Part 4

The end of the saga of Nafutan Point, way to the rear, had come the day before (27 June). The Japanese breakout had left almost no fighting men behind there. Accordingly, the battalion of the 105th Infantry at last overran the area after enduring a final banzai charge. The soldiers found over 500 enemy bodies in the area, some killed in the charge and some by their own hand.

D+15 (30 June) marked a good day for the Army. After fierce fighting, the 27th Infantry Division finally burst through Death Valley, captured Purple Heart Ridge, and drew alongside the 8th Marines. Holland Smith gave due recognition: “No one had any tougher job to do.” The gaps on the flanks with the 2d and 4th Marine Divisions were now closed. In doing so, the Army had sustained most of the 1,836 casualties inflicted upon it since D-Day. The 4th Marine Division, however, had suffered 4,454 casualties to date, while the 2d Marine Division had lost 4,488 men.

The corps front now ran from Garapan, past the four pimples, to the 4th Marine Division’s left boundary. Here, it ran sharply northward to Hill 700. From there it ran to the east coast. Central Saipan was in American hands. Most of the replenishment supplies had been unloaded. The enemy had begun withdrawing to his preplanned final defensive lines. The Army’s official history summed up these days’ costly victories this way, “The battle for central Saipan can be said to have come to a successful end.”

_D+16-D+19, 1-4 July_

Now Holland Smith turned his attention to operation plans to drive through the northern third of Saipan and bring the campaign to a successful, albeit a bloody, conclusion. His next objective line ran from Garapan up the west coast to Tanapag and then eastward across the island. Past Tanapag, near Flores Point, the 2d Marine Division would be pinched out and become the corps reserve. That would leave the 27th Infantry Division and the 4th Marine Division to assault General Saito’s final defenses.

The easiest assignment during this period fell to the 4th Marine Division on the east coast. It advanced 3,500 yards against light opposition, veering to its left, ending on 4 July with its left flank some 2,000 yards north of Tanapag, right on the west coast.

As usual, what looked like “light opposition” to General Schmidt in his divisional CP looked very different to that tired, tense lieutenant who described a painfully typical rifle platoon situation on D+16:

I took the rest of my men and we proceeded--very cautiously--to comb the area. It was a terrible place: the rocks and creepers were so interwoven that they formed an almost impenetrable barrier; visibility was limited to a few feet. After what had happened to [my wounded sergeant], the atmosphere of the place was very tense. We located some rock crevices we thought the Japs might be in, and I tried calling to them in our Japanese combat phrases to come out and surrender. This proved fruitless, and it let the Japs know exactly where we were, while we had no idea of their location. Then I tried to maneuver our flamethrower man into a position where he could give the crevice a blast without becoming a sitting-duck target himself. Because of the configuration of the ground, this proved impossible.

Right about now, there was a shot off to our left. We started over to investigate and all hell broke loose! A Jap automatic weapon opened up right beside us. We all hit the deck automatically. No one was hit (for a change), but we couldn’t spot the exact location of the weapon (as usual). I called to the man who’d been over on the left flank. No answer. What had happened to him?

At this point more enemy fire spattered around the small group of Marines. The source seemed to be right on top of them, so the lieutenant told two of his men to throw some grenades over into the area he thought the fire was coming from--about 20 feet away. Under cover of that, the Marines worked a rifleman forward a couple of yards to try to get a bead on the Japanese, but he was unable to spot them and the enemy fire seemed to grow heavier.

Now the lieutenant began to get very worried:

Here we were--completely isolated from the rest of the company--only half a dozen of us left--our flank man had disappeared and now we were getting heavy fire from an uncertain number of Japs who were right in our middle and whom we couldn’t locate! Some of the men were getting a little jittery I could see, so I tried to appear as calm and cool as I could (although I didn’t feel that way inside!). I decided to move back to the other end of the hilltop and report to [our company commander] on the phone. If I could get his OK, I would then contact [another one of our platoons] for reinforcements, and we could move back into this area and clean out the Jap pocket.

Pressing hard against the Japanese defenses constantly resulted in these kinds of face-to-face encounters. Three days later (D+19), Lieutenant Colonel Chambers observed a memorable act of bravery:

Three of our tanks came along the road.... They made the turn to the south and then took the wrong turn, which took them off the high ground and into a cave area where there were literally hundreds of Japs, who swarmed all over the tanks. We were watching and heard on the radio that (the lieutenant) who commanded the tanks was hollering for help, and I don’t blame him. They had formed a triangle and covered each other with the co-axial guns as best as they could.

The commanding officer of the 1st Battalion, 25th Marines, Lieutenant Colonel Hollis U. (“Musty”) Mustain was nearest the crisis. Chambers went on:

Mustain’s executive officer was a regular major by the name of Fenton Mee. Musty and I were together, and when radio operators told us what was going on, Musty turned to Mee and said, “Get some people there and get those tanks out.”

Mee turned around to his battalion CP, who were all staff people. He just pointed and said, “Let’s get going.” He turned and took off. I can still see his face--he figured he was going to get killed. They got there and the Japs pulled out. This let the tanks get out, and they were saved. It was one of the bravest things I ever saw people do.

Chambers also noted that, by D+19, out of 28 officers and 690 enlisted men in his rifle companies at the start of the campaign, he now had only 6 officers and 315 men left in those companies. Counting his headquarters company, he had just 468 men remaining of the battalion’s original total strength of 1,050, so one rifle company simply had to be disbanded. The grim toll was repeated in another battalion which had had 22 out of 29 officers and 490 enlisted men either killed or wounded in action.

Next to the 4th Marine Division was the 27th Infantry Division in the center of the line of attack. It, too, had a far easier time than in the grinding experiences it had just come through. Its advance also veered left, and was “against negligible resistance” with “the enemy in full flight.” Thus it reached the west coast, pinching off the 2d Marine Division and allowing it to go into reserve.

There was a different story in the 2d Marine Division zone of action at the beginning of this period. On 2 July Flametree Hill was seized and the 2d Marines stormed into Garapan, the second largest city in the Mariana Islands. What the regiment found was a shambles; the town had been completely leveled by naval gunfire and Marine artillery.

The official Marine history pictures the scene:

Twisted metal roof tops now littered the area, shielding Japanese snipers. A number of deftly hidden pillboxes were scattered among the ruins. Assault engineers, covered by riflemen, slipped behind such obstacles to set explosives while flamethrowers seared the front. Assisted by the engineers, and supported by tanks and 75mm self-propelled guns of the regimental weapons company, the 2d Marines beat down the scattered resistance before nightfall. On the beaches, suppressing fire from the LVT(A)s of the 2d Armored Amphibian Battalion silenced the Japanese weapons located near the water.

Moving past the town, the 2d Marine Division drove towards Flores Point, halfway to Tanapag. Along the way, with filthy uniforms, stiff with sweat and dirt after over two weeks of fierce fighting, the Marines joyfully dipped their heads and hands into the cool ocean waters.

With the other two divisions already having veered their attack to the left and reached the northwest coast, the 2d Marine Division was now able to go into corps reserve, as planned, on 4 July. (Holland Smith, seeing the end in sight on Saipan, wanted this division rested for the forthcoming assault on neighboring Tinian Island.)

The Japanese, meanwhile, were falling back to a final defensive line north of Garapan. The American attack of the preceding weeks had not only shattered their manpower, their artillery, and their tanks, but the enemy also was desperate for food. “Many of them had been so pressed for provisions that they were eating field grass and tree bark.”

_D+20-D+23, 5-8 July_

Any Japanese “withdrawal” meant that some of their men were left behind in caves to fight to the death. This tactic produced again and again for the American troops the life-threatening question of whether there were civilians hidden inside who should be saved. There was a typical grim episode at this time for First Lieutenant Frederic A. Stott, in the 1st Battalion, 24th Marines:

On this twenty-first day of the battle we trudged along a circuitous route to relieve the 23d Marines for an attack scheduled for 1300. A normal artillery preparation preceded it, followed by the morale-lifting rockets, but neither they nor mortar fire could eliminate many cave-dwelling Japs. And again the cost was heavy. Using civilian men, women, and children as decoys, the Jap soldiers managed to entice a volunteer patrol forward into the open to collect additional civilian prisoners. A dozen men from A Company were riddled as the ruse succeeded.

This kind of treacherous action by the Japanese was demonstrated in a different form on the following day (D+21). Lieutenant Colonel Chambers described how he dealt summarily with it--and, by contrast how his men treated genuine civilians who had been hiding:

... a few of the Japs had played possum by smearing blood of other Japs on themselves and lying still as the Marines came up. However, within the battalion my instructions were “if it didn’t stink, stick it.” [My officer] just laughed and said the Marines had bayoneted all the bodies. You had to do it!

We also picked up several civilian prisoners, including some women and children. The thing that really got to me was watching these boys of mine; they’d take all kinds of risks; they’d go into a cave never knowing whether there would be soldiers in there, to bring out these civilians. The minute they got them out, they began to feed them, give them part of their rations, and offer their cigarettes to the men. It made you feel proud of the boys for doing this.

Once the 2d Marine Division became corps reserve, it was obvious to General Smith that the time was ripe for a banzai attack. He duly warned all units to be alert, and paid a personal visit on 6 July to General Griner, of the 27th Infantry Division, to stress the likelihood of an attack coming down the coastline on the flat ground of the Tanapag Plain.

General Saito was now cornered in his sixth (and last) command post, a miserable cave in Paradise Valley north of Tanapag. The valley was constantly raked by American artillery and naval gunfire; he had left only fragmentary remnants of his troops; he was himself sick, hungry, and wounded. After giving orders for one last fanatical banzai charge, he decided to commit hara-kiri in his cave. At 10 a.m. on 6 July, facing east and crying “Tenno Haika! Banzai! [Long live the Emperor! Ten thousand ages!],” he drew his own blood first with his own sword and then his adjutant shot him and Admiral Nagumo in the head with a pistol, but not before he said, “I will meet my staff in Yasakuni Shrine 3 a.m., 7 July!” This was to be the time ordered for the commencement of the final attack.

The ultimate outcome was clear to Saito: “Whether we attack, or whether we stay where we are, there is only death.”

The threat of a mad, all-out enemy charge was nothing new to the troops on Saipan. A rifleman recounted one such experience:

Whenever we cornered the enemy and there was no way out, we faced the dreaded banzai attack. The 23d Marines had a few of these during our Saipan adventure, as did all the other outfits. I dreaded these attacks and yet welcomed them, which is quite a paradox. They generated a great deal of fear but, when it was over, that particular sector was Jap-free.

For hours, we could hear them preparing for their banzai attack, as it was the end for them and they knew it. Because it was against their heritage, their training, and their belief, they would not surrender. All that was left was a final charge, a pouring in of all their troops in one concentrated place with their pledge to take as many of us with them as possible.

His account continued with a dramatic description of the tense waiting he endured, while he listened to the enemy “yells and screams going on for hours.” The noise increased as Marine artillery and mortars, pounding in the direction of the Japanese sounds, added to the deafening din. The Marines were waiting in their foxholes with clips of ammo placed close at hand so that they could reload fast, fixing their bayonets onto their rifles, ensuring that their knives were loose in their scabbard all in anticipation of the forthcoming attacks. Listening to the screaming, all senses alert, many of the men had prayers on their lips as they waited. Unexpectedly, there was silence, a silence that signaled the enemy’s advance. Then:

Suddenly there is what sounded like a thousand people screaming all at once, as a hoard of “mad men” broke out of the darkness before us. Screams of “Banzai” fill the air, Japanese officers leading the “devils from hell,” their swords drawn and swishing in circles over their heads. Jap soldiers were following their leaders, firing their weapons at us and screaming “Banzai” as they charged toward us.

Our weapons opened up, our mortars and machine guns fired continually. No longer do they fire in bursts of three or five. Belt after belt of ammunition goes through that gun, the gunner swinging the barrel left and right. Even though Jap bodies build up in front of us, they still charged us, running over their comrades’ fallen bodies. The mortar tubes became so hot from the rapid fire, as did the machine gun barrels, that they could no longer be used.

Although each [attack] had taken its toll, still they came in droves. Haunting memories can still visualize the enemy only a few feet away, bayonet aimed at our body as we empty a clip into him. The momentum carries him into our foxhole, right on top of us. Then pushing him off, we reload and repeat the procedure.

Bullets whiz around us, screams are deafening, the area reeks with death, and the smell of Japs and gunpowder permeate the air. Full of fear and hate, with the desire to kill ... [Our enemy seems to us now to be] a savage animal, a beast, a devil, not a human at all, and the only thought is to kill, kill, kill.... Finally it ends.

This was the wild chaos that General Smith predicted as the final convulsive effort of the Japanese. And it came indeed in the early morning hours of 7 July (D+22), the climactic moment of the battle for Saipan. The theoretical Japanese objective was to smash through Tanapag and Garapan and reach all the way down to Charan-Kanoa. It was a “fearful charge of flesh and fire, savage and primitive.... Some of the enemy were armed only with rocks or a knife mounted on a pole.”

The avalanche hit the 105th Infantry, dug in for the night with two battalions on the main line of resistance and the regimental headquarters behind them. However, those two forward battalions had left a 500-yard gap between them, which they planned to cover by fire.

The Japanese found this gap, poured through it, and headed pell-mell for the regimental headquarters of the 105th. The men of the frontline battalions fought valiantly but were unable to stop the banzai onslaught.

Three artillery battalions of the 10th Marines behind the 105th were the next target. The gunners could not set their fuses fast enough, even when cut to four-tenths of a second, to stop the enemy right on top of them. So they lowered the muzzles of their 105mm howitzers and spewed ricochet fire by bouncing their shells off the foreground. Many of the other guns could not fire at all, since Army troops ahead of them were inextricably intertwined with the Japanese attackers. However, other Marines in the artillery battalions fired every type of small weapon they could find. The fire direction center of one of their battalions was almost wiped out, and the battalion commander was killed. The cane field to their front was swarming with enemy troops. The guns were overrun and the Marine artillerymen, after removing the firing locks of their guns, fell back to continue the fight as infantrymen.

The official history of the 27th Infantry Division recounts sadly the reactions of its fellow regiments when the firestorm broke on the 105th. The men of the nearby 165th Infantry chose that morning to “stand where they were and shoot Japs without any effort to move forward.” By 1600 that afternoon, after finally starting to move to the relief of the shattered 105th, the 165th “was still 200 to 300 yards short” of making contact. This tardiness was unfortunately matched by “the long delay in the arrival of the 106th Infantry” to try to shore up the battered troops of the 105th.

The extraordinarily bitter hand-to-hand fighting finally took the momentum out of the Japanese surge, and it was stopped at last at the CP of the 105th some 800 yards south of Tanapag. By 1800 most of the ground lost had been regained.

It had been a ghastly day. The 105th Infantry’s two battalions had suffered a shocking 918 casualties while killing 2,295 Japanese. One of the Marine artillery battalions had 127 casualties, but had accounted for 322 of the enemy. A final count of the Japanese dead reached the staggering total of 4,311, some due to previous shell-fire, but the vast majority killed in the banzai charge.

Amidst the carnage, there had been countless acts of bravery. Two that were recognized by later awards of the Army Medal of Honor were the leadership and “resistance to the death” of Army Lieutenant Colonel William J. O’Brien, commander of a battalion of the 105th Infantry, and one of his squad leaders, Sergeant Thomas A. Baker.

Three Marines each “gallantly gave his life in the service of his country” and were posthumously awarded the Navy Medal of Honor. They were Private First Class Harold C. Agerholm, Private First Class Harold G. Epperson, and Sergeant Grant F. Timmerman.

The 3d Battalion, 10th Marines, which had fought so tenaciously in the banzai assault, received the Navy Unit Commendation. Four years later, the 105th Infantry and its attached tank battalion were awarded the Army Distinguished Unit Citation.

While attention centered on the bloody battle on the coast, the 23d Marines was attacking a strong Japanese force well protected by caves in a cliff inland. The key to their elimination was an ingenious improvisation. In order to provide fire support, truck-mounted rocket launchers were lowered over the cliff by chains attached to tanks. Once down at the base, their fire, supplemented by that of rocket gunboats off shore, snuffed out the enemy resistance.

The next day, D+23, 8 July, saw the beginning of the end. The Japanese had spent the last of their unit manpower in the banzai charge; now it was time for the final American mop-up. LVTs rescued men of the 105th Infantry who had waded out from the shore to the reef to escape the Japanese. Holland Smith then moved most of the 27th Infantry Division into reserve, and put the 2d Marine Division back on the line of attack, with the 105th Infantry attached. Together with the 4th Marine Division, they swept north towards the end of the island.

Along the coast there were bizarre spectacles that presaged a macabre ending to the campaign. The official Marine history pictured the scene:

The enemy pocketed in the area had destroyed themselves in suicidal rushes from the high cliffs to the rocky beach below. Many were observed, along with hundreds of civilians, wading out into the sea and permitting themselves to be drowned. Others committed hara-kiri with knives, or killed themselves with grenades. Some officers, using their swords, decapitated many of their troops.

[Sidebar (page 30): Medal of Honor Recipients