On the night of 6 August, the Imperial Japanese Navy sent a force of four destroyers under Captain Kaju Sugiura—, , of Sugiara's own Destroyer Division 4 and of Captain Tameichi Hara's Destroyer Division 27—carrying about 950 soldiers and their supplies. The Japanese airfield at Munda on New Georgia, which the force at Vila was assigned to reinforce, was on the verge of being captured; it would actually fall later that day. The Imperial Japanese commanders expected that Vila would become the center of their next line of defense. The Japanese operational plan specified the same approach route through Vella Gulf as the three previous successful transport runs over the objections of Hara, who argued that repeating prior operations was courting disaster.