Lost Evidence: Guadalcanal (You Tube)
This consists of five videos.
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D-day for Guadalcanal.
3It talks about how the Japanese military had swept through the islands originally.
The island is 90 miles long, and 25 miles wide.
Photos taken previous to the invasion showed the Japanese were constructing an airfield on the island.
Only one small part of the runway had not been finished.
Tulagi had the Japanese HQ on it, so it also had to be captured and held. Once it got dark the Japanese started using banzai charges.
The maps they used were based on the aerial reconnaissance photos.
The marines take the airstrip on the second day and find out that the Japanese had left behind fuel and other supplies. The airstrip is named Henderson Field.
Back on Tulagi, Japanese defenders were in caves. The marines had no flamethrowers and were basically using World War I equipment, so they would take five gallon containers of gasoline, pour some into the cave, then shoot the container and cause it to blow up.
A Marine throws a charge into one of the caves. The island is taken by the end of day 2 of the attack.
A defensive perimeter is established around Henderson Field.
The American fleet is near Savo island. The Japanese fleet attacks and wins a major victory.
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One of the guys who had been in the battle said they would, on patrol, find Americans that had been taken by the Japanese and their heads had been cut off and put on pikes. This got the soldiers mad, and another guy says that, from that point on, the basic code was 'no prisoners taken.'
The Japanese counter-attacked using banzai charges and ran straight into the U.S. guns.
The next morning tanks and heavier guns were used to kill the Japanese. The result was around 800 Japanese dead, and 34 Americans had been killed. This shattered the myth of the Japanese superman soldier.
Once Henderson Field was operational, American planes were able to attack the Japanese who were trying to land reinforcements; they could only do this during the daytime, though.
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The Battle of Bloody Ridge begins.
A major problem on the island was malaria.
The Japanese concentrated their fire later on the airfield itself. The Japanese then tried to stage other attacks, but those didn't work and they were 'eviscerated'.
The Japanese tried to add more reinforcements, but the Cactus Air Force attacked the ships. The Marines fought for four months before they were finally able to leave the island. Around 7000 Americans had died, and some 30,000 Japanese had died on the island.
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