While Robinson and Boykin exhibited natural ability as winchmen, had they been civilian longshoremen they would have spent years working with general cargo before the union allowed them to handle ammunition. Port Chicago, however, had gotten into the habit of taking shortcuts, using inexperienced men to perform extremely sensitive tasks. According to Kinne, Negro personnel or no, “you do the best you can with what you have.” Ironically, even as the base flouted basic stevedoring safety standards, Captain Goss—and now Captain Kinne—was generating memos emphasizing the need for the careful handling of ammunition, citing as an example the recent explosion at the Naval Ammunition Depot in Hastings, Nebraska, the country’s largest weapons production depot. The blast, which occurred in early April in the bomb and mine loading area, ignited fifty tons of explosives. Tremors were felt 160 miles away in Omaha. Amazingly only eight depot employees were killed. They were buried in a cemetery on depot land. Their monument read, “They gave their lives that liberty might not perish.”
Captain Goss worried most about the sensitive, thin-walled bombs and depth charges. “Enough is known,” he wrote, “to warrant increased emphasis on the absolute necessity of care in handling all explosives, particularly containers of relatively large amounts of concentrated high explosives within thin walls. In particular, any dropping of bombs, depth charges, etc., upon metal or concrete floors, any bumping against hard substances, and heavy bumps from rolling or swinging are to be carefully avoided.… It must be realized by all concerned that explosives are dangerous if improperly handled and that our contribution to the war effort as well as the safety of all individuals engaged in this work is actually dependent upon proper care in handling explosives.”
Goss and Kinne issued a joint memo calling for the “unremitting attention” of everyone involved in the loading process. Oddly, though, Captain Kinne still refused to post safety regulations in the enlisted men’s barracks. Later he would admit that his opinion of the seamen was so low that he considered it an exercise in futility; they would never be able to understand the regulations anyway.
Goss and Kinne introduced a long-overdue training program for both officers and seamen, with Lieutenant Commander Holman heading up the classes. The goal was an ambitious one: to train hatch tenders and thirty seamen per month as winchmen and to instruct other seamen “who show aptitude” in “methods of stowage and shoring,” grooming them as carpenter’s mates, riggers, and hold crew chiefs. The lecture program was envisioned as a daily event. The realities of loading for the invasion of the Marianas, however, derailed the series almost before it began. By mid-July, Lieutenant Commander Holman had delivered only two talks.
Despite Goss and Kinne’s apparent concern for safety, many of the depot’s officers were still betting on the performance of their divisions. Percy Robinson could see it happening—the covert handshake, the wink and smile, the arm around the shoulder, and the mumbling. Once the deal was sealed, the officers would push their men. Delucchi had it down to a science. “C’mon, Robinson,” he would say. “Division No. 2 put on 240 tons today. You’re falling behind. I got a nice twenty-four-hour liberty pass that says we can catch ’em.” Then he would leave the dock, turning a blind eye to the misconduct that followed. Without taking shortcuts and rolling and banging bombs, the loaders could never achieve the kinds of tonnage numbers that officers wanted—often over 20,000 tons of ordnance per month. While there may have been depots putting out more tonnage, none of them were moving a greater variety of ammunition. It was not unusual for Port Chicago’s seamen to combat-load 175 different ordnance items onto a ship with a 7,000-ton storage capacity. It was an enormous and often bewildering task, complicated by the need for speed.
With Admiral Nimitz kicking the war for the Central Pacific into high gear, the USS Mauna Loa docked at Port Chicago. It left ten days later, carrying a load of 6,400 tons. As if they were not already working hard, Port Chicago’s black seamen instead picked up their pace, turning out a succession of Liberty ships every three to five days. In early May the USS Rainier berthed at Pier No. 1. By the end of May, she would reach Majuro, where her cargo was transferred to Mitscher’s fast carriers for their pre-invasion strikes on Saipan. On May 18, the USS Shasta arrived, and two days later the USS Lynx tied off at Pier No. 2. For the first time the depot was loading two ships at a time. After taking on nearly 5,000 tons of ordnance, the Shasta sailed for Eniwetok, where she took on what remained of the USS Sangay’s load (the Sangay sailed back to San Francisco) and then headed directly for Saipan.
CHAPTER 23
Where Young Men Go to Die
The Northern Attack Force, which was scheduled to invade Saipan on June 15, left Pearl Harbor at various times over a six-day period between May 25 and May 30, the slowest vessels leaving first. The 2nd Marine Division was the last group to go. Frank “Chick” Borta watched as the sailors rushed about, casting off hawsers and lines. Two days outside of Pearl Harbor, he learned that his battalion had a new name—1st Battalion, 29th Marines. Soon after he learned that they would be attached to the 2nd Marine Division’s 8th Marine Regiment and would be “taking part” in the invasion. The officer who made the announcement used those very words—“taking part”—as if they were being asked to participate in some kind of celebration.
Chick Borta figured if he ever wanted to see his Chicago home again, he had better listen to Lieutenant Henderson. Henderson was the platoon leader, and every day after an NCO led the men through calisthenics and abandon-ship drills, he presented photographs, relief maps, terrain models, and charts, and took them through the details of the invasion. General Holland “Howlin’ Mad” Smith, who would be in charge of the largest force ever to operate under Marine command, had divided the four-mile landing beach on the western shore of the island, extending from Saipan’s main town of Garapan to Agingan Point in the south, into four separate beaches: Red Beaches 1, 2, and 3 on the north; then Green Beaches 1, 2, and 3; then, just outside of Charan Kanoa, Blue Beaches 1 and 2; and finally Yellow Beaches 1, 2, and 3, extending to the south. The 2nd Division would hit the beaches north of the sugar dock in the town of Charan Kanoa (actual spelling is Chalan, but Marine historians spell it Charan) and the 4th Division would hit the beaches to the south. The 29th Battalion’s assignment, however, was to execute a feint, faking a landing north of Garapan at Tanapag Harbor. The hope was that the Japanese would commit a regiment to stop the attack on the harbor, distracting it from trying to repel the actual invasion. Amtracs would approach within 5,000 yards of the beach, circle as if preparing to attack, and then return to their LSTs, after which the troops of the 29th would be transported to Green Beach 2, where later on that day they would go ashore. Naval gunfire would be used to make the ruse look realistic.
Lieutenant Henderson’s lectures on field sanitation, first aid, and chemical warfare got long and tedious. As a joke, one Marine battalion commander issued his men a “hunting License.” “Permission is hereby granted [name of soldier inserted],” the license read, “to hunt Japs on any island, islet, or atoll.… Methods or means of exterminating Japs (commonly known as ‘Yellow Bastards’) are unlimited, as is the bag limit allowed the bearer. Due to the great similarity between Japs and baboons, this license also covers the bearer in the event he shoots a baboon by mistake. Great care should be exercised, however, in distinguishing between the two. This is simple as the Jap is much uglier, smells worse, and sometimes wears clothes. Those wearing colored arm bands get priority.… The license expires when the Jap species becomes extinct.”
For entertainment, Borta and Brem dealt separate games of blackjack. Brem had a track record as a winner. Back at Camp Tarawa on the Big Island of Hawaii, he had won $300 one night, almost four months’ salary, and promptly sent all his earnings to his parents in Gilroy, California. Borta ran a game with a fella named Dajak, who dealt while Borta took the money. En route to Honolulu, after maneuvers on Kahoolawe Island, they had teamed up and won big. On the way to Saipan, they figured that as
long as they had Lady Luck on their side, there was no sense in breaking up a profitable partnership.
Robert Patrick Roberts was aboard ship, too. When he took the bus down to Pearl Harbor’s West Loch channel on May 22, he had no idea that he would be taking the place of one of the Marines who had been wounded or killed in the explosion. Nor did he know that he would be assigned to a unit that the self-proclaimed “orphans” aboard ship were calling the “bastard battalion.” Like so many others in the battalion, he had never been in battle. The 1st Battalion 29th Marines was anything but an elite fighting unit. It had been put together hurriedly, using whatever extras the Marines could find—cooks, bakers, balloonists, antiaircraft gunners, horse Marines, and goof-offs, the kind of guys, as the saying went, who could fuck up a wet dream. Some of the rifle company commanders had been on Guadalcanal and Tarawa, but the battalion’s CO and most of the battalion’s other officers had no infantry experience whatsoever.
Roberts felt that many of the guys aboard ship had an edge to them. The new ones, especially, were jumpy, distant, and preoccupied, their heads filled with images of battle and death. Considering where they were going, it was inevitable that their nerves were rubbed raw. Many had no experience whatsoever with live fire. Many had never even simulated a landing.
Roberts probably should have been more frightened than he was. He had been to Scout and Sniper School and was one of the best shots the instructors at Camp Elliott had ever seen, shooting 317 bull’s-eyes out of a possible 340, but some officer with his head up his ass had made him an assistant Browning Automatic Rifle man, which meant that his job was to carry bandoliers of ammo, sixty to seventy pounds of it, and a tripod. Roberts had been to BAR school and he knew that the Japs targeted the BAR man and his assistant. By taking out a BAR man, the enemy could significantly reduce the automatic firepower of a squad. Roberts wondered if perhaps he should have listened to the doctor at Fort McPherson in Atlanta, Georgia, who gave him his induction physical. When the doctor examined his feet he told Roberts that they were flat and that he should consider going into the Navy instead of the Marines.
“Doctor,” Roberts said, “I can walk farther than I can swim.”
Had his daddy had his way, Roberts would have stayed at home in Elberton, Georgia, with his middle brother, who had a heart murmur. Mr. Roberts was a carpenter, and although he discouraged his son from going into carpentry, he would have been glad to bring his young son into the business if he had been willing to give up his dream of being a Marine.
“I already got three sons in the service,” Mr. Roberts said.
“Daddy,” Robert replied, “I wanna go.”
The last time Roberts had seen his father was when he left for boot camp. He was sitting in the kitchen and had tears in his eyes. It was the only time Roberts had ever seen him cry.
On June 6, 1944, while his LST was still en route to Eniwetok, the final staging area prior to the assault on Saipan, the heat turned from torrid to unbearable. Robert Graf was hanging over the rails on the weather deck, marveling at the phosphorescence and its “sparkling and glistening symphony of light,” when over the PA system the boatswain’s pipe sang out. “Now hear this, now hear this,” the announcer shouted. “We have just received word that the invasion of Europe has begun.” Graf, like everybody aboard ship, listened spellbound. “The landings took place in Normandy, and Supreme Headquarters announced that the landings to date have been successful.” Graf felt a lump grow in his throat. Then he heard a deep cheer rumble through the crowd. Seconds later men were jumping, hollering, catcalling, and whooping like Hollywood caricatures of Indian warriors. Graf hugged the Marine next to him.
Admiral Chester Nimitz, who was running the Central Pacific show from his desk in Pearl Harbor, knew that although Operation Overlord was larger than Forager (which included the invasion of Tinian and Guam, as well as Saipan), the Royal Navy’s contribution to General Dwight Eisenhower’s cross-Channel invasion of Normandy was essential. In the Marianas, however, every soldier, sailor, aviator, and Marine, every piece of equipment and the vast bulk of supplies, would be American. Shipping had to be arranged so that there would be no halt in the flow of materials, which included a colossal supply of ordnance, and nearly 4.5 million barrels of oil, 8 million gallons of high-octane aviation fuel, and 275,000 barrels of diesel oil each month.
Late in the evening on June 6, Graf’s LST 84 cruised into Eniwetok’s atolls and dropped its hooks in the lagoon. The plan was to remain berthed off the island until the morning of June 9. The USS Mifflin, which carried Carl Matthews’s Company G, also arrived that evening. The following morning Company G transferred to LST 764. To Carl Matthews it looked as if the entire U.S. Navy had descended on Eniwetok. So many ships had anchored that a man could have hopped across the lagoon from one vessel to the next without ever getting wet. The concentration of ships undoubtedly had Admiral Spruance on edge. Had a Japanese search plane spotted the convoy, it could have spelled doom for the invasion.
On the morning of June 7, aboard LST 84, Lieutenant Henderson briefed his men on what to expect from Saipan. Platoon commanders across the lagoon were giving their own versions of the same lecture. “The water is unfit to drink, and the food could knock you out as fast as a bullet,” Henderson said. Then he explained that farmers on Saipan used “night soil,” or human waste, to fertilize their fields. He painted a picture of an island where Marines would not only have to do battle with the “yellow vermin” Japanese soldiers but also with a malevolent environment. During the rainy season, which lasted from June through November, the island would be drenched in nearly a hundred inches of rain. Humidity would hang over the island like a wet sock. “The saber grass cuts through the flesh,” he added. “The insects carry diseases, and there are snakes that are poisonous and giant lizards. Do not approach the inhabitants. There is leprosy, typhus, dengue fever, and dysentery, elephantiasis, yaws, typhoid, and filariasis.”
Henderson’s lecture revealed just how little the U.S. military knew about Saipan. Unlike Guadalcanal and New Guinea, Saipan was not covered in jungle and infested with snakes or disease. On Saipan, in June, at the beginning of the wet season, the hibiscus, bougainvillea, and flame and poinciana trees were in exotic bloom, radiating a beauty some of the invading Marines could not help but notice. During lulls in the battle, while watching the fiery sun slide into the Philippine Sea, men had to remind themselves that they were on Saipan to kill or be killed.
The truth was that Saipan was far from primitive. It was the administrative center of Japan’s civilian government in the Marianas, and, in many ways, a modern island. It was home to nearly forty thousand Japanese nationals, who, although Tokyo was 2,000 miles away, were determined to remain loyal. Those with electricity devotedly listened to radio broadcasts from the home islands. Saipan’s two main centers of Garapan and Charan Kanoa were like towns across Japan with pretty parks, surrounded by concrete fences, sporting cast-iron Buddhas on pedestals. Garapan, in fact, became known as “Little Tokyo.” It had a hospital, a school of agriculture, and the largest business district in the South Seas, which locals called the “Garapan Ginza” after Tokyo’s famous Ginza. In fact, Saipan was considered such a desirable place that a Japanese commercial airlines company set up a tourist route from Tokyo to Saipan to Palau and back.
Saipan had a prosperous economy, built largely around agriculture, especially sugarcane production. The Nan’yo (South Seas) Kohatsu Kaisha, or NKK, cleared large tracts of timber and connected the fields to refining mills and liquor distilleries via miles of narrow-gauge railway. The NKK brought in Okinawan and Korean farmers as laborers and sent refined sugar, rum, and whiskey back to Japan.
The local government, eager to make devoted citizens of the four thousand Carolinian and Chamorran natives and the Okinawan and Korean workers, initiated a compulsory education system, emphasizing Japanese cultural values and mandating the study of Japanese language and history. It also formed young men’s associations (seinendan
) in which Japanese moral values were stressed. Although intent on inculcating an appreciation for all things Japanese, the government allowed the Carolinians and Chamorros to practice their Catholicism, and for the most part treated Saipan’s resident population charitably until February 1944, when the island was taken over by the military. The new heavy-handed administration put the local priest and brother under house arrest, refused to let people attend mass, imposed a curfew, and ordered many Chamorro and Carolinian residents of Garapan to leave their homes. Homes were used as troop billets and comfort houses, where Japanese soldiers could go for sexual gratification, and the islanders’ beloved Catholic Church was turned into a military storehouse. The military also pressed all able-bodied, non-Japanese men into labor gangs. It ordered women and children to their farms to tend vegetable gardens in order to feed the soldiers.
Japan’s history in Saipan dated back to September 1914, when a naval squadron steamed out of Yokosuka Harbor for the Nan’yo. For years the country had its sights set on German holdings in the Marianas and Micronesia. With Germany preoccupied with a war in Europe, it took what it wanted. In the 1930s, Japan secretly began to fortify the Mariana Islands. Unfortunately the League of Nations and its members were powerless. The terms of the 1921 mandate contained no language permitting League officials to inspect Japan’s construction projects. In 1935 an emboldened Japan withdrew from the League, and just two years later the Imperial Japanese Navy assigned its 4th Fleet the task of defending its new holdings in the Philippine Sea. The 4th Fleet used Truk with its deep-water lagoon as its headquarters.
In 1937 the Imperial Navy sent a survey unit to the Marshall Islands to develop plans for airfields, harbors, fueling stations, long-range radio stations, and an outer defensive perimeter. Tokyo also sent engineers to Saipan to reinforce gun positions and to build ammunition storage sheds, communications facilities, troop barracks, torpedo storage sheds, and air-raid shelters. In late 1941, Tojo instructed his island commanders to establish defense plans. Only days later, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
The Color of War Page 17
