 Throughout November , Japan 's top military leaders at the IGH in Tokyo continued to openly support further efforts to retake Guadalcanal from Allied forces . At the same time , however , lower @-@ ranking staff officers began to discreetly discuss abandoning the island . Takushiro Hattori and Masanobu Tsuji , each of whom had recently visited Guadalcanal , told their colleagues on the staff that any further attempt to retake the island was a lost cause . Ryūzō Sejima reported that the attrition of IJA troop @-@ strength on Guadalcanal was so unexpectedly severe that future operations would be untenable . On 11 December , two staff officers , IJN Commander Yuji Yamamoto and IJA Major Takahiko Hayashi returned to Tokyo from Rabaul and confirmed Hattori 's , Tsuji 's , and Sejima 's reports . They further reported that most of the IJN and IJA officers at Rabaul appeared to support abandoning Guadalcanal . Around this time , Japan 's War Ministry informed the IGH that there was an insufficient amount of shipping to support both the effort to retake Guadalcanal and transport strategic resources to maintain Japan 's economy and military forces . 
