Islands of Destiny: The Solomons Campaign and the Eclipse of the Rising Sun Read Online Free PDF Page B

to postponement. On July 11, Emperor Hirohito approved. Combined Fleet also dropped a renewed attempt against Midway. Three days later the Navy General Staff issued Directive No. 112, canceling the South Pacific offensive. The NGS suggested substituting a foray into the Indian Ocean. Combined Fleet studied this idea. Having opposed the NGS Fiji-Samoa plan, Ugaki resisted a new Indian Ocean attack too. A cruiser-destroyer force that had sailed to the west coast of the Malay Peninsula to prepare for that mission had just reached the area when recalled.
    With the demise of the FS Operation, strengthening the “Outer South Seas” (
soto nanyo
), as the Japanese called the South Pacific, became critical. The Eighth Fleet had been intended to besiege Australia once the FS maneuver created blockade lines. Now it was activated for defense instead. Unknown to the Japanese—and a harbinger of what was to come—the Americans were immediately aware of this. On July 12—the eleventh at Pearl Harbor—the daily intelligence summary issued by the U.S. Pacific Fleet recorded activation of the Imperial Navy’s new Outer South Seas unit.
    Vice Admiral Mikawa Gunichi was selected to lead it. Mikawa, who had shepherded the battleships of the Nagumo force, here enjoyed his first fleet command. He met his newly assigned operations officer, Commander Ohmae Toshikazu, at home in the Setagaya district of Tokyo on July 14.That day the heavy cruiser
Chokai
was designated fleet flagship—again a Japanese action that appeared in U.S. intelligence summaries the same day. Escorted by two destroyers, Mikawa left Kure in the
Chokai
on the nineteenth. That had to be gratifying, since Mikawa himself had skippered this vessel less than a decade earlier. As Mikawa departed, Ugaki was in Tokyo conferring with ministry and NGS officials on aircraft production and the Indian Ocean plan. Mikawa headed for Truk, the big base in the Mandates where the Fourth Fleet controlled the sea, a place of mysteries that U.S. intelligence had sought to penetrate for years.
    So the first mission entrusted to Rear Admiral Matsuyama would not, after all, be an opening move in the FS Operation. Instead his cruisers sailed from Truk to convoy the 11th and 13th Naval Construction Units to an island in the lower Solomons called Guadalcanal. The builders were to prepare an airfield at Lunga Point along its north coast. This installation would be vital, for the Japanese intended to fly planes hundreds of miles to the south and east. Guadalcanal was to be the springboard, projecting an air umbrella over Combined Fleet task forces if they ever advanced toward FS objectives. A seaplane installation already on nearby Tulagi would fly scouts, while strike aircraft from Guadalcanal provided the hard punch. The Eighth Fleet would operate in tandem with the 17th Army.
    Of course, plans hardly survive contact with reality, and so it would be here. The construction units sent to Guadalcanal had little heavy equipment—just four tractors, half a dozen hand-pulled earth compactors, and materials for a mine railway. The Korean laborers were not enthusiastic. The site also turned out to be more difficult than expected.
    Meanwhile Allied intentions were becoming a factor. Why the Japanese should have missed this remains a mystery. After all, the Allies had tried to mount a carrier attack on the main Solomons base, Rabaul, as early as February 1942. In May, when the Imperial Navy set up its seaplane installation on Tulagi, that too had been struck by American carriers even as the ships unloaded. The bombing became an opening chord in the Battle of the Coral Sea, in which American and Australian forces repulsed a Japanese attempt to conquer New Guinea. The salient points were that the Allieswere very sensitive to activity in the Solomons–New Guinea area, and that they often struck Imperial Navy bases. Preoccupied with fresh maneuvers in the Indian Ocean, belittling the South Seas as Tokyo had