The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942-1944

The larger islands of the Solomons gave off an

aroma of damp soil and rotting vegetation that could travel ten to twenty miles out to sea.

The Solomons are dominated by a dozen large islands arranged in a double chain.

The climate was sweltering and monsoonal. Rain-sodden jungles and mangrove swamps bred exotic fevers and skin disorders—malaria, dengue fever, blackwater fever, dysentery, filariasis, clysentery, leprosy, elephantiasis, prickly heat, and trench foot. Crocodiles and leeches lurked in the rivers and swamps; aggressive sharks patrolled the fringing reefs; scorpions, spiders, centipedes, and snakes stung and bit; knife-edged kunai grasses sliced into the flesh of those who walked through them; cat-sized rats scurried through the jungle underbrush.

THE PASSAGE TO THE SOLOMONS was pleasingly uneventful.44 The combined task forces, zigzagging to thwart enemy submarines, shaped a westerly course north of New Caledonia and into the Coral Sea, leaving Guadalcanal well to starboard. The seas were calm, the breezes mild, and a low cloud ceiling sheltered the fleet from Japanese reconnaissance planes. “It didn’t seem like war at all to me at first,” said Roland Smoot, captain of the destroyer Monssen.

MacArthur refused. “I shall return” had a Caesarian ring, and was the most memorable phrase of the entire Pacific War. To the Filipino people, suffering under an atrocious occupation, the first-person declaration was a thunderbolt of hope and

Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere

“It was funny to see some of the fellows fishing from the side of the ship, others laying in the sun getting a tan, and up forward on the bow some of the officers are boxing, while on the beach men are killing each other, some are in agony from wounds. Our planes are strafing and bombing and our ships are bombarding the Japs. The two scenes are so close to each other and yet it is from one extreme to another or two different worlds.”83

In some cases it was a matter of better paperwork and record-keeping—if the beachmasters did not know exactly what they had on the beach, and where to find it, they could not very well get it to the front lines. Inefficiencies were being identified and corrected; procedures steadily improved as all personnel learned from experience.