However in mid-September Guadalcanal again influenced events in Papua. Hyakutake was content to meanwhile push towards Port Moresby and take up a useful position on the south side of the crest of the Owen Stanley Range that would serve as a jumping off point when the attack on Port Moresby was resumed. Japanese airpower remained focused on Guadalcanal to the end of the year. Almost all Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft were withdrawn from New Guinea to support a further, successful attempt, to land the Kawaguchi detachment. As a result the Japanese again drew on Papuan resources to aid Guadalcanal. In the naval Battle of the Eastern Solomons, on 23 August, the landing was foiled. The Kawaguchi detachment, originally to go to Papua, was directed to land at Guadalcanal. That done he planned to reinforce Papua and take Port Moresby. Now faced with two large problems which had just days before seemed to him two small problems, Hyakutake decided, his resources being insufficient for both, to put the advance on Port Moresby on hold and retake Guadalcanal. Within days General Hyakutake, 17th Army commander in Rabaul, was informed that the Americans at Guadalcanal were also much stronger than had been believed. Then an Australian counterattack which briefly retook Kokoda on 9 August, suggested to them that the Australians might be stronger in Papua than they had anticipated. Initially the Japanese believed they had a satisfactory force to take Port Moresby and that Guadalcanal might easily be recovered. The resulting series of battles, which occurred at the same time as the Kokoda campaign, exercised a strong influence on it. At the same time the Americans reinforced their Marines. The Japanese in turn made a number of attempts to recover the airfield. The Americans easily overcame the small number of Japanese present and planned to make the airfield their own. Guadalcanal was one of the locations the Japanese had earmarked as part of their outer ring of defences and they had begun to build an airfield there. On 7 August 1942 the United States Navy landed a Marine Division on the islands of Guadalcanal and nearby Tulagi. The American invasion of Japanese held Guadalcanal in August 1942 diverted Japanese attention from New Guinea and was of great assistance to the Australians in their defence of Port Moresby.
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