LIFE Behind the Picture: ‘Skull on a Tank,’ Guadalcanal, 1942 In
February 1943, LIFE magazine published a series of photographs
from Guadalcanal — the largest of the Solomon Islands and the
site of the Allies’ first, pivotal offensive in the Pacific
during World War II. One of those pictures, made by a 25-year-
old LIFE photographer named Ralph Morse, instantly struck a
nerve with the magazine’s millions of readers. Seven decades
later, it remains one of the most unsettling images to emerge
from any war. Morse’s picture (the first in this gallery) of a
severed Japanese soldier’s head impaled on a tank captures more
graphically and immediately than volumes of words ever could the
relentless and often casual barbarity of war. Here, 70 years
after the end of that critical campaign, LIFE.com presents not
only Morse’s memories of how he made that photograph but also
other pictures from Guadalcanal, photos that ran in LIFE and
many more (by Morse and two other staffers, the brothers Joe and
Frank Scherschel) that we