Marines 10, Japs I

Major General Alexander Archer Vandegrift of the Marines last week rendered an accounting of his four months on Guadalcanal. The Army was moving in, and General Vandegrift's report sounded a good deal like a valedictory. Killed: Japs, 6,640; U.S. Marines and soldiers, about 700. Planes shot down: Jap, at least 450; U.S., about 70. (Neither Jap nor U.S. sea losses around Guadalcanal were included in the Vandegrift report.)

This did not mean that Vandegrift's men had crippled the Japanese Army or air power. It did mean that U.S. forces had withstood their first big test, even though the Japs had tried desperately to rout them. It did not mean that the Japs would give up without having more tries at the growing U.S. forces on Guadalcanal. Last week they came back with eleven destroyers. Dive-bombers and torpedo planes, aided by U.S. surface vessels, sank one, probably another, and damaged three.

Also revealed last week was the establishment of a Jap airfield at Munda on New Georgia Island, only 150 miles from Guadalcanal. U.S. forces could now expect more frequent raids than the daily bombing between twelve and two and the nightly nuisance raid of solitary "Washing-Machine Charley."