US Marine Corps - The Black Vault

444 Arnpbibians Came To Conquer
COMPHIBFORPAC with the Commanding General First Marine Division
was that Vice Admiral Ghormley and Rear Admiral Turner could not get
out of their minds that all the early directives from higher authority listed
taking the Santa Cruz Islands ahead of the Solomon Islands in the missions
to be accomplished, and it had only been the imperatives resulting from the
Japanese fast progress in building an airfield on Guadalcanal which had
shifted the Santa Cruz Islands from number 1 to number 2 on the JCS chore
list,
The original despatch to COMSOPAC gave him tasks having the:
Immediate objective of seizing and occupying Santa Cruz Islands and positions
in the Solomon Islands, with the ultimate objective of occupying
Eastern New Guinea and New Britain.
Vice Admiral Halsey came into command of SOPAC without the background
of a chore long assigned and not discharged, and, making an on the
spot estimate of the situation, decided that HUDDLE could stand aside.
Admiral Turner’s belief was that the HUDDLE planning had served
a very useful purpose throughout, and that it had helped the Marines
on Guadalcanal, rather than hindered them, in that it provided a hook upon
which to hang urgent requests for additional troops in the SOPAC area.28
RELIEF OF MARINES BY ARMY TROOPS
The major problem of the Marines on Guadalcanal was the Japanese.
There were two other Marine problems toward whose solution Rear Admiral
Turner was working, although not always to the satisfaction of the Marines.
The first was support of the Marines, both combat and logistic, and the
second was their relief by Army troops.
Admiral Turner felt that he had incurred the displeasure of his comrades
in arms over the relief of the Marines by the Army on Guadalcanal. He
thought that:
The Marines were unhappy because they weren’t relieved sooner, and the
Army was unhappy because they were thrown onto Guadalcanal before they
were fully ready.zg
JCS 23, approved by the Joint Chiefs on 16 March 1942, had lumped the
South Pacific and Southwest Pacific into one area and provided for 416,000
= Ibid,
= Turner.