AT A GLANCE
Why go?
Perched on a low ridge along the Kukum Highway on Guadalcanal, Bloody Ridge National Historical Park is the Solomon Islands' first national park — a place where one narrow hillline changed the course of the Pacific War. In September 1942, approximately 840 U.S. Marines under Lieutenant Colonel Merritt "Red Mike" Edson held this ground against a Japanese force nearly three times their size for two consecutive nights. Had the ridge fallen, Henderson Field and the allied air campaign on Guadalcanal would likely have been lost. Today, a granite monument bearing the 1st Marine Raider Battalion insignia marks the spot where that desperate defense unfolded.↗↗
More than a battlefield landmark, Bloody Ridge honors the Solomon Island scouts and coastwatchers whose intelligence warnings gave the Marines time to prepare. It is a site of shared remembrance — where American, Japanese, and Solomon Islander histories intersect on a ridge barely 29 meters above sea level.↗↗
The Battle That Saved Henderson Field
On 7 August 1942, Allied forces landed on Guadalcanal and captured the unfinished Japanese airfield they renamed Henderson Field. Just over six weeks later, on the nights of 12–14 September, Major General Kiyotaki Kawaguchi led three Japanese battalions — just under 3,000 men — through the jungle toward a narrow ridge one mile south of the airfield. Their objective was to seize both Henderson Field and the nearby Fighter One airstrip, which would have handed the Japanese control of the skies over Guadalcanal.