Battlefields of the South Pacific: Revisiting Guadalcanal, New Guinea, and Rabaul

In late summer 1942, the Pacific War balanced on a knife’s edge.Japan’s sprawling empire seemed unassailable, yet on a chain of remote islands south of the equator, the tide began to turn. The US Marines struck first at Guadalcanal in the Solomons, where the fate of the Pacific cantered on a single prize: the Japanese airbase at what became known as Henderson Field.Control of this airstrip meant control of the southwest Pacific - and the lifeline to Australia. For six savage months the battle raged. Marines and Army units fought in jungles, ravines, crocodile-haunted rivers, and across kunai-grass hills, quickly learning that the Japanese would fight to the death rather than surrender. As American troops clung to Henderson Field, the struggle shifted north to New Guinea, where the land itself was an enemy.Along the jagged ridges of the Owen Stanley Mountains, Australian soldiers made their stand on the mud-choked Kokoda Trail, the only passable route across the range. Beyond loomed Rab