The Conquering Tide (35 page)

The Guadalcanal campaign had exposed all of the internal rifts and rivalries that divided the Japanese military regime and paralyzed its ability to craft coherent strategies. Major decisions, especially those involving joint action by the army and navy, were reached gradually. Consensus had to be given time to congeal. Considerations of “face” were always near the surface. The Japanese army had first discounted the significance of the enemy's move into Guadalcanal, assuring themselves and their navy counterparts that the Americans could be dislodged at any time. Piecemeal and ineffective troop landings followed. First, a lightly equipped regiment was sent in and annihilated; then a lightly equipped brigade; eventually a full division, but without adequate munitions, equipment, or provisions. Again and again, frontal attacks on strongly fortified marine lines were beaten back, with devastating losses to the attackers. Even within the ranks of the navy, command rivalries were debilitating. More
than once, Admiral Raizo Tanaka received contradictory orders from the Eleventh Air Fleet and the Eighth Fleet. One headquarters had dominion over the entire region, and the other stood directly above Tanaka in the chain of command. Each seemed to regard the other as an interloper, and they tussled over issues large and small. Tanaka thought it “inconceivable” that the two commands did not confer effectively with one another, since both were (usually) seated at Rabaul. “When their orders were conflicting and incompatible, it was embarrassing at least, and utterly confounding at worst.”
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Once a course of action was chosen, a prevailing inertia inhibited modification. The rigidity inherent in Japanese operations led to repeating patterns that could be analyzed and predicted by the Allies. Even when communications intelligence failed to discover the Japanese intentions, American commanders could often foretell when, where, and how the enemy would mount his next assault. “In fighting it is bad to repeat a formula,” Musashi had written, “and to repeat it a third time is worse. When an effort fails it may be followed with a second attempt. If that fails, a drastically changed formula must be adopted. If that fails, one must resort to another completely different formula. When the opponent thinks high, hit low. When he thinks low, hit high. That is the secret of swordsmanship.”
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G
UADALCANAL WORE THE SCARS
of the long, vicious conflict that had raged on, over, and around it. The Lunga Plain was pockmarked with craters and strewn with broken and splintered palm trees. Everywhere there was wreckage, shoved to the edges of roads or airstrips or lying half-awash on the beaches. Foliage was beginning to creep over the rusting remains of smashed tanks and crashed aircraft. Copper telephone wire was draped haphazardly over standing palms. West of Point Cruz, the bows of Tanaka's four bombed-out transports jutted up onto the beach. Even months after the last naval action, Ironbottom Sound was still littered with floating debris, and brown coils of fuel oil marked the sites of sunken wrecks.

On the ridges south of Henderson Field, trees and foliage had been mowed down by artillery and machine-gun fire. Beyond the coils of barbed wire marking the American lines, the bloated and stinking remains of Japanese soldiers lay half-buried in the muck. The stench was awful, but the Americans were in no hurry to bury the enemy dead. The Japanese
had been known to booby-trap the corpses of their fallen friends. Ants and other scavengers would eventually strip them to the bone.

Among these relics of past carnage were ambitious new building projects. It has been cleverly observed that the bulldozer was one of the most significant weapons of the Pacific War, and the point was never better showcased than on Guadalcanal in 1943. Ten new 1,100-man Seabee battalions arrived to join the pioneering 6th and 14th (which had landed under fire in November 1942), and all were reorganized into the 18th Naval Construction Regiment. Airfields were expanded, regraded, and resurfaced with concrete made of coral or red volcanic rock. Networks of taxiways connected them to revetments, machine shops, barracks, warehouses, and camouflaged munitions dumps. The hills inland of Koli Point were leveled and developed into “Carney Field,” a new airbase for USAAF bombers. Tank farms mushroomed around Lunga Point and Henderson Field, and were linked by miles of piping to the airfields and wharves. Bulldozers uprooted the trees and flora around Koli, Lunga, and Cruz Points, where modern seaport complexes—concrete piers, cranes, pipelines, narrow-gauge railways running into warehouses—would serve the constantly arriving transports and tankers. Fresh troops, airmen, maintenance crews, and civilians poured into the island day by day, arriving on ships or on the big Douglas C-47s of the South Pacific Combat Air Transport Command (SCAT). Paved roads were built through recently impenetrable jungle; steel-framed bridges were flung across rivers; electrical power lines were strung between utility poles; tent cities appeared suddenly in palm groves and
kunai
fields. The social nexus of the growing community was the “Hotel De Gink,” a row of Quonset huts providing lodging for transient airmen and other visitors. A spacious dining hall served coffee and hot meals around the clock.

As the counteroffensive rolled up the Solomons, the island groups to the south and east—New Caledonia, New Hebrides, the Santa Cruz group, Samoa, the Fijis—were demoted to the status of holding zones, rest areas, and way stations. The war had passed them by, but they remained populated by large and growing numbers of Allied personnel. Pacific War memoirs tend to dwell at length on these tropical paradises, safely removed from the fighting, where young servicemen (and women, particularly nurses) sojourned for weeks, months, or years of their lives. They were the setting for James Michener's postwar novel
Tales of the South Pacific
, a thinly fictionalized series of vignettes drawn from the author's experiences as a reserve
naval lieutenant stationed on Espiritu Santo and other islands east of the Solomons.
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Life in those quiescent islands figures very little in histories or even films about the war, but it retains a potent hold on the memories of the men and women who were there.

Visitors who set foot on those remote shores were easily enchanted by the exotic beauty of the region—by the azure lagoons and white beaches; by the brilliantly colored fish, flowers, and birds; by the soft rustle of palm fronds and the metrical thump of the surf. Limes and lemons grew wild along the beaches. Flying fish leapt from the wakes of passing boats. Sunsets were unlike anything they had seen before: a sublime palette of colors ranging from blue to orange to green to red to purple. The stars were wrong, at least in the southern half of the sky. One might find a familiar constellation near the northern horizon, but it would appear upside down. Wartime letters, diaries, and memoirs are full of such observations.

The islands also had a sinister aspect. Observers described dark volcanoes shrouded in steaming mists. Land crabs the size of dinner plates scurried around their tents at night. Fruit bats with four-foot wingspans took flight at sunset. Insects were relentless, and the mosquitoes carried malaria. Americans and other Westerners were alternately fascinated and repelled by the natives—their loincloths and bare breasts, their betel-reddened incisors filed to sharp points, the vaguely intelligible version of English they spoke. Rumors circulated that the tribesmen still practiced headhunting and cannibalism, a prospect both enthralling and hideous.
Long pig
was the pidgin word for human flesh. Harold Buell recalled that islanders on Espiritu Santo liked to joke about cannibalism. “A favorite native joke was to pinch your arm or stomach and state solemnly: ‘You makeum fine long pig.' They would then grin broadly showing their front teeth.”
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Americans would barter handsomely for a shrunken head, and at least a few of those gruesome souvenirs were smuggled aboard ships and taken back to the United States.

Units left on rear-area islands for weeks or months suffered paralyzing boredom. Poker games went on for days, as they did in every other part of the Pacific. Men played checkers, backgammon, and cribbage, and read
months-old magazines, comic books, and newspapers. Bloody “grudge matches” were fought between feuding soldiers or sailors of rival ships, with wagers placed on the outcome. Everyone lived for mail, which arrived more regularly as the war progressed; reading letters, however, only took up a fraction of their time, and wartime censorship limited what they could write. Movies were screened each night in makeshift outdoor amphitheaters, with the men sitting on the ground or on coconut logs, but because new reels were scarce, the men were often condemned to watch the same film twenty or more times. They often recited the dialogue mechanically, in unison with the actors. Eventually, on the better-developed islands, the Seabees built tennis courts, horseshoe pits, and baseball diamonds. USO tours stopped at the larger islands, and the shows got bigger and more lavish in the final two years of the war. The smaller islands were lucky to receive any entertainment at all. Marine Private John Vollinger, who spent eight months on a lesser island in the Samoa group, saw “only one U.S.O. show consisting of two old vaudeville guys that told dirty jokes while juggling. Back in the States they would have been booted off the stage, but we wanted entertainment in any form.”
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Heavy drinking was a time-honored outlet. Every island had an officers' club, though on smaller islands it might amount to a wooden table covered by a thatched roof. Admiral Aaron Stanton Merrill liked to say that “if we could find a palm tree and a bottle we'd set up an officer's club.”
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Enlisted men had to work harder to procure a supply. Throughout the Pacific, one could find an illicit trade in “torpedo juice,” the high-proof fuel used in torpedoes. Beer was usually rationed at two cans a week. When a larger quantity of beer was obtained by backhanded means, it could be chilled by taking it to high altitude for thirty minutes. Pilots would provide that service in exchange for a share of the spoils. Whiskey was more scarce and expensive, but there was a price for everything on the black market.

“War everywhere is monotonous in its dreadfulness,” wrote the newsman Ernie Pyle, when he toured the theater later in the war. “But in the Pacific, even the niceness of life gets monotonous. . . . [T]he days go by in their endless sameness and they drive men nuts. It's sometimes called going ‘pineapple crazy.' ”
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Morale in the South Pacific boondocks was a growing concern in 1943. The Joint Chiefs discussed the problem at length. General Marshall worried about the state of mind among army garrisons on rear island bases, and thought it essential to move them forward into combat areas as soon as
it became feasible. His views on this subject likely factored in the support he often gave to King's demands for offensive action in the Pacific.

A
DMIRAL
H
ALSEY, WHO PRESIDED OVER
the far-flung islands from his COMSOPAC headquarters in Noumea, was one of those rare military leaders who did not attach much importance to his own dignity. He laughed out loud at jokes made at his expense. He wore khaki shorts that flaunted his pale, spindly legs. He was not too proud to admit that he had graduated in the bottom third of his Naval Academy class of 1904, or that he had run up enough demerits to put his career there in peril. He had been a star fullback, he often said, on the worst football team in the navy's history. (The team lost to Army every year he played, always by lopsided scores.) Halsey agreed with Ernest King's maxim that a sailor who didn't drink, smoke, or chase women was not to be entirely trusted. His bony hands were usually clutching a cigarette. He once stepped off a plane in Espiritu Santo and kissed his girlfriend, an army nurse, while a row of officers stood at attention. Now and again he drank until the break of dawn, slept for four hours, then grumbled about his hangover at the 9:00 a.m. staff meeting: “It seemed like a good idea last night.”
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Liberty with Halsey, said the admiral's long-term chief of staff, was “more damned fun than a circus.”
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Halsey had a fine sense of the absurd. He threw out wisecracks that would not have been out of place in a Bob Hope monologue. Overhearing one sailor tell another, “I'd go through hell for that old son of a bitch,” Halsey accosted the pair and said, “Right here I want to tell you that I object to being called ‘old.' ”
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In 1945, upon receiving word of Japan's surrender, he sent the following instructions to all carrier air groups: “Investigate and shoot down all snoopers—not vindictively, but in a friendly sort of way.”
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He was willing to be kidded about his lack of fortitude under fire. When the
Enterprise
was attacked by Japanese warplanes off the Marshall Islands in February 1942, Halsey threw himself flat on deck, forsaking the grandeur of his three-star rank. As he picked himself up, he noticed that one of his young signalmen was stifling a laugh. “Who the hell are you laughing at?” he asked. “You don't have rank enough to laugh at an admiral.” As the man began to apologize, perhaps fearing he was in serious trouble, Halsey cut him off, saying, “I'm going to make you a Chief Petty Officer—that will make it look better.”
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Halsey knew perfectly well that stories of these antics would circulate widely, with variations and embellishments, all up and down the ranks. Together they crafted an image of a happy warrior, a fighting man who loved war and wanted everyone else to have as much fun as he was having. There was plenty of truth in that representation, but it was not complete. More than any other major military commander of the Pacific War, Halsey wore his emotions on his sleeve. He wept openly, frequently, and without pretense. When inspecting ships returned from battle, or visiting wounded men in hospital wards, or pinning medals to men's chests, or stepping up to a microphone to address the crew of a ship, he was never far from tears. Upon receiving the Distinguished Service Medal for leading a carrier raid into the Marshall Islands, he choked up and told the officers and men of the
Enterprise
that they had won it for him. His peculiar style of leadership was full of contradictions: simultaneously cold-blooded and tender-hearted, bombastic and coolly logical, overbearing and self-deprecating, sentimental and ridiculous. Whatever it was, it resonated powerfully. Sailor James J. Fahey of the
Montpelier
undoubtedly spoke for the fleet when he told his diary, in November 1943, “The men would do anything for him.”
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