Thursday 25th October.

47 days to go.

The Gifu in the background and Galloping Horse is the bald hill in the midle ground.

Well, work meanders on. Spent some time today on the computer, formatting stuff and generally being bored in what I am doing. I did have some meetings with people from the local gold mine. I asked for some free samples. Guess what? They said yes! It is going to be sent to someone at a University to identify. This Professor is building up a data base on the gold mined all around the world. Each sample has a fingerprint which is unique. So in the future if any is stolen and comes back on the market it may be identified.

I made some more inroads with my counterparts here. We are working through some problems and finding solutions to them. If they can continue at this level we will have made some good improvements to their processes.

We are now getting to the final stages of the Second World War in Guadalcanal.

The US continued the fighting, rather than let the Japanese regroup. They forced the Japanese back westward along the coast, on the 22nd they had taken the Japanese position at Kokumbona and by the 25th they had extended the beach head to the Poha River.

From this point on it became a pursuit, the Japanese had no defences and were chased from the Poha River towards Cape Esperance. On the 1st of February the US send troops on landing craft to the south of Cape Esperance, trapping the Japanese between them.

The Japanese, unknown to the US forces had recognised their situation. They started evacuating from Cape Esperance that night. The US continued their North and South attacks until the 9th of February when their 2 forces met. This was the end of the Guadalcanal campaign.