Withdrawal offered a better use of Japan's remaining strength

The argument is that Japan should have accepted the loss of Guadalcanal after the airfield was captured and withdrawn whatever troops and supplies it could recover. Preserving mobile forces would have served Japan's own decisive-battle doctrine better than feeding a position that could no longer be sustained. Eighth Fleet instead assigned eight destroyers to the drum-delivery mission, two as escorts and six as transports. Each transport carried roughly two hundred to 240 drums and gave up its torpedo reloads, retaining only the weapons already in its launchers. The contrast turns force preservation from an abstract strategic principle into a concrete choice about ships, weapons, and an operation with little prospect of changing the campaign.