The Last Tokyo Express
By the end of December 1942, the Japanese had lost the battle of attrition against the US on Guadalcanal. The Japanese navy could no longer keep the Army supplied and they were losing many men each day to malnutrition and disease, and many more to relentless US Army 25th Infantry and Americal Division attacks.
But there was still 12,000 much needed troops on the island. The Japanese troops from Guadalcanal were needed to reinforce another series of fortified islands further up the Solomon Island chain. In the beginning of the New Year, the Imperial Japanese Headquarters decided to withdraw from Guadalcanal. Operation Ke commenced at the end of January 1943 and Admiral Mikawa’s Tokyo Express brought out all of Gen Hyakutake’s troops on the final runs from the island over the nights of February 1st, 5th and the 7th.
On the morning of 8 February 1942, the bloody six month Battle for Guadalcanal was over. Although 2 ½ more years of bloody fighting lay ahead, most of the post war Japanese leaders and virtually all Japanese historians consider the Battle of Guadalcanal as the point from which the war was essentially unwinnable for Japan. (On the contrary, most Americans consider the Battle of Midway the turning point in the Pacific.) The best Imperial Japan could muster met the best America could muster in arguably the most even sided contest of the War in the Pacific. Japan would not recover. The Jaanese would be on the strategic defensive for the rest of the war.
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