Guadalcanal campaign

Guadalcanal is a tropical island in the South-Western Pacific. The largest island in the Solomons, it was discovered by the Spanish expedition of... Alvaro de Mendaña in 1568. The name comes from Guadalcanal, a village in the province of Seville, in Andalusia, Spain, birthplace of Pedro de Ortega Valencia, a member of Mendaña's expedition. During 1942-43 it was the scene of bitter fighting between Japanese and Americans in which the latter were victorious. At the end of the war, Honiara, on the north coast of Guadalcanal, became the new capital of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate. Guadalcanal is mainly covered in tropical rainforest and jungle, and it has a mountainous interior with an active volcano, Mount Popomanaseu. The population in 1998 was around 85,000. A Spanish expedition from Peru under the command of Álvaro de Mendeña de Neira discovered the island in the year 1568. Mendaña's subordinate, Pedro de Ortega Valencia, named the island after his home town Guadalcanal in Andalusia, Spain.
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The Pacific War, also sometimes called the Asia-Pacific War refers broadly to the parts of World War II that took place in the Pacific Ocean, its... islands, and in East Asia, then called the Far East. The term Pacific War is used to encompass the Pacific Ocean theatre, the South West Pacific theatre, the South-East Asian theatre and the Second Sino-Japanese War, also including the 1945 Soviet-Japanese conflict. It is generally considered that the Pacific War began on 7/8 December 1941 with the Japanese invasion of Thailand for the invasion of British Malaya, and the attack on Pearl Harbor in the United States' Territory of Hawaii by the Empire of Japan. Some authors consider the conflict in Asia can be dated as far as 7 July 1937, beginning with the Second Sino-Japanese War between the Empire of Japan and the Republic of China, or possibly 19 September 1931, beginning with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. However, it is more widely accepted that the Pacific War itself started in early December 1941, with the Sino-Japanese War then becoming part of it as a theater of the greater World War II.
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The Battle of Edson's Ridge, also known as the Battle of the Bloody Ridge, Battle of Raiders Ridge, and Battle of the Ridge, was a land battle of the... Pacific campaign of World War II between Imperial Japanese Army and Allied ground forces. It took place from 12–14 September 1942, on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, and was the second of three separate major Japanese ground offensives during the Guadalcanal Campaign. In the battle, U.S. Marines, under the overall command of U.S. Major General Alexander Vandegrift, repulsed an attack by the Japanese 35th Infantry Brigade, under the command of Japanese Major General Kiyotake Kawaguchi. The Marines were defending the Lunga perimeter that guarded Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, which was captured from the Japanese by the Allies in landings on Guadalcanal on 7 August 1942. Kawaguchi's unit was sent to Guadalcanal in response to the Allied landings with the mission of recapturing the airfield and driving the Allied forces from the island. Underestimating the strength of Allied forces on Guadalcanal—about 12,000—Kawaguchi's 6,000 soldiers conducted several nighttime frontal assaults on the U.S.
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