As most people know, Dec. 7, 1941, was the “Day that will live in infamy,” as proclaimed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his declaration of war on the Empire of Japan. The attack on Pearl Harbour put in action America’s response, and one of the first locations that response took place, on land, was the Battle of Guadalcanal. It took eight months for the Americans to get there.
On Aug. 7, 1942, U.S. Marines landed on Guadalcanal, quickly seizing an airfield that would soon be renamed Henderson Field. Guadalcanal was at the very periphery of the Japanese Empire’s Pacific conquests, and damned close to Australia, relatively speaking. Its airfield was key. To start the long road to Tokyo, the Solomon Islands, including Guadalcanal, had to be taken. The Marines captured the airfield, and dug in.
In response, the Japanese landed a force of 900 elite soldiers east of the airfield on Aug. 19. Of that contingent, 800 battle-hardened troops marched for two days before attacking. The Marines, aware of the impending assault, lined up on a tidal lagoon that they actually called Alligator Creek, but history would call, mistakenly, Tenaru River.
With Marine artillery pieces firing canister shot (think of giant shotgun shells) and nests of Great War-era Browning M-1917 water-cooled heavy machine guns, the Marines were prepared to stop the Japanese.
These machine guns were heavy, ungainly and fearsome. As long as you didn’t run out of water for cooling or bullets for firing, they would basically fire forever, as many soldiers found out in no-mans-land during the Great War (what most people call the First World War).
Into this fearsome fire, roughly 800 of Japanese Colonel Kiyonao Ichiki’s the 28th Infantry Regiment charged. It was one of the first times American ground forces were on the receiving end of suicidal massed “Banzai” charges. Despite running into almost certain death, the Japanese soldiers would not relent.
As I noted above, the Japanese were battle-hardened. Japan had been at war in China since 1931. They had rolled over half of the Pacific. These men knew how to fight, and how to kill. Many had done it before. And they would not expend their lives cheaply.
Eventually five tanks were sent in to finish the job. The rear of the tanks looked like meat grinders, having driven over living and dead Japanese. Yet still, they would not surrender.
The result of the attack was a slaughter the likes of which that startled the Americans. They had never seen anything like that. Of the 15 prisoners they took, they were largely taken unconscious. The surviving wounded did their best to take out American medics with a grenade instead of allowing them to attend to their wounds. After this battle, Marines learned there was no such thing as taking prisoners with the Japanese.
The Battle of Tenaru River is shown in great detail in the first episode of HBO’s miniseries The Pacific. It is gut-wrenching, to say the least.
Of those roughly 800 Japanese attackers, somewhere between 774 and 777 were killed. In expending their lives, they had managed to inflict between 41 and 44 deaths among the American Marines of the 1st Marine Regiment. Keep that number in mind.
Step forward to Oct. 1, 2017. One man, and at this point, presumably only one man, hauls numerous guns into a Las Vegas hotel room overlooking a country music festival. In about 10 minutes, firing hundreds of rounds using modified semi-automatic rifles, he shoots into the crowd like the proverbial fish-in-a-barrel. One man kills 58 people and wound nearly 500.
This one suicidal man, heavily armed and in an optimal position, inflicted more American (and Canadian) deaths in those roughly 10 minutes than a battle-hardened regiment of 800 Japanese soldiers were able to achieve, armed with rifles, pistols, machine guns, mortars, swords and knives in a night-long frontal, suicidal Banzai attack.
Let that soak in.
More Americans died, at the hands of one of their own citizens, than did in a major battle with a hardened enemy. That is a context I don’t think most people will fathom. That is America, today.
Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at brian.zinchuk@sasktel.net.
