on the beachhead for the remainder of his regiment, but finding the beach deserted and the island apparently lightly defended, Ichiki grossly underestimated the strength of the American forces, left a rear guard of 125 men, and advanced to make a nighttime frontal assault against the American positions. Unknown to Ichiki, the American Marines were aware of his landing and were entrenched in defensive positions. In the Battle of the Tenaru of 21 August 1942 Ichiki was defeated with extremely heavy losses. Recent Japanese scholarship disputes the claim that Ichiki was personally at fault, and state that the Imperial General Staff placed Ichiki in a suicidal position by ordering him to attack prepared positions, outnumbered 15 to 1, without air, naval or heavy artillery support, and with poor intelligence that vastly underestimated American strength. The additional troops from his second group would not have changed this equation. However, the General Staff needed a scapegoat, and decided to pin the failure on Ichiki. There was also speculation that the General Staff preferred to send Ichiki to battle directly from the aborted Midway operation, calculating that if the detachment returned to Japan the secret of the failure at Midway would leak. Accounts differ as to how Ichiki died. At least one account claims that Ichiki was killed in action during the heat of battle; others state that he committed ritual suicide due to the humiliation of his defeat in the battle. Despite the failure of his attack, Ichiki was promoted posthumously to major general. See also Marco Polo Bridge Incident References Books Crowley, James. "A Reconsideration of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident," Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. XXII, No. 3 (May 1963). External links Notes 1892 births 1942 deaths Japanese generals Military personnel from Shizuoka Prefecture Battle of Midway Japanese military personnel killed in World War II Imperial Japanese Army personnel of World War II