History of the “bastard battalion” (1st Battalion, 29th Marines) is from an account written by Lieutenant Colonel Tompkins and R. R. Keene’s story in the June 1994 issue of Leatherneck.
Despite the excellence of Nimitz’s team, Tarawa still was a bitter disappointment. Hoping to turn the disappointment of Tarawa into something positive, in early December Kelly Turner boarded a plane from the Gilberts to Pearl Harbor, where he met with Nimitz, who was just returning from the Ellice Islands. En route, Turner wrote an innocuously titled document called “Lessons Learned at Tarawa.” It was hardly a bland after-action report, but rather a detailed denunciation of the invasion along with an impassioned analysis of what in the future it would take to avoid the mistakes of Tarawa. Turner’s list was fourteen points long and covered everything from the need for longer and more thorough shelling, “greater angles of fire,” to the significance of synchronizing bombardment with the movement of assault troops, to the speedy ship-to-shore movement of everything from heavy weapons to medicine to rations—but the first and most urgent item in his report dealt with the importance of obtaining amphibious tanks and LCI gunboats, especially amtracs capable of getting troops over the reefs and onto land. Turner estimated that in future operations each Marine division would need three hundred amtracs—preferably armored—and enough LSTs to transport them. At Tarawa, Holland Smith had demanded amtracs for the invasion. He received 125, too few to carry ashore the first three assault waves, but too many for the three LSTs to handle. Fifty tractors had no launching vehicles, and so were deck-loaded onto troop transports. Spruance also weighed in. “Flat trajectory fire support ammunition,” he wrote, “proved ineffective against many shore targets. Greater angle of fall required.”
CHAPTER 21: ERNIE KING’S VICTORY
King’s letter to Nimitz and Marshall is from Master of Sea Power. MacArthur’s lobbying efforts are described by Larrabee in Commander in Chief.
Each Marine division was broken into three regiments, and each regiment was further divided into three battalions. In addition to three rifle units, a division would also include an artillery and howitzer regiment, an engineer regiment, tank and amphibious tractor battalions, an assault signal company, and a medical battalion.
New Essex- and Independent-class carriers as well as battleships, cruisers, and destroyers could sail at thirty knots.
Journalists referred to Truk as the “Gibraltar of the Pacific.” After over two decades of isolation—the League of Nations had awarded the Caroline Islands to Japan after World War I—Mitscher knew almost nothing about Truk. The attack on Truk was the first large-scale, independent carrier strike ever attempted, dwarfing the Japanese ambush of Pearl Harbor.
All along, King’s biggest problem was that few of his own colleagues, including Nimitz, saw the wisdom of capturing the Marianas. Like MacArthur, they believed that the target did not provide the kind of deep-water harbors the Navy needed. Also, because of the supremacy of the idea that the route to Japan went through the Philippines, Formosa, and China, they considered the Marianas an unnecessary diversion. They also believed that using Navy resources to capture a target so that the Army Air Force could conduct B-29 bombing raids on Japan was inimical to them. Vice Admiral Kinkaid, commander of the Seventh Fleet, bluntly summed up the feelings of many senior naval officers. “Any talk of the Marianas for a base,” he said, “leaves me entirely cold.” Fortunately for King, Lieutenant General “Hap” Arnold, head of the Army Air Forces, emerged as an enthusiastic partner. Arnold desperately desired a base for his new B-29 bombers and understood that the Marianas represented the fulfillment of that goal.
Now both King and MacArthur had their orders. After isolating Rabaul, MacArthur was to proceed westward along the northern coast of New Guinea, and then, on November 15, take Mindanao. King and Nimitz were to bypass Truk and seize the southern Marianas, isolate the Carolines, and then, on September 15, invade the Palaus, which would provide a base from which the Pacific Fleet could support MacArthur’s November attack against Mindanao. Formosa would follow in February 1945. If Luzon was needed to support that attack, MacArthur would secure it first. Following the fall of Formosa, the China coast would be the next objective.
CHAPTER 22: PRAISE THE LORD AND PASS THE AMMUNITION
Port Chicago’s War Diary says that Captain Kinne showed up on April 27, 1944. Kinne’s additional duties included Commanding Officer of the Enlisted Men’s Barracks.
When James Forrestal became the new secretary of the Navy, following Frank Knox’s death in late April, blacks got a leader sensitive to their plight and dedicated to providing equal treatment and opportunity for all men regardless of their color. Forrestal was a member of the National Urban League and a proponent of social equality, but he was no moral crusader. As undersecretary of the Navy and then secretary, he saw the issue of using blacks as full combat seamen as one of efficiency and simple fair play. While he accepted the argument of Admiral Randall Jacobs (head of the Bureau of Naval Personnel) that “you couldn’t dump two hundred colored boys on a crew in battle,” he also agreed with the Special Programs Unit of the Bureau of Personnel that large concentrations of blacks in shore duties lowered efficiency and morale. Just months before Forrestal became secretary, the Special Programs Unit published a groundbreaking pamphlet titled “Guide to the Command of Negro Naval Personnel,” in which it argued that racial tension in the Navy was a serious problem that needed to be dealt with head-on. “The idea of compulsory racial segregation,” it said, “is disliked by almost all Negroes, and literally hated by many. This antagonism is in part a result of the fact that as a principle it embodies a doctrine of racial inferiority. It is also a result of the lesson taught the Negro by experience that in spite of the legal formula of ‘separate but equal’ facilities, the facilities open to him under segregation are in fact usually inferior as to location or quality to those available to others.”
The Special Programs Unit had to overcome much opposition within the bureau to get the pamphlet published in February 1944. Some thought the subject of racial tension was best ignored; others objected to the “sociological” content of the work, considering this approach outside the Navy’s purview. The pamphlet stated further that “[t]he Navy accepts no theories of racial differences in inborn ability, but expects that every man wearing its uniform be trained and used in accordance with his maximum individual capacity determined on the basis of individual performance.”
In his dispatch, after Secretary Knox’s death, acting Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal praised the secretary, writing that he had “devoted himself unremittingly and without reserve to the best interests of the country and to the naval service.” While Frank Knox had overseen an enormous growth in Navy personnel, he had done little for blacks. Forrestal, however, possessed the bureaucratic and political skills to achieve reforms.
Kinne’s idea of posting daily tonnage totals was an idea inspired by the Navy’s practice of putting up shooters’ scores at the rifle range. Ambitious marksmen, striving for top honors, knew what they had to beat. While Kinne placed the chalkboard where everyone could see it, his main purpose was to remind the loading officers that they, in particular, were responsible for achieving tonnage targets. “It would be impossible,” he believed, “to maintain a satisfactory loading rate with the type of enlisted personnel assigned to Port Chicago unless every officer in a supervisory capacity keeps continually in mind the necessity for getting this ammunition out.”
The expansion envisioned by Captain Goss was approved by the commandant of the Twelfth Naval District in late 1943. Originally the idea was to construct twenty magazines in the tidal area. That idea, however, was dismissed in favor of the inland storage area option.
Percy Robinson even resorted to putting some seamen on report with the division’s petty officer. The complaint would eventually reach Delucchi’s desk. Robinson did not like going to “the man,” especially Delucchi, but he just could not see any other way. Port Chicago�
�s habitual loafers were put on what was called the “slacker squad.”
This was the second of four explosions at the Hastings (Nebraska) Naval Ammunition Depot. The first happened in late January 1944 when a six-inch shell exploded. Three men from a Negro ordnance battalion were killed. On June 10, 1944, a civilian employee was decapitated when a detonator went off. The largest explosion occurred on September 15, 1944, when railroad cars exploded, leaving a crater 550 feet long, 220 feet wide, and fifty feet deep. Nine servicemen were killed and fifty-three were injured. There is still speculation that others were killed or injured, but the Navy has never released the complete records of the blast.
Captain Goss’s memo about handling ordnance with greater care was dated May 8, 1944.
Port Chicago’s seamen were asked to handle a wide variety of ordnance. The Caven’s Point Army Depot in New Jersey handled more tonnage, but only worked with two types of ammunition. Consequently its men were able to load twenty tons per hour.
CHAPTER 23: WHERE YOUNG MEN GO TO DIE
The two operations—Overlord and Forager—were the largest in the history of the world. Historians would regard June 1944 as the greatest month in military and naval history.
The comment regarding every soldier, sailor, aviator, and Marine, every piece of equipment, and the vast bulk of supplies for the Marianas invasion being American is from Samuel Eliot Morison.
For a complete explanation of the invasion plans, read Major Carl Hoffman’s Saipan: The Beginning of the End.
Arrival dates differ. In On to Westward, Robert Sherrod says the troops arrived in Eniwetok not on June 6 but on June 8.
Some historians claim that a Japanese plane had spotted the task force. Spruance, however, always disputed the claim.
Japanese nationals living on Saipan brought over pianos for children studying the music of German composers. In Garapan, buildings lined the paved streets, among them a confectionary store, a store that sold Oriental dancing dolls, a shoe store, a market with fruit-flavored shaved ice, and two movie houses (Charan Kanoa also had one). Local martial arts, drama, and dance groups used the theater, and, depending upon the time of the year, residents enjoyed traditional Japanese performances. Men patronized the town’s drinking houses, gambled on cockfights, and played Japanese board games like go and shogi. On the weekends families picnicked and listened to performances at the gazebo bandstand in Garapan. Children participated in social clubs and played batu seremban with stones from the beach, flew kites from the hills above Lake Susupe and along the beaches from Charan Kanoa north to Tanapag, played baseball, and swam in the beautiful blue-green waters inside the reef. The climate was hot, especially in summer, but tropical breezes and afternoon rain showers made the temperatures bearable.
For a fascinating account of the prewar crackdown on local culture and religion by Japanese administrators, read Sister Maria Angelica Salaberria’s story “The War in the Pacific in Saipan.”
When, during the Spanish-American War, the U.S. seized Spanish holdings in the Philippines as well as the island of Guam, the Spanish moved to sell their Micronesian holdings to Germany. Germany assumed control of the Marianas in 1899 and administered its Micronesian empire from the village of Garapan on Saipan. The Germans initiated a wide range of public-works projects—improved roads, clean water–delivery systems—and instituted compulsory education. They also tried to entice German farmers to the islands.
In the 1930s, Japan secretly began to fortify the Mariana Islands, building a major seaplane base at Tanapag Harbor in 1935, a naval airbase, called Aslito Field, and a variety of bombproof buildings, in violation of the League of Nations mandate. Although Japan claimed they were “civilian” projects, construction met much stricter military standards. During a six-year period between 1934 and 1940, the Japanese government spent 14 million yen to finance construction of questionable civilian projects in the Marianas.
In truth, Japan was solidifying its hold on Micronesia. In 1940, construction teams built bases at Kwajalein, Roi-Namur, Jaluit, Maleolap, and Wotje in the Marshalls, and early in 1941 the 4th Fleet dispatched the new 6th Base Force to defend them. These same crews erected long-range radio stations on Saipan and Kwajalein and a number of other islands to ensure uninterrupted communication between the South Seas and Tokyo. In 1941 Tokyo authorized the construction of fueling stations on Truk, Palau, Pohnpei, and the Marshalls to ensure the mobility of the far-ranging Japanese Fleet. Acknowledging the importance of Saipan as a transfer point for soldiers, a maintenance facility for aircraft, and a communications link with Japan’s home islands, Tokyo sent engineers to Saipan to reinforce gun positions, and to build a fueling station there, as well as ammunition storage sheds, communications facilities and radio directional finders, troop barracks, torpedo storage sheds, and air-raid shelters.
Because the invasion happened months before the Japanese expected it (they thought they had until November, Nimitz’s original date for the invasion), numerous batteries were not operational. Although many more guns never made it out of storage, Lieutenant General Hideyoshi Obata commanded considerable firepower. Obata had mistakenly assumed that the Americans would strike first in the western Carolines, and a few weeks before the invasion he left Saipan on an inspection tour. He made it back only as far as Guam and was stranded there during the battle.
Forty-two guns were discovered in storage at the Garapan naval depot at Tanapag. Three concrete revetments for Type 89 127-mm dual-purpose guns were built on Mount Nafutan near a radar emplacement. The guns never made it. American forces found three 120-mm dual-purpose guns lying on the ground at Laulau beach.
For a breakdown of Japan’s plans for defending its Micronesian holdings, and General Obata’s plans for holding Saipan, read D. Denfield’s thorough Japanese World War II Fortifications and Other Military Structures in the Central Pacific and Gordon Rottman’s Saipan and Tinian 1944: Piercing the Japanese Empire.
From the interior hills, Obata hoped his high-angle-firing howitzers, designed to pierce the thinly armored upper decks of the invasion vessels, might be able to drive off the American armada. It was a tactic that General Maresuke Nogi used successfully in the 1904 battle of Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War.
Admiral Kelly Turner told correspondent Robert Sherrod, “Yes, Saipan is going to be a tough one. But I think we have planned it well.” Nevertheless, both he and Howlin’ Mad Smith understood that it was going to be bloody and grim. “A week from today,” Smith told Sherrod, “there will be a lot of dead Marines.”
Mitscher made the decision to strike in the afternoon in order to vary the pattern. “Heretofore,” he said, “all of our carrier attacks had been made in the early morning. It was believed that the enemy had become accustomed to this and would expect to continue this practice.” Because the carriers had to head into the wind to launch their planes, Mitscher took his ships to the west side of Saipan.
Tokuzo Matsuyo, a noncommissioned tank officer, wrote in his diary: “13 June—At 0930, enemy naval gunfire began firing in addition to the aerial bombing, the enemy holds us in utter contempt.” Another captured diary indicated that “[t]he greatest single factor in the Americans’ success was naval gunfire.”
On March 6, 1521, Magellan sighted the Marianas on his voyage westward. Based on chronicler Antonio Pigafetta’s descriptions, Magellan may have sailed between Saipan and Tinian and landed on the latter. Later on, starving, scurvy-ridden Spanish traders used the islands as a rest stop on the long journey between Acapulco and Manila. In 1662, Luis de Sanvitores, a Jesuit, stopped briefly at Guam on his way to the Philippines. His glimpse of the islands led him to want to establish a mission there. Later he would establish the name “Marianas” for the islands in honor of Marie Ana of Austria, superseding the names “Ladrones” and “Islas de Latinas Velas.” Discovery spelled doom for the native Chamorro population, which measured fifty thousand. After just a few years of Spanish occupation, the population had dropped to 3,500.
&nb
sp; There’s an alternate story regarding the naming of the Marianas. That story goes that in 1668 a small band of Jesuit priests established a mission on Guam, receiving essential support from Queen Mariana of Spain. In recognition of her support, they named the archipelago the Mariana Islands. It comprises fifteen islands that lie in a long, flat arc from Farallon de Pajaros in the north to Guam in the south, a distance of about 500 miles. The northern islands are a series of volcanic peaks rising abruptly from the sea. The southern group, which includes Guam, Rota, Aguijan, Tinian, and Saipan, is composed of coral limestone resting on a volcanic base. A fringing reef runs parallel to the shoreline and forms a narrow, protected lagoon for virtually the entire length of the western coast. By contrast, the eastern and northern coasts are ringed by high, rocky cliffs, which drop into the sea. Trade winds prevail during the dry season.
The details about Saipan’s early history and pre–World War II history are derived largely from three books: Scott Russell’s Ancient Chamorro Culture and History of the Northern Mariana Islands, Alexander Spoehr’s Saipan: The Ethnology of a War-Devastated Island, and Francis Hezel’s From Conquest to Colonization.
When the sergeant called for lights out, a number of men came to thank Matthews and the sailor. They said they felt calm and reassured, as if they had been to church.
CHAPTER 24: THE TERRIBLE SHORE
Tokyo Rose’s broadcast and names of songs she played are from R. R. Keene’s article in the June 1994 issue of Leatherneck magazine and Reverend W. Charles Goe’s Is War Hell?
The armored amphibians that brought the Marines to the beaches were from the 2nd Armored Amphibian Battalion and the Army’s 708th Amphibian Tank Battalion. Aerial photographic coverage of Saipan was poor, and planners overestimated the amtracs’ ability to negotiate the terrain.
The Color of War Page 48
