America's first offensive of WWII began with Marines landing on an island they couldn't pronounce, fighting Japanese forces in a six-month nightmare of jungle, malaria, and naval slaughter.
On August 7, 1942, U.S. Marines landed on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands — America's first offensive operation of World War II. The target was a partially-built Japanese airfield that, if completed, would threaten Allied supply lines to Australia. The Marines took the airfield easily. Then the Japanese counterattacked, and the campaign turned into a six-month battle of attrition that neither side expected.
The waters around Guadalcanal became known as 'Iron Bottom Sound' — named for the dozens of warships from both sides that sank there. The naval campaign was brutal: seven major surface engagements were fought, with the U.S. and Japan each losing roughly 24 ships. The U.S. lost two aircraft carriers. For months, the Japanese Navy owned the seas at night, running supply convoys the Marines called the 'Tokyo Express.'
Henderson Field — the airfield the Marines had seized — became the campaign's center of gravity. Both sides understood that whoever controlled it controlled the island. The Japanese launched repeated massed infantry assaults to retake it; the Marines held on with artillery, air support, and desperate hand-to-hand fighting. In the jungle beyond the perimeter, soldiers fought in darkness and heat with malaria rates exceeding 50 percent.
Japanese ground forces suffered from the same supply problems they'd imposed on the Marines. Cut off by American air superiority during daylight, unable to land heavy equipment, Japanese soldiers began starving months before the campaign ended. Disease and starvation ultimately killed more Japanese troops than combat. By the time Japan decided to evacuate in February 1943, the island's garrison had been effectively destroyed.
The evacuation itself was a rare Japanese success: Operation Ke extracted 10,652 survivors under American noses over three nights, so quietly that the U.S. initially believed Japan was launching a new offensive. It was one of the most skillfully executed evacuations of the war — and the last thing Japan's forces would accomplish on Guadalcanal.
Guadalcanal marked the strategic turning point in the Pacific. Japan had lost its offensive initiative, 24 warships, nearly 700 aircraft, and 25,000 men. The Americans had learned how to fight a sustained campaign against a ferocious enemy. From this point, Japan would fight a defensive war, giving up island by island as the American advance moved toward the home islands.