JAPANESE COUNTERLANDING
LARUMA RIVER AREA
7 NOVEMBER 1943
Then, at dawn on the morning of 7 November (D plus 6), the Japanese struck. Four of their destroyers put ashore 475 men well west of the Marine perimeter, between the Laruma River and the Koromokina Lagoon. They landed in 21 craft: barges, ramped landing boats, even a motor boat, but, to their disadvantage, along too wide a front for coordinating and organizing a strike in unison and immediately. A Marine Corps combat correspondent, Sergeant Cyril J. O’Brien, saw the skinny young Japanese who scampered up the beach with 80-pound packs two-and-a-half miles from the Laruma to near the Koromokina, left flank of the Marines, to join their comrades.
They were eager enough, even to die. A little prayer often in the pockets of the dead voiced the fatalistic wish that “whether I float a corpse under the waters, or sink beneath the grasses of the mountainside, I willingly die for the Emperor.”
The first few Japanese ashore near the Laruma, however, did not die. An antitank platoon with the 9th Marines did not fire because the landing craft in the mist looked so much like their own, even to the big white numbers on the prow. Near Koromokina, they seemed to be all over the beach. One outpost platoon, which included Private First Class John F. Perella, 19 years old, was cut off on the beach. Perella swam through the surf 1,000 yards to Marine lines and came with a Navy rescue boat and earned a Silver Star Medal.
Sgt Herbert J. Thomas was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.
Department of Defense (USMC) 302918
Lieutenant Colonel Walter Asmuth, Jr., commanding officer of the 3d Battalion, 9th Marines, ordered a company attack, called on mortars and the artillery of the 12th Marines. The Japanese were well equipped with the so-called knee mortars (actually grenade launchers) and Nambu machine guns and fought back fiercely. In that jungle, you could not see, hear, or smell a man five feet away. Private First Class Challis L. Still found a faint trail and settled his machine gun beside it. An ambush was easy. The lead Japanese were close enough to touch when Still opened up. He killed 30 in the column; he was a recipient of the Silver Star Medal.