Part 1

Transcriber’s note: Table of Contents added by Transcriber and placed into the public domain. Boldface text is indicated by =equals signs=.

Contents

Liberation: Marines in the Recapture of Guam Sidebar: General Roy S. Geiger Coming Back to Guam Operation Forager Sidebar: General Allan H. Turnage Sidebar: General Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr. Sidebar: Major General Andrew D. Bruce Ashore in the North Sidebar: 3d Marine Division Insignia The Southern Beaches Sidebar: Medal of Honor Recipients Sidebar: The Taking of Chonito Ridge Colonel Suenaga Attacks Fonte Ridge Sidebar: General Robert E. Cushman Sidebar: ‘Daring Tactics’ Gave Capt Wilson Medal of Honor Sidebar: The Colt .45-Caliber M1911A1 Pistol Orote Sidebar: War Dogs on Guam Securing the Force Beachhead Line The Attack North Beginning of the End Sidebar: PFC Witek’s Medal of Honor Hailed ‘Inspiring Acts’ Sources About the Author Erratum About the Series Transcriber’s Notes

LIBERATION: MARINES IN THE RECAPTURE OF GUAM

MARINES IN WORLD WAR II COMMEMORATIVE SERIES

BY CYRIL J. O’BRIEN

Liberation: Marines in the Recapture of Guam

_by Cyril J. O’Brien_

With the instantaneous opening of a two-hour, ever-increasing bombardment by six battleships, nine cruisers, a host of destroyers and rocket ships, laying their wrath on the wrinkled black hills, rice paddies, cliffs, and caves that faced the attacking fleet on the west side of the island, Liberation Day for Guam began at 0530, 21 July 1944.

Fourteen-inch guns belching fire and thunder set spectacular blossoms of flame sprouting on the fields and hillsides inland. It was all very plain to see in the glow of star shells which illuminated the shore, the ships, and the troops who lined the rails of the transports and LSTs (Landing Ships, Tank) which brought the U.S. Marines and soldiers there.

The barrages, which at daylight would be enlarged by the strafing and bombing of carrier fighters, bombers, and torpedo planes, were the grand climax of 13 days (since 8 July) of unceasing prelanding softening-up. Indeed, carrier aircraft of Task Force 58 had been blasting Guam airfields since 11 June, while the first bombardment of the B-24s and B-25s of the Fifth, Seventh, and Thirteenth Air Forces fell as early as 6 May.

Up at 0230 to a by-now traditional Marine prelanding breakfast of steak and eggs, the assault troops, laden with fighting gear, sheathed bayonets protruding from their packs, hurried and waited, while the loudspeakers shouted “Now hear this.... Now hear this.” Unit commanders on board the LSTs visited each of their men, checking gear, straightening packs, rendering an encouraging pat on a shoulder, and squaring away the queues going below to the well decks before boarding the LVTs (Landing Vehicles, Tracked).

Troops on the APAs (attack transports) went over the rail and down cargo nets to which they--weighed down with 40-pound packs as well as weapons--held on for dear life, and into LCVPs (Landing Craft, Vehicle and Personnel). These troops would transfer from the landing craft to LVTs at the reef’s edge, if all went as planned.

Aircraft went roaring in over mast tops and naval guns produced a continuous booming background noise. Climaxing it all was the voice of Major General Roy S. Geiger, commanding general of III Amphibious Corps, rasping from a bulkhead speaker:

You have been honored. The eyes of the nation watch you as you go into battle to liberate this former American bastion from the enemy. The honor which has been bestowed on you is a signal one. May the glorious traditions of the Marine Corps’ esprit de corps spur you to victory. You have been honored.

In the crowded, stifling well decks of the LSTs, the liberators climbed on board the LVTs and waited claustrophobic until the LST bow doors dropped and the tracked landing vehicles rattled out over these ramps into the swell of the sea. As the amphibian tractors circled (about 0615) near the line of departure, a flight of attack aircraft from the _Wasp_ drowned out the whine of the amtrac engines and whirled up clouds of fire and dust, obscuring the landing beaches ahead. Eighty-five fighters, 65 bombers, and 53 torpedo planes executed a grass-cutting strafing and bombing sweep along all of the landing beaches from above the northern beaches of Agana, south for 14 miles to Bangi Point.

“My aim is to get the troops ashore standing up,” said Rear Admiral Richard L. Conolly, Southern Attack Force (Task Force 53) commander, who earned the nickname “Close-in Conolly” during the Marshalls operations for his insistence on having his naval gunfire support ships firing from stations very close to the beaches.

Private First Class James G. Helt, a radioman with Headquarters and Service Company, 1st Battalion, 3d Marines, in the bow of an LVT moving towards shore, wondered, as did many others, if anything could still be alive on Guam? Ashore, Lieutenant Colonel Hideyuki Takeda, on the staff of the defending _29th Division_, said the island could only be defended if the Americans did not land. In a diary, one Japanese officer noted that the only respite from the bombardment was a “stiff drink.”

The next best thing to a welcome mat for Marine assault waves had been laid by the audacious Navy Underwater Demolition Teams 3, 4, and 6, who cleared the beach obstacles. Navy Chief Petty Officer James R. Chittum of Team 3 noted that these pathfinders were usually close enough to draw small arms fire. At Asan, they exploded 640 wire obstacle cages filled with cemented coral, and at Agat they blew a 200-foot hole for unloading in the coral reef. Team 3, under Navy Reserve Lieutenant Thomas C. Crist, also removed half of a small freighter from a channel blocking the way of the Marines.

Swimmers as well as scouts, the “demos” reconnoitered right up on the landing beaches themselves. They left a sign for the first assault wave at Asan: “Welcome Marines--USO This Way.”

At 0730 a flare was shot in the air above the waiting flotilla and Admiral Conolly commanded: “Land the Landing Force.” At 0808, the first wave of the 3d Marine Division broke the circle of waiting LVTs to form a line and cross the 2,000 yards of water to the 2,500-yard-wide beach between Asan and Adelup points. At 0829, the first elements of the 3d Marine Division were on Guam. Three minutes later, 0832, lead assault troops of the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade crossed the shelled-pocked strand at Agat, six miles south of the Asan-Adelup beachhead.

[Sidebar (page 2): General Roy S. Geiger

Major General Roy S. Geiger, as the other general officers in the Guam invasion force, was a World War I veteran. He also was an early Marine Corps aviator. He was the fifth Marine to become a naval aviator--in 1917--and the 49th in the naval service to obtain his wings. He went to France in July of that year and commanded a squadron of the First Marine Aviation Force. In the war and after, he saw service with Marine Corps air units. He also was well educated professionally, for he attended the Army Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth in 1924-1925 and was a student in the Senior and Advanced Courses at the Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island, 1939-1941. In August 1941, he became commanding general of the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing and led it at Guadalcanal during the difficult days from September to November 1942. Back in Washington in 1943, he was Director of Aviation, until, on the untimely death of Major General Charles D. Barnett, Commanding General, I Marine Amphibious Corps, just prior to the Bougainville landings, General Geiger was rushed out to the Pacific to assume command and direct the landings at Empress Augusta Bay on 1 November 1943. He was the first Marine aviator to head as large a ground command as IMAC, which was redesignated III Amphibious Corps in April 1944. He led this organization in the liberation of Guam in July 1944, and in the landings on Peleliu on 15 September 1944. General Geiger led this corps into action for the fourth time as part of the Tenth Army in the invasion of Okinawa. Upon the death of Army Lieutenant General Simon B. Buckner, Geiger took command of the Tenth Army, the first Marine to lead an army-sized force. In July 1945, at the end of the Okinawa operation, General Geiger assumed command of Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, at Pearl Harbor. In November 1946 he returned to Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, in Washington, and died the following year. By an act of Congress, he was posthumously promoted to the rank of general. ]

_Coming Back to Guam_

Guam, along with the Philippines, became a territorial possession of the United States with the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1899, ending the Spanish-American War. Earlier, on 21 June 1898, First Lieutenant John Twiggs “Handsome Jack” Myers had led a party of Marines ashore from the protected cruiser _Charleston_ to accept the surrender of the Spanish authorities, who didn’t know that a state of war then existed between Spain and the United States. Thus began a long Marine presence on Guam. The island, southernmost of the Marianas chain, was discovered by Ferdinand Magellan in 1521, but not occupied until 1688 when a small mission was established there by a Spanish priest and soldiers. When control of the rest of the Mariana Islands, including Saipan and Tinian, all once German possessions, was given to Japan as a mandate power in 1919, Guam became an isolated and highly vulnerable American outpost in a Japanese sea.

This American territory, 35 miles long, nine miles at its widest and four at its narrowest, shaped like a peanut, with a year-long mean temperature of 79 degrees, fell quickly and easily in the early morning of 10 December 1941. Much of the Japanese attack on Guam came from her sister island of Saipan, 150 miles to the north.

The governor of Guam, Captain George J. McMillan (the island governor was always a U.S. Navy officer), aware that he could expect no reinforcement or relief, decided to surrender the territory to Japanese naval forces. Foremost in his mind was the fate of the 20,000 Guamanians, all American nationals, who would inevitably suffer if a strong defense was mounted. He felt “the situation was simply hopeless.” He sent word to the 153 Marines of the barracks detachment at Sumay on Orote Peninsula and the 80-man Insular Guard to lay down their arms. Even so, in two days of bombing and fighting, the garrison lost 19 men killed and 42 wounded, including four Marines killed and 12 wounded.

_Operation Forager_

In late 1943, both the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and, later, the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS) agreed to the further direction of the Pacific War. General Douglas MacArthur, commander of the Southwest Pacific Area, was to head north through New Guinea to regain the Philippines. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet, and Pacific Ocean Areas (CinCPac/CinCPOA), proposed a move through the Central Pacific to secure a hold in the Marianas. The strategic bombing of Japan would originate from captured fields on Guam, Saipan, and Tinian. The new strategic weapon for these attacks would be the B-29 bomber, which had a range of 3,000 miles while carrying 10,000 pounds of bombs. The code name of the Marianas operation was “Forager.” The Central Pacific drive began with the landing on Tarawa in November 1943, followed by the landings in Kwajalein Atoll on Roi-Namur, Eniwetok, and Kwajalein itself.

In January 1944, Admiral Nimitz made final plans for Guam, and selected his command structure for the Marianas campaign. Accordingly, Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, the victor at Midway, was designated commander of the Fifth Fleet and of all the Central Pacific Task Forces; he would command all units involved in Forager.

Vice Admiral Richmond K. Turner, who had commanded naval forces for the landings at Guadalcanal and Tarawa, headed the Joint Expeditionary Force (Task Force 51). Turner would also command the Northern Attack Force for the invasion of Saipan and Tinian. Admiral Conolly, who had commanded the invasion forces at Roi and Namur in the Marshalls, would head the Southern Attack Force (Task Force 53) assigned to Guam. Marine Major General (later Lieutenant General) Holland M. Smith, the Expeditionary Troops commander for the Marianas, would be responsible for the Northern Troops and Landing Force at Saipan and Tinian, essentially the Marine V Amphibious Corps (VAC). Major General Roy S. Geiger, an aviator who had conducted the Bougainville operation, was to command the Southern Troops and Landing Force, the III Amphibious Corps, at Guam.

D-Day for the invasion of Saipan had been set for 15 June. It was an important date also for the 3d Marine Division, commanded by Major General Allen H. “Hal” Turnage; the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade under Brigadier General Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr.; and the Army’s 77th Infantry Division under Major General Andrew D. Bruce. They were to land on Guam on 18 June, but the 3d Division and the brigade first would wait as floating reserve until the course of operations on Saipan became clear. The 77th would stand by on Oahu, ready to be called forward when needed.

Admiral Spruance kept the floating reserve well south and east of Saipan, out of the path of an expected Japanese naval attack. A powerful Japanese fleet, eager to close with the American invasion force, descended upon the Marianas. The opposing carrier groups clashed nearby in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, one of the major air battles of the war. The Imperial Navy lost 330 out of the 430 planes it launched in the fray. The clash (19 June), called “the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot,” was catastrophic for the Japanese and ended once and for all any naval or air threat to the Marianas invasion.

With the hard fighting on Saipan turning gradually but inevitably in favor of the American Marines and soldiers battling the Japanese, the U.S. Navy was ready to direct its attention to Guam, which was now slated to receive the most thorough pre-landing bombardment yet seen in the Pacific War. After weeks at sea, the 3d Division and the 1st Brigade were given a respite and a chance to go ashore to lose their “sea legs” after so long a period on board ships. The Task Force 53 convoy moved back to Eniwetok Atoll, whose huge 20-mile-wide lagoon was rapidly becoming a major forward naval base.

The Marines welcomed the break and the chance to walk on dry land on the small islands of the atoll. There was even an issue of warm beer to all those on shore. The Marine veterans of the fighting on Bougainville, New Georgia, and Eniwetok had a chance to look over the soldiers of the 305th Regimental Combat Team, which now came forward from Oahu to be attached briefly to the brigade for the landing on Guam, set for 21 July and designated W-Day. The rest of the Army contingent, the 77th Infantry Division, was well trained and well led, and was scheduled to arrive at the target on W plus 1, 22 July.

The 3d Marine Division, composed of the 3d, 9th, and 21st Marines (rifle regiments), the 12th Marines (artillery), and the 19th Marines (engineers and pioneers), plus supporting troops, numbered 20,238 men. It had received its baptism of fire on Bougainville in November and December 1943 and spent the intervening months on Guadalcanal training and absorbing casualty replacements. The 1st Provisional Marine Brigade, which was organized on Guadalcanal, was also a veteran outfit. One of its infantry regiments, the 4th Marines, was formed from the disbanded raider battalions which had fought in the Solomons. The other once-separate regiment, the 22d Marines, was blooded in the seizure of Eniwetok in February 1944. Both regiments had 75mm pack howitzer battalions attached, which now joined brigade troops. In all, the brigade mustered 9,886 men.

Corps troops of the III Corps was heavy with artillery and would use every gun. III Corps had three battalions of 155mm howitzers and guns and the 9th and 14th Defense Battalions, whose 90mm guns could and would fire at both air and ground targets.

For the handling of casualties, III Corps had a medical battalion, with equipment and supplies to operate a 1,500-bed hospital. In addition, the 1st Brigade had two medical companies; the 3d Division its own medical battalion; and the 77th Division a fully staffed and equipped Army field hospital. Each of the divisions had a medium tank battalion and a full complement of engineers, augmented by two Marine separate engineer battalions and two naval construction battalions (Seabees). Two amphibian tractor battalions and an armored amphibian battalion would carry the assault waves to shore. All in all, the III Amphibious Corps was prepared to land more than 54,000 soldiers, sailors, and Marines.

Waiting for the attack and sure that it would come, but not where, was the Japanese _29th Infantry Division_ under Lieutenant General Takeshi Takashina. The _29th_ had served in Japan’s _Kwantung Army_, operating and training in Manchuria until it was sent to the Marianas in February 1944. One of its regiments, the _18th_, fell victim to an American submarine, the _Trout_, and lost 2,200 of its 3,500 men when its transport was sunk. Reorganized on Saipan, the _18th Infantry Regiment_ took two infantry battalions to Guam, together with two companies of tanks.

Another of the _29th_’s regiments garrisoned Tinian and the remaining unit, the _38th Infantry_, together with division headquarters troops, arrived on Guam in March. The other major Army defending units were the _48th Independent Mixed Brigade_ and the _10th Independent Mixed Regiment_, both formed on Guam in March from a six-battalion infantry, artillery, and engineer force sent from the _Kwantung Army_. With miscellaneous supporting troops, the total Army defending force numbered about 11,500 men. Added to these were 5,000 naval troops of the _54th Keibitai_ (guard force) and about 2,000 naval airmen reorganized as infantry to defend Orote Peninsula and its airfield. General Takashina was in overall tactical command of the 18,500 Army and Navy defenders. His immediate superior, Lieutenant General Hideyoshi Obata, commanding the _Thirty-first Army_, was also on Guam, though not intentionally. Returning to his Saipan headquarters from an inspection trip to the Palau Islands, Obata was trapped on Guam by the American landing on Saipan. He left the conduct of Guam’s defense to Takashina.

The fact that the Americans were to assault Guam was no secret to its defenders. The invasion of Saipan and a month-long bombardment by ships and planes left only the question of when and where. With only 15 miles of potential landing beaches along the approachable west coast, the Japanese could not be very wrong no matter where they defended.

Tokyo Rose said they expected us. On board ship, the Americans heard her and her pleasant beguiling voice on the radio. While she made threats of dire things to happen to invasion troops, she was never taken seriously by any of her American “fans.”

Major General Kiyoshi Shigematsu, shoring up the morale of his _48th Independent Mixed Brigade_, told his men: “The enemy, overconfident because of his successful landing on Saipan, is planning a reckless and insufficiently prepared landing on Guam. We have an excellent opportunity to annihilate him on the beaches.”

Premier Hideki Tojo, supreme commander of the war effort for Japan, also had spirited words for his embattled commanders: “Because the fate of the Japanese empire depends on the result of your operation, inspire the spirit of officers and men and to the very end continue to destroy the enemy gallantly and persistently; thus alleviate the anxiety of the Emperor.”

Back to visit Guam a half century later, a former Japanese lieutenant said the tremendous American invasion fleet offshore had “paved the sea” and recalled what he thought on 21 July: “This is the day I will die.”

“Conditions,” said Admiral Conolly, “are most favorable for a successful landing.”

[Sidebar (page 4): General Allan H. Turnage

Allan H. Turnage was commissioned in 1913, and went to France as commanding officer of the 5th Machine Gun Battalion, 5th Brigade of Marines. In the interwar period, Turnage had an assortment of assignments to sea duty and to duty overseas, and in 1935 he reported as director of The Basic School, then at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. At the outset of World War II, he commanded Camp Lejeune and its training center, which was responsible for the organization and training of two regimental combat teams slated for duty with the 3d Marine Division. In October 1942 he became assistant division commander of the 3d Marine Division and its commander the next September. General Turnage led the division in the landing on Bougainville and the liberation of Guam. Following the end of the war, he became Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps. Lieutenant General Turnage’s final assignment was command of Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, at Pearl Harbor. Upon his retirement in 1948, because he was decorated in combat, he received a fourth star. He died in October 1971. ]