Their Backs against the Sea: The Battle of Saipan and the Largest Banzai Attack of World War II

by Bill Sloan

  As Tinsley and a battalion runner named Tex were returning to the Regimental CP, a Jap who was dug into the railroad bank opened fire on them, but because he was firing across the railroad tracks, he couldn’t depress the gun low enough to hit either Marine.

  “He did put a hole in the canteen I had on my back,” Tinsley said, “and I found out I could dig a foxhole in the hard clay with my feet and bare hands. Our command post was just on the other side of the railroad tracks, and Tex was really getting nervous. I did my best to calm him down.

  “He can’t hit us here, and if he moves to where he can see us, we can hit him,” Tinsley told him. But Tex just couldn’t take it. He was determined to make a run for the CP. “Later on, after he got back, he showed me five bullet holes in his dungarees and a bullet burn across his stomach near his navel. “You were damn lucky,” Tinsley said. “You pull a stunt like that again, and I’ll shoot you myself!”

  By late in the evening they had advanced to the top of the ridge, and the regimental commander ordered them to retreat to the forward slope of the hill behind the ridge. Tinsley was bunking with a young private first class named Leonard Allen, an eighteen-year-old recruit from Selma, Alabama, whom Tinsley had adopted as a foxhole buddy.

  “But I was so dog-tired,” Tinsley said. “The rain had kept us wet and muddy for weeks. I think it rained every day and night we were on the island. At any rate, I passed out cold.”

  A group of Japanese troops decided to charge their line just at dawn the next morning while Tinsley was still sound asleep. They came racing over the ridge yelling, “Banzai! Marine, you die!” When they found the Marines weren’t there, it was too late—they were like lambs led to the slaughter.

  “The machine gun in front of the two-man foxhole where Allen and I were was credited with killing over fifty Japanese troops,” Tinsley remembered. He slept through the battle, and when he asked Allen why he didn’t wake him up, he just kind of shrugged.

  “We had the situation well in hand,” said Allen. “And you needed the sleep.”

  WHEN THE BATTLE of Saipan was declared officially at an end, it wasn’t actually over. Small pockets of resistant Japanese remained hidden in caves, and their presence posed a threat to workers who were rapidly turning the island into an important base for bombing runs over the heart of Japan.

  In no time Holland Smith went back on his vow “never to use the 27th Division again.” During the period between 9 July and 4 October, when the division was finally evacuated, the Army killed about 2,000 more enemy soldiers and captured 3,000 civilians. Of the 30,000 Japanese troops on the island, only 921 were taken prisoner. Some 20,000 Saipan civilians died.

  For the record Holland Smith would never again command US soldiers in the field. It was probably because of opinions similar to those expressed by Brigadier General Clark Ruffner in a letter to Lieutenant General Robert Richardson, commander of all Army troops in the Central Pacific. Ruffner accused “Howlin’ Mad” of being “highly prejudiced against the Army, as demonstrated in his manner, language, overbearing attitude toward Army commanders, and his biased remarks and actions in all Army matters.”

  General Ralph Smith, who had earned a Silver Star for two instances of bravery with the infantry in France in 1918, went on to become military attaché at the US Embassy in Paris. Upon retiring from the Army in 1948 he served as a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute on War, Revolution, and Peace. After he passed his hundredth birthday and became the oldest surviving general officer in the US Army, he was asked how he achieved such a magnificent age. “I get up every morning and I’m still here,” he said. “That’s how I got this way.”

  THE JAPANESE WERE the first to admit that losing Saipan was a blow that was beyond recovery. As Fleet Admiral Osami Nagano, supreme naval adviser to the Emperor, later put it, “When we lost Saipan, hell was upon us.”

  Vice Admiral Shigeyosh Miwa, who commanded the Japanese submarine force that attacked Pearl Harbor, stated it even more bluntly after the war: “Our war was lost with the loss of Saipan,” he said. “It meant [that the United States] could cut off our shipping and attack our homeland.”

  Vice Admiral Shigeru Fukudome, who had served as chief of staff of the Imperial Japanese Navy, expressed similar feelings. “With the loss of the Marianas,” he said later, “I felt that the last chance had slipped away from us.”

  Their assessment was accurate. It was truly the beginning of the end for Japan, although only a handful of American civilians realized the importance of what had happened. In the frantic flood of war news and the continuation of the assault against Japan, it is doubtful that most US citizens even understood the importance of the fall of Saipan.

  “I have always considered Saipan as the decisive battle of the Pacific offensive,” Holland Smith would write later. “Iwo Jima and Okinawa were costlier battles and carried us closer to Japan, but their capture was made possible only by our earlier success at Saipan.”

  Before Saipan, America and Japan both possessed powerful carrier-based air support, but after Saipan—because of the Marianas Turkey Shoot—only the Americans prevailed. Before Saipan, except for a few tenuously held airbases in China, the Japanese homeland was beyond the range of US land-based bombers. After Saipan, land-based American bombers could strike Japanese cities every day. Before Saipan, US submarines were based some 2,400 miles from Japanese home waters. After Saipan the distance was reduced by about half.

  And most importantly, before Saipan the Japanese government that had triggered the war against the United States at Pearl Harbor was still in power. After Saipan the government of Hideki Tojo was forced to resign, and the new government was ordered to consider the possibility of ending the war.

  DESPITE ALL THIS, some Japanese soldiers refused to concede and continued to operate in the remote high country around Saipan’s Mount Tapotchau for more than a year. One case involved Captain Oba Sakae, who vanished into the hills with 350 Japanese soldiers as the battle was ending. Oba spent several months organizing his forces and stealing supplies to keep them alive.

  In spite of numerous Marine sweeps through the area, Oba somehow always managed to escape. Nevertheless, his soldiers suffered from constant hunger as well as a loss of men whenever they encountered US troops.

  The situation remained unresolved for more than a year until the Americans sent other Japanese officers to persuade Oba that the war had indeed ended. Three months after Japan surrendered, Oba led his small remaining group of forty-six men down out of the hills, and they gave themselves up.

  TODAY THE TUMULT of war seems far away in Saipan, which is now a part of the US Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands.

  The wreckage of Garapan, once the island’s capital, remained unpopulated for close to twenty years after the war. But in the 1960s and 1970s the area was redeveloped into large resort hotels and expensive condominiums. Today thousands of tourists flock there each year, many of them from Japan.

  Garapan now has a resident population of about 3,600 persons. It is also home to the American Memorial Park, which honors the US soldiers and Marines who died in the battle.

  Among the fields that lie inland from the hotels, occasional reminders of the war are still found. It is relatively common to find weapons, canteens, and unexploded shells left behind by the 100,000 Americans and Japanese who fought for twenty-four days on Saipan.

  Kuentai, a Japanese organization that has located the remains of several 27th Division soldiers on Saipan, reported in February 2016 that it had found the dog tag of a member of the division, Private First Class Thomas Davis, who received the Silver Star in June 1944 for risking his life to rescue a wounded comrade under heavy fire. The dog tag was found sticking out of the soil in a farm field on Saipan.

  Ironically, Davis, who served in the 165th Infantry Regiment of the 27th Division, was killed some ten months later on Okinawa by a Japanese sniper while again helping a wounded soldier. His body was brought home four years later an
d was reburied in Roachdale, Indiana.

  Officials said that Tom Davis of Victoria, Texas, a fifty-seven-year-old machinist who was named after his uncle, would receive the dog tag.

  chapter 10

  Tinian’s Rolling Plains

  THE ISLAND of Tinian, three and a half miles southwest of Saipan, might very well have been made for the B-29 Superfortress. Within a few weeks after US forces landed, about five hundred of the massive bombers would be grazing on Tinian’s rolling plains. And when the B-29s started to roll, there would literally be hell to pay in Japan.

  It was true that most of Tinian was edged with jagged limestone cliffs that ranged from the height of a man’s head to about a hundred feet. Gaps in the cliffs were few and far between. They allowed Japanese defenders to concentrate their defenses on some of the most likely landing sites, a distinct problem for a Marine landing force.

  But once you got beyond the limestone cliffs, almost the entire length of Tinian was actually one long plateau—as flat as a pancake—rising up from the surrounding ocean. At the time of the Tinian invasion on 24 September 1944, most of that long, flat plateau was devoted to neat, checkerboard fields of sugar cane, and two sprawling airfields took up much of the rest.

  While the bitter fighting for Saipan was unfolding, US forces had ample opportunities to scrutinize Tinian from every possible angle. At thirty-nine square miles, the island was as large as Saipan, and American artillery systematically pounded it every day for almost two months. It is highly doubtful that any enemy island was more thoroughly reconnoitered during the entire Pacific War.

  In the words of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, the assault on Tinian was probably the “most brilliantly conceived and executed amphibious operation” in all of World War II.

  From a strategic standpoint it was the flatness of Tinian’s terrain that made it such a desirable target. One of the main objectives of the entire Marianas campaign was to obtain bases for long-range bombers, and Tinian’s rolling plains and gentle slopes offered far better sites than Saipan. The Japanese themselves had already constructed one airfield on Tinian that boasted a runway almost a thousand feet longer than the one at Aslito Airfield on Saipan.

  In a matter of a few months—with the help of fifteen thousand men of the Naval Construction Battalion, or Seabees—two Tinian airfields, known as North Field and West Field, were destined to become the busiest in the world as the home base for the newly formed 20th Air Force.

  THE BEACHES OFF Tinian Town, the largest settlement on the island, located on the southwest shore facing Sunharon Bay, obviously offered the most convenient place for the Marines to land. They were designated as Orange, Red, Green, and Blue, and they boasted beaches some 2,100 yards wide with only a few small breaks.

  This was also where the Japanese fully expected the US forces to come ashore and where most of the island’s nine thousand Japanese troops—approximately half Army and half Navy—were congregated and well prepared. They were deeply entrenched with many 25-millimeter guns in place and sizable infantry defenses. Two coastal defense batteries also covered Tinian Town, and the waters around it were known to be heavily mined. Convenient or not, serious consequences had to be considered. Holland Smith, before he departed to take a new noncombat job, warned that it could be another Tarawa.

  Another potential site was Yellow Beach on the northeast shore of Asiga Bay, about one-third of the way up the island. It consisted of short, sandy stretches of twenty or twenty-five feet, with the longest expanse about 125 yards wide.

  Two other possible sites were located on the northwest shore near the two airfields. These White 1 and White 2 Beaches, each less than two hundred feet wide, were generally considered by the Japanese as simply too small for a regimental landing with two battalions abreast. Nevertheless, American planners felt they had no alternative but to seriously consider the White beaches, even with their shortcomings.

  Ultimately, the planners chose the narrow White Beaches on the northwest coast. In so doing they accepted the risks that troops, equipment, and supplies might back up and stagnate hopelessly at the water’s edge. That risk was heavy. Despite the fact that the assault troops of the 2nd and 4th Marines would be worn and weary after a long and difficult struggle to take Saipan, all the Marine and Navy commanders finally agreed: it had to be the White Beaches or else.

  With Saipan secured and the preparations for the next landing at midpoint, a change of command within the Northern Troops and Landing Force took place. On 12 July Holland Smith was relieved and ordered to take command of Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, a newly created unit for all Marine combat forces in the Pacific theater. It would be an administrative but backwater position, with little or no dealings with troops in the field. The new commanding general for the Northern Troops and Landing Force was Major General Harry Schmidt, who was relieved of his command of the 4th Marine Division by Major General Clifton Cates. Schmidt was a smart, tough leader and strategist with thirty-five years of service as a Marine.

  THE JAPANESE FORCES on Tinian were under the command of Colonel Kiyochi Ogata, commander of Japan’s 50th Infantry Regiment. Ogata was well aware that an invasion of the island was coming, and he was luckier than General Saito, his counterpart on Saipan, in that his troops were fully trained and well equipped. Ogata had headed his regiment since August 1940, and before arriving on Tinian they had served in Manchuria. In the process Ogata had developed a high degree of spirit among his troops.

  Ogata’s plan for defending Tinian was basically the same as the one used on Saipan. The enemy was to be destroyed at the water’s edge if possible. If not, he was to be subjected to a counterattack on the night after the landing. If expelling the enemy proved impossible, the Japanese would fall back on prepared positions to the south and defend them to the last man.

  For once the Americans were close enough to their next objective to pound it with their guns from a fire support base on Saipan. On 20 July, while the combat on Saipan was at its height, US Army 155-millimeter “Long Toms” started bombarding Tinian daily, and the number of artillery pieces grew as the battle for Saipan wound down. Meanwhile Rear Admiral Harry Hill’s gunships were also busy over Tinian, while carrier planes and Army P-47s flying from Aslito Airfield added to the bombardment.

  Beginning on 16 July the US naval bombardment began. On 23 July Admiral Hill stepped up his preparatory fire with a total of three old battleships, two heavy cruisers, three light cruisers, and sixteen destroyers. The ships were set up to fire in such a way that Tinian would be shelled from every point on the compass, and the naval artillery plan was carefully designed to give the Japanese no indication about where the amphibious assault would take place.

  The day of the assault, 24 July, was called “Jig Day” in Marine terminology, although few, if any, people know today exactly how the name originated.

  At daybreak a flotilla of ships and landing craft carrying the 2nd Marine Division set out from Saipan’s Tanapag Harbor in a well-calculated feint on Tinian Town. The battleship USS Colorado and the destroyer USS Norman Scott were struck numerous times by Japanese guns, while they sat offshore pounding Japanese fortifications, with the Navy suffering sixty-two killed, including Norman Scott’s captain, Commander Seymour D. Owens, who was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross for his actions that day. In addition, 245 sailors on the two ships were wounded before the Japanese shore battery was silenced. Except for those considerable losses, the feint attack was highly successful. In the process Tinian Town was reduced to ashes and piles of burning rubble.

  The Japanese fell for the American ruse hook, line, and sinker. A message from Tinian to Tokyo said that “more than a hundred landing barges had been repulsed” in an attempt to get ashore at Tinian Town. Instead, elements of the 4th Marine Division and the Marines’ 8th Regimental Combat Team were pouring ashore at the other end of the island in the real H-Hour.

  Marine casualties for that first day ashore were relatively low, and enemy opposition was spotty—mo
derate small arms and mortar fire—although occasionally fierce. Those Marines who did make contact with the enemy were impressed with the caliber of the Japanese garrison. The average enemy soldier on Tinian was better trained with much superior marksmanship than those on Saipan.

  The 2nd Division took the main beach area. Private First Class Charles Pase had fought at Tarawa and Saipan, and he was still a month short of his eighteenth birthday when he and the rest of the 8th Regimental Combat Team hit shore. The Marines were in relatively flat country, right down next to the beach. The hole through which they moved inland was so small that the Japs didn’t even bother to defend it. It couldn’t have been more than fifty or a hundred feet wide. “It was tiny,” Pase remembered. “It was the kind that you take your girlfriend down to and go skinny dipping.”

  Despite its size, the entire Regimental Combat Team made it through that opening in a matter of a few hours. The infantry got in, moved out, and gave them a hundred yards of clearance. “They pulled those big guns in—the machine guns and the Pack Howitzers. I don’t know how many men we lost, but I don’t think it was more than about a dozen,” Pase said.

  As soon as the 4th Division got ashore, they gave the 2nd Division the protection they needed to make a safe landing on a big beach, which is exactly what they did. In fact, the landing was so well carried out that the 4th Division got a Presidential Unit Citation for it. “Of course, it was dangerous,” Pase said, “and the colonel that handled it deserves all the praise he can get. He got us ashore, and we did all of our fighting after we were ashore, not just trying to get there.”