Battle of Guadalcanal

When Japanese troops swept onto Guadalcanal in June of 1942, followed by American marines two months later, intent on removing the enemy from the island, few people outside of Polynesia had ever heard of this 2,000-square-mile speck of jungle in the Solomon Islands.

Over the next six months, Guadalcanal and its neighboring islands would prove to be a critical turning point between the Allies and their Japanese adversaries during World War Two. Surprised by the Allied offensive, the Japanese made determined attempts between August and November to retake the airfield they had begun to build on Guadalcanal.

Guadalcanal Campaign

The campaign would involve three major land battles fought in dense jungle conditions, seven pivotal naval battles (five nighttime surface actions and two carrier battles), and almost daily aerial dogfights that lasted until early November, when the Japanese made their last-ditch attempt to land enough troops on Guadalcanal to retake their geographically strategic air base.

In December, the Japanese surrendered their efforts to retake the island, evacuating the last of their remaining forces on February 7th, 1943. The Battle of Guadalcanal followed the successful Allied defensive actions at the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway in May and June of 1942.

Along with the battles at Milne Bay and Buna-Gona, the Guadalcanal campaign marked the Allies’ transition from defensive operations to offensive superiority, effectively seizing the strategic initiative in the Pacific Theater of Operations. While the Japanese were clearly in a defensive rather than an expansionary mode after their losses at Guadalcanal, they continued to fight with extreme ferocity during the Solomon Islands campaign, the New Guinea campaign, the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign, the Maria and Palau Islands campaign, as well as the attacks on the Japanese islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

The Japanese would finally surrender on September 2nd, 1945, after the Americans dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, followed three days later with a second nuclear detonation at Nagasaki.