Comes with hand-signed C.O.A.

This incredibly rare and museum-grade WWII artifact is marked “CONFIDENTIAL” and was the first intelligence battlefield report received following one of the most famous and infamous battles between the U.S. Marines and Imperial Japanese Army of the entire Guadalcanal campaign. The Battle of the Tenaru, sometimes called the Battle of the Ilu River or the Battle of Alligator Creek, was a land battle between the Imperial Japanese Army and Allied ground forces (mainly of the United States Marine Corps) that took place on August 21, 1942 on the island of Guadalcanal during the Pacific campaign of World War II. The battle was the first major Japanese land offensive during the Guadalcanal campaign.

*This battle was actually portrayed on the HBO series The Pacific and shows the heroic efforts of Pfc. Robert “Lucky” Leckie and the 1st Marine Division during the Battle of the Tenaru. On August 7, 1942, Pfc. Robert “Lucky” Leckie and the 1st Marine Division stormed ashore at Guadalcanal only to find that the Japanese had abandoned the beaches and holed up inland. But their relief was to be short-lived. Within days, Leckie—a machine gunner and later an intelligence scout—and the rest of the 1st Marines would get their first bitter taste of battle and death.

Leckie’s recollection of that battle is part of his 1957 memoir, Helmet for My Pillow, which is excerpted here. The book, along with E. B. Sledge’s With the Old Breed and the story of Medal of Honor recipient Sgt. John Basilone, are the basis for the HBO miniseries, The Pacific.

If you purchase this artifact and would like the digital link to this exerpt from his memoir please reach out to us and we can send it to you.

In the battle, U.S. Marines, under the overall command of U.S. Major General Alexander Vandegrift, repulsed an assault by the "First Element" of the "Ichiki" Regiment, under the command of Japanese Colonel Kiyonao Ichiki. The Marines were defending the Lunga perimeter, which guarded Henderson Field, which was captured by the Allies in landings on Guadalcanal on August 7. Ichiki's unit was sent to Guadalcanal in response to the Allied landings with the mission of recapturing the airfield and driving the Allied forces off the island. Underestimating the strength of Allied forces on Guadalcanal, which at that time numbered about 11,000 personnel, Ichiki's unit conducted a nighttime frontal assault on Marine positions at Alligator Creek on the east side of the Lunga perimeter. Ichiki's assault was defeated with heavy losses for the Imperial attackers.

The Marine units counterattacked Ichiki's surviving troops after daybreak, killing many more of them. All but 128 of the original 917 of the Ichiki Regiment's First Element were killed in the battle.

The battle was the first of three separate major land offensives by the Japanese in the Guadalcanal campaign. The Japanese realized after Tenaru that Allied forces on Guadalcanal were much greater in number than originally estimated and sent larger forces to the island for their subsequent attempts to retake Henderson Field.

Dated August 1942 this original combat report provides an extremely rare look at the offensive strike carried out by the Japanese forces aginst U.S. Marines for what would be known as the Battle of the Tenaru. These reports were meant to inform high command and officers for future strategical combat decisions in the area.