Henderson Field: The Stand that Turned the Pacific War

Prologue: Night of Fire

October 24th, 1942. Guadalcanal. 2:30 AM.

Sergeant John Basilone kneels in the mud, hands blistered, uniform soaked, behind a Browning M1917 machine gun. The barrel is so hot he can smell oil burning off the metal. He hasn’t slept in 36 hours. He hasn’t eaten in longer. Through the darkness, he hears them coming again—a rustle in the elephant grass, a snap of vegetation, then the screaming: “Banzai! Banzai!”

Three thousand Japanese soldiers from the Sendai Division charge straight at his position, running over the bodies of their comrades who fell an hour ago, climbing over their own dead like stepping stones across a river. Basilone presses the trigger. The gun chatters. Red tracers slice through the rain. Men drop. More men take their place.

Somewhere behind the Japanese lines, Lieutenant General Harukichi Hayakutake waits for the message announcing the capture of Henderson Field. He has 15,000 soldiers, artillery, tanks, the Imperial Japanese Navy, Admiral Yamamoto himself. Tokyo is certain: the Americans are soft, weak, untested. By sunrise, the American flag will be replaced by the rising sun.

They are wrong.

Chapter 1: The Airfield That Changed Everything

Henderson Field was not just an airstrip. It was the key to the entire South Pacific.

In the summer of 1942, Japanese maps showed an empire stretching from the home islands to the Dutch East Indies, Burma to the Marshall Islands. They had conquered more territory in six months than any military force in history. Singapore had fallen. The Americans had been driven out of the Philippines. The Pacific Fleet was crippled at Pearl Harbor.

But the Japanese war machine ran on oil. The oil fields were thousands of miles from Japan. Tankers carrying that oil had to cross waters increasingly vulnerable to American attack. The Japanese needed to push their defensive perimeter farther south, cut the supply lines between the United States and Australia, and threaten the last major Allied base in the region. For that, they needed Guadalcanal.

Guadalcanal sits at the southern end of the Solomon Islands chain—a lush, green nightmare of jungle, mountains, and disease. In May 1942, Japanese crews began building an airfield on the northern coast. They cleared Kunai grass, laid down coral and gravel, imported heavy equipment. By early August, the runway was nearly complete.

If the airfield became operational, Japanese bombers could reach Australia. Fighters could intercept any Allied ship trying to resupply the South Pacific. The strategic balance would shift.

The Americans could not let that happen.

Chapter 2: The First Offensive

On August 7th, 1942, 11,000 Marines of the First Marine Division splashed ashore on Guadalcanal—the first American amphibious assault since the Spanish-American War. They caught the Japanese by surprise. Construction crews fled into the jungle. The Marines captured the half-finished airfield within 36 hours and renamed it Henderson Field, after Major Lofton Henderson, a Marine aviator killed at Midway.

The real fighting was just beginning.

Japan could not accept the loss of Guadalcanal. It was not just strategic—it was a humiliation. The Americans, supposedly weak and decadent, had attacked. Admiral Yamamoto knew what it meant. He had studied in America, seen Detroit’s factories, watched West Coast shipyards. If given time, America’s industrial might would overwhelm Japan.

The Americans had to be stopped at Guadalcanal. The airfield had to be recaptured before the tide turned.

Chapter 3: Trial by Fire

The first Japanese counterattack came two weeks after the landing. Colonel Kiyonao Ichiki led 900 men across the Tenaru River in a night assault, believing they would sweep the Marines aside. The Marines were waiting with machine guns and artillery.

The Battle of Tenaru lasted less than 12 hours. Over 800 Japanese soldiers were killed. Few surrendered; most fought to the death. Colonel Ichiki burned his regimental colors and shot himself.

The Americans saw a clear victory. The Japanese saw a temporary setback. Neither side understood yet what Guadalcanal would become.

The second counterattack came in September at Bloody Ridge. Major General Kiyotake Kawaguchi led 3,100 men through the jungle to attack Henderson Field’s rear—a brilliant plan on paper. But the jungle was worse than anyone expected. It took four days to cover eight miles. Men arrived exhausted, dehydrated, disorganized. Radios were dead. Coordination was gone.

Lieutenant Colonel Merritt Edson’s First Marine Raider Battalion was waiting. For two nights, the Japanese threw themselves at the Marine lines. For two nights, the Marines held. Over a thousand Japanese soldiers died. The ridge was renamed Edson’s Ridge.

But Tokyo was growing impatient. Two attacks had failed. The Americans still held Henderson Field. Something had to change.

Chapter 4: Sendai Division Arrives

The Imperial General Staff decided to send an entire division—the Second Infantry Division, the Sendai Division, one of the most prestigious units in the Japanese Army. Its soldiers, recruited from Miyagi Prefecture, were known for endurance and discipline. They had fought in Manchuria, conquered Java, and were considered elite.

In early October, the “Tokyo Express” began delivering the Sendai Division to Guadalcanal. The Tokyo Express was the Marines’ nickname for Japanese destroyers running down the Slot every night, bringing reinforcements and supplies under cover of darkness. Too fast for American patrol boats, they shelled Marine positions and were gone before dawn.

By mid-October, more than 15,000 Japanese soldiers were on Guadalcanal. Artillery pieces were dragged through the jungle. Tanks landed on the beaches. Ammunition dumps were hidden. Lieutenant General Hayakutake arrived to take personal command. This would be no piecemeal attack. This would be a coordinated assault, supported by naval bombardment and air strikes.

Chapter 5: The Bombardment

Before the ground assault, the Japanese Navy had a surprise for Henderson Field.

At 1:33 AM on October 14th, battleships Kongo and Haruna approached Guadalcanal under cover of darkness, escorted by a light cruiser and nine destroyers. Their mission: destroy Henderson Field.

The battleships opened fire with their 14-inch guns. Each shell weighed over 1,400 pounds. Explosions shook the island. For 83 minutes, 973 shells slammed into the Lunga perimeter, most landing around the airfield.

Pharmacist’s Mate First Class Lewis Ortega described it: “A whistling noise and then boom. What the hell was that? And then another one. For the next four hours, we were bombarded… You can get a dozen air raids a day, but they come and they are gone. But when these battleship guns start lobbing shells into you, they come one after another.”

By dawn, Henderson Field was in ruins. Both runways cratered. Forty-eight of ninety aircraft destroyed. Aviation fuel burned. Forty-one men dead, including six pilots. The Cactus Air Force—a mix of Marine, Navy, and Army planes—was nearly wiped out.

The Marines called it simply “the bombardment.” It was the worst naval shelling American forces had ever endured, and it was only the beginning.

Chapter 6: The Plan

Hayakutake finalized his plan. The main attack would come from the south. Major General Masao Maruyama would lead 7,200 men of the Sendai Division through the jungle to strike at the airfield’s rear—the same approach Kawaguchi had tried, but with more than twice as many troops.

A secondary attack would come from the west. Colonel Namasu Nakaguma would lead three battalions and nine tanks across the Matanikau River to hit the Marine flank. A third force under Colonel Akinosuke Oka would attack from the southwest. Three forces would strike simultaneously. The Americans would be overwhelmed from multiple directions. Henderson Field would fall.

“The time of the decisive battle between Japan and the United States has come,” Hayakutake announced. “This attack will determine the fate of the war.”

He set the assault for the night of October 23rd.

Chapter 7: The Jungle Fights Back

The route Maruyama chose looked reasonable on a map—about 15 miles from the assembly area to the American lines, a single day’s march in normal terrain. But Guadalcanal was not normal.

The jungle was so thick that in places you could not see ten feet ahead. The ground was tangled roots, vines, rotting vegetation. Every step sank into mud. The hills were steep, slippery with rain. The heat suffocating, the humidity near 100%. It rained every day.

Maruyama’s men hacked forward inch by inch, dragging artillery with ropes, carrying ammunition on their backs. They drank from stagnant pools. Men collapsed from heat exhaustion. Some fell behind and were left. Radios failed. Units became separated. Officers lost contact with their men.

By the afternoon of October 23rd, Maruyama’s force was nowhere near the American lines. The attack had to be postponed 24 hours, but the message never reached Nakaguma’s force at the Matanikau.

Chapter 8: The First Clash

At dusk on October 23rd, Nakaguma launched his attack. Nine Japanese tanks charged across the sandbar at the mouth of the Matanikau River. Behind them came two infantry battalions, bayonets fixed, screaming “Banzai!”

The Marines were ready. Thirty-seven-millimeter anti-tank guns opened fire at point-blank range. The first tank was hit before it reached the far bank. The second burst into flames. All nine tanks were destroyed. Crews who tried to escape were cut down by machine gun fire.

Behind the burning tanks, the infantry was caught in the open. Forty Marine howitzers opened fire. Six thousand shells fell on Japanese positions in less than an hour. The river ran red with blood. By midnight, the attack was over. Six hundred Japanese soldiers were dead. The Marines had fewer than fifty casualties.

Nakaguma’s attack accomplished nothing except to alert the Americans that something big was coming.

Chapter 9: The Night of the Meat Grinder

The next night, October 24th, Maruyama finally reached the American lines. His men had spent two days struggling through the jungle. They were exhausted, dehydrated, many had thrown away equipment. The coordinated attack had degenerated into a chaotic stumble.

But Maruyama still had 7,000 soldiers facing a single American battalion.

Lieutenant Colonel Lewis B. Puller—Chesty—commanded the First Battalion, Seventh Marines. His sector stretched over 2,000 yards along ridges south of Henderson Field, a frontage normally defended by an entire regiment. Puller had about a thousand men.

At 9:30 PM, a Marine listening post reported movement in the jungle. Sergeant Ralph Briggs was on the field phone: “Colonel, there’s about 3,000 Japs between you and me.” Puller asked if he was certain. “Positive,” Briggs replied. “They’ve been all around us, singing and smoking cigarettes, heading your way.” Puller hung up, looked at his officers. “Let them come,” he said.

At 1:15 AM, the first wave hit. Japanese soldiers emerged from the jungle, screaming, charging straight at the lines, climbing over barbed wire, throwing grenades, firing from the hip. The noise was deafening—rifle shots, explosions, machine guns, and above it all, the screaming.

The Marines opened fire.

On the right side of the line, Sergeant John Basilone’s machine gun section held a critical choke point. If the Japanese broke through there, they’d have a clear path to the airfield. The Japanese came in waves. The first wave was cut down within 50 yards. The second wave made it closer. The third wave reached the barbed wire. Bodies piled up in front of the guns.

Basilone kept firing. When one gun jammed, he cleared it under fire. When another was destroyed by a grenade, he dragged a spare into position. When ammunition ran low, he fought through Japanese soldiers to reach the supply dump and carried belts back to his men. At one point, he picked up the 90-pound machine gun and moved it to a new position, the barrel so hot it burned through his gloves.

For hours, the assault continued. Wave after wave, charge after charge. The Japanese kept coming—they had been told the Americans would break.

They were wrong.

By dawn, the Marine lines were still intact. The ground in front of Basilone’s position was covered with bodies. His section had killed so many Japanese soldiers they could not count them all. Later, the Marines found more than a thousand Japanese corpses within a few hundred yards of the perimeter. At Basilone’s position alone, 38 bodies were in a single heap.

Basilone had not slept in three days. He had not eaten. When he finally rested his head against the edge of his foxhole, his men counted the ammunition. They had fired more than 26,000 rounds.

For his actions, John Basilone would receive the Medal of Honor—the first enlisted Marine to earn the award in World War II.

Chapter 10: The Unbreakable Line

The battle was not over. Maruyama still had thousands of soldiers in the jungle. He was not ready to give up.

On the night of October 25th, the Japanese attacked again. This time, they came from multiple directions. Parts of three battalions hit Puller’s sector. Another force attacked the ridge to the west. A third struck at positions held by Army troops from the 164th Infantry Regiment—the first Army unit to see combat on Guadalcanal.

The fighting was even more intense. At Puller’s command post, the colonel coordinated fire missions while bullets cracked overhead. When a staff officer suggested they pull back, Puller’s response became legend: “We do not retreat. Marines do not retreat. We stay here and die if necessary.”

They did not die. They held.

The Army soldiers of the 164th—National Guardsmen from North Dakota—were fed piecemeal into the Marine lines throughout the night. Most had never seen combat. They were scared, confused, operating in darkness in unfamiliar positions. They fought anyway.

By morning, the second assault had failed. More Japanese bodies littered the jungle. More wounded crawled back toward their lines. The Sendai Division was being bled white against defenses it could not break.

Chapter 11: The Final Gamble

On October 26th, Maruyama ordered one final attack—a desperate gamble. His men were exhausted. Units shattered. He had lost contact with most commanders. But Tokyo demanded results. The Navy was offshore with transports full of reinforcements. The honor of the emperor demanded the attack continue.

The final assault came at night, as all Japanese attacks did. Colonel Oka’s force, delayed even more than Maruyama’s main body, finally arrived at the Marine lines. Two thousand men charged positions held by the Second Battalion, Seventh Marines. The Marines had been fighting for three straight nights. They were low on ammunition, barrels worn, hands shaking from exhaustion.

They held anyway.

Oka’s attack disintegrated in the barbed wire. Survivors retreated into the jungle, leaving hundreds of dead behind.

On the morning of October 27th, Maruyama admitted defeat. He ordered his surviving troops to withdraw west, away from Henderson Field, away from the slaughter.

Chapter 12: The Cost

The mathematics of Henderson Field were staggering. In three nights of fighting, the Japanese lost between 2,000 and 3,000 soldiers killed. The exact number was impossible to determine—many bodies never recovered from the jungle. Marines and Army soldiers lost fewer than 100 men. The kill ratio was at least 20 to 1.

The Sendai Division, elite upon arrival, was destroyed as a fighting force. Its commander, Major General Nasu, was killed by artillery during the second night. Its regimental colors were captured. More than half its combat strength was gone.

Burial details used bulldozers. Corpses were stacked so deep in places they had to be loaded into mass graves like cordwood. The tropical heat caused rapid decomposition. The smell was indescribable. A few days after the battle, one burial detail counted 1,462 bodies in Puller’s sector alone.

The Japanese had walked into a killing ground perfectly designed to destroy them. The Marines had artillery the Japanese could not match—40 howitzers ranged on every approach, unlimited ammunition. Every time the Japanese massed, the guns opened fire.

The Marines had machine guns the Japanese could not suppress. The Browning M1917 could fire 500 rounds a minute. A single gun, properly positioned, could stop a battalion.

The Marines had barbed wire that channeled attackers into predetermined kill zones. The Japanese had to climb over or cut through it under fire.

And the Marines had something else: men like John Basilone and Chesty Puller, who refused to retreat, who held their positions through three nights of hell, who proved Americans could fight as hard and as long as any soldier on Earth.

Chapter 13: The Aftermath

The Japanese had been told the Americans were soft. They learned the truth in the mud, wire, and blood of Henderson Field.

But the significance extended beyond the body count. Henderson Field survived. The Cactus Air Force, battered and depleted, continued to operate from the cratered runway. Within days, aircraft were taking off again. Within weeks, the airfield was stronger than ever.

And that meant the Japanese plan for Guadalcanal was finished.

The entire premise of Japanese strategy was that Henderson Field could be neutralized and recaptured. Without the airfield, there would be no Cactus Air Force. Without the Cactus Air Force, Japanese ships could operate freely. The island could be reinforced at will. The Americans could be driven off.

But Henderson Field would not fall. The battleship bombardment had failed to destroy it. The ground assault had failed to capture it. Every day the airfield remained in American hands, the Japanese position became more precarious.

The Cactus Air Force controlled daylight hours. Any Japanese ship approaching risked attack by dive bombers and torpedo planes. The Tokyo Express could only operate at night, and destroyers could not carry enough supplies to sustain a major ground force.

Japanese soldiers began to starve. They called Guadalcanal “starvation island.” They boiled grass and ate it. They killed and ate horses meant to carry artillery. They caught rats and roasted them. Malaria swept through their ranks. Dysentery killed more men than American bullets.

Every night, the Tokyo Express brought more soldiers. Every day, those soldiers consumed more food that was not arriving. The mathematics were inexorable.

Chapter 14: The Final Battles

In November, the Japanese tried again to knock out Henderson Field. Admiral Yamamoto sent two more battleships, Hiei and Kirishima, to bombard the airfield. This time, the American Navy was waiting.

In the brutal naval battle of Guadalcanal, November 12th–15th, American cruisers and battleships intercepted the Japanese force. The fighting was savage and confused—a brawl in the darkness of Iron Bottom Sound. Both sides suffered terrible losses. The Americans lost two light cruisers and seven destroyers. Over 1,700 American sailors died.

But the Japanese lost battleship Hiei, sunk by aircraft from Henderson Field. They lost Kirishima, sunk by the guns of the American battleship Washington. Most of the transport convoy meant to reinforce Guadalcanal was destroyed.

Never again would the Japanese Navy attempt to knock out Henderson Field from the sea.

The battle for Guadalcanal dragged on through December and January, but the outcome was no longer in doubt. The Japanese could not supply their forces. They could not reinforce their positions. They could not take the offensive.

In late January 1943, Tokyo decided to evacuate. Over three nights in early February, Japanese destroyers crept down the Slot one final time—not delivering troops, but taking them away. More than 10,000 survivors were rescued. They left behind over 20,000 dead.

The American victory at Guadalcanal was complete. Japan would never go on the offensive again in the Pacific. From that point forward, they would be retreating, defending, falling back. The tide of war had turned—and it turned at Henderson Field.

Epilogue: The Legacy

The significance of what happened on that muddy airstrip in October 1942 cannot be overstated. If the Japanese had captured Henderson Field, the entire course of the Pacific War would have changed. The Americans would have been pushed back. Australia threatened. The island-hopping campaign delayed by months or years.

But Henderson Field held. It held because of Marine artillery that broke up every attack before it could gain momentum. It held because of machine gunners like John Basilone who refused to abandon their positions. It held because of commanders like Chesty Puller who understood the airfield had to be defended at any cost.

When Basilone received the Medal of Honor in Australia in May 1943, he said: “Only part of this medal belongs to me. Pieces of it belong to the boys who are still on Guadalcanal.” He could have stayed in the United States. The Marine Corps offered him a commission and a desk job. He could have spent the rest of the war selling war bonds and giving speeches.

He refused. “I ain’t no officer,” he said, “and I ain’t no museum piece. I belong back with my outfit.”

In February 1945, Sergeant John Basilone landed on Iwo Jima. On the first day of the assault, while leading his men off the beach under heavy fire, he was killed by a Japanese mortar round. He was 28 years old. He received the Navy Cross posthumously. He is the only enlisted Marine to earn both the Medal of Honor and the Navy Cross in World War II.

The battle for Henderson Field ended more than eighty years ago. The jungle has reclaimed most of the battlefield. The runway where Basilone fought is now Honiara International Airport, serving the capital of the Solomon Islands. Tourists fly in on jets, unaware of what happened there.

But the lesson of Henderson Field remains.

The Japanese believed they could not be stopped. They believed their spirit would overcome American machines. They believed their willingness to die would break American resolve.

They were wrong.

At Henderson Field, the Americans proved they could match Japanese courage with courage of their own. They proved that industrial might and military skill could defeat human wave attacks. They proved that a defensive position, properly prepared and stubbornly held, could destroy an attacking force, no matter how determined.

The Sendai Division learned this lesson in the barbed wire south of the airfield. They learned it in the mud in front of Basilone’s machine guns. They learned it in the craters left by Marine artillery. By the time they finished learning, most of them were dead.

In 1942, Japan attacked America’s Henderson Field. They threw their best division against a single Marine battalion. They expected to sweep the Americans aside and recapture the airfield that threatened their empire. It was a mistake—and it cost them the war.