Blood on the Shore

The Allied world had to wait awhile for the full story of what happened in the Solomon Islands. Until the Marines had done their work, and the Navy was ready to tell the story, it was enough to know that this time the shells pounding the invaded islands came from U.S. ships. This time the bombs rending docks, ships, airdromes and troops were U.S. bombs. The men riding shoreward in squat assault boats, leaping to the beaches, mounting their guns and slowly closing their hold on the islands were U.S. Marines. This time it was the Japs who peered slit-eyed from the slit trenches, who listened for the roar of attacking planes, who wondered when the hard, murderous strangers would next spring from the dunes and lunge forward behind grenades, machine guns and bayonets. This time it was the Japs who cried for reinforcements, and moaned that the tide of men rising from the sea never seemed to ebb or slacken.

Operations Are Continuing. After eleven days of the first U.S. offensive in World War II, the established facts made a scant background for the story to come:

> The offensive was behind schedule, but it was not failing. It was going bloodily and slowly. On the eleventh day the Navy announced that the invaders completely surprised the Japs in the first landings, took some prisoners, destroyed 18 seaplanes at their moorings. But after eleven days the Marines were still in their "shore positions"--a sufficient indication that the going had been hard, that many & many a young Marine had fallen in his first battle, that the Marines had done exceedingly well to hold their beachheads.

> On the first and second days land-based Japanese aircraft attacked U.S. warships, transports and supply ships. With obvious satisfaction, the Navy said that these attacks caused "only minor damage," cost the Japs at least 18 more planes.

> In its first detailed communique the Navy said cruisers and destroyers protected the actual invasion force, omitted any reference to carriers or naval planes.

> On the second night Japanese cruisers and destroyers tried to smash the invasion fleet. Then came what U.S. tars had long prayed for: the first real, gun-to-gun test of U.S. and Japanese surface seapower. Result: a licking for the Japs. The Navy said that U.S. cruisers and destroyers kept the Japs well away from the transports, finally forced the whole Jap fleet to retreat. Both sides took their losses; the Navy's cryptic account indicated only that they were heavy, that the Japanese had not dared another test of surface strength. The Navy calmly left others to infer that the Jap losses may well cripple them throughout the Pacific war area, that the U.S. losses may exceed those previously listed (one cruiser sunk, two cruisers, two destroyers and one transport damaged).

> There was some reason to believe what no official account claimed: that on Guadalcanal Island the Marines had driven inland from Sealark Strait and seized or immobilized the Japs' main airdrome in the lower Solomons.

> The Japs still had airdromes in the attack area, and on the eleventh day they apparently still held Tulagi harbor.

Help from Australia. The main effort of U.S. bombers from Port Moresby and Australia was to harass the Japs at their greatest concentration center in Rabaul, to hunt down convoys on the way to the Solomons, to pin down the Japanese Air Force in the southwest Pacific by incessant attacks on Salamaua and Lae in New Guinea and on Timor in the Dutch East Indies.

Why the Solomons? Just what will the U.S. gain if it takes the lower Solomons and the Japs still have their bases within air range in New Britain and New Guinea?

Admiral Ernest Joseph King, the Navy's COMINCH, anticipated such questions: the Solomons in Japanese hands were a threat to U.S. communications with Australia and New Zealand. In U.S. hands they could be bases for further attacks on the Japs in the southwest Pacific. A compelling reason which Admiral King did not state was the evidence that the Japs already had formidable forces established in the Solomons, might soon have had an impregnable base at Tulagi.

Perhaps part of the explanation of why the Solomons were attacked, instead of New Guinea or New Britain, may lie in the fact that the former are in a Navy sphere (ruled by Admiral Ghormley from New Zealand), while the latter are in the Australian sphere of operations (under MacArthur). Said a spokesman at General MacArthur's headquarters when the offensive was announced: "This is a Navy show."

It was a magnificent show, bravely performed by men who were dying on the stage. At the end, the Navy would know whether it was worth the price of admission.

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