Marines nicknamed the first Allied offensive against Japan Operation Shoestring
Guadalcanal was not even named in the first Allied plan. It was added only when scouts found Japan building an airfield there. Six months of fighting on land and sea followed, from August 1942 to February 1943, and the Allies emerged holding the initiative in the Pacific for the rest of the war.
After Pearl Harbor, Japan swept across the Philippines, Malaya, Singapore and the Dutch East Indies. Its advance was checked at the Coral Sea in May 1942, a tactical draw but the Allies' first major victory over Japan, and halted at Midway in June. Both sides lost many carrier aircraft and crews, but the United States could replace them far faster, because Japanese factories and pilot schools could not keep up with combat losses.
Admiral Ernest King pushed for an offensive in the southern Solomons to protect shipping routes between America and Australia and to open a path toward the big Japanese base at Rabaul. The original targets were Tulagi, with its fine harbour, nearby Florida Island and the Santa Cruz Islands. In early July the Japanese started a large airfield at Lunga Point on Guadalcanal, from which bombers could menace those sea lanes; by August some 2,800 personnel were there, 2,200 of them Korean forced labourers and trustees. Guadalcanal jumped to the top of the list, and the Santa Cruz landings were eventually dropped.
Priorities in Washington favoured defeating Germany first, so the Pacific commanders fought for every resource. A command dispute between Douglas MacArthur and Chester Nimitz was settled by moving the boundary between their areas westward. The invasion force of 75 warships and transports gathered near Fiji in late July. Its 16,000 troops under Alexander Vandegrift were fresh from training, carried old bolt-action Springfield rifles and had just 10 days of ammunition, with overall supplies trimmed from 90 days to 60.
The landings on 7 August 1942 met little resistance at first, and the Marines completed Henderson Field. Then both sides poured in reinforcements. The Japanese tried repeatedly to retake the airfield, and a string of naval clashes, from Savo Island to Santa Cruz, culminated in a decisive Allied win in mid-November. In December Japan chose to abandon the island and withdrew its last troops by 9 February 1943.
Source: Guadalcanal campaign
