The Conquering Tide (33 page)

American search flights had tracked Tanaka's movements carefully. He
had staged through Rabaul and the Buin and Shortland harbors, where a large increase in shipping during the last week of the month had clearly signaled another supply run. To counter it, Halsey dispatched Rear Admiral Carleton H. Wright with a cruiser-destroyer force (Task Force 67) from Espiritu Santo. Wright passed through Lengo Channel at 9:45 p.m. and arrived in the waters north of Tassafaronga Point just as Tanaka closed from the north.

At 11:06 p.m., SG radar on the flagship cruiser
Minneapolis
discovered two ships at a distance of 23,000 yards. The blips gradually resolved into seven or eight ships on a southeasterly course. At about the same time, Japanese lookouts noted flares dropped from cruiser planes overhead, and obtained a visual fix on “what appear to be enemy ships, bearing 100°.”
⁹
Without waiting for Tanaka's order, the lead destroyer
Takanami
launched torpedoes and opened fire.

The Americans had brought superior firepower into the action—five cruisers and six destroyers matched against Tanaka's eight destroyers, six of which were short of munitions and heavily loaded with supplies. But Wright was slow to give the order to open fire, and the delay mattered. The American torpedoes were fired at an awkward angle, and none struck home. Their 8- and 5-inch projectiles were better aimed, but they were concentrated on the lead ship
Takanami
, which was quickly set ablaze all along her length and began going down by the head.
Takanami
's sacrifice effectively decided the action in favor of the Japanese, because she absorbed all the American gunners had to offer while her explosions and fires screened her seven sisters. No other Japanese ship suffered a direct hit in the battle, or even a destructive near miss.
¹⁰

Tanaka ordered a hard port turn to take his column on a course parallel to that of Wright's. As they rotated their broadsides toward the enemy, the undamaged Japanese destroyers launched their deadly spreads. The Long Lance torpedoes ran true. Beginning at about 11:27, as the warheads connected with their targets, the big cruisers at the heart of Wright's column lurched upward and erupted in flames. The
Minneapolis
took two crippling blows on her port side. The first tore off the ship's bow and ignited gasoline storage tanks; the second struck amidships and flooded her engineering spaces. Less than a minute later, the
New Orleans
was hit on her port bow. The explosion detonated her magazines, tore off a large section of her bow, and killed the entire crew of turret 2.
¹¹
The
Pensacola
's fuel tanks were
ignited by a torpedo hit; she would burn through the night. The venerable
Northampton
, the last cruiser in Wright's column, gave chase to the retreating Japanese ships and sent several 8-inch salvos after them. For that she was rewarded with two devastating torpedo hits that put an end to her. She was abandoned and sank early the next morning.

Not for the first time, the U.S. Navy had suffered a dreadful beating in a night torpedo action. In fifteen minutes, and at a cost of one destroyer, Tanaka had sent one heavy cruiser into the abyss and critically damaged three more. The naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison, a free-handed critic but a miser with praise, rated Tanaka's performance “superb.”
¹²
Admiral Nimitz ruefully observed that “we are made painfully aware of the Japanese skill, both in night and day action, in the use of guns and torpedoes. To date there has been no reason to doubt his energy, persistence, and courage.”
¹³

Wright estimated that his force had sunk four Japanese destroyers and damaged two more. That rosy claim was viewed with suspicion even by the crews of his own ships, especially when dawn revealed no sign of enemy wreckage. If there was anything to console the Americans, it was the exceptional valor and skill of the damage-control parties that saved the
Minneapolis
,
New Orleans
, and
Pensacola
. The action had left the three cruisers ablaze and in near-sinking condition, but all somehow managed to quell the fires and hobble into Tulagi Harbor, and all would be returned to service later in the war.

Tanaka chose to withdraw to Shortland without attempting the supply drop. His reasons were sensible enough—his destroyers had expended all torpedoes, and he could expect attack from the air if he did not get well away to the west before morning. But the decision exacerbated the privations of the army on Guadalcanal, and apparently angered his superiors at Rabaul and Truk. He must try again, without delay. On the night of December 3, ten destroyers managed to drop 1,500 supply drums off Cape Esperance. But only a fraction, perhaps one-fifth of the drums, reached the Japanese army. The units assigned to recover them had been undermanned and physically exhausted. The following morning, American fighters flying from Henderson Field strafed and destroyed several hundred drums found drifting in Ironbottom Sound. Tanaka tried another run on December 7, but his ships were harried by bombers and fighters, then attacked and driven away by six PT boats west of Savo Island.
¹⁴

Even in their anchorage at Shortland, the Japanese could not rest. B-17s
and fighters raided the area every day. On December 10, two fuel tankers were struck and set afire, with heavy damage. Tanaka sortied with nine destroyers the following afternoon and managed to drop 1,200 supply drums. American PT boats swarmed out of Tulagi Harbor and launched torpedoes, one of which struck Tanaka's flagship, the recently commissioned
Teruzuki
. “The ship caught fire and became unnavigable almost at once,” he wrote. “Leaking fuel was set ablaze, turning the sea into a mass of flames. When fire reached the after powder magazine there was a huge explosion, and the ship began to sink.”
¹⁵
She was scuttled at 4:00 the next morning; more than half her crew went down with her. The eight surviving destroyers withdrew to Shortland. Tanaka, injured in the action and confined to a hospital at Buin, was disgusted to learn that only 220 of the 1,200 drums launched that night had been recovered by the army.

With the moon waxing, the PT boat attacks were growing more deadly every night, and Admiral Mikawa ordered a temporary halt to the supply runs. Tanaka privately advised him that the game was up—Guadalcanal must be abandoned. For his trouble, Tanaka received orders transferring him to an administrative post in Singapore. This talented officer, who had done his best to supply Guadalcanal with the limited tools at hand, and who had scored a mighty naval victory less than a month earlier, would never command at sea again.

Talk of pulling out of Guadalcanal was strictly taboo. The Japanese army, even more than the navy, had staked its honor and reputation on the recapture of Henderson Field. Lieutenant General Hitoshi Imamura, recently arrived at Rabaul to assume command of Eighth Area Army, intended to summon the Sixth and Fifty-First Divisions from China and put them ashore on Guadalcanal by the end of the year.
¹⁶
Senior naval commanders thought the plan absurd but were reluctant to say so. Even if 50,000 more troops could somehow be transported to the island, an unlikely prospect in light of November's events, how could they be supported? If 30,000 men currently on the island were starving, how could 80,000 be fed?

In the privacy of his diary, Admiral Ugaki contemplated the inevitable. The interservice politics were extremely delicate, and considerations of “face” would certainly come into play. But it would not do to persist in a futile campaign for the sake of maintaining cordial relations between the army and the navy. On December 7, he wrote, “Deeming wrong as wrong and impossible as impossible, and without being obstinate because of
face-savings or without coaxing others, we should deal with this important matter with the utmost frankness.” The army would have to arrive at the conclusion independently—“it is essential to let them realize its inevitability by themselves.”
¹⁷
At any event, the question was out of his hands. Such a momentous change in policy could be decided only by the high command in Tokyo.

I
N
J
APAN AND OTHER POINTS WEST
of the International Date Line, the eighth day of December marked the first anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The date was feted with the usual self-congratulatory bunkum. The Imperial Navy headquarters released a grossly inflated tally of enemy ships sunk in the first year of the “Greater East Asia War”: eleven aircraft carriers, eleven battleships, forty-six cruisers, forty-eight destroyers, and ninety-three submarines. (More accurately, it also reported a cumulative total of Japanese officers and sailors killed in action: 14,802.)
¹⁸

Newspapers and magazines published annual retrospectives highlighting the notable victories achieved by Japanese forces.
Kokusai Shashin Joho
, the International Graphic Magazine, published gun camera photos depicting burning enemy ships and aircraft.
¹⁹
In a speech carried over the airwaves, Foreign Minister Masayuki Tani declared that American leaders “are truly running their nation in a laughable manner. They may be high in producing capacity, but without the more essential qualities, such as lofty war ideals, America cannot win over us.”
²⁰

Japanese servicemen returning from the South Pacific were confounded by the elation they found at home. No one in Tokyo seemed to grasp how precarious Japan's position had become. There might be some compelling purpose in firing up the spirits of the public, but the boundaries dividing fact and fantasy were blurred even in the inner councils of power. Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, in a December 8 speech to military leaders at the War Ministry, declared that the Allies “want obstinately to continue their counterattack, but making use of our great material resources, we are ready to annihilate them at any moment at any point on the globe.”
²¹
That very week, as Tojo undoubtedly knew, the Imperial General Staff had begun a joint army-navy strategic review with an eye toward cutting losses and pulling out of Guadalcanal. In Truk, Admiral Ugaki judged that a visiting delegation of army staff officers “didn't seem to have enough knowledge
of the fervent fighting spirit of the American forces. Neither did they show much interest in comparative strength, theirs and ours.”
²²
Captain Tameichi Hara, who had returned to Japan for repairs to his ship, dined with a group of naval staff officers in mid-December. “I don't know how you who are stationed here view things from the homeland, but it is hell at the front,” he told them. “As professionals you all know better than to base your judgments on the official bravado announced by headquarters in Tokyo. We have had some tactical victories, but we are suffering a strategic defeat.”
²³
The mood grew tense, and one of the others told Hara that it was a social occasion and he ought to lighten up.

In mid-December, Colonel Joichiro Sanada of the Imperial Headquarters staff was dispatched on a fact-finding mission to the South Pacific. At Truk and Rabaul, he solicited and recorded the views of senior officers of both the army and the navy. Even accounting for what is lost in translation, one is struck by the temporizing, evasive, and subtext-laden character of the answers given. More than one officer remarked that recapturing the island “is difficult.” Several kicked responsibility up to the “ultimate authorities.” All were preoccupied with army-navy sensitivities. The army called for more ships; the navy called for more army airpower. Neither was willing to be the first to advocate giving up Guadalcanal, but neither was keen to commit its strength to a renewed offensive. “If the army can undertake it with confidence,” said a senior member of Yamamoto's staff, in a typical reply, “the navy will pitch in, too.” General Imamura, who had recently spoken of landing two fresh divisions on Guadalcanal, offered Sanada this master stroke of equivocation: “At present, we are searching for a plan to lead us out of the difficulty, but we alone cannot say that the operational policy be changed. I hope that the central authorities will make a decision from the overall viewpoint after deliberating on the relationship with the navy.”
²⁴

In conferences at the Imperial General Headquarters, it was customary for officers of the two services to sit on opposite sides of the table, an arrangement that could only dramatize the rift between them. Recriminations proceeded until all arguments were exhausted. The army blamed the navy for failing to maintain adequate supply lines. The navy criticized the ground tactics employed on Guadalcanal, and demanded more army air support. General Kenryo Sato recalled “heated discussions exchanging clenched fists over the table between the army and navy.”
²⁵
Neither side
could afford an impasse, however, and not only because both services were suffering ruinous losses in the Solomons. The emperor had lost patience with the sniping between his two military branches and had issued stern warnings against disharmony. The generals and admirals had no choice but to grapple toward some sort of face-saving consensus. Gradually it became clear that everyone was looking for a way out of Guadalcanal. As one conference followed another, and the regime stumbled toward a new accord, about 200 Japanese soldiers on the island perished each day.

Colonel Sanada reported to Tojo upon his return to the capital on December 29. His formal recommendation, couched in terms only slightly less paralytic than those he had heard in Rabaul and Truk, was that “it is not advisable to hurry the recapture of Guadalcanal Island.”
²⁶
He had expected a furious rebuke, but was relieved to learn that Tojo had apparently reached the same conclusion. Sanada's report and recommendation were “adopted much more readily than I had feared.”
²⁷