On January 4, 1943, Imperial Headquarters in Tokyo ordered the evacuation of Guadalcanal, which was accomplished without serious loss. On February 9, Admiral Halsey was able at last to report that the island had been conquered.

This episode marked the end of the Japanese offensive surge. In six major naval engagements and many lesser encounters two American carriers, seven cruisers, and fourteen destroyers had been sunk, besides the Australian cruiser Canberra. The Japanese losses were one carrier, two battleships, four cruisers, and eleven destroyers. The

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loss of life on both sides was severe, on land, at sea, and in the air. “For us who were there,” writes an American eye-witness, whose moving account I have followed,

“Guadalcanal is not a name but an emotion, recalling desperate fights in the air, furious night naval battles, frantic work at supply and construction, savage fighting in the sodden jungle, nights broken by screaming bombs and deafening explosions of naval shells,” 1 Long may the tale be told in the great Republic.

The tide of war had also turned in New Guinea. The Japanese overland advance began on July 22, 1942, from the north coast towards Port Moresby, which was guarded by two brigades of the 7th Australian Division back from the Middle East. The Owen Stanley Mountains, rising to over thirteen thousand feet, form the spine of the New Guinea land mass. Through these a foot-track traverses the passes and the virgin jungle. A single Australian militia battalion fought a stubborn delaying action, and it was not until the second week of September that the five Japanese battalions employed approached Port Moresby. Here, at the Imita Ridge, the enemy advance was stayed.

While all this was in progress two thousand Japanese Marines landed from the sea and tried on August 26 to take the three air-strips being built near Milne Bay, at the southernmost tip of the great island. After a fortnight’s intense fighting along the seashore, more than half of the invaders were killed and the rest dispersed. The Japanese were thenceforth thrown on the defensive in New Guinea.

By trying to take both New Guinea and Guadalcanal they had lost their chance of winning either. They now had to retreat over the mountain track under close Australian

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ground and air pursuit. Disease and hunger took a heavy toll. The American-Australian airpower grew constantly. The United States 32d Division was flown in. The Japanese convoys carrying reinforcements suffered enormous losses.

Ten thousand desperate fighting men, with their backs to the sea, held the final perimeter at Buna. It was not till the third week of January 1943 that the last resistance was overcome. Only a few hundred Japanese survived. More than fifteen thousand had been killed or perished from starvation and disease. By February the southeastern end of New Guinea, as well as Guadalcanal, was firmly in Allied hands. A Japanese convoy of twelve transports, escorted by ten warships, on its way to reinforce their important outpost at Lae, was detected in the Bismarck Sea. It was attacked from the air on March 2 and 3, and both transports and escort, carrying about fifteen thousand men, were destroyed.

By June 1943, when this volume opens, the prospect in the Pacific was encouraging.