by Toland, John
The Marines fought their way slowly into Charan Kanoa. It wasn’t made of bamboo and paper as they had imagined, but was a complex of concrete one- and two-story structures covered with bougainvillea in bloom. Each was a little fort. At the center of town they infiltrated past a baseball diamond and grandstand incongruously flanked by a Buddhist temple.
From a flimsy thirty-foot-high observation tower perched on the slopes behind Garapan, Admiral Nagumo watched the invasion. He stood transfixed at the sight of the overwhelming number of ships but turned briefly to Yeoman Noda, who had served as a clerk under Yamamoto until his death, to note that at least four of the battleships he had sunk at Pearl Harbor were back in action. His tone indicated as much admiration as concern.
Not far away, a stray American shell plummeted down on General Saito’s staff during an outdoor meeting near the cave that served as his command post. When the smoke cleared, Saito was still sitting unhurt and silent, with his sword stuck in the ground between his spread legs. On both sides men lay sprawled. Half the staff was dead.
But he remained optimistic about the battle itself (although Marines continued to land—twenty thousand during the day—they had suffered two thousand casualties, and only half of the beachhead had been secured) and radioed Tokyo:
AFTER DARK THIS DIVISION WILL LAUNCH A NIGHT ATTACK IN FORCE AND EXPECT TO ANNIHILATE THE ENEMY AT ONE SWOOP.
The men who had to plan the night attack were not as confident. With the division scattered and their own casualties mounting, there were only thirty-six tanks and a thousand infantrymen available to “annihilate the enemy at one swoop.”
The operation went wrong from the beginning. Saito was to meet the attack force on a hill above Charan Kanoa to send them off personally, but the Americans, attracted by all the movement toward the assembly point, scattered the general’s staff with accurate artillery fire. The tankers waited hour after hour for Saito, who had become separated from his staff in the confusion and darkness. After midnight word came that he had been burned to death in a sugar-cane fire. Major Hirakushi, transformed from public relations officer to commander of the infantry, was relieved of that duty and dispatched to recover the general’s body while another officer took charge of the assault. He mounted the first tank, but before it had gone half a mile a shell brought it to a standstill. The remaining tanks clanked down the hill without bothering to wait for the infantrymen. At the bottom they blundered into the swamp east of town and most of them became mired down. The tanks that managed to churn free were finally joined by the panting infantrymen. Officers, swords aloft, led the headlong charge. The Japanese burst into the Marine positions with such vigor that it took a cannonade from 5-inch naval guns and intense machine-gun and rifle fire to stop them. They regrouped and charged again and again. Almost seven hundred died and the American lines were still intact.
Major Hirakushi nearly lost his own life in his attempt to find Saito’s body. Incendiary shells made an inferno of a cane field he was crossing and only his sword saved him. Using it as a scythe, he cut a path through to safety. Exhausted, he reached the division command post an hour before dawn. A solitary figure was sitting outside the cave, chin on chest. It was General Saito. “Are you all right, Division Commander?” Hirakushi asked. Saito looked up but made no response.
In a cave overlooking Garapan the nurse Shizuko Miura, who had escaped through the burning town the day before, huddled with other civilians. A soldier peered in with word that more Americans were starting to land just below Garapan, and the tank corps located near the town was moving out to stop them. Shizuko scrambled outside. Her elder brother was in one of the tanks. Below, Garapan was still in flames and through the smoky dawn she saw a ship (it was an LST) approach the reef south of town.
“It’s starting!” a soldier shouted. Boats—amphtracs—were disgorging from the mother ship. She watched, almost hypnotized, as the strange craft scuttled over the reef. Angry spits of fire winked from woods along the shore. Tanks rolled out of Garapan and started toward the beach.
“My brother!” Shizuko exclaimed.
“Girl, get back in the cave where it’s safe,” a soldier warned her.
She ignored him and pushed through a crowd of men to get a better look. The tanks were at the pier. Their guns barked, accompanied by the rattling of machine-gun and rifle fire from the woods. Some of the American boats turned back. Two white hospital ships approached the reef. Flames suddenly leaped out of one.
There were flashes from the big warships far beyond the reef. Then came a series of distant rumbles that were drowned out by shattering explosions from Garapan. The air trembled from the concussions. Enemy planes swept in strafing the shore. The firing from the woods ceased. More landing craft were swarming toward the reef. Here they stopped; tiny figures leaped out, and holding guns high above their heads, waded across the wide lagoon toward the dock area. Fifteen minutes later they were scrambling up the piers; their faces seemed to be blackened. The tanks were silent. Her brother and all the other tankers must have been killed.
To the south, across the water, she could make out the silhouette of Tinian, where she had last seen her mother, father and younger sisters. Had that island too been invaded? Were she and her elder sister, who had evacuated Garapan a week earlier, the only ones in the family alive? Unable to make herself go back to the safety of the cave, she stared vacantly at the death and destruction below. She roused herself with a sudden decision: she would volunteer as a nurse at the main field hospital near Mount Donnay on the other side of the island.
She took a last look at smoldering Garapan. Small boats were clustered around the piers and Americans already pushed inland. “Brother, good-bye,” she said and started resolutely up the ridge.
“Hey, woman, where do you think you’re going?” a soldier called to her from the mouth of the cave. “Enemy planes!” He pointed in the air with his rifle but she hurried on, ignoring the fighters that swooped down.
Once over the ridge the war seemed far away. She passed a long line of civilians waiting for hardtack. A young woman broke away from the group and embraced her—it was her older sister. Shizuko told her about their brother’s death and that she was going to Mount Donnay.
“Bakayaro!” Her brother-in-law was indignant. “You can’t go alone to a place where there are only men! Your parents entrusted you to my care. If something happened to you, how could I apologize to them?”
“The rest of the family is dead!” she burst out. “Do you want to be the only one alive?” These fools had not seen the destruction of Garapan, the corpses littering the streets; they still imagined the soldiers would protect them.
She reached the hospital on the slopes of Mount Donnay as the sun was setting. It was a barren field where a vast gathering of wounded men lay on the ground in rows so close together that she could hardly walk between them. Overcome by the stench, she did not notice a middle-aged captain, a surgeon, surveying her through round, thick glasses. “Women can’t do anything here,” he scolded. “Besides, this is the Army and we can’t permit civilians to remain. Go back down the mountain before it gets too dark.”
She told him that her father and mother and younger sisters were dead and that she had seen her brother killed in battle at Garapan. The captain walked away but she followed him, pleading. He stopped to talk with another doctor, a young lieutenant, still ignoring her. Finally he motioned to her. “All right,” he said sternly, “from now on you are a nurse.” He gave her his Red Cross armband and the lieutenant clapped a helmet on her head. “This is the Army, and never act selfishly,” said the captain. There were eleven of them to care for all the wounded—three doctors, seven medics and herself. “Obey your commander’s order at all times. Many painful and sad things are going to take place. Don’t give up and do your best.” She looked down at the armband with such obvious pride that the lieutenant gave a little laugh. “She’s young and I’m afraid she may become emotional.”
Her first duty was
holding a flashlight for the little medical team which worked rapidly down a long line of patients. A medic jerked at a protruding piece of shrapnel in one man’s back. The patient groaned, fainted. “It’s easier when they pass out,” the medic told her and yanked again, without success. The captain, the chief surgeon, came over and cut away flesh with a scalpel. The aide tried a third time. Shizuko’s hand shook, and the light wavered. “Steady!” said the surgeon as he pulled out a red-and-black piece of shrapnel as big as a fist. Shizuko felt cold sweat under her arms as the surgeon gave the patient an injection. The medic took a mouthful of water and sprayed it on the man’s face.
The next patient was wounded in the left foot. The surgeon handed her a pair of scissors. “Cut off the trousers,” he said. She found a blood-soaked bandage underneath, stuck to the wound as if it were glued. She plucked at it, fearing the man might scream if she pulled too hard.
“Don’t hesitate, nurse,” said the surgeon sharply. “If you’re afraid of a wound and feel so much pity that you can’t hurt a patient, you’re useless. Here.” The patient gritted his teeth. The bandage came free under the surgeon’s steady pull and she could see shattered bones. Blood flooded out.
The surgeon examined the wound. “The foot won’t be of any use now. We should cut it off.” He pricked the foot with the scissors. “Do you feel it?”
“No.”
“It’s to be expected.” He turned to Shizuko. “Nurse, cut off the flesh—and no hesitation.”
Nauseated, Shizuko began clipping the loose flesh. The soldier trembled with every tentative swish of the blades, and greasy sweat broke out on his forehead. At last she was finished. The surgeon, who had been watching impatiently, turned to a colleague. “Shall we operate?” he wondered and asked the medic how many anesthetic injections were left. There were but three boxes. “We’ll treat him later,” the surgeon decided. “Cover the wound, nurse. With the same bandage.” She replaced the old blood-stained bandage and the patient was carried to one side.
“This time, nurse, do the whole thing by yourself,” said the surgeon. What little confidence she had left vanished. She hoped she’d get someone with a slight wound. A new patient was brought in and the stretcher-bearers smiled at her. She gritted her teeth and somehow got the bandage off for the surgeon’s inspection. Each time it was easier. Concerned about the young soldier with the wounded foot, she finally got up her courage to remind the surgeon that he was supposed to operate.
“I completely forgot,” he said and ordered the patient carried to the “operating table”—the words themselves made Shizuko’s heart beat quickly. The stretcher was placed on two boxes while a medic brought out a plate filled with instruments. First the patient was injected in the back. As soon as the anesthetic took effect the surgeon deftly cut flesh from around the bone with a scalpel that glittered in the light. The medic began hacking with a little saw, scattering the bone in a white powderlike substance. The patient groaned in pain.
“Cheer up! It’ll be over in a minute,” the medic who was holding the flashlight encouraged him.
Moments later—it seemed like an hour to Shizuko—the bone was severed and the surgeon began trimming away thick pulpy flesh. A stream of red spurted out of the stump. The doctor grabbed at the blood vessel with pincers, but it slipped away and he couldn’t find it in the uncertain light. Shizuko could see the blue vessel plainly and pushed forward impatiently, “Doctor, I can pick it up.”
Without a word he handed her the pincers. Quickly she plucked up the spurting vessel. The surgeon took the pincers while she bound it tightly with hemp yarn.
“All right,” said the surgeon. He put in a few stitches, like an expert seamstress, applied some gauze, bandaged the stump and again injected the patient.
“Thank you very much,” said the soldier in a voice as faint as a whisper.
The Marines had done little that day except buttress lines in preparation for a drive across the island. Most of their artillery was ashore, and GI’s of the 27th Division were landing. General Saito still had hopes of pushing the Americans back into the sea with the help of tanks and men of a naval Special Landing Force. His first objective was an enemy concentration near the Saipan radio station in the suburbs of Garapan. The attack was set for dusk but the orders were so confusing, the communications so poor, and the problems of terrain so difficult that it wasn’t until ten hours later that twenty-five tanks and five hundred men funneled down the ravine leading to the radio station.
The Marines, alerted by the squeak and rattle of armor, called for illumination. Ships lobbed star shells overhead, catching the attackers in the open where they were overwhelmed by a deluge of fire from artillery, mortar, bazooka, rifle and machine gun. Tanks burst into fire, silhouetting others which rumbled out of the shadows. Within an hour most of them were either destroyed or abandoned, but the infantry kept fighting until after dawn. It was no use. The Americans were still in place. They would never be driven into the sea.
The failure of the counterattack was ignored by Tokyo. The Army General Staff, in the name of the Emperor, radioed 31st Army:
BECAUSE THE FATE OF THE JAPANESE EMPIRE DEPENDS ON THE RESULT OF YOUR OPERATION, INSPIRE THE SPIRIT OF THE OFFICERS AND MEN AND TO THE VERY END CONTINUE TO DESTROY THE ENEMY GALLANTLY AND PERSISTENTLY, THUS ASSUAGING THE ANXIETY OF OUR EMPEROR.
General Igeta replied:
HAVE RECEIVED YOUR HONORABLE IMPERIAL WORDS AND WE ARE GRATEFUL FOR BOUNDLESS MAGNANIMITY OF THE IMPERIAL FAVOR. BY BECOMING THE BULWARK OF THE PACIFIC WITH 10,000 DEATHS, WE HOPE TO REQUITE THE IMPERIAL FAVOR.
The Japanese were again committed to a useless fight to the death.
With dawn Shizuko could see that the hospital area was surrounded by rocky little peaks. It was like a stadium with no protection from air raids. There were at least a thousand wounded men on the ground, and the little valley resounded with their constant but subdued chorus of agony. If there is a hell, she thought, this is it.
With two aides holding a large can she went down the lanes of men doling out water. She put a cup to the lips of an inert corporal. He seemed dead. Another patient shook him. “Yoshida, it’s water! You wanted it so much. Look, Yoshida, it’s a nurse from Japan!” The corporal slowly opened his eyes and groped for her. She grasped his feeble hand tightly and said, “Soldier, I’ve brought you water. Drink.” He mumbled. “He’s dreaming of home,” his friend explained. The word “home” tightened her throat; then she remembered the admonition about becoming emotional.
She bent over another figure. He had nothing on but a loincloth, and kept his face hidden in his hands. His left eye was black, “as big as a ping-pong ball.” It was covered with squirming maggots. The other eye had been gouged out by the worms. Her hands trembled. “Let me treat you, soldier.” He remained silent as she picked out the maggots one by one with pincers and dropped them into a can. “My brother was in the Army,” she said. “He was a tank man. On June fourth he came to Saipan from Manchuria, and on the sixteenth, near Garapan, he died fighting the enemy. That’s why I can’t see a soldier without thinking of him as my brother.”
“Is that why you came here?” he said in a toneless voice. She explained why she had become a nurse. Tears flowed out of his terrible left eye. “Thank you.”
She started to speak about her family and he painfully fumbled for something tucked under his loincloth. It was a bloodstained picture of a woman in kimono.
“Is this your wife?” The man—his name was Lieutenant Shinoda—nodded. “She’s still young.”
He told her that he had joined the Army three days after the wedding. “When I was wounded all I could think of was my wife. I wanted to live for her sake. But I shall die …”
Shizuko couldn’t speak. She resumed plucking out maggots, removing all but those tenaciously clinging to the center of the eyes. To kill these she soaked two wads of gauze in mercurochrome and placed them over his eyes. She applied a bandage and told him she would return. “Help is surely
coming. Hold out until then because your wife is waiting for you.”
The next day—it was June 18 and the Marines had cut Saipan in two just below Mount Donnay—Shizuko managed to find him a uniform. She changed his eye bandage but discovered that the mercurochrome had done no good. The gauze itself was alive with maggots. He wanted the picture sent back to his wife when he died.
“You won’t die. I will surely cure you. And we’ve heard that reinforcements are coming. Then you can return to the homeland. Keep up your spirits!” To change the subject she talked about her brother and four sisters. She alone was a tomboy and her mother always told her, “Shizuko, behave like a woman.” She told Shinoda how lucky he was to have someone waiting back home and how hard the doctors and medics were working to save men like him.
“Nurse, you’re really great,” said a lively voice. She looked up at a baby-faced second lieutenant. His right arm was in a sling and he had other wounds, but he was in good spirits. “Cheer up!” he told his dejected companions. “How can you call yourselves soldiers and be so downcast? Reinforcements will come in time!” All at once his eyes glistened and he said as if in a dream, “I have a sister in Hokkaido who is about as old as you. For the past two days I’ve been admiring you and it made me wonder what my sister was doing.”
* In the Diet the previous year, Tojo had denied that his regime was a dictatorship: “People often refer to this as a dictatorial government, but I should like to make the matter clear … The man called Tojo is no more than a single humble subject. I am just the same as you. The sole difference is that I have been given the responsibility of being prime minister. To this extent I am different. It is only when I am exposed to the light of His Majesty that I shine. Were it not for this light, I would be no better than a pebble by the roadside. It is because I enjoy the confidence of His Majesty and occupy my present position that I shine. This puts me in a completely different category from those European rulers who are known as dictators.”
