Part 3

Somewhat farther along, a bayonet was seen sticking up through a patch of fronds. The Jap crouched within it hadn’t room to draw in the whole length of the weapon. Private First Class Edward Fiske fired his BAR at the hole; the dried fronds caught fire from the tracers. At that point Fiske ran out of ammunition.

Private First Class Julian Guterrez then took up the fire with his M1 [rifle]. He stood directly above the hole and fired down into it. Then the hole exploded; the Jap inside had turned a grenade on himself. A man’s shattered arm came flying out of the hole and hit Guterrez on the shoulder, splattering blood all over his face and clothing. The arm bounced off and fell to the side. As Guterrez looked at it, fascinated and horror-stricken, he saw another bayonet rising out of a patch of fronds just beyond the outstretched and still-quivering fingers. He yelled to a man behind him. The man relayed a grenade and Guterrez pitched it with all of his might into the patch of fronds. It erupted in a shower of palm leaves and blood and flesh.

Guterrez reeled over toward the lagoon to cleanse himself of the blood. Before he could reach the water, in sight of all the other men, he vomited all over the beach. Minutes passed before he could gather himself together again.

As the two Army regiments began their third day of combat, it was dirty and dangerous work. One Marine historical summary of the Marshalls operation told their story:

Resistance during the day was continually stiffer as the enemy took advantage of every possible uncertainty of the terrain, and concentrated the fire of such mortars and artillery as were left to them. Despite the havoc wrought by the bombardments, there was still much cover available and positions were concealed with great adroitness. Many of the concrete installations still stood in partial ruin even though they had received direct hits from heavy naval guns, and the fire from 75mm [cannon] had little effect on them.

It was necessary to employ heavy demolition charges to breach emplacements sufficiently for the employment of flamethrowers and grenades. In the utter turmoil, it was nearly impossible to maintain contact. Nothing was any longer recognizable. The situation was made doubly uncertain from the fact that fire might come from almost any direction at the flanks, frontally, or from the rear. The going was tough.

Weird things can and do happen in such fighting. A Japanese officer charged a U.S. tank with just his bare saber. In the dusk one evening Japanese riflemen tried to walk into the American lines carrying palm branches in front of their bodies so they would not be seen. A U.S. infantryman carrying a flamethrower approached a pillbox, and out through its door bolted a Japanese officer in counterattack. He was squirting a fire extinguisher towards the flame gun. The liquid doused the American soldier as he let the flame go. The Japanese officer dropped dead at his feet, burned to a crisp.

And so it went for four long days until the far tip of Kwajalein had been reached and the island was declared secured.

The successful battle for both ends of Kwajalein Atoll had been concluded, and a series of conclusions were drawn from it. Japanese deaths reached a total of 8,122, some 27 times the number of Americans killed. The relatively small scale of U.S. casualties gave Admiral Chester W. Nimitz the ready forces he needed to push forward rapidly with plans for further action: first, one more atoll in the Marshalls, and then quickly on to the vital Mariana Islands, the linchpin of Japan’s inner line of defense. Kwajalein would provide the air base from which the B-29 bombers would conduct their raids on the Marianas, and the Army 7th Infantry Division and the 4th Marine Division would play key roles in those future operations.

Tactically, there were a variety of innovations in the twin battles at Kwajalein, and these would continue to prove valuable in the future. There was the first use of Navy underwater demolition teams; the first use of DUKWs in combat; the first use of command ships with special communications equipment to control the battle; the first use of airplanes to control naval gunfire; and the first use of armored amphibian tractors (LVTAs). In addition, the two battles saw the debut of new units designed to facilitate crucial communications during combat. These were the Joint Assault Signal Companies. The official Marine history of the Marshalls campaign described their complex responsibilities:

The primary mission of this unit was to coordinate all supporting fires available to a Marine division during an amphibious operation. In order to carry out this function, the company was divided into Shore and Beach Party Communications Teams, Air Liaison Parties, and Shore Fire Control Parties.... During training, the various teams were attached to the regiments and battalions of the division. Thus each assault battalion could become familiar with its shore and beach party, air liaison, and fire control teams.

Another new element was the way rockets were used. This was a centuries-old technique of bombardment, but in the Marshalls the 4th Marine Division was the first American division to use rockets mounted on jeeps, pick-up trucks, and Navy gunboats in combat.

One other Marine resource was unique: the use of Navajo Indian “code talkers” in battle. They proved a perfect foil for the Japanese ability in previous battles to understand Marine voice-to-voice communications and Morse Code. To prevent this a group of Navajo Indians had been recruited and trained in special code words they could use in combat. When they were talking in the Navajo’s exotic language, no Japanese would ever decipher the message! At Roi-Namur their walkie-talkie portable radios carried the urgent instructions back and forth between ship and shore, as well as between higher echelons and subordinate units, and did it so quickly that previous delays of up to 12 hours (intercepting, transmitting, and deciphering messages) were eliminated.

Finally, the two battles for Kwajalein Atoll proved incontestably the effectiveness of prolonged and massive preinvasion naval gunfire and aerial bombing. The U.S. planes and warships had so thoroughly scoured not only the target islands, but also the other Japanese air bases in the Marshalls, that not a single Japanese plane was able to attack the American surface forces in the campaign.

_The Final Attack: Eniwetok_

With Kwajalein Atoll now in American hands, a review of the next operation immediately took place. Admiral Nimitz flew there from Pearl Harbor and met with his top commanders. The 2d Marine Division, tempered in the fires of Tarawa, had earlier been alerted to prepare for a May attack on Eniwetok Atoll, 330 miles northwest of Kwajalein. The planners decided to use instead the 22d Marines (under the command of Colonel John T. Walker) and two battalions of the Army’s 106th Infantry Regiment, since they had not been needed in the quick conquest of Roi-Namur and Kwajalein. In addition, the date for the attack was jumped forward to mid-February.

The softening-up process had begun at the end of January, and the carrier air strikes increased the following month. Japanese soldiers caught in this deluge were dismayed. One wrote in his diary, “The American attacks are becoming more furious. Planes come over day after day. Can we stand up under the strain?” Another noted that “some soldiers have gone out of their minds.”

On D-Day, 17 February, the Navy’s heavy guns joined in with a thunderous shelling. Then, using secret Japanese navigation charts captured at Kwajalein, the task force moved into the huge lagoon, 17 by 21 miles in size. Brigadier General Thomas E. Watson, the Marine in overall command of some 10,000 assault troops, had the responsibility for conducting a complex series of successive maneuvers. As at Kwajalein Atoll, the artillery was sent ashore on D-Day on two tiny islets adjacent to the first key target, Engebi Island. The Marines’ 2d Separate [75mm] Pack Howitzer Battalion went to one islet, and the Army’s 104th Field Artillery Battalion went to the other. There they set up to provide supporting fire for the forthcoming infantry assault.

The landing on Engebi came the next morning, D plus 1, 18 February, as the 1st and 2d Battalions of the 22d Marines headed for the beach in their amtracs. At this time there occurred “one of those pathetic episodes incident to the horrible waste of war.” As one Marine report described it:

One tank was lost in the landings. It was boated in an LCM [Landing Craft, Medium] on which, unfortunately, only one engine was functioning. By some mischance the lever depressing the ramp was operated with the result that the craft began to flood rapidly while still 500 yards offshore. The tank crew had “buttoned up” and could gain but [a] small idea of the accident. Despite the frantic efforts of the LCM’s crew to warn the occupants, the desperate urgency of the situation was not appreciated. The LCM gradually filled, listed, and finally spilled her load into the lagoon, turning completely over. At the last possible moment, one of the crew of the tank managed to escape as the tank actually hit bottom forty feet down.

Once the two battalions hit the beach, they found the core of the enemy defenses to be a palm grove in the middle of the island. This area was riddled with “spider holes,” and the American shelling had added fallen trees to the cover provided to the Japanese by the dense underbrush. Thus their positions were extremely difficult to locate. It was dangerous work for the individuals and small groups who had to take the initiative, but they did and the assault ground ahead against enemy defenses.

With these advances and some direct fire from self-propelled 105mm guns against concrete pillboxes, the whole of Engebi had been overrun by the Marines by the afternoon of D plus 1. On the following morning the American flag was raised to the sound of a Marine playing “To the Colors” on a captured Japanese bugle. An engineer company, however, spent a busy day using flamethrowers and demolitions to mop up by-passed enemy soldiers. More than 1,200 Japanese, Koreans, and Okinawans were on Engebi, and only 19 surrendered.

The main action now shifted quickly on D plus 2 to the attack on Eniwetok Island. This mission was assigned to the 1st and 3d Battalions of the Army’s 106th Infantry Regiment. When they landed, their advance was slow. Only 204 tons of naval gunfire rounds (compared to the 1,179 tons which had plastered Engebi) hit Eniwetok. “Spider hole” defenses held up their advance. A steep bluff blocked the planned inland advance of their LVTAs, resulting in a traffic jam on the beaches. Less than an hour after the initial landing, General Watson felt obliged to radio Colonel Russell G. Ayers, commanding the 106th, “Push your attack.”

Things were clearly not going as planned, for General Watson had hoped to secure Eniwetok quickly, and then have the battalions of the 106th immediately ready for an attack on the final objective, Parry Island. To speed the progress on Eniwetok, the reserve troops, the 3d Battalion of the 22d Marines, were ordered to land early in the afternoon. Moving forward, they were soon in heavy combat. Japanese soldiers who had been by-passed kept up their harassing fire; permission to bring the battalions half-track 75mm cannon ashore was flatly denied Colonel Ayers. The Marines had to take responsibility for clearing two-thirds of the southern zone on the island. Tanks were ashore but “not available,” and coconut log emplacements provided the Japanese with strong defensive positions.

Nevertheless, the attack inched forward with the repeated use of flamethrowers and satchel charges. Halting for the night several hundred yards from the tip of the island, the Marines were greeted the following morning (D plus 3) by an astonishing sight. The Army battalion supposed to be on their right flank had, without notifying the Marines, pulled back 300 yards to the rear during the night and left a large gap in the American lines. The Marines then had to stem a small but furious Japanese night counterattack. When the soldiers returned in the morning, the American attack began again, and by mid-afternoon the Marines and the Army battalion had secured the southern part of the island.

Progress was still very slow in the northern sector, so Marine tanks and engineers moved in to assist the other Army battalion there. Finally, in the afternoon of D plus 4, 21 February, the northern area was also declared secure.

With the elapse of all this time (96 hours instead of the 24 hours expected), General Watson was forced to alter his plans for the final phase of the operation: the assault on Parry. He brought down from Engebi the 1st and 2d Battalions of the 22d Marines, pulled that regiment’s other (3d) battalion off Eniwetok, and designated them for the landing on Parry.

Amidst all of this purposeful activity, the ludicrous side of war emerged in one episode. A U.S. float plane moored in the lagoon, and a boat was sent to take off the crew. Coming alongside, the boat cleverly managed to capsize the plane.

The exact timing of an amphibious assault is a crucial decision based on a delicate balancing of a host of factors, such as the condition of the troops and their equipment, provision of fire support, etc. General Watson decided to hold off the landing on Parry until D plus 5 (22 February). An official report explained the reasons for the delay:

(a) To rehabilitate and reorganize [the battalion of the 22d Marines] which had been in action for three successive days.

(b) To reembark, repair, and service medium tanks and rest their crews.

(c) To make light tanks, which were still engaged on Eniwetok, available for the assault on Parry Island if required.

(d) To provide one [battalion] of the 106th Infantry as support reserve in the event it was required.

(e) To allow additional time for the air and surface bombardment of Parry.

Awaiting the amtracs of the 22d Marines, the Japanese commander on the island issued a very succinct order to his troops:

At the edge of the water scatter and divide the enemy infantry in their boats--attack and annihilate each one. Launch cleverly prepared powerful quick thrusts and vivid sudden attacks, and after having attacked and having destroyed the enemy landing forces, first of all, then scatter and break up their groups of boats and ships. In the event that the enemy succeeds in making a landing annihilate him by means of night attacks.

The enemy plans to “annihilate” failed. For two days before the Marine assault, the Navy had moved its big guns in as close as 850 yards offshore and pounded the defenders with 944 tons of shells. This was supplemented by artillery fire from the neighboring islands and rocket fire from the gunboats as the Marines went in. This rain of shells crept ahead of the tanks and infantrymen as they tenaciously slogged their way across the island.

As always, there was the unexpected. When a shell from a U.S. warship hit directly on top of an underground bunker, all the Japanese inside poured out and ran--of all places--into the sea. Another shell hurled a coconut tree aloft and catapulted the body of an enemy sniper from its branches through the air to his death.

For the assault troops, it was a continuing story of “spider holes,” tunnels, underground strong points, and enemy resistance to the death. Another young Marine, Second Lieutenant Cord Meyer, Jr., in his first combat fought on both Eniwetok and Parry. The grueling experiences he had were typical of everyone who took part in these battles. He was landed with his machine gun platoon in the second wave of assault troops, three minutes after the first men to hit the beach on Eniwetok. Moving quickly inland, the platoon came to the edge of a blasted coconut grove. Then, as the lieutenant later wrote home:

We were hard hit there, and with terrible clarity the reality of the event came home to me. I had crawled forward to ask a Marine where the Japs were--pretty excited really and enjoying it almost like a game. I crawled up beside him but he wouldn’t answer. Then I saw the ever widening pool of dark blood by his head and knew that he was dying or dead. So it came over me what this war was, and after that it wasn’t fun or exciting, but something that had to be done.

Fortune smiled on me that day, or the hand of a Divine Providence was over me, or I was just plain lucky. We killed many of them in fighting that lasted to nightfall. We cornered fifty or so Imperial [Japanese] Marines on the end of the island, where they attempted a banzai charge, but we cut them down like overripe wheat, and they lay like tired children with their faces in the sand.

That night was unbelievably terrible. There were many of them left and they all had one fanatical notion, and that was to take one of us with them. We dug in with orders to kill anything that moved. I kept watch in a foxhole with my sergeant, and we both stayed awake all night with a knife in one hand and a grenade in the other. They crept in among us, and every bush or rock took on sinister proportions. They got some of us, but in the morning they all lay about, some with their riddled bodies actually inside our foxholes. With daylight it was easy for us and we finished them off. Never have I been so glad to see the blessed sun.

With that battle over, the lieutenant and his men were hustled back on ship. For a day and a night they were “desperately trying” to get their gear into proper shape to go right back into combat. The following morning, they went in on the attack on Parry.

They found the beach was swept with machine-gun and mortar fire, but they surged inland over ruined, shell-blasted soil rocked by the continual mortar bursts. Then their captain suddenly pointed, and above the brush line they saw 150 or so men bending forward, moving on a parallel course about 50 yards away. The Marines, however, waved, thinking that they must be fellow Marines. The men paid little attention to the Marines and seemed to be setting up machine guns. The realization struck home: they were Japanese.