Short History of World War II - James L. Stokesbury [136]
The Americans countered with four destroyers and, this time, two battleships of their own, Washington and South Dakota. The latter took a hit that put her temporarily out of action, and for a while it was Washington and the destroyers against fourteen Japanese. With her radar-controlled gunnery she sank Kirishima and a destroyer; then South Dakota came back on the line, and the Japanese had had enough. They fled northward.
The mid-November battles effectively turned the tide in the waters of the Solomons. The Americans were now in superior strength, and the Japanese tacitly acknowledged the fact. The direct challenge was over. They were by no means ready to quit completely, however. At the end of the month when Japanese Admiral Tanaka was caught off Tassafaronga Point with a replenishment squadron, he attacked furiously and, badly outnumbered though he was, he hit three American heavy cruisers and sank a fourth, for the loss of only one of his destroyers.
With naval supremacy, the Americans increased their advantage on the island of Guadalcanal. Japanese reinforcements dwindled, and for supplies they were reduced to running their ships offshore and throwing over oil drums, hoping they would drift to land. The American troop buildup continued, and they gradually outnumbered the enemy. In December, the 1st Marine Division, what was left of it, was finally withdrawn, and the fever-wracked, young-old men came out of the line at last. The Japanese now threw up their own defensive lines east of Henderson Field, and defied all efforts to dislodge them. Wasteful of manpower in a charge, they were indefatigable diggers and burrowers, each foxhole a stronghold containing a man willing to die if he could take an American with him.
By January of 1943 the Americans had 50,000 men on the island. The Japanese were down to about 12,000 half-starved survivors. They had another 50,000 to the northward but could not run them down the Slot in the face of American naval power. Reluctantly, they decided to cut their losses and get out. In early February they ran a series of high-speed destroyers down to their perimeter and, under the Americans’ noses, lifted their troops off the beaches. It was the most successful evacuation of its type since the British pulled out of the Dardanelles in 1915. But evacuations are not victories. Now both at Midway and at Guadalcanal the Americans had started out the weaker and ended up the winners. The Japanese had frittered away their strength and their advantages, committing themselves piecemeal, and losing opportunities while the enemy quickly improved. Yamamoto’s remark about a navy of golfers and bridge-players was coming home to haunt him.
Elsewhere the story was the same. A thousand miles west of Guadalcanal, MacArthur was forging his way up the Papuan coast of New Guinea, past Buna, Gona, Salamaua, Lae. The Australians finally stemmed the Japanese advance through the Owen Stanley Mountains and sent them back from Kokoda, slowly at first, and then routing them triumphantly. The country was horrible: swampy, insect-ridden jungle and sharp mountain ridges where man was not the only, but the most deadly creature.
What began in 1942 continued through 1943. Germany still had priority, but the industrial power of the United States, coupled with that of its allies, was capable of fighting two wars at once. American military and naval commanders were not going to wait for Germany to be defeated before turning on the treacherous enemy who had attacked