THE BATTLE FOR THE ISLANDS

ON August 12, 1942, five days after the 19,000-strong 1st Marine Division had landed unopposed on Guadalcanal in the British Solomon Islands, the first American ground offensive of the war, Sergeant Jim McEnery came upon the aftermath of a slaughter of US Marines who had walked blindly into an ambush.

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Not satisfied with mere killing, the Japanese had hacked the Americans to pieces. Random body parts littered the river bank. "Now," wrote one Marine, "our killing potential was amplified. A second ingredient, hatred, had been added. What kind of warfare was this?"

The invasion of Guadalcanal was designed to protect Australia and New Zealand, and begin the rollback of Japanese advances in the Pacific that had followed the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

In just five months, the Japanese had captured Guam, Wake Island, Kong, the Malayan Peninsula, the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines and parts of Burma and New Guinea. The Imperial Japanese Empire now stretched across seven time zones and contained 516 million people - many more than the 360 million under Hitler's control at the height of German military success.

The fightback began in June 1942 with the hard-fought naval victory at Midway in the central Pacific when the US navy sunk four Japanese aircraft carriers for the loss of one of its own. But Guadalcanal was the first chance for US forces to go on the attack.

It was a brutal six-month campaign. As well as battling the harsh tropical climate, inadequate supplies, and chronic malaria and dysentery, the Marines had to contend with an enemy that largely refused to surrender and did not take prisoners.

When the Japanese finally withdrew in February 1943, they left the corpses of 30,000 soldiers, sailors and airmen. Total American fatalities were 7,100, including 1,769 Marines. Guadalcanal, concluded Major General Kawaguchi, was the "graveyard of the Japanese army".

For US Army Chief of Staff General Marshall, it marked the "turning point in the Pacific" thanks to "the resolute defence of these Marines and the desperate gallantry of our naval task forces". The next US target was the Japanese naval and air base at Rabaul at the eastern end of the 370-mile-long island of New Britain.