_by Henry I. Shaw, Jr._
In the early summer of 1942, intelligence reports of the construction
of a Japanese airfield near Lunga Point on Guadalcanal in the Solomon
Islands triggered a demand for offensive action in the South Pacific.
The leading offensive advocate in Washington was Admiral Ernest J.
King, Chief of Naval Operations (CNO). In the Pacific, his view was
shared by Admiral Chester A. Nimitz, Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet
(CinCPac), who had already proposed sending the 1st Marine Raider
Battalion to Tulagi, an island 20 miles north of Guadalcanal across
Sealark Channel, to destroy a Japanese seaplane base there. Although
the Battle of the Coral Sea had forestalled a Japanese amphibious
assault on Port Moresby, the Allied base of supply in eastern New
Guinea, completion of the Guadalcanal airfield might signal the
beginning of a renewed enemy advance to the south and an increased
threat to the lifeline of American aid to New Zealand and Australia. On
23 July 1942, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) in Washington agreed that
the line of communications in the South Pacific had to be secured. The
Japanese advance had to be stopped. Thus, Operation Watchtower, the
seizure of Guadalcanal and Tulagi, came into being.
The islands of the Solomons lie nestled in the backwaters of the South
Pacific. Spanish fortune-hunters discovered them in the mid-sixteenth
century, but no European power foresaw any value in the islands until
Germany sought to expand its budding colonial empire more than two
centuries later. In 1884, Germany proclaimed a protectorate over
northern New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, and the northern
Solomons. Great Britain countered by establishing a protectorate over
the southern Solomons and by annexing the remainder of New Guinea. In
1905, the British crown passed administrative control over all its
territories in the region to Australia, and the Territory of Papua,
with its capital at Port Moresby, came into being. Germany’s holdings
in the region fell under the administrative control of the League of
Nations following World War I, with the seat of the colonial government
located at Rabaul on New Britain. The Solomons lay 10 degrees below the
Equator--hot, humid, and buffeted by torrential rains. The celebrated
adventure novelist, Jack London, supposedly muttered: “If I were king,
the worst punishment I could inflict on my enemies would be to banish
them to the Solomons.”
On 23 January 1942, Japanese forces seized Rabaul and fortified it
extensively. The site provided an excellent harbor and numerous
positions for airfields. The devastating enemy carrier and plane
losses at the Battle of Midway (3-6 June 1942) had caused _Imperial
General Headquarters_ to cancel orders for the invasion of Midway, New
Caledonia, Fiji, and Samoa, but plans to construct a major seaplane
base at Tulagi went forward. The location offered one of the best
anchorages in the South Pacific and it was strategically located: 560
miles from the New Hebrides, 800 miles from New Caledonia, and 1,000
miles from Fiji.
The outposts at Tulagi and Guadalcanal were the forward evidences of a
sizeable Japanese force in the region, beginning with the _Seventeenth
Army_, headquartered at Rabaul. The enemy’s _Eighth Fleet_, _Eleventh
Air Fleet_, and _1st_, _7th_, _8th_, and _14th Naval Base Forces_
also were on New Britain. Beginning on 5 August 1942, Japanese signal
intelligence units began to pick up transmissions between Noumea on
New Caledonia and Melbourne, Australia. Enemy analysts concluded that
Vice Admiral Richard L. Ghormley, commanding the South Pacific Area
(ComSoPac), was signalling a British or Australian force in preparation
for an offensive in the Solomons or at New Guinea. The warnings were
passed to Japanese headquarters at Rabaul and Truk, but were ignored.
[Illustration: THE PACIFIC AREAS