_Col Kiyono Ichiki, a battle-seasoned Japanese Army veteran, led his
force in an impetuous and ill-fated attack on strong Marine positions
in the Battle of the Tenaru on the night of 20-21 August._]
Almost as Turner’s transports sailed away, the Japanese began a
pattern of harassing air attacks on the beachhead. Sometimes the raids
came during the day, but the 3d Defense Battalion’s 90mm antiaircraft
guns forced the bombers to fly too high for effective bombing. The
erratic pattern of bombs, however, meant that no place was safe near
the airfield, the preferred target, and no place could claim it was
bomb-free. The most disturbing aspect of Japanese air attacks soon
became the nightly harassment by Japanese aircraft which singly,
it seemed, roamed over the perimeter, dropping bombs and flares
indiscriminately. The nightly visitors, whose planes’ engines were soon
well known sounds, won the singular title “Washing Machine Charlie,”
at first, and later, “Louie the Louse,” when their presence heralded
Japanese shore bombardment. Technically, “Charlie” was a twin-engine
night bomber from Rabaul. “Louie” was a cruiser float plane that
signalled to the bombardment ships. But the harassed Marines used the
names interchangeably.
Even though most of the division’s heavy engineering equipment had
disappeared with the Navy’s transports, the resourceful Marines soon
completed the airfield’s runway with captured Japanese gear. On 12
August Admiral McCain’s aide piloted in a PBY-5 Catalina flying boat
and bumped to a halt on what was now officially Henderson Field, named
for a Marine pilot, Major Lofton R. Henderson, lost at Midway. The Navy
officer pronounced the airfield fit for fighter use and took off with a
load of wounded Marines, the first of 2,879 to be evacuated. Henderson
Field was the centerpiece of Vandegrift’s strategy; he would hold it at
all costs.
Although it was only 2,000 feet long and lacked a taxiway and adequate
drainage, the tiny airstrip, often riddled with potholes and rendered
unusable because of frequent, torrential downpours, was essential to
the success of the landing force. With it operational, supplies could
be flown in and wounded flown out. At least in the Marines’ minds, Navy
ships ceased to be the only lifeline for the defenders.
While Vandegrift’s Marines dug in east and west of Henderson Field,
Japanese headquarters in Rabaul planned what it considered an effective
response to the American offensive. Misled by intelligence estimates
that the Marines numbered perhaps 2,000 men, Japanese staff officers
believed that a modest force quickly sent could overwhelm the invaders.
On 12 August, CinCPac determined that a sizable Japanese force was
massing at Truk to steam to the Solomons and attempt to eject the
Americans. Ominously, the group included the heavy carriers _Shokaku_
and _Zuikaku_ and the light carrier _Ryujo_. Despite the painful losses
at Savo Island, the only significant increases to American naval forces
in the Solomons was the assignment of a new battleship, the _South
Dakota_ (BB 57).
[Illustration: _Of his watercolor painting “Instructions to a Patrol,”
Capt Donald L. Dickson said that three men have volunteered to locate
a Japanese bivouac. The one in the center is a clean-cut corporal with
the bearing of a high-school athlete. The man on the right is “rough
and ready.” To the one at left, it’s just another job; he may do it
heroically, but it’s just another job._
Captain Donald L. Dickson, USMCR
]
Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo had ordered Lieutenant General
Haruyoshi Hyakutake’s _Seventeenth Army_ to attack the Marine
perimeter. For his assault force, Hyakutake chose the _35th Infantry
Brigade_ (Reinforced), commanded by Major General Kiyotake Kawaguchi.
At the time, Kawaguchi’s main force was in the Palaus. Hyakutake
selected a crack infantry regiment--the _28th_--commanded by Colonel
Kiyono Ichiki to land first. Alerted for its mission while it was at
Guam, the Ichiki Detachment assault echelon, one battalion of 900
men, was transported to the Solomons on the only shipping available,
six destroyers. As a result the troops carried just small amounts of
ordnance and supplies. A follow-on echelon of 1,200 of Ichiki’s troops
was to join the assault battalion on Guadalcanal.
[Illustration: