The Japanese were as tenacious on defense as they were in attack, and it took a good deal of firepower to force those men to retreat. Some simply refused, dying to a man in their positions and forcing the Marines to take down every last machinegun that had been set up on defense. When Vandegrift moved his division headquarters up country to get a better feel for what was happening, he looked over the captured position and made an astute observation that every officer on his staff never forgot.
“Looks like the enemy was trained to go to a place, stay there, fight and die. We train our men to go to a place, fight to win, and to live. I can assure you, it is a much better theory.”
That was what the men of the Sakaguchi Regiment would have to do if they were going to hold in the north, fight and die. When reports reached Tavua that his men had encountered strong enemy resistance, he realized that he had very little in reserve. There was a single engineer battalion, with two of its three companies watching the northeast coast and the third on the airfield near Tavua trying to get it ready to receive friendly aircraft. The 2nd Yokosuka SNLF had been ordered to reconnoiter the highland, and now it was necessary to recall it and have it march quickly to Tavua to stand as a reserve.
Something had just happened there on the main island of Viti Levu that no one fully realized that day. There, at the edge of that jungle in the Fiji highlands, the men of the Sakaguchi Regiment had been met, held, then pushed back by the sheer muscle and firepower of two full Marine Regiments. A third regiment, the 1st Marine under Colonel Cates, was now also coming up in support. It was May 1st, May Day, the day the restless coursing lines of war flowed up and receded at the edge of that jungle, yet no man on either side really appreciated how significant that was. The tide, at least on the ground, had turned.
Out on the Solomon Sea, the Japanese were slowly approaching, returning to challenge the naval and air superiority Halsey had imposed over the Fijis for the last week. No news had come from Fiji of late. The only news that would be sent home on Showa Day would be that of Japan’s latest acquisition. He had shepherded the Shoji Detachment down from Buka and instead of landing on Guadalcanal as first planned, they had taken it to Espiritu Santo in the Santa Cruz Islands. As there was no other enemy activity in the lower Solomons, airfield construction Regiments would be dispatched immediately from Rabaul to both Lunga on Guadalcanal and Espiritu Santo. That would complete the missing link in the long chain of islands stretching from Rabaul to Noumea. It was a masterful stroke, and even if the Fiji operation were to fail, the occupation of those islands, linking the Solomons to the New Hebrides, was of great strategic significance.
Thus far the US had enjoyed naval superiority in the Fiji Group after the initial landing, but the Japanese carriers were returning, intending to reach the scene by the first of May. As the American carriers had been spotted operating north of those islands, it was Yamamoto’s intention to confront them directly. On the last day of April he was in position to sweep east, hoping to find and punish the last of the enemy carriers… But Halsey was not there.
True to his plan to try and keep the main Fiji islands between his carriers and the enemy, Halsey swung south. If Suva Bay were the center of a clock, The Japanese were at 12:00 and the Americans at 06:00 at dawn on the first of May. A lone Kate off the Akagi saw what he thought were carriers and cruisers to the south of Kandavu Island, which sat about 50 nautical miles below the main Fiji group. The wizened Admiral Chuichi Nagumo had arrived from Japan to take over carrier operations in Yamamoto’s group, and the sighting was enough for him to order an immediate strike from Akagi and Soryu.
All the dive bombers had been prepping for a ground strike against Suva, mostly armed with fragmentation bombs. To stop that process and rearm the planes with armor piercing bombs would take at least 30 minutes, so Nagumo sent his torpedo bombers instead, a total of 34 B5Ns, many armed with bombs and a few others with torpedoes. They were escorted by 22 Zeroes, but the strike ran into a very thick CAP defense, with all of 40 Wildcats up on defense, and they were enough to hold the enemy at bay. Many of the planes were forced to break formation and turn back. A few Kates got down into their torpedo runs, mostly focusing their attack on the Enterprise as Halsey watched from the weather deck. He was impressed by the dogged approach made by the enemy, even with his own fighters right on their tails. The enemy got torpedoes in the water, but lost twelve planes and scored no hits.
Suspecting an enemy surface group was nearby, Halsey had detached two cruisers, the Cleveland and Honolulu, with destroyers Ward and Phelps to sweep the Kandavu Channel ahead of his carriers. They were also found in this strike, but Nagumo’s only consolation for the loss of so many torpedo planes was a single hit on the Cleveland by a Kate that had been armed with bombs that day. The first enemy punches had been parried, and now it was time for the US carriers to throw some lead the other way.
The previous night, Combined Fleet had doubled down on the order that sent cruisers into that channel on Showa day. With the carriers at hand, Ugaki deemed the risk acceptable this time and ordered two small surface action groups to sweep those same waters south of the islands. The first was composed of heavy cruisers Haguro and Myoko, and the 15th Destroyer Division with Kuroshio, Oyashio, Hayashio, and Natsushio. It was entering the Kandavu channel between Viti Levu and the Kandavu island, the most direct passage to Suva and the big Allied airfield at Nausori at the southeast corner of the island. That was the objective for Captain Sakiyama on the Haguro, to take his cruisers in and put that airfield out of action by bombardment. Yet like Captain Mori’s ill fated sortie a few days earlier, he would never get there.
A patrol of two SBDs off the Enterprise spotted the enemy cruisers heading east into the channel, and Halsey immediately went after them. 36 Wildcats accompanied the initial strike, which was made by 44 SBDs and 14 TBDs, a heavy blow that encountered no more than 9 A5M Claudes off the airfield at Nandi. The nimble fighters had to dodge craters to get airborne, but they managed it, only to get into a hail storm of F4F Wildcats. Seven were shot down, and the strike wave blew right on through to hit those cruisers.
When they were done destroyer Oyashio had taken a direct hit, with heavy fires amidships, Myoko was struck once, a near miss that mostly hit the ship’s belt armor, but the heavy cruiser Haguro got smashed. The Dauntless pilots put no less than six bombs on the cruiser, riddling it with concussion and fire. The coup de grace was a single torpedo hit that would end the ship’s misery. Haguro had once been fated to be the last major Japanese warship attacked and sunk in the war, but not this time around.
Two hours later a second strike arrived overhead with 24 SBDs and 8 TBDs off the Wasp. They found only one cruiser remaining, put a bomb on Myoko, and sunk a pair of destroyers, Hayashio and Natsushio. It was only the weather that prevented Halsey from destroying this entire group, for heavy thunderstorms popped up in the late afternoon, and the planes were called home.