World: Peace on Guadalcanal

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The Battle of Guadalcanal is over. After six months of fighting the last Japanese on the island is either dead or evacuated.

Tokyo announced the end this Tuesday. Secretary Knox confirmed it. Whatever new struggle may be brewing in the Pacific, it can hardly be another Jap attempt to reconquer Guadalcanal. That fight is over.

At the end the last 3,000 Japanese survivors were trapped on Cape Esperance on the northwest tip. For months the Americans had been fighting slowly up along the northern coast from Henderson Field 25 miles away. Last week a strong body of U.S. troops suddenly showed itself in "a strong position" near the little Melanesian Mission station of Marovovo on the opposite shore. How they got there was not explained. If by land, they would have had to march overland more than 40 miles, through the harshest kind of mountains and jungle. It was possible they had come by sea, in the transports the Japs attacked off Rennell Island. However they got there, their arrival put the Japs in a box.