Here you go. Part 3 and the last of the Guadalcanal Developer’s Notes by Nate Heiss is up:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=ah/article/ah20071114a
In the article it mentions this about the historical relevance of the battle and how they incorporated that into the game:
“Japan wanted the island chain as a place to launch air attacks on the US mainland. They also wanted to cut off the supply routes from Australia and the US. The US mostly wanted to stop Japan form achieving their goal, but establishing a foothold in the Solomons gave them a nice place to launch their Pacific operations closer to Asia.”
I have read before how the Japanese wanted to use the islands to separate Australia and the U.S. but, did Japan really want the islands to launch air strikes against the US mainland? Was that even feesable from Guadalcanal? That doesn’t make sense to me because isn’t Guadalcanal too far away to attack California isn’t it?