With the loss of the Marshalls in early 1944, Prime Minister Hideki Tojo and his military advisers guessed that an invasion of Saipan was next. In February 1944, only 1,500 soldiers were stationed there. Defense of the Saipan garrison was the responsibility of Lieutenant General Hideyoshi Obata, who was determined to get his hands on as many troops as possible. The first group to leave Japan for Saipan was the 43rd “Glory” Division under the command of General Yoshitsugu Saito. Saito was an aging cavalry officer with no combat experience. Because American submarines prowled the waters around the Marianas, the 43rd made the decision to leave Japan in two separate convoys. The first convoy, which carried General Saito, left Tateyama Harbor in Tokyo on May 14, 1944, and made it to Saipan without incident five days later. When the second one left Japan in early June, American submarines struck, sinking five of seven ships. Still, Japan succeeded in putting thirty thousand troops on Saipan before the American invasion. Pledging to defend Saipan by whatever means possible, they adopted a rallying cry: “We must use our bodies to construct a bulkwark in the Pacific.”
Despite the passion of his troops, Obata recognized that without artillery positioned around the island, his forces did not stand a chance of repelling the Americans. The 9th Field Heavy Artillery Regiment had twelve 150-mm howitzers, capable of piercing the thinly armored upper decks of the American amtracs, and 75-mm mountain guns set up on Kannat Tabla Mountain south of Mount Tapotchau, and two miles east of the Green Beaches. At Agingan Point, just south of the Yellow Beaches, defense forces had a battery of two six-inch British Whitworth Armstrong guns with ranges of nearly nine and a half miles. A battery of four six-inch guns defended Nafutan Point at the far southern end of the island. Near each gun was an ammunition magazine. On the eastern slopes of Mount Nafutan was a battery of three 140-mm coastal defense guns. Obata’s men hastily camouflaged them with straw and painted canvas. On the south side of Magicene Bay, defenders had a battery of 200-mm coastal defense guns with a range of eleven miles. On the rocky point north of Magicene Bay (Laulau Bay today), the general had two 120-mm guns, surrounded by five-foot-thick walls. On the island’s western shore, the Japanese set up two six-inch guns and two dual-purpose 120-mm guns overlooking Tanapag Harbor. A mile east of Muchot Point, just outside of Garapan, they set up four more 120-mm guns.
On the beaches where the Japanese hoped to stop the Americans, Obata placed two antitank guns (a 37-mm and a 47-mm). He also had 7.7-mm machine guns capable of firing six hundred rounds per minute, 6.5-mm Nambu machine guns and emplacements, German-style blockhouses, and rifle pits three feet deep.
The bulk of Obata’s defensive strategy rested on his ability to drive the Americans into the sea. As a consequence he devoted little attention to his interior positions where the terrain was ideally suited for a long, drawn-out defense. The task of defending the island, however, would fall to General Saito.
Late in the afternoon on June 7, while the Marines aboard the various LSTs played pinochle and poker and wrote letters to loved ones, a small group of officers, including Admiral Raymond Spruance and Vice Admirals Marc Mitscher and John McCain (father of the Arizona senator), retired to the Eniwetok Officers’ Club for what was the club’s grand opening. With its extravagant bar and screened-in porches, the two-story EOC affected a kind of tropical splendor. Whatever relaxation and conviviality the club offered would be short-lived, however.
Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner did not join them. He stayed aboard the flagship USS Rocky Mount, finalizing the details of D-Day. As commander of the amphibious landing, he had the responsibility of organizing the naval gunfire preparation and then getting the troops ashore. To that end, he had divided the island into seven fire-support sections and had assigned battleships, destroyers, and cruisers to each section. Once the troops were ashore, Turner’s responsibility was to keep them supplied. Command of the fighting forces, however, was in the hands of General Holland Smith.
On the afternoon of June 11, more than two hundred fighters and bombers, launched from Mitscher’s Task Force 58 carriers, hit Saipan, staging what would be Operation Forager’s opening salvo. The attack caught the Japanese by surprise. For the next three days bombers dropped tons of high explosives on Saipan’s airfields and military installations, destroying most of the island’s planes before they ever got off the ground. On June 13, Spruance’s battleships entered the fray, pounding the western coast of Saipan and the neighboring island of Tinian with a huge amount of ordnance, a portion of which had been loaded at Port Chicago. That night, Task Force 58’s destroyers spelled the battleships. A full twenty-four hours of shelling demoralized many of Saito’s troops, who watched helplessly while the American ships destroyed airfields, aviation facilities, antiaircraft emplacements, and coastal defense guns. “Where are our planes?” inquired noncommissioned officer Tokuzo Matsuya. “Are they letting us die without making an effort to save us? If it were for the security of the Empire we would not hesitate to lay down our lives, but wouldn’t it be a great loss to the ‘Land of the Gods’ for us all to die on the island? It would be easy for us to die, but for the sake of Japan’s future I feel obligated to stay alive.” Others remained willfully ignorant of the situation’s severity. One Japanese commander sent a message to “all units concerned.” “Morale is high,” he wrote, “and we are in complete readiness. Although losses, etc., are being investigated, it is expected that they are very slight.”
That same day, determined to avoid the mistakes that had cost so many lives at Tarawa, Admiral Turner sent out two Navy underwater demolitions teams (UDTs) to scout Saipan’s reef and the waters up and down the 6,000-yard landing area. A third team reconnoitered the Tanapag Harbor area. Battleships provided covering fire for the entire operation. Although the UDTs conducted their reconnaissance in daylight, the teams suffered only seven casualties, and brought back essential information regarding reef conditions, depth of water, surf, tide, and current. Additionally, they planted radio beacons to help direct the amtracs on D-Day and charted the best routes over the reef. They made one other important discovery. Although the Japanese had mined and fortified some of the beaches, especially those to the south and east, where they thought a landing would likely occur, the beaches on the western side, where the Americans would attack, were free of obstructions.
By the time the UDTs were finished with their investigation, the Northern Landing Force had assembled almost eleven miles off the western coast of Saipan, just out of range of Saito’s big 200-mm coastal defense guns. For the first time the Marines aboard the LSTs got a glimpse of what they were in for. Despite the lectures from battalion intelligence (G-2), what the men knew about Saipan could have been written on the back of a beer coaster. On maps, it was shaped like a pistol with the barrel pointing north toward Iwo Jima and Tokyo. But from the sea it looked like a giant serpent bursting out of the blue-gray water, its spine pronounced and arcing. At the apex of the spine stood Mount Tapotchau, at 1,554 feet. To the north and south, a series of smaller, interconnected ridges radiated out from Tapotchau. The island was small—12.5 miles long and 5.5 miles across at its widest point—and its mountains so modest that most of the Marines doubted that it could prove an adversary to strong, young men in the prime of their lives. The truth was that while much of the flat western coast had been cleared by the Japanese to accommodate rich green fields of sugarcane and smaller farms, the interior was a jumble of rocky cliffs, box canyons, steep-sided, jungled ravines and gullies where plants battled for sunlight, narrow-mouthed caves that inside opened up into huge, cool chambers, and dense patches of the island’s original limestone forests. Razor-sharp coral limestone covered the ground, waiting to tear at the tough, inch-thick cord soles of the Marines’ boondockers and slow their advance to a virtual crawl.
Late in the afternoon on June 14, the sun shone brilliantly, and light southwesterly winds rustled the sea. Aboard an LST a Marine carefully folded his American flag, reminding everyone who passed by him that back home June 14 was Flag
Day. Another ran a rod and an oil patch through the barrel of his sawed-off shotgun, his weapon of choice. He claimed that the shotgun worked better on Jap snipers hiding in the trees. Pluto Brem sorted through his combat pack. Anyone who knew Brem would have understood that he was stewing. Missourian William Landers, Richard Carney, the dashing boxer from the Bronx, and some of the other guys had taken out a bet on which BAR man would last the longest, Brem or another guy named Wally Kelb. Carney had put his money on Brem. Still Brem did not like it one bit. The wager gave him the heebie-jeebies.
Brem and Borta had heard the report that Saipan’s cane fields were “burning merrily.” They also heard about Admiral Mitscher’s follow-up dispatch, when Mitscher gushed, “Keep coming, Marines, they’re going to run away.” Nevertheless Borta was scared and confessed to Carney his trepidation about the next day’s events. “Stick with me, Chick,” Carney said. “There isn’t a Jap mother who has a son that can kill Mrs. Carney’s boy.”
That evening, aboard the LST, Carl Matthews was doing what he loved best. He and a sailor were making music to the delight of seventy men who were gathered around, sitting on fifty-five-gallon drums of high-octane gasoline. Matthews scraped out a tune on the fiddle and the sailor played the banjo. They did some bluegrass favorites and then a country ballad made famous by the Vagabonds in the 1930s:
When it’s lamp lighting time in the valley,
In dreams I’ll go back to my home,
I can still see the light by the window;
It will guide me wherever I roam.
As the Southern Cross drifted down near the horizon and Orion appeared, a small group of Marines asked them if they knew any hymns. Matthews had grown up in the Baptist church and could play and sing hymns all night long. The sailor had learned them as a boy, too. They began with “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” and followed up with “In the Sweet By and By.” Those who knew it sang along:
There’s a land that is fairer than day,
And by faith we can see it afar;
For the Father waits over the way
To prepare us a dwelling place there.
In the sweet by and by,
We shall meet on that beautiful shore …
CHAPTER 24
The Terrible Shore
June 15, 1944, was only a few hours old when the Marines hit the deck for what each of them knew might be his last day on earth. Once again they were frightened, flustered boys who knew the Japanese would be waiting for them. The previous evening Tokyo Rose had suggested that the invasion was doomed. “You better enjoy these recordings while you can,” she threatened, “because tomorrow at oh-six-hundred, you’re hitting Saipan … and we’re ready for you. So, while you’re still alive, let’s listen.” Then she played “I’ll Be with You in Apple Blossom Time,” an Andrews Sisters tune. The message cast a pall over the men. No one could discount it as a psychological trick. Maybe Tokyo Rose and Tojo really did know something.
Later on she came on again: “Now, what are you boys doing out here fighting us? Wouldn’t you like to be home with your wife, dining, dancing, and having a good time? Why don’t you just quit this and go on home?” Everyone slept fitfully that night, their dreams filled with images of fire and fast-moving fragments of steel, and loved ones beyond their embrace. When morning came, it was almost a blessing.
As the men aboard LST 84 gathered for breakfast, they learned that the U.S. transport Monrovia had almost run over a group of Japanese soldiers whose ship had been sunk. A destroyer had picked them up.
“What the hell?” one of the men asked in disbelief. “Why not run the bastards over?”
On the mess deck, Navy cooks sweated over steaming metal pans and large, sizzling grills. Robert Graf, the former company clerk, tried to wash down his fried potatoes and steak and eggs with black coffee, but the tradition of the last meal puzzled him. Why would you want to fill a man’s belly before he went into battle? Likely he would be throwing it up later anyway.
After morning chow, Graf went up on deck. One hundred black Marines from the 19th Depot Company, which had sweated out their journey in the crowded hold of a transport ship, sharing space with essential cargo, were already lugging supplies off the ships and loading them onto amtracs. The all-black 19th had just been activated in February, and this was their first test in a battle zone—the first of any black Marine unit. Nothing in their experience at Montford Point, however, had prepared them for the tumult of war. What they learned to do well in North Carolina was march. The rumor at Montford Point was that once you were assigned to a depot company, all you would ever do again was march and parade and load and unload ships. For the former, all a man needed was rhythm and coordination, and for the latter, a strong back. The question now was, would the men be able to get supplies to the combat troops, or would they crack once the lead started to fly?
From the ship’s deck, Graf saw fires burning on the slopes south of Tapotchau. Closer in he could make out the silhouettes of battleships against the dim horizon. At 5:42, Admiral Turner gave his orders to “land the landing force,” and at 5:45 the big guns rumbled, and roaring and hissing shells arced through the skies like comets.
Just an hour before the bombing, Major General Keiji Iketa, chief of staff of the 31st Japanese Army, reported that despite the size of the American landing force, “Morale is high. We are waiting.” Many others, however, were shocked and bewildered by the sheer number of ships off the western coast of the island.
Aboard LST 764, Carl Matthews, the mischievous Texan Richard Freeby, and Wendell Nightingale, the clean-living kid from Maine, were sorting through their packs. Matthews dressed in his cleanest dungarees and underwear in an attempt to reduce the threat of infection should he be hit by shell fragments. He also made sure he had his copy of the Gideon New Testament. At Roi he had wrapped it in plastic and carried it ashore in his breast pocket. A few days after the incident at the plane hangar, when his buddy Maurice Maness was hit by a mortar fragment, Matthews opened the Bible and noticed that the pages were stuck together. His first thought was that water had gotten into the plastic wrapper. What he discovered, however, was a small piece of shrapnel embedded in the pages. Pulling it out, he noticed that the shrapnel had stopped at a line of Scripture that included the words “from whence cometh wars.” From that point on, the Bible assumed for him the character of a talisman. Almost every Marine carried something into battle—a locket, a photo, a letter, a cartridge casing, a rabbit’s foot—which he hoped would bring him luck. For Matthews it was the Gideon New Testament.
Nightingale slipped a pack of cigarettes into the pocket of his dungaree jacket. At nineteen, he had taken up smoking to pass the time. The previous evening as he packed his seabag, he picked up a carton of cigarettes that he had bought at the PX back in Hawaii, and held it as if he were contemplating something important. Then somewhat sheepishly he’d looked at Matthews and asked his friend if he would consider putting the cigarettes in his seabag. Nightingale explained that if something happened to him on Saipan, the Marines would send his seabag home, and he could not bear the thought of his mother discovering the cigarettes.
After packing the bulk of his gear, Matthews wrapped his Bible in a new piece of plastic and put that in his pack along with semaphore flags to send signals, and a notebook and pencils. Minutes later, Lieutenant Leary came through with his checklist. He went from man to man, making sure that none of them had forgotten anything.
Aboard the Rocky Mount, during a lull in the firing, the chaplain’s voice came over the loudspeaker: “With the help of God we will succeed … most of you will return, but some of you will meet God who made you … repent your sins … those of the Jewish faith repeat after me … now Christian men, Protestants and Catholics, repeat after me …” Not long after, Admiral Turner got the weather report: “Partly cloudy with cumulus clouds, visibility twenty miles, winds easterly at thirteen knots.” Ideal conditions for an amphibious landing.
By 7:00 a.m., the control ves
sels, charged with organizing the assault, flew flags to identify the beaches to which they were directing traffic. Thirty-four LSTs of the first wave assembled three quarters of a mile behind the line of departure. Barely a minute later the air strikes began. Graf filled his canteens to the top to prevent sloshing, and packed extra toilet paper into his helmet liner. Then he stuffed his pack with socks, an extra pair of skivvies, dyed green back in California (white skivvies poking out of a guy’s pants were a dead giveaway), and a poncho. He attached D and K rations to his web belt, and to his pack he affixed his bayonet sheath and an entrenching tool. Then he checked his knives: his personal throwing stiletto that he fixed to his belt, and his Ka-Bar with its seven-inch blade. Finally he hung four grenades from his pockets, fastened his cartridge belt around his waist, and swung two bandoliers, holding forty rounds each, over one shoulder and his gas mask over the other. He felt like a lumbering bear. After all this, he had an urgent need to pee.
His urine was as dark and thick as maple syrup. He knew that he was already dehydrated, and he popped a salt tablet and then returned to the deck, where he watched planes dive out of the sky and drop their bombs. One of the planes disgorged hundreds of packages. Later he learned that they contained leaflets assuring the Japanese soldiers that if they surrendered they would be treated humanely.
The Color of War Page 18
