Battle of Guadalcanal
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50 free Battle of Guadalcanal trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Battle of Guadalcanal was the moment the Pacific War turned. For half a year from August 1942, American and Japanese forces fought on land, at sea and in the air for one jungle-covered island in the Solomons, and neither side could afford to lose it. This quiz gathers the fun facts and strange details behind the campaign: the nicknames troops invented for the things that plagued them, the night naval battles, the code names, the men who earned the Medal of Honor, and the books and films the fighting inspired. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you pick up the story as you play. It suits history buffs, students of the Second World War and anyone with a relative who served in the South Pacific. The opening questions are friendly; the later ones will test a real enthusiast.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which country contains the village that gave Guadalcanal its name, the home town of a sixteenth-century explorer?
Spain
Spain has the original Guadalcanal, a village in Andalusia's Seville province. Pedro de Ortega Valencia, sailing with Mendaña's expedition, named the Pacific island after his birthplace.
Q 02Which surname was shared by five brothers from Waterloo, Iowa, who all died when one cruiser sank off Guadalcanal?
Sullivan
Sullivan was the name, and the loss of all five aboard USS Juneau moved the Navy to name a warship USS The Sullivans. The brothers had insisted on serving together.
Q 03Henderson Field on Guadalcanal honours a Marine pilot killed attacking Japanese carriers in which earlier battle?
Midway
Midway is where Major Lofton Henderson died at the head of his bomber squadron. Marines gave his name to the field within days of coming ashore.
Q 04Which code name did Allied planners give Guadalcanal, a word the island's pilots soon borrowed for their own nickname?
Cactus
Cactus was the code name, so the scratch collection of Allied planes flying from the island became known as the Cactus Air Force.
Q 05Which nickname did Allied forces give the fast Japanese destroyer runs that supplied Guadalcanal under cover of night?
Tokyo Express
Tokyo Express was the name the press made famous. The destroyers had to unload and be back at base within one night, before daylight brought Allied aircraft overhead.
Q 06Marines on Guadalcanal named a tidal lagoon Alligator Creek, but which reptiles actually lived in its waters?
Crocodiles
Crocodiles, not alligators, live in the Solomons, so the name was wrong twice over: the 'creek' was a lagoon cut off from the sea by a sandbar. It stuck anyway.
Q 07Douglas Munro, killed rescuing Marines off a Guadalcanal beach, is the only Medal of Honor recipient of which service?
Coast Guard
Coast Guard signalman Munro steered his own landing craft between Japanese guns and the Marines so the others could load. He was 22.
Q 08Which Japanese admiral, blamed for Pearl Harbor, was shot down in 1943 by American fighters flying from Guadalcanal?
Isoroku Yamamoto
Isoroku Yamamoto died when P-38s from Guadalcanal ambushed his transport near Bougainville. American codebreakers had read a message giving his travel schedule.
Q 09Japanese sailors named their own night destroyer runs to Guadalcanal after which creature that is busiest after dark?
Rats
Rats gave the runs their Japanese name, Rat Transportation. Fast warships could slip troops ashore this way, but not the heavy guns, vehicles and food an army needed.
Q 10Which household appliance named the lone Japanese planes that droned over Guadalcanal at night to keep Marines awake?
Washing machine
Washing machine was the comparison: troops called each raider Washing Machine Charlie for its rattling engines, which some bomber pilots deliberately ran out of sync.
Q 11Which Marine machine gunner earned the Medal of Honor on Guadalcanal, sold war bonds at home, then died on Iwo Jima?
John Basilone
John Basilone could have sat out the war as a celebrity, but he asked to go back to the fleet and was killed on the first day of the Iwo Jima landings.
Q 12Which 1998 Terrence Malick film, adapted from a James Jones novel, follows American soldiers fighting on Guadalcanal?
The Thin Red Line
The Thin Red Line draws on its author's own war: Jones fought on Guadalcanal as an infantryman and was wounded there before he ever wrote about it.
Q 13Which nickname did Allied sailors give New Georgia Sound, the channel Japanese warships ran down toward Guadalcanal?
The Slot
Q 21Which Marine Raider colonel, known as Red Mike, held Guadalcanal's Bloody Ridge against repeated Japanese night attacks?
Merritt Edson
Merritt Edson and about 800 Marines withstood more than 3,000 attackers just south of the runway. He received the Medal of Honor, and the ridge now carries his name.
Q 22Which phrase did Evans Carlson, whose Marine Raiders made a four-week patrol across Guadalcanal, borrow from Chinese?
Gung ho
Gung ho came from the name of China's industrial cooperatives. Carlson took it to mean working together and made it his battalion's watchword, and the Marines spread it.
Q 23Which Guadalcanal scout, bayoneted and left for dead by Japanese captors, crawled back to warn the Marines of an attack?
Jacob Vouza
The Slot got its name from its shape, a narrow corridor of water between two chains of islands, and from the stream of warships that used it.
Q 14Which name did Allied sailors give the waters off Guadalcanal because so many ships and planes sank there?
Ironbottom Sound
Ironbottom Sound holds the wrecks of more than 50 vessels lost during the campaign, Japanese and Allied alike.
Q 15Which admiral nicknamed Bull took charge of the South Pacific in October 1942, with Guadalcanal hanging in the balance?
William Halsey
William Halsey replaced Robert Ghormley, whom the Pacific Fleet's commander had come to see as too pessimistic to keep leading the campaign.
Q 16Which general led the 1st Marine Division onto Guadalcanal and later became the first four-star Marine on active duty?
A. A. Vandegrift
A. A. Vandegrift received the Medal of Honor for holding Guadalcanal and went on to serve as Commandant of the Marine Corps.
Q 17Which nickname belongs to the Navy construction battalions that reached Guadalcanal in 1942 to maintain Henderson Field?
Seabees
Seabees is a play on CB, the initials of Construction Battalion. Nearly 400 of them landed in September 1942 to keep the battered runway in service.
Q 18Which mosquito-borne disease struck far more men of the 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal than Japanese fire did?
Malaria
Malaria led the tropical diseases that caused some 8,500 hospital cases in the division, more than four times its battle casualties.
Q 19What were Japanese crews building on Guadalcanal in mid-1942 that prompted the Allies to invade the island?
An airfield
An airfield at Lunga Point would have put Japanese long-range bombers within reach of the sea lanes between America and Australia. The Marines finished it themselves.
Q 20Which volcanic island near Guadalcanal named an August 1942 night battle that sank three American cruisers?
Savo
Savo's battle was a night ambush that routed the Allied screen while the attackers were barely scratched, one of the worst defeats in US naval history.
Jacob Vouza chewed through the ropes that bound him to a tree and reached American lines minutes before the assault. He was later knighted.
Q 24Which capital city of Solomon Islands grew up on Guadalcanal's north shore beside the wartime Henderson Field?
Honiara
Honiara became the capital in 1952 because the American military had left the area better equipped with roads and facilities than anywhere else in the islands.
Q 25Which war correspondent landed with the Marines and turned his notes into the 1943 bestseller Guadalcanal Diary?
Richard Tregaskis
Richard Tregaskis stood 6 feet 7, a conspicuous target, yet stayed through the first weeks ashore. Hollywood released a film of his book within a year.
Q 26Joe Foss, the top Marine fighter ace over Guadalcanal, later became the first commissioner of which sports organization?
American Football League
American Football League owners hired Foss in 1959, soon after he left office as governor of South Dakota. He ran the upstart competition until 1966.
Q 27Which constellation appears on the 1st Marine Division's shoulder insignia, designed in Australia after Guadalcanal?
Southern Cross
Southern Cross stars surround a red numeral one that stands for Guadalcanal, the division's first action. Each Marine was issued two of the badges to sew onto his battle jacket.
Q 28Which Army formation, named for New Caledonia where it was raised, was the first Army unit sent to Guadalcanal?
Americal Division
Americal Division is a contraction of American and New Caledonian. Its first regiment ashore fought so closely beside the Marines that it was sometimes called the 164th Marines.
Q 29Coastwatchers who warned Guadalcanal of incoming air raids took their code name from which children's book character?
Ferdinand
Ferdinand, the storybook bull who sits and smells the flowers rather than fight, was chosen to remind the watchers that their job was to observe unnoticed, not to do battle.
Q 30Barney Ross, decorated with a Silver Star for a night fight on Guadalcanal, had been a world champion in which sport?
Boxing
Boxing made Ross famous as a champion in three weight divisions. Wounded on a night patrol, he held off a Japanese attack alone and saved a fellow Marine.