleet staff returned to Truk. So Toibana flew on Yamamoto’s airplane. In an eerie twist of fate—perhaps exacting retribution—it had been Toibana, in China in 1937, who had been a key figure in the Panay incident, convincing superiors to delay word to their attack planes that an American gunboat cruised in their strike area.

Vice Admiral Ugaki recorded that the songbirds were pleasant that morning. He and Yamamoto left Governor’s Hill ten minutes before plane time. Toibana, his deputy, and others came from the direction of the control tower. Ugaki was puzzled to discover two officers in dress whites when he had decreed field uniforms, but they turned out to be the fleet surgeon and paymaster. One would fly in each airplane. The men boarded. Yamamoto’s Betty took off first, then Ugaki’s. Petty Officer Hayashi piloted the aircraft carrying Admiral Ugaki. The fighters formed up over Lakunai. A V of three stationed itself above and to the side of each transport. Hayashi kept such tight formation with the lead plane, Ugaki remembers, that he feared their wingtips might touch and cause an accident. The flight plan, designed to enable Yamamoto to see something of the war theater, took them to the southern tip of New Ireland, then along the eastern coast of Bougainville. The Bettys descended to lower altitude for optimal viewing. The route took them over the bases at Buka and Kieta, turning inland to head toward Buin. The planes rose to about 6,500 feet.

Admiral Ugaki had just been handed a note telling him to expect landing in fifteen minutes when lightning struck. Major Mitchell’s P-38s came from below. Warrant Officer Yanagiya Kenji, flying one of the escort, about 2,000 feet above the Bettys, looked down and saw them under attack. The Japanese fighters were surprised, because Allied fighters most often dived from above. Before they could intervene, the Bettys were already embattled. Major Mitchell’s covering Lightnings interposed. Captain Lanphier and Lieutenant Rex Barber made the crucial gun runs. While the American pilots have disputed credit for the success, what matters is that both Bettys were smoked and both crashed, Yamamoto’s in the jungle and Ugaki’s just off the Bougainville shore. One P-38 was lost in the clash, but the strike team returned without further incident.

No one, including Commander Toibana, survived the crash of the airplane carrying Yamamoto Isoroku. The admiral’s body would be found by Commander Watanabe, who grabbed the first plane he could get and mounted a frantic search for survivors. Pilot Hayashi, chief of staff Ugaki, and paymaster Kitamura Gen escaped from the Betty crashed in the surf. Badly injured, already sick, Admiral Ugaki spent months in the hospital.

At the daily staff meeting the next morning in Nouméa, Richmond Kelly Turner whooped it up when the shoot-down was announced. Admiral Halsey, privately exulting, chose to tease Turner. “Hold on, Kelly! What’s so good about it?” the Bull groused. “I’d hoped to lead that scoundrel up Pennsylvania Avenue in chains.”

Commander Watanabe Yasuji understandably obsessed over everything that preceded Yamamoto’s death. He discovered that his original message, supposed to have been confined to Navy radios, had in fact passed over Army circuits also. This bit of confusion created an obstacle to the Imperial Navy’s realizing its codes had been cracked. Watanabe nursed his suspicions. In 1949 Roger Pineau interviewed him on behalf of Samuel Eliot Morison. Watanabe’s one question for Pineau concerned the Yamamoto trip message and which radio net had betrayed it. Pineau, sworn to secrecy about Ultra until the codebreaking was declassified in 1978, begged off answering. Watanabe Yasuji had had a hearty reputation in the Imperial Navy as a ladies’ man. In the 1950s he—and Kusaka Jinichi also—morphed into devotees of Zen Buddhism.

The Yamamoto shoot-down had huge consequences for Japan. Nimitz and Layton had been right that the Japanese lacked admirals of his stature. Tokyo managed to keep Yamamoto’s death secret for a month. His body was cremated, Commander Watanabe accompanied the ashes to Truk, and the remains were carried home aboard fleet flagship Musashi. A state funeral was held. Yamamoto’s ashes were divided in two parts, one buried on the grounds of the Imperial Palace, the other in his hometown. But while the nation grieved, the war in the Solomons heated up to fever pitch.

THE YEAR OF THE GOAT

In the animistic, twelve-year cycle common in many Buddhist countries, 1943 was the Year of the Goat. Though the Asian image of that is different, more positive than the Western one, Japan would need to overcome adversity. In particular, since Imperial Japan’s fiscal year started with April, the death of Admiral Yamamoto was an especially bad setback at the outset of a new year of war. Aboard the Carrier Division 2 flagship Hiyo, Commander Okumiya was standing near recently promoted Vice Admiral Kakuta at Truk when the Musashi lowered her flag in honor of Yamamoto. Only a few days earlier Kakuta and Yamamoto had stood together in Rabaul. Now the C-in-C was dead. Okumiya’s heart skipped a beat when he saw the color drain from Kakuta’s face. The air officer struggled with his emotions too.

The feeling of shock was universal. Hara Tameichi arrived at Truk aboard the destroyer Shigure a week after Yamamoto’s death. Upon recuperating from his exertions off Guadalcanal, Hara had been elevated to command a full division of destroyers, though his promotion to captain had yet to come through (he gained that rank on May 1). Captain Hara went to the Musashi to report to Admiral Ugaki. Hara worried that the Imperial Navy’s repetition of formulas led to unnecessary losses, and he wanted to make this argument through Ugaki, whom he knew, to Yamamoto. Climbing the superbattleship’s Jacob’s ladder from his launch, Captain Hara found only a single warrant officer to greet him, a breach of protocol in receiving a unit commander. The whole ship seemed odd and somber, and when the captain declared that he wished to visit Admiral Ugaki, the man stared at him as if he were mad. The warrant hesitated, but finally led Captain Hara into the Musashi. “No officers were evident along our route, and the men I saw looked bewildered and depressed,” Hara later wrote. The man conducted him to Yamamoto’s cabin, which opened to wafting incense and dim light. Suddenly Hara recognized an urn of ashes on a draped table. The sailor explained, “These are the remains of our Commander-in-Chief and six of his staff officers. Admiral Ugaki and the others were critically injured.” Captain Hara teared up, and he offered a silent prayer for the dead.

Sagging morale was evident, disturbing, and could be dangerous to performance. Four of the six fighter pilots who flew escort on Yamamoto’s fated trip would be dead within months. No doubt morale worries figured among Emperor Hirohito’s reasons for visiting the Musashi on June 24, during her sojourn in the Empire after she delivered Yamamoto’s remains.

Meanwhile, the more Captain Hara learned, the more alarmed he became. Reporting to his fleet commander, Vice Admiral Kondo Nobutake, Hara discovered his division existed only in name. All his vessels except one were on loan to other units. Kondo’s haggard appearance and hoarse, slow voice also shocked Hara, who knew the admiral’s reputation as a dapper gentleman. And once Captain Hara read the files, he went from anxiety to deep gloom. Allied airpower constricted Japanese naval operations like a python snake, while Halsey’s South Pacific naval forces steadily grew, their strength presently towering over the Imperial Navy’s. The record of the Bismarck Sea battle was especially shocking. Leaving Kondo’s flagship Atago, Hara stopped at the officers’ club, where he encountered Koyanagi Tomiji, now chief of staff to Admiral Kurita. Koyanagi explained the Allied skip-bombing method. Hara quickly realized that unless the Navy could develop a counter, the jig might well be up. At Rabaul even the water was being rationed. No one had bread. Meat and vegetables went first to high-command messes, while the clever supply clerks of the base forces managed to divert much of what was left. The destroyermen got the dregs. Koyanagi had led Tanaka Raizo’s destroyer squadron, in which Hara had sailed. He trusted Koyanagi. Hara felt like a student on his first day in college.

Japanese officers might be depressed, but on the other side of the mirror Allied leaders were not quite riding high. Admiral Halsey saw the enemy redoubts at Munda and Vila becoming major thorns in SOPAC’s side. The need to retrain troops and the disagreements with MacArthur hindered Halsey’s grinding ahead. The delay attendant in preparing new Russells bases also retarded an offensive. Even as codebreakers put finishing touches on their Yamamoto shoot-down decrypts, Halsey flew to Australia to coordinate with MacArthur. It was the first time they had met, and in person they cooperated very well.

In the meantime Admiral Halsey wore the enemy down. The Imperial Navy had begun sending the Tokyo Express to its new outposts as early as February. It had also run a few merchant ships into those places. Interdicting the traffic led the Bull to order offensive mining. While not a desperate measure, the mining represented a double-edged sword—with Halsey fully expecting to operate SOPAC forces here, minefields sown to catch the Japanese might very well cripple Allied vessels. Once the PT boat base in the Russells became active, and patrol craft were plying these waters regularly, the mines could become even more dangerous to Americans. The aspect of calculated risk was manifest.

Halsey also pursued the neutralization of Munda and Vila. By the time of Yamamoto’s I Operation, which obliged SOPAC to cancel a cruiser bombardment that Rear Admiral Ainsworth was to have carried out, the Japanese bases had been hit a good half dozen times. Beyond the cruiser forces, Admiral Halsey assigned destroyer units to these missions as well. Much like the Japanese at Guadalcanal, SOPAC commanders discovered that cruiser and destroyer bombardments appeared more effective than they actually were. Regardless of the weight of shells fired, the enemy air bases were typically in working order the next day. Naval bombardments supplemented constant air action. Three times Allied warships shelled Munda, the last on the night of May 12–13. The Vila base and nearby Stanmore Plantation were the targets on four occasions. Sometimes the bombardments were simultaneous, as on May 12–13, when Ainsworth’s cruisers hit Vila while Captain Colin Campbell’s destroyers shelled Munda. Since the JNAF had stopped actually basing aircraft, the number of planes vulnerable to these bombardments was small. Every cruise involved a danger of being caught by enemy warships or air strikes, so Halsey used the sorties to punctuate an aerial campaign.

Aerial interdiction did not suppress Munda or Vila, but it did exact a price. And the campaign would be extended beyond New Georgia to hit the enemy farther up The Slot. Buin, Ballale, and Kieta went on the target lists. With B-17s and B-24s now flying from Guadalcanal—the Thirteenth Air Force was formed to lead Army air units in the Solomons—Halsey’s airmen ranged far afield. The air attacks were never milk runs. Japanese flak took a toll of strike aircraft, enough so that night missions became the primary tactic, at least against Bougainville. AIRSOLS and the Thirteenth Air Force also ran a vigorous night-intruder operation. JNAF night-fighter capability was quite limited. In any case the air campaign would be massive and constant.

The Navy’s communiqués tell the story. The department’s press office issued releases almost daily, sometimes more than one, reporting events as news reached Washington. Typically the information office ran a day or two behind operations, and, of course, the releases were shorn of such relevant information as the size of attacks, specifics of combat action, and so on. But the contours are readily apparent. In the seven-week (forty-nine-day) period through Yamamoto’s death, Munda was hit at least twenty-two times and Vila twenty-one. From the releases it is clear that some of these were multiple attacks, some were mass efforts, and some were simultaneous strikes at both places; a few were fighter sweeps, and some seemed to be intruder operations. Bombers struck the Buin complex twenty-one times. Kahili was by far the most popular target, but most “attacks” appear to have been harassment. Bombings or fighter sweeps engaged Rekata Bay on six occasions. Other places were also hit, but these targets absorbed by far the greatest effort. The massive I Operation strike at Guadalcanal did not prevent AIRSOLS from hitting Vila early that same morning, or Rekata Bay in the afternoon. Rabaul was not struck even once.

The handling of the Yamamoto shoot-down is quite interesting: Where news usually ran days behind, Navy Department Communiqué 348 of April 18 stated: “A number of Lightning (Lockheed P-38) fighters engaged two Japanese bombers, escorted by six Zero fighters, over Kahili in the Shortland Island area,” and went on to claim destruction of both bombers. Everything else in the release concerned April 16. The mention of two bombers, information that had not been in the radio intercepts, reveals that authorities must have arranged in advance for the press office to run this current item, quite likely for the purpose of suggesting that the ambush had been nothing more than a routine air battle.

An Allied reorganization in March designated SOPAC naval forces as the Third Fleet and those under SOWESPAC the Seventh Fleet. Though the latter did not yet truly merit that appellation, Halsey’s Third Fleet had become a potent force. His major weakness remained lack of aircraft carriers. The Saratoga still represented the only fully capable flattop. The Enterprise continued to be hampered by her damage from Santa Cruz. Following a last round of training maneuvers, the “Big E” left the South Pacific at the beginning of May. At that moment the Royal Navy’s Victorious was en route to the Third Fleet. The Victorious and the Saratoga made up Halsey’s fast carrier force. He had several jeep carriers too, but they did not sail in the battle line. The Victorious served in the South Pacific throughout. Crewmen who had expected a long-term deployment were astonished when she was recalled. America’s industrial behemoth had begun to spew forth the new warships that would overwhelm Japan. Indeed, the same week the Americans hustled to prepare Yamamoto’s ambush, higher authority informed CINCPAC that eight new aircraft carriers would join the Pacific Fleet before the end of the year. By June 19, Nimitz had decided to release the Victorious to Royal Navy control on August 1. The light carrier Princeton replaced her.

Meanwhile SOPAC initiated its mine-laying campaign on March 20, initially focusing on Bougainville waters, especially Shortland harbor. Avenger aircraft from Guadalcanal laid most of the mines. They were credited with damaging a destroyer and a merchantman, and sinking another. Aerial mines laid in Blackett Strait—off Vila—and in the Munda area did not seem to faze the Tokyo Express, however. Accordingly, on May 6, Rear Admiral Ainsworth’s cruiser-destroyer group sauntered through Blackett Strait to clear it. Then, under Commander William K. Romoser, the modern destroyer Radford led three older tin cans converted into minelayers into the strait to deposit a standard three-row field. In no time this outing produced a signal success. The next day Captain Tachibana Masao led four Japanese destroyers from Buka to Buin, loading supplies for Vila, where they arrived after midnight on May 8. While getting under way, the Kuroshio touched off a mine, rendering her unnavigable. About half an hour later the Oyashio also hit a mine. Less heavily damaged, she took off many crewmen of the other vessel. The Kuroshio drifted onto a couple more mines, broke up, and sank. In the morning the Oyashio’s engines failed. Australian coastwatcher A. R. Evans promptly reported the enemy presence. They were set upon by SOPAC aircraft. Supported by destroyers Kagero and Michishio, Oyashio drove off the first strike, but the Americans returned in the afternoon to sink both Oyashio and Kagero. Tachibana’s single remaining ship, damaged by strafing, rescued survivors of all the others. Thrilled by such results, Halsey’s mine group repeated the exercise a week later in Kula Gulf, covered by Ainsworth’s cruiser bombardment of Vila. Alerted this time, the Japanese swept the mines. Repetition of operational formulas did not work on either side.

The hapless heavy cruiser Aoba staggered into the lagoon at Truk on April 25. The cruiser tied up next to repair ship Akashi, which labored to make her seaworthy enough to sail home for a proper fix in a shipyard. The Aoba’s brief return and almost instant crippling were a metaphor for Japan’s desperate condition. The ship would be hors de combat for seven long months. At midafternoon that day an Emily flying boat landed from Yokosuka. The patrol bomber carried Admiral Koga Mineichi, chief of the Yokosuka Naval District, ostensibly down for an inspection. Upon his arrival Admiral Koga assumed command of the Combined Fleet.

The Aoba held special meaning for Koga. The admiral had skippered that cruiser in 1930, a moment that from the Navy’s perspective might be considered the twilight of peace, before Imperial Japan had gone far into the machinations in China that led ineffably to the Pacific war. Koga had been a member of the so-called “treaty faction,” those who favored naval disarmament as part of a program to avoid conflict. The faction had been outplayed by others who aggressively sought advantage, and disputes begun in north China had embroiled Japan in a progressively deepening crisis, now extended across the Pacific. With the Imperial Navy increasingly tested, and its acknowledged finest leader—Yamamoto, Koga’s good friend—now dead, Koga was summoned to pick up the pieces.

The advent of Koga Mineichi surprised no Japanese. As early as January 1941, Yamamoto had written a memorandum advising on officers who could succeed him. Koga’s name was at the top of that list. That paper was secret, but opinion in the fleet put Koga in line for the top command. Only ten men stood ahead of Koga on the Navy List, including admirals who were retired, elevated to the supernumerary Supreme War Council, dead, or serving in indispensable positions, such as NGS chief Nagano or Navy Minister Shimada. Toyoda Soemu was just ahead of Koga, and the latter’s promotion to full admiral in May 1942, eight months after Toyoda, made Koga junior in rank. But Koga had Imperial household connections that Toyoda lacked, while Yamamoto’s secret advice had specifically counseled Koga over Toyoda. Both had graduated Etajima in 1905, a year behind Yamamoto, who had known them well.

When Admiral Nimitz mulled over the Yamamoto ambush, he and Captain Layton had discussed Koga’s potential. They agreed he would be a step down from his illustrious predecessor. But beyond a small circle of former American naval attachés, intelligence professionals, or officers with service in China, Koga Mineichi remained a cipher to the Allied camp. “In a race of unknown men,” Time magazine prattled, “he is an especial anonym.”

Koga wholly lacked Yamamoto’s flamboyance, probably the main reason for his not being better-known. The admiral was a stolid, competent officer who acted with caution and care, advancing steadily through the ranks. In the officer corps Koga was considered able, prudent, and amiable. He and Yamamoto had been shipmates as well as midshipman contemporaries, and political allies in the treaty faction. Koga was knowledgeable on both naval matters and international affairs, spoke French and some English, and was viewed as friendly to the United States. In 1937, when the fighting in China became generalized, Admiral Koga as vice chief of the Navy General Staff had participated with Yonai Mitsumasa in a last-ditch effort to settle the crisis. As a subordinate fleet commander in 1940, when Japan made demands on Vichy France that increased America’s hostility, Koga Mineichi had objected to the myopic policy. Before Pearl Harbor, informed of even more aggressive policies sure to bring war, Koga—who knew Yamamoto opposed them—complained of measures being taken without consulting the Combined Fleet leader.

Born in Saga prefecture of samurai stock, the fifty-nine-year-old Koga Mineichi had graduated Etajima near the top of his class. His braininess showed in many ways. Hardly a year after passing the course at the Naval War College, Koga returned as an instructor. He had spent nearly five years assigned in France, including a tour as naval attaché. Koga had been a Combined Fleet staff officer. There were several berths on the Navy General Staff, including a stint in charge of the intelligence bureau and an unusual three-year tour. He had also been active on technical boards and worked for the staff of the emperor’s special inspector.

But Koga Mineichi was a battleship man amid an upheaval in the nature of warfare. In addition to the Aoba, Koga had skippered the battleship Ise and led a cruiser division. He had preceded Kondo Nobutake in command of the Second Fleet. Koga remained a solid surface warrior imbued with the traditional doctrine of decisive battle. With the NGS in the late 1930s, the admiral had argued that surface ships need not fear airplanes. The Aoba’s misfortune contradicted that view. As Second Fleet commander in 1941 he had opposed the transfer of his attached carrier unit to become part of the new all-flattop Kido Butai. In part, Koga’s opposition had been overcome by reassignment to lead the China Area Fleet, in which capacity he had blockaded Hong Kong when war began. Much now depended on Koga Mineichi’s flexibility and intellect.

The emergency nature of his appointment at least afforded Admiral Koga the opportunity to have his pick of subordinates, and the new C-in-C prevailed on the Navy General Staff to send him its vice chief, Fukudome Shigeru, as his staff boss. Vice Admiral Fukudome, who had been with Koga on the NGS in the 1930s, had much more experience with aviation, and that was a help. But a certain fatalism had set in. On several occasions when the press of business let up, Koga reflected to Fukudome that Yamamoto had been lucky to have passed while the war situation still seemed favorable.

Admiral Koga told Fukudome that the fleet would not stop its effort to force a decisive battle. On the plan for third-phase operations, necessary once IGHQ declared the war had entered this new period, Koga altered Combined Fleet’s contingency plans. He took account of changed conditions by designing a new kind of decisive battle. Completed in the summer, Koga’s plan divided the broad expanse of the Pacific into sectors and made local commanders responsible for preparing numerous air bases and fortifying each one. The various air flotillas could shuttle—as they had been doing into Rabaul—among threatened sectors. Once an opportunity arose, the main strength of Combined Fleet would join with land-based air to smash the enemy. Under Koga the Navy began creating a new First Air Fleet as an elite JNAF formation—but it would not be ready for many months. Koga also engineered Kondo Nobutake’s relief. Vice Admiral Kurita Takeo, promoted to replace him at Second Fleet, had a reputation as an aggressive surface commander. Kondo went to the China Area Fleet.

In short, Koga Mineichi intended an aggressive strategy. Admiral Koga said as much in the order of the day he issued on May 23, when Japan revealed the death of Yamamoto and the appointment of his successor:

No matter how many times the enemy shall advance against us, we shall always welcome combat with him and in exterminating him and assuring for ourselves the ultimate victory, we shall by united effort and perseverance forge for ourselves a greater and greater military power. At the same time that we manifest a relentless spirit of attack, we shall be prepared to meet the changing conditions of warfare with new strategies and new weapons, always keeping one step ahead of the enemy.

The war is now at its peak. We defend what is ours and the task of meeting and striking the enemy must be the prerogative of the Imperial Navy. We shall defend ourselves to the last breath and shall totally destroy the enemy.

Pious words, perhaps. At the moment Admiral Koga issued this exhortation, the Aleutians seemed threatened and much of the fleet had concentrated in Empire waters. Koga would keep his biggest ships there for several months, taking the opportunity to dry-dock them for upkeep. He returned to Truk in August. By then the war in the Solomons had brewed up. A week before the Aoba was sufficiently repaired to voyage home, the test began.

REDRAWING THE BATTLE MAPS

After two postponements, SOWESPAC completed preparations for its next leap ahead. In the Coral Sea this included assault landings at Kiriwina and Woodlark islands, below New Britain. Once those places had airfields, Allied fighters would be in easy range of Rabaul itself, not to mention all the other Japanese bases. The enemy were not blind to the peril. It was apparent the Allies were poised to leap. In May the 25th Air Flotilla returned to Rabaul, followed in June by the 24th, reinforcing what the Eleventh Air Fleet already had. Aerial reconnaissance over Guadalcanal on May 21 showed forty four-engine bombers, thirty-two twin-engine ones, and no fewer than 275 single-engine aircraft. When Halsey and MacArthur sent fifty-plane raids against Lae and Shortland and a hundred-plane raid on Munda, Admiral Kusaka decided to strike back. He used his added strength for new lightning bolts. On June 7, Kusaka sent a swarm of eighty-one Zeroes on a fighter sweep to the Russell Islands bases. Among the casualties was Warrant Officer Yanagiya Kenji of the 204th Air Group, who had failed in escorting Yamamoto’s fatal flight. Seriously wounded, Yanagiya had his arm amputated. Redeploying 25th and 26th flotilla planes to Buin, on June 12 Kusaka repeated the sweep using seventy-seven fighters, and four days later he struck at Ironbottom Sound with twenty-four bombers and seventy fighters. Veterans remember this as the “Big Raid.” Two ships were damaged badly enough to beach, another hurt more lightly, and half a dozen U.S. planes crashed, against thirty Japanese. As with the I Operation, results disappointed. A submarine concentration against Halsey’s carriers, sighted in Torpedo Junction, failed to accomplish anything.

In contrast to vigorous air activity, now Admiral Kusaka became reluctant to use his surface ships. With the bulk of the Combined Fleet in Empire waters and oriented toward the Aleutians, Kusaka had little support. A staff meeting on June 10 revealed the dismal state of Vice Admiral Samejima’s Eighth Fleet. Heavy cruiser Chokai, previously the flagship, had been recalled by the Combined Fleet. Samejima’s main strength comprised the 3rd Destroyer Squadron. Light cruiser Yubari of that unit had damaged the shafts for two of her three propellers, restricting top speed to twenty-four knots. Equally perplexing, Yubari was undergoing crew transfer. Two-thirds of her officers plus 35 percent of enlisted men were new. Destroyer Yugiri, torpedoed during an antisubmarine sweep, was undergoing local repair. She would be ready before the end of June. The commander of Destroyer Division 22 reported his ships had not been dry-docked for seven to nine months, depending on the vessel, and steamed at reduced efficiency. They had off-loaded reserve torpedoes to reduce displacement and maintain speed potential. Those ships and two others all needed dry-docking. Destroyer Nagatsuki had a leak in a propeller shaft casing and was shipping two dozen tons of water a day, double that under way. Desperate for bottoms, Kusaka nonetheless rated her battleworthy. Half the destroyers had just changed skippers or were about to. Rear Admiral Akiyama Teruo of the 3rd Squadron, himself a new face, had come from a shoreside billet. The one bright light was that light cruiser Sendai had joined and settled in. Admiral Samejima’s Eighth Fleet faced grave challenges.

All this would have made Bull Halsey happy. Photos of Rabaul and Shortland showed Japanese heavy cruisers and more destroyer types than there were. This was coincidental. The Imperial Navy had been using Vice Admiral Nishimura’s Cruiser Division 7 to shuttle replacement seamen into Rabaul. As for the Chokai, for weeks she had been at anchor off Truk’s Dublon Island. Meanwhile the Eighth Fleet had patrol boats and some old destroyers converted to other uses, often mistaken for tin cans. Halsey’s aerial snoopers were reporting a stronger fleet than Kusaka, in fact, possessed.

In tandem with MacArthur’s advance, Halsey had laid on Operation “Toenails,” his next move, against New Georgia. He began with assault landings. Rendova, an island just five and a half miles across the water from Munda, offered a prime location for a PT boat base from which the devil boats could mount a close blockade. It would be invaded at several points. On New Georgia there were landings at Segi Point, Viru Harbor, and Wickham Plantation. The first, actually undertaken by the Marines’ 4th Raider Battalion on June 21, was the opening chord in the ensemble. In preparation SOPAC made a forty-plane raid on Vila on June 19, and fifty-plane attacks on Munda on June 25, and both on the twenty-sixth. Then on the twenty-ninth, Merrill’s cruisers bombarded Munda while Halsey’s minelayer unit took on Vila. The real landings took place the next day.

News of the invasion electrified Rabaul. The Japanese fleet, alerted at dawn on June 30, soon learned of Americans storming Rendova. One who got the alert was Lieutenant Commander Hanami Kohei of the destroyer Amagiri. Until recently skipper of a tin can at Singapore, Hanami had taken over the Amagiri less than two weeks earlier. He found the ship in sore need of rest and reconditioning and planned to replace some sailors and effect such repairs as could be done in place. Hull, weapons, and engines had all been affected by war service. Commander Hanami was coping with the frustration of futile requests for spare parts when Rendova changed everything. “The information created a tumult at Rabaul Base,” Hanami recalled. The fleet moved out “in full strength with determination to blast the enemy on the sea but efforts to locate him finally ended fruitlessly.” That night Rear Admiral Akiyama brought the light cruiser Yubari with nine destroyers, including Amagiri, to pound the Rendova beachhead. Without observers to correct their aim, the Japanese blasted the jungle, inflicting no damage.

None of the invasion sites directly threatened Munda. The strategy was rather to seize a foothold, develop Rendova, then mount the offensive on Munda and Vila from there. The covering force, under Halsey’s direct command, would be Task Force 36. It included both Ainsworth’s and Merrill’s cruiser groups and a carrier unit built around Saratoga and HMS Victorious. As a historical artifact, it is interesting that the Royal Navy here participated in a U.S. amphibious landing in the South Pacific.

At Rabaul, Admiral Kusaka knew of the general threat but not specific Allied intentions. On New Georgia the Japanese now had 10,500 troops, built around two regiments of the Army’s Southeast Detachment, under General Sasaki Akira, and Rear Admiral Ota Minoru’s 8th Combined SNLF, divided between Munda and Vila, with a few scattered outposts elsewhere, including Rendova. Preparatory bombardments did nothing to destroy the defenses. As the invasion fleet dropped anchor, only a few miles away shore batteries at Munda opened fire. Their very first salvo hit the destroyer Gwin. But two others replied, and American troops going ashore quickly set up artillery at Rendova and added their counterfire. The Japanese guns fell silent.

American amphibious ships just beginning to learn their trade at the time of the Guadalcanal landing were now well practiced. The command ship McCawley not only put ashore 1,100 soldiers but landed supplies at a rate of 157 tons per hour. This proved fortunate, for the first important Japanese reaction was an afternoon strike by two dozen torpedo bombers, one of which put a fish into the McCawley. That night an overenthusiastic PT boat launched her spread at the “Wacky Mac” and finished her off. The only other naval casualty was the destroyer Zane, run aground on a reef in the dark.

General Sasaki updated Rabaul in a stream of radio messages. Startled when no landings were attempted against Munda itself, Sasaki soon understood. Seabees went ashore at Rendova in the early assault waves. They had strict orders to fabricate an airfield within two weeks, along with a new PT boat base and other facilities. The Seabees worked through rain and dark. They almost never stopped. Admiral Kusaka added his bit. The day after the landing he sent in a bomber attack that arrived undetected at noon, with GIs in their chow lines. Bombs smashed the hospital, damaged boats, and inflicted more than 130 casualties. New Zealand Squadron No. 14 participated in the defense. Pilot Officer Geoff Fisken, flying the P-40 called the “Wairarapa Wildcat,” splashed two Zeroes and a Betty. Bombings continued, with Japanese Army aircraft participating during the early days.

On July 5 came the first surface naval engagement. Tip Ainsworth brought his cruiser group back to punish Vila. Starting after midnight, Ainsworth dumped more than 3,000 rounds of six-inch fire on the enemy base. While that happened, other Allied ships moved 43rd Infantry Division troops and the 1st Marine Raider Battalion across from Rendova to make the first landing near Munda. A Tokyo Express did the same for the Japanese. The Express had been unloading when the Japanese heard Ainsworth’s thunder and they hurriedly put to sea. As the Americans completed fire missions, the Ralph Talbot reported radar contact. Moments later a torpedo plowed into the destroyer Strong. The Japanese were so far away that no one could believe their destroyers had launched these deadly fish.

That injury became insult the following night. Halsey flashed word that intelligence called a Tokyo Express run from Buin. Rear Admiral Ainsworth, who had been retiring down The Slot, reversed and came back hunting bear. Ainsworth far outgunned the enemy, with light cruisers Honolulu, Helena, and St. Louis, plus four destroyers. Admiral Akiyama led a full-bore Express, with a guard unit of three ships escorting seven destroyers crammed to the gunwales with troops and supplies. At 1:40 a.m. of July 6, American radars acquired Japanese targets inside Kula Gulf. Akiyama had just detached his second transport unit to Vila, having already sent the first. He was headed north-northwest, hugging the Kolombangara shore. Lookouts spotted the Americans minutes later, but surprise had already been lost—though lacking radar, Akiyama’s flagship, destroyer Niizuki, had a radio receiver designed to detect radar emissions. More than half an hour earlier she recorded the Allied signals. Akiyama knew the enemy was out there, just not where. Ainsworth began clearing for action and maneuvering to trap the Japanese. He ordered guns at 1:54 a.m., but it was several minutes until the cannonade began. The initial salvo smashed the Niizuki, but her mates instantly launched torpedoes. Despite 2,500 six-inch shells, only the Niizuki sank, taking Akiyama to his grave. Three other destroyers were lightly damaged. But on the American side Captain Charles P. Cecil’s Helena was destroyed by torpedoes. A single hit between her forward six-inch turrets simply blew off the bow, sluicing water into every deck—and above deck too as she forged ahead at twenty-five knots. Seaman First Class Ted Blahnik, whose action station was in an AA gun director tub far aft on the 600-foot-long ship, could not figure out why water coursed over the deck and poured into his tub. But in moments the “Happy Helena” shuddered as a second Long Lance hit, and a third shattered her keel. For extra ignominy a final hit was a dud torpedo. The Helena sank in little more than twenty minutes, except for her prow, which jutted from the water like an arrowhead pointed at the Southern Cross. Almost 450 sailors were lost.

Amid the confusion the battle had a second act. Destroyers that stopped for rescues or were late out of Vila faced a pair of Ainsworth’s tin cans that had stuck around to rescue Helena survivors. The Nagatsuki ran aground. In daylight she would be pounded into a wreck by SOPAC airmen. Some Helena sailors, convinced they faced an enemy force of four new cruisers with eight destroyers, insisted they had blown every one out of the water. Admiral Ainsworth himself reported eight Japanese craft, claiming all of them sunk save one or two left as cripples. The CINCPAC war diary recorded that result. The truth was that no Japanese were visible because the Imperial Navy had disappeared into the night.

Even worse from the American point of view would be what became known as the Battle of Kolombangara, in the same waters a week later. Ainsworth was back with Task Group 36.1, the Atlanta replaced by New Zealand light cruiser Leander, with six extra destroyers for a total of ten. Every ship had radar and an integrated combat information center. They now sported a combination of search and microwave radars that enabled actual spotting of the fall of shells, optimally at 10,000 yards or less. Radar-controlled gunnery had become a reality. Ainsworth was there because of Ultra, confirmed by coastwatchers. So well-informed were the Allies that he could delay departure until late on July 12 and still be in position at the appointed hour. Ainsworth had a crushing superiority.

The Japanese made some changes. Eighth Fleet headquarters moved forward to Buin. But the Imperial Navy no longer had the resources to accomplish wholesale unit rotation. A fresh fighter unit advanced to Rabaul—but the fighter component of the 582nd Air Group had to be disbanded. The air groups of carriers Ryuho and Junyo were also thrown into the meat grinder. Admiral Koga ordered a fresh destroyer squadron to Rabaul to replace the battered ships with the Eighth Fleet. But much like Captain Hara Tameichi’s destroyer division, its vessels farmed out to others, Rear Admiral Izaki Shunji’s 2nd Destroyer Squadron had a few original ships with a hodgepodge of others glommed onto it. The flotilla on July 12 included several destroyers that had fought with the 3rd Squadron, plus others drafted in from the outside. In the U.S. official history Samuel Eliot Morison complains of the late-inning addition of unfamiliar destroyers into Ainsworth’s force creating “once more the setup of Tassafaronga.” This condition had become the norm on the Japanese side.

Izaki’s force left Rabaul before dawn, loaded 1,200 troops at Buin, and stood down The Slot. He sailed in the light cruiser Jintsu with a covering unit of five destroyers. The transport unit with four more carried the load, departing Shortland in the afternoon. Captain Sato Torajiro’s cruiser launched a floatplane at 8:15 p.m. to scout Kula Gulf. After nightfall a bright moon lit the sea, enabling an Allied snooper to spot Izaki soon after midnight. The Catalina carried an observer from Task Group 36.1’s flagship, so premeditation is clear. Ainsworth was already within thirty miles of Izaki. The admiral had to have been expecting action. Izaki detached his destroyer-transports to slide by the Americans and they did so. Whether he based this on a general understanding of the combat environment—Izaki was an Etajima classmate of codebreaker Ushio Fujimasa, then heading the Owada Group—or on detecting Ainsworth’s radars is unknown. One destroyer, Yukikaze, carried her own radar and acquired the enemy thirty minutes before visual contact. The bright moon now worked to Japanese advantage. Izaki’s vessels saw the Americans before they had closed to optimal range.

Admiral Ainsworth instructed his ships to launch torpedoes before shooting, but Izaki beat them to the punch—and Japanese torpedoes were faster and more powerful. Captain Sato’s Jintsu spit seven torpedoes, and the destroyers more. Sato ordered his ship to illuminate the enemy—as fatal here as it had been for the Hiei off Guadalcanal. Jintsu’s main battery had been in action only a couple of minutes when she was hit. The Allied cruisers pummeled her—2,630 six-inch shells in about twenty minutes. American light cruisers in particular had awesome firepower. At least ten hits slammed the Jintsu, and she was also struck by a torpedo. Seaman Toyoda Isamu, one of the ship’s oldest salts—he had been with Jintsu since the spring of 1939—was at his action station just forward of the aft smokestack when there was a tremendous explosion on the port side. Admiral Izaki, Captain Sato, and the ship’s executive officer were all killed. There were no fires. Jintsu listed slightly to port but then rolled to starboard. After just ten minutes, at 1:48 a.m. the cruiser broke in two and sank. A handful of men were rescued by the submarine I-180, and the Americans picked up a few more. Seaman Toyoda was captured on New Georgia four days after the battle. The vast majority of 484 sailors perished.

But by this time Rear Admiral Ainsworth’s battle plan had already gone wrong. Captain Shimai Zenjiro of the Yukikaze took charge of the remaining Japanese warships. He turned away under a squall and ordered torpedoes reloaded, a vital chore completed at 1:36 a.m. Twenty minutes later Shimai’s destroyers regained sight of the Allies. They flung thirty-one torpedoes at 2:05. At about that moment Ainsworth, confused over the identity of the targets on his radar, ordered star shell illumination. Shortly thereafter, within a hellish six minutes Long Lances detonated against cruisers Leander and St. Louis, Ainsworth’s flagship Honolulu, and the destroyer Gwin. Both American cruisers’ bows were opened to the sea. The Leander had a starboard list. As a final act, the PBY that had been observing all this made her own bombing run against the retiring Japanese. She missed. The damaged warships returned to Guadalcanal under their own power, but Honolulu and St. Louis would be out of action for four months and the Leander laid up the better part of a year. The destroyer Gwin sank. At Pearl Harbor, Admiral Nimitz decided that Pug Ainsworth had handled a succession of difficult situations with aggressiveness and skill. At Rabaul, learning the details, Hara Tameichi concluded this had been a greater victory even than Tassafaronga. But not all Imperial Navy officers were so pleased. Another destroyer captain, Hanami Kohei of the Amagiri, emphasized the technological balance: “While night fighting had long been regarded as a unique prowess of the Japanese Navy, the results now had become entirely the reverse. This was because US forces were using radar and we were powerless from preventing them from approaching us suddenly with…guns blazing.”

The young John F. Kennedy’s story epitomizes this moment, its trials and anguish, and the relentless rhythm of the conflict. Kennedy had arrived at Tulagi under the hammer of Japanese air attack, a fresh-faced PT boat officer hungry for a command. The boat he would skipper, PT-109, claimed to have downed one of the Japanese raiders that day. The tender Niagara, serving the PT boat base, claimed seven. Patrol boat methods and missions were changing to reflect burgeoning Allied strength and the new texture of the war. PT patrols that had been a matter of one or a few boats from Squadron 3 on Tulagi first became mass sorties to block the Express at Guadalcanal, then switched to a variety of activities. Flotilla One, a collection of squadrons, replaced the single unit. Tulagi harbor became a receiving center. The need for room drove the PT flotilla to set up a satellite base on Florida Island. Lieutenant Kennedy spent his early weeks at Sesapi on Florida with Squadron 2, integrating his basic training with the practical experience PT boat hands had acquired and now passed along. Florida too had become a backwater. The advance up The Slot moved the nexus of PT operations first to the Russells, then Rendova.

PT-109, the boat Jack Kennedy made famous, distinguished herself in the Russells invasion before he arrived. She recovered some of the scouts sent to reconnoiter the islands. During the landing phase the PTs, including the 109, turned out en masse to help screen the transports. Two-boat sections of PTs then patrolled Russells waters. But Squadron 6 became the denizens of the Russells base, while Squadron 2 pulled back to Sesapi for the boats to be overhauled, their hulls scraped. The 109’s radar proved troublesome, but in itself this detail shows the difference between sides in this war: The Allies now had radars even in individual patrol boats, whereas this crucial technical development was only beginning to trickle down to reach Japanese destroyers. Lieutenant Commander Rollin Westholm, flotilla operations officer and a former skipper of PT-109, assigned Jack Kennedy as her new captain. He took command on April 25. Her crew included only a couple of men from the boat’s original complement, and some sailors boarded with Kennedy himself.

For a period of weeks Lieutenant Kennedy made familiarization patrols and did shake-down runs with PT-109. He was off Lunga Point on April 18 when fighter pilot Tom Lanphier, returning from the Yamamoto shoot-down, made a celebratory rollover down the runway of the airfield to mark his success. Kennedy’s patrol boat investigated strange lights on Savo Island, charted water obstacles, and looked for stray supply drums off the coast. Kennedy experienced the dangers of cruising in fog—near zero visibility, throttling up the PT boat’s three engines was an invitation to disaster—and the fear of seeing a light at sea that might turn into a Japanese warship. At Sesapi Kennedy lived in a native hut and employed a Melanesian houseboy, who confessed that he’d helped eat a missionary. The Melanesians were friendly and the houseboy helpful, but one day he disappeared. Scuttlebutt had it that he had been apprehended by authorities who sought to punish indigenous cannibalism.

This is a good place to spend a moment on the impact of the war on this primitive society. Throughout the Solomons lived tribes of headhunters, fishermen, or others who practiced slash-and-burn agriculture. Shell money remained standard currency. Many Melanesian ways had not changed in decades, if not centuries. Excepting those who crewed island steamers, most experiences of the outside world were limited to contacts with missionaries, colonial officials, and plantation owners or overseers. New Zealand and Australian colonial authorities, in succession to the British, and in particular missionaries like the Seventh Day Adventists, whose South Seas Evangelical Mission made them possibly the most enthusiastic proselytizers in the islands, introduced a modicum of modernization. The main island of the New Georgia group suggests the degree of missionary penetration: It had settlements called Jericho and Nazareth. Developers came to the Solomons to install plantations, primarily for coconuts and gum trees. This led to a reduction in nomadization, some wage-based employment, the growth of villages into towns around the ports, and the establishment of new settlements, particularly around missions. The colonizers introduced notions of “law” and legal norms that clashed with traditional adjudication and lineal descent, not to mention the concept of “property” as against tribal lands. Traditional ways were diluted, though not eliminated. Close connections among the islands remained. An example springs from Jack Kennedy’s experience when his PT boat was later smashed and the young officer worked desperately to save his crew. Years afterward Kennedy thanked the islanders who helped rescue them. By then the ten men lived on seven different islands. Two resided at Munda, another at Rendova. One had taken the name “Moses.” One, Eroni Kumana, later donated a bracelet made of seashells to the Kennedy Library, asking that it be laid on the former president’s grave. That was done in 2009. In the Solomons the cream-colored shells were money still. Modernity had arrived in the islands, yet tradition remained strong.

The clash of cultures did not come to the Solomons because of World War II, though war accelerated many trends and brought tremendous agitation. Sophisticated ships and planes, cannon, mechanisms people had hardly seen, and alien men with guns who tried to enlist the natives or demanded they take sides were major features of the indigenous experience. The sheer scale shocked the Melanesians. On Guadalcanal the indigenous population amounted to perhaps 15,000 people. The warring sides flooded the island with soldiers numbering many times that—and more men died there than the entire native community. Some indigenous people took the war as an opportunity to better their lot, others to break free of the colonial mold; still others sought to flee.

With a colonial tradition already spanning decades, the Melanesians mostly sided with the Allies, who represented the whites they had long known. Vicious Japanese reprisals for real or imagined slights made that choice easier. Coastwatchers, in particular, depended on these traditional loyalties. Roughly 400 Melanesians served alongside the coastwatchers on the various islands. Such cooperation explains how Australian coastwatchers could be active on New Georgia while the Japanese held bases on the same islands. In addition there was a Solomon Islands Protectorate Defense Force that carried 680 natives on its rolls. Some of these people, like Sergeant Vouza, fought with the Americans on Guadalcanal. The war sparked demands for native labor. Indigenous men from Guadalcanal, Tulagi, Florida, and Malaita became the mainstay of supply handling for the huge Allied bases on Cactus. Eventually this phenomenon would be recognized by the establishment of an official Solomon Islands Labor Corps in which 3,200 Melanesians served.

But the war also challenged the fabric of indigenous society. Malaita Island—never invaded, never occupied, never a battleground—gives the example. The closest Malaita came to the war was the quiet presence there of a couple of Australian coastwatchers. Natives returning from work on Guadalcanal brought tales contrasting their treatment with that meted out by plantation overseers. Even African-Americans in the U.S. forces—themselves visibly oppressed—behaved more graciously than the compradors. An emancipation movement formed on Malaita and spread through the Solomons. After 1945, protectorate security authorities regarded these self-government advocates as revolutionaries, which led to a hysterical response.

The Allied commanders at least took some pains to avoid the worst of culture shock. Native villages were typically off-limits to Allied troops. Often there were only chance contacts, or ceremonial occasions when officers were invited to native rituals. Most outsiders, both American and Japanese, were left with their fantasies of half-naked natives frolicking at village festivals. Some encounters were less convivial. When PT boats moved to the new Russells base, a couple of sailors who had rustled up a skiff with an outboard went off exploring a little river. Startled by black snakes, they ran away from the boat and saw some native women, only to confront tribesmen with spears, who followed them, pounding their spears on the ground in the manner of Zulu tribesmen in the British-African colonial wars. The sailors hightailed it for their skiff, ignoring vines and snakes alike.

Most PT sailors’ encounters with the tribesmen more resembled Jack Kennedy’s attempt to teach his houseboy soccer than that of the crewmen in the Russells, but there was no escaping the fact that Allied bases, wherever they were, shared the islands with the indigenous. Soon enough Kennedy arrived in the Russells himself with PT-109. Jack, who had participated in such antics as keeping his men in instant ice cream, and turning a blind eye to their concocting moonshine, was ready too. Lieutenant Kennedy lost a coin toss for a PT boat assignment to New Guinea and went to the Russells instead. Toward the end of May his boat, rated combat-ready, his crew “Tulagi-groggy,” moved up and into the war. There were three PT formations at the base. Commander Allen P. Calvert led the group, as he had the original force at Tulagi. PT-109 belonged to the Russell Islands Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron.

PT patrols now frequently escorted small ship movements, or went as outriders for the tin cans and other vessels screening larger convoys. Kennedy guarded the 4th Marine Raider Battalion when it was inserted at Segi Point, and PT-109 helped screen one of the Rendova landings. The Seabees installed the Rendova PT base at Lumberi, an islet at the southeastern end. It was named Todd City after Leon E. Todd of PT Squadron 9, the first devil boat skipper killed there. Lieutenant Commander Thomas G. Warfield led the force to which PT-109 soon belonged. The boats here aimed at Munda and Vila. Their exploits exasperated the enemy, who could be dangerous, but Allied air was nearly as bad. On July 20, PT-164, -166, and -168 were returning to Rendova when they were set upon by Army B-25s. They shot down one of their own planes. Another night Kennedy’s PT would be attacked by a Catalina snooper.

The whole New Georgia venture turned out to be much more complicated than anyone, Admiral Halsey included, had anticipated. The passel of little landings that led to Rendova became a kind of amphibious infiltration. When the first three U.S. battalions assaulted New Georgia, they landed only five miles from Munda. The troops were supposed to prepare the way for a much bigger force of the 43rd Division that would wrest that place from the enemy. Terrain proved so difficult that more than six weeks of mud and misery would sap the energy and consume the strength of the GIs sent to New Georgia to cover those five short miles—more properly four, since the lead units moved a mile or so on the day of the invasion.

General Sasaki observed the American encroachment with mounting alarm, appealing to Rabaul for reinforcements and supplies. The series of naval battles off Vila demonstrated that running the Tokyo Express in these waters, if anything, would be more difficult than at Guadalcanal. But the Japanese gamely went at the task. On July 18, Admiral Kusaka issued his Operations Order No. 10, which provided for measures to secure Munda and Kolombangara and “sweep” the enemy from New Georgia. “The air units and surface units will cooperate with the submarine force, exerting every effort to cut enemy transportation lines, especially to prevent his unloading in the Kula Gulf region.” Dusk or dawn “group fighter attacks” were favored, and submarines were to make surprise strikes.

Instead it seemed the Japanese themselves were being swept from the board. The submarine force tried hard. At one point Rabaul set two of the smaller RO boats to approach Munda from opposite directions and snare SOPAC vessels either there or off Rendova. No result. Commander Orita Zenji made seven patrols in The Slot during June and July. He found little except PTs until July 12, when the American destroyer Taylor caught his RO-101 on the surface and opened fire. Orita submerged, escaped, and made Rabaul, but counted 127 dents in his boat from the destroyer’s automatic weapons. Two other subs were not as lucky. The fleet also deployed heavy surface ships to Rabaul for the first time in many months. Vice Admiral Nishimura Shoji’s cruiser force steamed off Kolombangara as cover unit for a Tokyo Express, ready to intervene against any SOPAC sortie into Kula Gulf. But on the night of July 19–20 it was Nishimura who was set upon—by half a dozen U.S. Marine Avengers, probably from Marine Torpedo Squadron 143 or 144. One TBF managed a near miss on cruiser Kumano that sprang hull plates and sent her to the repairmen for two months. Nishimura moved his flag to the Suzuya, but took Cruiser Division 7 back to Truk without attempting further operations.

Admiral Kusaka next tried a heavy Tokyo Express to Buin, sending the seaplane carrier Nisshin crammed with twenty-two tanks and eight guns, plus almost 1,200 soldiers aboard her and three destroyers. AIRSOLS planes piled on them on July 22, based on an Ultra intercept the previous evening that revealed the Nisshin’s time of arrival and planned anchorage. The aerial ambush was a fifty-plane raid, covered, since the action would take place in the heart of the Japanese base zone, by no fewer than 120 fighters. Several bomb hits crippled the Nisshin, which sank with the bulk of the troops and supplies and all the heavy equipment.

On July 20, Captain Hara was summoned to Rabaul and brought destroyer Shigure to join the Eighth Fleet transport unit. She carried a load of desperately needed aircraft spare parts and spent several days in transit. When Shigure dropped anchor in Simpson Harbor and the captain could get to headquarters, he learned that two of the destroyers responsible for the naval victory off Kolombangara were already sunk. Hara was stunned. Within a few days he had been scheduled for a Tokyo Express to Vila. Before that expedition, on August 1, another of the Kolombangara victors fell to the enemy. The Vila Express would have a nasty encounter with John F. Kennedy’s PT-109.

Hara Tameichi dreaded formulas. What unfolded on August 1 was not an exact repetition, though the Express did follow the course of a previous mission, which had made a sort of backdoor passage through Blackett Strait. Captain Sugiura Kaju of Destroyer Division 4 led the Express and its transport unit. Admiral Kusaka kicked off the action by sending a dozen bombers to plaster Todd City and keep down the devil boats. That SOPAC knew of the expedition, in turn, is indicated by the fact that it ordered a full-press effort. At sunset fifteen PT boats put to sea under Lieutenant Henry J. Brantingham in PT-159. He also served as section leader for one group, posting himself farthest up the channel and other PT sections on down it. On the opposite side of Kolombangara, Admiral Halsey posted a destroyer group under Captain Arleigh A. Burke.

Captain Yamashiro Katsumori led the one-ship destroyer guard force for the Express. He had had some success on previous voyages, including reaching Vila with a transport unit the night of the Kula Gulf battle, and had taken over Destroyer Division 11 afterward. Yamashiro sailed in the Amagiri, with Sugiura’s Hagikaze, Arashi, and Shigure bringing up the rear. That only a single vessel could be spared for the crucial guard role indicates the thinness of Japanese resources. Captain Sugiura’s unit carried 900 reinforcements and 120 tons of supplies. The night was pitch dark as they entered Blackett Strait. Sugiura had his vessels hove to at the rendezvous, and barges came from shore to meet them. Yamashiro put the Amagiri to the west of the mission force, steaming in a loose square pattern. In the Shigure, Hara was astonished that all the men and supplies could be unloaded in just twenty minutes. They were under way within five more, and not long afterward were making thirty knots through waters so treacherous that in peacetime no one would dare a fraction of that speed. Yamashiro recalled that the entire business of approach, transshipment, and withdrawal was completed within ninety minutes. Once he saw Sugiura’s bow waves, Yamashiro altered to starboard and increased speed to resume position at the head of the Japanese column.

Comparing historical accounts of this action leaves some mysteries. Hara clearly recollects that the engagement took place during the return voyage. Captain Yamashiro and Lieutenant Nakajima Goro, navigation officer of the Amagiri, both confirm Hara’s observation. American accounts are replete with detail on all the PT boat sections firing at the enemy. In fact, the PT squadron after-action report erroneously cites five Imperial Navy destroyers and claims five or six torpedo hits. These claimed contacts would have been possible only if the action had taken place with Sugiura’s vessels still inbound for Vila. Hara recounts only the single encounter with PT-109. Brantingham’s PTs had been on station since twilight. The discrepancies cannot be resolved on the basis of available evidence. Either the PTs missed the inbound Express or the Japanese remained completely oblivious to torpedo attacks that resulted in five to six hits.

But no one contests the contact with Brantingham’s “B” Section. The unit leader detected the Express on radar and soon had visual contact. PT-159 shot four torpedoes at 1,400 yards; her consort the 157 boat launched two. Their presence revealed—grease in a torpedo tube caught fire during launch—Brantingham’s vessels fled under fire. Remaining were Lieutenant (Junior Grade) John R. Lowrey’s PT-162 and Jack Kennedy’s PT-109, joined by Lieutenant P. A. Potter’s PT-169, which had become separated from its group. They saw flashes and heard radio chatter, but had no real knowledge of the situation. Kennedy called general quarters once he glimpsed a searchlight and the water spouts of exploding shells. Suddenly in the darkness the prow of a big ship loomed. For a second Kennedy thought it might be another PT.

Japanese lookouts also saw the other vessel only at the last moment. Lieutenant Commander Hanami of the Amagiri recorded this as a cloudy night with intermittent squalls and poor visibility. It was about 2:00 a.m. Petty Officer Kametani, the first to spot PT-109, reported Kennedy’s boat when she was just 1,100 yards away. For a moment Captain Yamashiro, on the bridge as guard unit leader, thought the object might be a Japanese barge, but he swiftly decided she must be one of the devil boats. Navigator Nakajima later described the options for Australian journalists: “We had three alternatives—to turn to port and collide with the other destroyers, to keep ahead and go onto the reefs, or to turn to starboard and meet the M.T.B. [motor torpedo boat].” Skipper Hanami recounts that conventional wisdom in the Imperial Navy at the time was to meet a PT boat with a “crash strategy,” and that he ordered a course change to run it down. Captain Yamashiro insists that he ordered a turn to port to avoid collision. Coxwain Doi Kazuto turned the wheel. Either way the Amagiri was just beginning to respond to her helm when she sliced into Kennedy’s PT-109 at thirty-four knots. Lieutenant Nakajima, in the charthouse as the collision occurred, felt a bump; Hanami heard a thunderous roar and felt the searing heat as flames erupted from the stricken PT. A sailor in one engine room heard a thud and feared they had been hit by a torpedo; in another a petty officer heard a scraping noise and thought the destroyer had stuck on a reef.

The Amagiri’s left-hand propeller had a blade sheared off as it ran through the American torpedo boat while turning. Scorched paint along the bow plus leaks were the main damage to the Japanese vessel—not serious but cutting her speed down to twenty-four knots for the return trip. At Rabaul, Captain Yamashiro took Commander Hanami with him to flagship Sendai to report to Rear Admiral Baron Ijuin Matsuji, who had replaced the deceased Izaki at the head of Eighth Fleet’s destroyer squadron. The baron met them on the quarterdeck with a broad smile. He only wondered why Yamashiro had not broken radio silence to reveal this exploit. Japan, starved for good war news, made much of this ugly business, with newspapers headlining, “Unprecedented—Enemy Torpedo Boat Trampled Asunder,” and “Enemy Torpedo Boat Cut Smack in Two.” The Domei News Agency interviewed crewmen and presented the event as if it had been the achievement of a master swordsman.

Imperial Navy participants have their own dispute in the PT-109 affair. It raged in Japanese media in the late 1950s, including articles in newspapers like Yomiuri, Sankei Shimbun, and Nihon Keizai Shimbun, and in television coverage on the NHK network. Officers Yamashiro and Hanami bickered over the events of that night, with Commander Hanami sticking to his claim that he had gone after PT-109. Captain Yamashiro insisted he had sought to prevent the collision. Both wrote letters to John F. Kennedy as if he could settle their argument. The question of whether the collision was deliberate turns on whether Amagiri altered to port or starboard and who ordered this change. Rightly enough, Yamashiro insists the ship’s master could not have given the order against the wishes of his division commander, but the captain weakened his argument by telling Kennedy in a 1958 letter that the course change had been to starboard (a claim he subsequently reversed), and by writing in a 1960 article for the publication of an association of former naval officers that he could not remember whether helm orders had also been issued by Commander Hanami or by Lieutenant Yonemaru, the assistant navigator, who had had direct charge of the coxswain. The standard account with which American readers are familiar, Robert J. Donovan’s book PT-109, relegates this dispute to brief mention in a footnote and declares that the case for an accidental collision is thin. In August 1962, Captain Yamashiro wrote Donovan and his publisher, McGraw-Hill, contesting Donovan’s quotations from the accounts of certain Japanese sailors and demanding that changes be made to that book.

Back in 1943, when PT boat leader Lieutenant Brantingham saw the flaming carcass of Kennedy’s boat and heard the shell fire of that engagement, he rejoiced that at least someone had gotten a hit. But the shoe was on the other foot. Fate tied together many threads that night. John F. Kennedy’s war service later helped his political career. Arleigh Burke, whose destroyer unit had been too far away, smashed another Tokyo Express in November at the Battle of Cape St. George, one in which Captain Yamashiro led the transport unit. Yamashiro was subsequently banished to shoreside billets. And Commander Hanami’s hometown, Fukushima, would be devastated by a nuclear plant meltdown. Japan, whose war ended in the awesome destruction wrought by nuclear weapons, had swiftly adopted nuclear power, and in 2011 the Fukushima plant complex succumbed to the climactic disaster of a tsunami.

So the Amagiri cut the PT-109 in two. Two crewmen perished. Thus began a weeklong ordeal for Jack Kennedy and his eleven survivors. At great personal risk Kennedy rallied his sailors, saved several from the flaming wreck, and shepherded the disoriented men toward an island, swimming with one of them himself. After days of exposure Kennedy helped move them to another islet. He looked for ways to contact Allied commanders. A portion of the PT boat’s wreck was found afloat in daylight, and in due course Station KEN, the Guadalcanal coastwatcher network control, circulated a notice to look out for American survivors. Reginald Evans, the Australian coastwatcher on Kolombangara, got the message. He confirmed the nature of the observed wreckage. Two of his native scouts, Eroni and Biuku, eventually encountered a pair of the PT-109 crewmen, and Jack Kennedy was able to get a note to Evans and then meet him. Natives took the news to a U.S. outpost. Kennedy and his crew were picked up by PT-157 on August 8. While that day marked the end of an ordeal for Jack Kennedy and his men, it also framed the moment Japan tumbled over the edge into an abyss.

TOWARD THE EVENT HORIZON

New Georgia continued to beg for help. Admiral Kusaka had to respond. On August 4 he ordered another Express. In Tokyo the next day General Sugiyama informed the emperor that Allied moves threatened every post in the Outer South Seas. Sugiyama had to endure a very unusual imperial outburst. “Isn’t there someplace where we can strike the United States?” Hirohito demanded. “When and where on earth are you ever going to put up a good fight? And when are you going to fight a decisive battle?” The next engagement would confirm all the emperor’s worst fears.

At Rabaul naval officers gathered under an awning on the destroyer Hagikaze for a briefing on their operation. Captain Sugiura Kaju, who had led the previous Tokyo Express successfully, commanded this mission and went over the plans. A torpedo expert, Sugiura had already been a senior destroyer leader before the war, and he had a sterling reputation. But he intended to replicate the approach of the previous sortie, so, even to an old friend, Hara Tameichi objected. Sugiura countered that the details of the Express had already been settled with Kusaka’s headquarters and with the Army. It was too late. Captain Hara sailed in the Shigure, last in Sugiura’s four-ship column.

Hara’s misgivings were well-founded. While it is perfectly true that, with the New Georgia campaign in full swing and the Japanese operational tempo well understood, SOPAC could expect a Tokyo Express, Halsey’s preparations were based on Ultra intercept of an Eighth Fleet dispatch, enabling him to set the ambush. As on the night of the PT-109 incident, when SOPAC had put cruisers off Vella Gulf (on the other side of Kolombangara from previous Express missions), with PTs down near Blackett Strait, this time Halsey posted PT boats in the same place, with destroyers right inside the gulf. He instructed Vice Admiral Theodore S. Wilkinson, his operational leader, to put the forces in motion. The preparatory order went to Captain Frederick Moosbrugger the preceding day. The Japanese destroyers, still at Rabaul, left at 5:00 a.m. on August 6. Moosbrugger had had nearly a day’s notice. In any case, the American captain raised steam by noon and led a half dozen destroyers from the anchorage. They were in position by 10:00 p.m. Moosbrugger delivered on his instructions.

The standard practice with Ultra was to post an air scout in the vicinity of a predicted surface naval movement. While an air spotter tipped the enemy that the Allies were aware of their presence, more important was that it gave the Japanese an explanation other than codebreaking for why their actions were anticipated. Sure enough, as Sugiura’s destroyers passed Buka Island at 6:30 p.m., they saw a snooper and then overheard its contact report. Sugiura pressed on without altering course or speed. By 9:00 p.m. the Express neared its goal. Captain Sugiura arrived in Vella Gulf at his appointed hour.

Moosbrugger had put his ships close off the Kolombangara shore, difficult to see against the dense jungle foliage. The last-quarter moon, obscured by clouds, was due to set near 10:30. The Southern Cross constellation was already dropping beneath the horizon. There were occasional squalls. This darkness completed the frustration of Japanese lookouts. At 11:18 destroyer Dunlap made radar contact. Captain Moosbrugger decided it was a ghost signal, but fifteen minutes later the same ship acquired a real contact, almost due north, twelve miles distant. Craven this time confirmed the contact. Moosbrugger immediately ordered his ships to set for torpedo attack. By 11:37 the tin cans knew there were four Imperial Navy warships. The launch took place at 11:43, with the Japanese at 6,500 yards, before a single gun had spoken. Commander Gelzer L. Sims of the Maury sent her fish against Sugiura’s Hagikaze. These were classic night-destroyer tactics, the kind the Japanese had so often employed against American flotillas whose own tin cans were usually restricted by conforming to a battle line of heavy ships.

Captain Sugiura saw everything as nominal. His Tokyo Express had settled on a southeast course at thirty knots. At 11:30 p.m. he altered to south-southeast. On the Kawakaze, the second ship, Petty Officer Tokugawa Yoshio, an ammunition hoist operator, was grabbing some shut-eye, in common with his comrades. Aboard the other vessels only Hara Tameichi had any inkling of danger. His Shigure, an older tin can in need of a refit, had lagged behind. Seeing nothing but forbidding darkness, rather than speeding up Hara ordered the Shigure to battle stations and doubled his lookouts. At 11:42 a spotter on the Hagikaze reported dark shapes along the Kolombangara coast. American torpedoes were already in the water.

After that, bedlam. A Shigure lookout saw torpedo wakes. Captain Hara had hardly gone on the long-wave radio to warn of torpedoes when lookouts on Arashi and Kawakaze reported enemy ships. Hagikaze and Arashi heeled to port and Kawakaze to starboard, but none could avoid the deadly tin fish. The first two were hit amidships. On the Kawakaze the crew barely made it to battle stations before torpedoes struck. Petty Officer Tokugawa believed the first one hit the bow. Sailors claimed a PT boat had delivered it. She quickly began sinking. The Japanese later established that seven torpedoes struck home, including one no one noticed, right through Shigure’s rudder, apparently so encrusted with barnacles that the holed rudder was only slightly less efficient at turning the ship. It was Hara who put up the fight for the Japanese, and Shigure survived because she had lagged behind. Had she matched the speed of Sugiura’s other ships, the Shigure would have been in the torpedo water. Hara turned away under a cloud of smoke and made for Rabaul, joining cruiser Sendai, returning from a supply run to Buin.

A number of Japanese survived tribulations as great as those of Jack Kennedy. Chief Petty Officer Kawabata Shigeo of Kawakaze swam fifteen hours before reaching land. Friendly natives gave him coconuts and young shoots to eat. Petty Officer Tokugawa drifted two days until the current took him to Vella Lavella, where he found more than two hundred survivors of the other ships. Seaman Kawahara Jihei drifted about twenty hours and cut himself badly on coral as he beached at Vella Lavella. The U.S. patrol that captured him was guided by a Melanesian tribesman.

The Battle of Vella Gulf, as this action is known, marked the onset of Japan’s dark period. Suddenly a draw seemed the best that Japanese forces could accomplish. Amid the succession of inconclusive actions and actual defeats, Kusaka’s position collapsed. Come to witness that sorry end would be Baron Tomioka Sadatoshi, the erstwhile NGS planner. After a time commissioning a new cruiser for the Imperial Navy, Tomioka arrived in Rabaul as a staff aide to Admiral Kusaka. Only a year earlier Tomioka had been debating the merits of South Pacific offensives versus an invasion of Australia. Now he had to assist his admiral in the desperate defense of a Japanese bastion, its power ebbing.

This transformation boggles the mind. Until very recently Halsey’s SOPAC forces had not exceeded the Japanese. Indeed, for roughly the first half of Tomioka’s year it was Japan that had been superior. Intelligence made the difference. Not that Japan lacked for resources in this field. The Japanese had aerial reconnaissance; they set up their own network of coastwatchers; the radio traffic analysts of the Owada Group and the communications units—like the 1st and 8th at Rabaul—were very good. But there were marked differences in the two sides’ capabilities. The Japanese simply never devoted the weight of effort to intelligence that the Allies—the United States, Great Britain, Australia—all did. There were many thousands of officers and men involved with Allied activities. On the Japanese side the number was a fraction of that. While hard data are lacking, a reasonable estimate would put their personnel at a tenth to a quarter the size of the Allied intelligence force.

The professional spook in the Imperial Navy lacked standing. So did the Allied pros, but on their side wartime events, starting with Midway, ended any confusion over the value of their work. During Tomioka’s year, intelligence proved so central to enabling meager Allied forces to trump the enemy that by mid-1943 it had become integral to the entire enterprise. The Japanese tolerated intelligence but regarded the product more as demonstrating the dimension of obstacles a commander must overcome to achieve victory. At root this was different from the Allied concept, in which intel identified targets; then operating forces blasted them.

Japanese intelligence nevertheless employed identical principles. Documents captured in the South Pacific show that the Japanese graded information for accuracy (“undoubtedly reliable,” “probably reliable,” “authenticity is undetermined”), collected topographical and other information from natives and friendly residents, had an actual propaganda strategy, exploited captured documents, recognized the value of prisoners as information sources, closely followed Allied radio news broadcasts, and, of course, valued radio intelligence and aerial reconnaissance. Japanese instructions placed special emphasis on this data: shifts in strength and movements of adversary air units, status and equipment of airfields, movements and status of warships and supply forces, the state of signaling and broadcasting, and adversary unit identifications. Japanese Army documents also emphasized data on enemy airborne raiding forces (MacArthur would conduct a parachute assault against Nadzab in New Guinea). Any Allied intelligence officer would recognize these collection targets immediately.

Much as IGHQ reached “central agreements” on operations, and local commanders negotiated parallel arrangements for their regions, the Imperial Navy and Army made formal agreements that assigned primary collection responsibility in given sectors to one service or the other. In the Solomons the Navy took the lead on intelligence.

The Japanese were careful statisticians. Captured documents showed they closely tracked attacks on their air bases in an effort to divine overall patterns. Ground observers recorded the numbers and types of aircraft in an attack or over an area, as well as the hour, altitude, and general technique of attacks. Halsey was thus gaming the Japanese system when he flung a 150-plane attack at Kolombangara but made his next amphibious landing on Vella Lavella. Kusaka expected SOPAC to invade the former.

Given the intelligence juggernaut that fueled Allied success, it is perplexing that their system fell short when it came to Japanese pullbacks. The Guadalcanal evacuation owed much to Allied tardiness in divining the enemy’s true intentions. This happened again in the summer of 1943. The view from Rabaul was that supplying such exposed outposts as Munda and Vila had become too costly. Admiral Kusaka had also begun to suspect that Halsey would invade Bougainville—hence the sudden effort to build up Buin and surrounding bases, including Shortland, which Southeast Area Fleet believed a specific SOPAC target. Kusaka determined to regroup his garrisons, relinquishing Munda, which the Americans captured on August 4. He also ordered that troop movements be made primarily by barge.

What began as tactical maneuver soon became strategic necessity. Tokyo viewed the Solomons with increasingly jaundiced eyes. The Americans had just ejected Japan from the Aleutians—in the end without any intervention by Koga’s Combined Fleet. In various encounters during early August the emperor raked both Army and Navy chiefs over the coals, and complained to Prime Minister Tojo as well. The Allies had to be stopped somewhere. Imperial Headquarters initiated yet another strategic review. Planners decided that positions throughout the Pacific needed strengthening and the Solomons were draining capabilities. As an interim measure while Army-Navy discussions progressed, on August 13, Admiral Nagano issued NGS Directive No. 267, providing that the Solomons battle be waged by forces in place, which should withdraw to rear positions from late September. Meanwhile at the front, the tenor of operations quickly changed. Naval officers at Rabaul found themselves dispatched to convoy barges or to distract SOPAC while barges sneaked past the the Allies. General Sasaki and Admiral Ota made it to Kolombangara with many of their troops. The Americans reckoned they had eliminated about 2,400 Japanese in the seven-week Munda campaign. That represented a fraction of the Japanese force. It soon became clear that the Allies were not going to assault Kolombangara. On August 15 Halsey’s forces landed on Vella Lavella instead. The Japanese Army rejected any counterlanding. The Americans invaded more points on the island. Kusaka responded with air strikes. A transport was sunk off Guadalcanal and an LST at Vella Lavella, while a few other ships were damaged, but there was no halting SOPAC, which funneled 6,300 troops into Vella Lavella. Allied participation in combat reached a new level when New Zealand troops engaged there. The Japanese barges worked overtime to shuttle men to posts the Allies had yet to reach.

Bypassed, the 12,000-strong garrison at Kolombangara still needed recovery. To facilitate this, Kusaka decided to set up a barge station at Horaniu at the northeast end of Vella Lavella. Since the Allies on that island had stopped to form a perimeter and build an airfield, this remained possible. A small force loaded on barges at Rabaul. They were covered by a destroyer sortie. Rear Admiral Ijuin Matsuji of Destroyer Squadron 3 led the operation. Tall and gangly for a Japanese, with an optimistic disposition and wide-open eyes, the baron was a navigator of excellent reputation. Formerly master of the battleship Kongo, Ijuin had advocated reliance on barges. Intent on showing this would work, the baron gave his captains a free hand in making preparations. Only four destroyers could be used, but Admiral Ijuin picked the best tin cans at Rabaul, including Hara Tameichi’s Shigure, and the Hamakaze, equipped with radar. Ijuin’s force sailed before dawn on August 17.

American search planes discovered the baron’s ships in The Slot. Admiral Wilkinson detached a destroyer division from the Vella Lavella invasion flotilla’s screen and sent it after Ijuin in a high-speed chase. AIRSOLS also contributed a night attack by two flights of TBF Avengers. The torpedo planes failed to score, but they delayed Ijuin while Captain Thomas J. Ryan’s destroyers came up on him. A surface engagement took place around midnight. The Americans were silhouetted by a bright moon behind them. The fight was inconclusive. One Japanese destroyer, slightly damaged by near misses, suffered a few casualties; another sustained even lighter damage. Two of Captain Ryan’s tin cans had their prows battered by Japanese torpedoes. The barges sought refuge in a cove and continued to Horaniu the next night. Frustrations at home had reached such a point that when the emperor learned of the battle he erupted at Admiral Nagano, accusing the Navy’s destroyers of running away and leaving the Army troops to their fate. In its essentials, however, the mission had worked.

For weeks the barge chain continued regrouping Japanese forces. Tokyo Express runs supplemented them on certain key evacuations. More Army troops were dispatched by convoy to the Outer South Seas. The Japanese reinforced Rabaul with nearly a full infantry division. This place became a fortress in more than name. General Sugiyama conferred with Hirohito on the plans. Their September 11 conversation shows the depths to which the Empire had fallen. In a talk replete with references to the historic Emperor Meiji, Hirohito expressed himself openly. He would not “tolerate” another episode where the generals came back to report their soldiers had “fought bravely, then died of starvation.” Supplying Rabaul lay at the heart of the matter. Why defend the place at all? Sugiyama observed, “Rabaul is vital to the Navy and they have asked us to hold it somehow.” General and emperor explored the implications of the initiative while Hirohito also harped on New Guinea, another of his sore points. But everything came back to the fortress. “If we lose Rabaul,” Sugiyama admitted, “we will lose all mobility.”

So the redeployment proceeded. The 3,400 Japanese at Rekata Bay returned aboard destroyers. Barges safely removed Japanese coastwatcher posts on Santa Isabel and Gizo. Troop strength at Vila and Choiseul was thinned out. At least one more Tokyo Express ran to the big island. Tip Merrill’s cruisers made nightly forays up The Slot from September 12 in an effort to interrupt the barge traffic. One October night, Merrill thought he had nabbed a convoy and lit the sky with star shells to help his tin cans shoot—but results proved illusory. One officer concluded that the destroyers’ five-inch guns could not track fast enough to follow barge maneuvers at close range, while the fuses on 40mm cannon shells were so sensitive they detonated prematurely. More than fifty PT boats patrolled constantly and slugged it out with the barges, but often got as good as they gave. On one occasion they claimed sinking twenty bargeloads of the enemy. The eye-opener came when the PT force started modifying boats, removing torpedoes and rearming them as gunboats.

For Allied sailors and airmen it seemed Japanese determination made them unstoppable. Day after day they went back to the same targets, blowing them to hell, but the enemy always came back—in numbers and with guns. Frustration eroded morale to a degree. One day at Espíritu the men were given a boost by the visiting first lady of the United States, Eleanor Roosevelt. Rear Admiral Aaron S. “Tip” Merrill’s cruiser force happened to be there, revictualing. Sailors on liberty attended the rally, and others saw Roosevelt as she toured the base. James Fahey of the Montpelier noted that Mrs. Roosevelt was the first woman he had seen in nearly ten months. Lieutenant Commander Richard Milhous Nixon—another future president of the United States—saw Mrs. Roosevelt’s jeep convoy as it moved between stops that September day. Nixon was a staff officer with the rear area forces. He too recalled the morale boost, and decades later remembered the first lady’s visit as one of the most memorable moments of his war service.

The completion of the Vella Lavella airfield on September 24 strengthened Halsey’s vise but did not stop the Japanese withdrawal. A couple nights later an I-boat narrowly missed light cruiser Columbia when she illuminated herself by opening up at a beach fire the Japanese had set. The major pullout from Kolombangara began on September 27. Wrapped up early the next month, only sixty-six men of the garrison were lost in the withdrawal. Admiral Halsey would claim that over a three-month period SOPAC forces sank 598 barges and seriously damaged another 670. These figures are hard to square with evident Japanese success.

Kusaka achieved his goals despite SOPAC intelligence, Halsey’s knowledge that the movements were under way, and the strenuous Allied efforts to blockade Kolombangara by sea and air. The SOPAC leader claimed three or four thousand Japanese gunned down or drowned in the barges alone, but only about 1,000 of the 15,000 troops on Kolombangara and the surrounding posts ended up in Halsey’s trap. The rest escaped. Captain Yamashiro Katsumori of PT-109 fame led the final Express mission to the island on the night of October 2–3. Had Japanese offensives been conducted as meticulously as their evacuations, the Allied Powers in the South Pacific might truly have been driven onto the ropes. Kusaka’s bombers raided Guadalcanal, the Russells, Munda, Vella Lavella, and once even as far as Espíritu Santo, but accomplished no more than harassment.

In Tokyo a broad strategic review adopted a fresh approach. Japan would defend a restricted inner perimeter and adopt hugely expanded war production goals. But the Navy and Army differed on details yet again—and neither held fast to the plan’s logic. Admiral Nagano plumped for the inner perimeter but, in accordance with Combined Fleet commander Koga’s battle zone concept, held that opportunities for decisive action must be sought outside the perimeter. General Sugiyama favored holding on to what Japan already had, to gain time to build up the new defenses. Both supported more than doubling the existing rate of aircraft manufacture despite the fact that raw materials imports were already significantly below 1942 levels—and promised to diminish further as more merchant ships were requisitioned for war service. Even assuming the expanded production, Admiral Nagano refused to assure success. These issues were aired at an imperial conference with Hirohito on September 30. The IGHQ directive that followed sanctioned the new strategy without comment on its lack of realism. Rabaul lay hundreds of miles beyond the approved perimeter.

The last round would be fought over removal of the very barge station that Kusaka had placed at Horaniu, where there were now 600 men. On October 6, the Southeast Area Fleet sent Baron Ijuin with a strong destroyer group to escort a pair of transport units, one of tin cans, the other barges. An aerial scout spotted the Japanese en route, and Captain Frank R. Walker took six destroyers to meet them. This time Ijuin had “air” of his own. A floatplane saw the U.S. warships, and when Walker ducked into a squall to elude the enemy, his forces became separated. But any advantage the baron gained was canceled when the aerial scout reported U.S. strength at four cruisers and three destroyers. Ijuin maneuvered with caution in the belief that a greatly superior fleet aimed at him. Ijuin’s own force had been divided when he detached Captain Hara with two destroyers as a close escort for the convoy. The subsequent action was another nasty scrap that began in confusion and ended with indecision.

In the initial phase, Admiral Ijuin was diverted just before rejoining Captain Hara, leaving him four destroyers against Walker’s three. Ijuin sped to the southeast, closing, and in a position to cross the Americans’ T. Moving too fast and executing a complex maneuver, the Japanese ended on Captain Walker’s port side in torpedo water once the Americans launched on them. Ijuin turned, putting his own force in the trap he had hoped to spring on the enemy. Destroyer Yugumo, last in line, drew the American fire, quickly pounded by five hits. She failed to conform to Ijuin’s maneuvers, advancing on the Americans instead, shooting and launching torpedoes. Walker’s ships reduced Commander Osako Azuma’s vessel to a sinking wreck. Walker had the advantage then, three tin cans against Captain Hara’s ships Shigure and Samidare, while Ijuin was temporarily out of the picture. Then Imperial Navy torpedoes began to impact, and one took off the bow of destroyer Chevalier. The following ship, O’Bannon, collided with her, damaging her own bow. Returning to the action, Ijuin and Hara now had five destroyers against Walker’s Selfridge and the damaged O’Bannon. Then a torpedo hit Walker’s own ship, clipping off her bow, but the baron was headed away. Before Ijuin could turn back and resume the fight, Captain Harold O. Larson reached the scene with three fresh destroyers. Had the battle continued, the Americans would have been outnumbered, but with the advantage of radar-controlled artillery.

Because of the erroneous scout report, Ijuin thought there were cruisers out there he could not account for. He decided to break off. The Chevalier sank later that night, leaving the score one destroyer sunk on each side, plus two American vessels damaged. But by now Halsey’s command could absorb those losses without breaking stride, while the single ship Yugumo represented more than 15 percent of Eighth Fleet strength. A couple dozen Yugumo sailors managed to reach a Japanese island base. Another seventy-eight became American prisoners after rescue by PT boats, fresh subjects for intelligence interrogation. Admirals Kusaka and Samejima could not afford many victories like this Battle of Vella Lavella.

Kusaka marked the success by presenting a ceremonial sword to Captain Hara, plus daggers to each of his destroyer skippers. There were no citations for Baron Ijuin or anyone in his unit. The presentations occurred at a banquet in Hara’s honor at the Rabaul officers’ club. Several geisha added a touch of glamour. Kusaka and Samejima hosted the event with all the top brass, including the other barons, Tomioka and Ijuin, the latter chagrined. Kusaka made a little speech and offered a toast to Hara and his colleagues. But the occasion turned into a disaster. Hara drank too much, and tried to exchange his sword for drinks for his crews. Ijuin promised to buy the sake for the men and led Hara away. The true embarrassment came from a fleet staff officer who had lost many friends on the Yugumo. He piped up, referring to the admiral’s comments, “You have just noted the brief life expectancy of a destroyer. Must we put up with such a situation? Are we going to celebrate next October 26 as the anniversary of the last battle in history in which our carriers took part?”

The officer acknowledged the efforts of the Eleventh Air Fleet but complained of the prosaic Tokyo Express sorties, with all the danger borne by the destroyers—no wonder their life expectancy averaged less than two months—and came back to the big ships: “Why do destroyers have to shoulder the entire burden without the support of our carriers, battleships, and cruisers?” He lashed out, in effect, at Tomioka: “And what is Imperial Headquarters doing in Tokyo? Announcements blare every day that we are bleeding the enemy white in the Solomons. It is we who are being bled white.”

Before he left, Captain Hara witnessed the end of this scene, with Admiral Kusaka in silent misery. Baron Samejima managed a flat reply: “I understand that Commander in Chief Koga is preparing for a decisive naval action in which all our big ships will be deployed.”

The decision would come soon, and William F. Halsey and Chester W. Nimitz were setting the stage at that very moment. The South Pacific commander would invade Bougainville, on Rabaul’s very doorstep. His strength was now such that he could hurl a multidivision force, the I Marine Amphibious Corps, into the fray. Its landing would be planned by Major General Alexander A. Vandegrift, in a brief reappearance as a field commander. Nimitz was going to attack in the Central Pacific, at a place called Tarawa. The Central Pacific action would have an indirect effect on events in the South Pacific. The combination of their efforts created Japan’s last great crisis in the Solomons.

SOPAC’s maneuver began in a low key, with diversionary attacks. A New Zealand brigade landed in the Treasury Islands in the first autonomous action by troops from that nation. Meanwhile Americans—men of the 2nd Marine Parachute Battalion—would hit Choiseul, the Solomon island next down from Bougainville. This last operation illustrates the flexibility that Allied forces could now apply. In finalizing the Bougainville invasion plan, some attention to Choiseul seemed necessary. Admiral Wilkinson and General Vandegrift had an interest in a PT boat base there, and some idea an airfield could be built. But Bougainville remained the center ring. The brass ordered up scouts. A five-man patrol spent a week on Choiseul, including time with local coastwatchers Charles J. Waddell and C. W. Seton. The battle maps had changed so much that by now they were the only ones still behind Japanese lines. The scouts transferred from a PT to a native canoe to get ashore, and used canoes on their longer treks. In late September, two more patrols inserted from Navy seaplanes. The scouts found about a thousand Japanese, mostly at the northern end. The coastwatchers believed forces several times that size had abandoned the southern tip of Choiseul to regroup, apparently awaiting barge transport. Based on this information, on October 12 the brass ordered Marine paratroops to make a diversionary landing. With luck the Japanese would be fooled, distracted from the Bougainville target as well as the New Zealanders whose operation, though secondary, was intended to actually seize the Treasuries. If nothing happened, SOPAC might reinforce the initial incursion and actually develop a Choiseul base.

The 2nd Parachute Battalion, under Lieutenant Colonel Victor H. Krulak, got the Choiseul assignment. Code-named “Blissful,” the operation was anything but. Krulak was to make as much noise as possible. It was the battalion’s first assault landing—and the men were green troops too. But Krulak was first-rate, and he had the benefit of a personal meeting with coastwatcher Seton, who came to Vella Lavella with two native guides to brief the Marine commander. There were only a couple of weeks to prepare. Some 650 paramarines landed at Voza bay the night of October 27. The Marines drove the enemy out of a barge base, but Krulak and others were wounded. His deputy took a strong patrol toward the north end of the island. They got lost. The boss radioed for PT boats to rescue them. The Marines’ plea went to Navy Lieutenant Arthur H. Berndtson, whose torpedo boat detachment had moved forward to Lambu Lambu Cove on Vella Lavella. Berndtson had just two PT boats immediately available, and one of them, PT-59, was refueling at the time. Her skipper was John F. Kennedy.

After his ordeal, Kennedy had demanded another command. Superiors gave him the PT-59, among those rearmed as a gunboat. Lieutenant Kennedy, four of his original crew still aboard, had shaken down the boat and took it into action. It was Kennedy’s PT-59 with another that saved the Marine patrol. PT-59 plus PT-236 sailed from Lambu Lambu Cove. With his fuel tank just one-third filled, Kennedy had the gas to get to Choiseul but not enough for the return trip. From the beginning the plan was for the other craft to take her in tow when the time came. The PTs charged into the bay on the afternoon of November 2, guns ablaze. They covered two landing craft that managed to extract the desperate paramarines. One craft smashed up on reefs, and PT-59 took aboard her passengers, whom they returned to Krulak’s camp. A Marine too badly wounded to move stayed in Kennedy’s bunk for the transit across The Slot. He died at sea, just before PT-59 ran out of gas. Kennedy was towed back to Lambu Lambu, where Lieutenant Berndtson now had orders to take all five of his boats to shield the evacuation of Krulak’s Marines. The entire force loaded into landing craft. Krulak’s diversion had run its course. A couple weeks later, following several more missions, Lieutenant Kennedy was examined by a doctor and ruled physically and mentally exhausted. He was invalided home. Kennedy would miss the curtain rising on the last act of the Solomons campaign. There could be no doubt who had the advantage, but even now the Imperial Navy refused to concede defeat.