Sarah Paine

And all of a sudden, the Navy is in deep, dark trouble and needs the Army to help them out of Guadalcanal.

So now think samurai.

The Japanese 17th Army had been ordered to take Port Moresby and New Guinea.

That's what they were up to.

But with Guadalcanal, they are told, ah, you need to tack on Guadalcanal to that Port Moresby event.

Okay, and our logistics, they're a thousand kilometers apart.

So now the army is gonna be lying to the navy about how many people they've got at Guadalcanal because they're scared the navy won't provide enough rations and things.

The navy doesn't provide enough rations, people starve anyway.

And then the navy that got the army into this mess wants to call it off and move out, but the army, good samurais, want to fight on and they just expend all kinds of resources.

And this thing has enormous strategic effects.

Prior to Guadalcanal, the Japanese army wanted to continue their strategy of chasing the nationalists out of China.

Back in 1937, the Japanese had conquered Nanjing, which is the original nationalist capital, and the nationalists had fled up the Yangtze River to Chongqing beyond some gorges and some other things and beyond the rail network.

And in 1943, the Japanese were planning to attack Chongqing.

And then at that point, I think if you're a nationalist, you're fleeing into Burma.

And if that had happened, then the Japanese could have probably pulled hundreds of thousands of people out of the China theater and put them elsewhere.

And that would have caused all kinds of problems.

Also, the Japanese had to call off their plans to invade Australia.

So Guadalcanal has enormous strategic implications.

So if you're focusing samurai on one battle, Guadalcanal, well, it has implications in places called China and Australia that are a long way off.

Okay, the United States also had inter-service rivalries, right, between our Army and Navy, and that's why you have two separate campaigns for Admiral Nimitz and General MacArthur.