Gordon Turner’s Princeton University paper “Dual Conflict: A Study of Saipan” notes that many of the problems between the Marines and the Army originated from fundamental tactical differences and poor lines of communication. He notes that Army regiments often received Howlin’ Mad Smith’s orders for 7:00 a.m. attacks between midnight and 5:00 a.m., leaving them little time in which to prepare for the day’s advance.
A thorough discussion of the conflict can also be found in Harry Gailey’s Howlin’ Mad vs. the Army: Conflict in Command, Saipan 1944.
CHAPTER 29: TAPOTCHAU’S HEIGHTS
In On to Westward, Robert Sherrod quotes a staff officer on the problems of taking Mount Tapotchau: “We can’t sit back and expect artillery and naval gunfire to blast ’em out of those caves.”
Quote about Japanese tactics from Sherrod.
Quote about holding Tapotchau from Hoffman.
Japanese phrases—Kosan se yo! (“Surrender!”) and Detekoi! (“Come out!”)—are from a May 26, 1944, D-2 Section handout titled “Useful Japanese Words and Phrases for Frontline Troops.”
Details about General Saito’s various command posts are provided by the interrogation of Major Yoshida.
In Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, Herbert Bix writes that in Tokyo, Hirohito’s chief aide, General Hasunuma, and the Board of Field Marshals and Fleet Admirals delivered a sobering report to the Emperor. Saipan, they said, was already lost. An angry Hirohito insisted they put those words in writing, and abruptly left the room.
On June 27, Holland Smith trudged up a narrow path to a shrine near the top of Mount Tapotchau. A Marine historian wrote that the “entire island lay stretched visibly before him, like a huge aerial photograph.”
In his June 1994 article for Leatherneck magazine, “The Orphan Battalion That Took Mount Tapotchau,” R. R. Keene offers excellent details regarding the 1st Battalion, 29th Marines’ assault of the Japanese position on top of Mount Tapotchau.
CHAPTER 30: GYOKUSAI
The Americans had a hard time at Nafutan Point despite having antiaircraft guns, mortars, and tanks at their disposal. The forces at Nafutan Point were from the Army’s 105th Infantry’s 2nd Battalion. Howlin’ Mad Smith could have used his 3rd Division Marines, which were part of his Southern Attack Force, but he was saving that division for the invasion of Guam.
Smith was still displeased with the progress of the Army. He had turned over command of the 27th Division to Major General Sanderford Jarman with the hope that the energetic general could get his troops moving. A day later Jarman relieved Colonel Ayres, commanding officer of the 106th’s 2nd Battalion, and that same night he sent a message to the entire 27th Division: “This division is advancing against a determined enemy that must be destroyed.… I know I can depend on every member of the 27th to get into this fight with everything he has. Good hunting to every man.”
Even with the delays during the Battle of the Philippine Sea, and a variety of logistical problems caused by Saipan’s shoals and reefs, the lack of channels, and near-constant shelling, the black shore parties managed to do the near impossible. The explosion at West Loch complicated their task. To avoid delaying Operation Forager, white Marines from the 4th Division, like Robert Graf, hurriedly put supplies aboard LSTs often without regard for order, observing much less rigorous combat loading procedures. On Saipan, this caused more than a few headaches for the black shore parties. But this difficulty they handled, too, and now that their regular duties were largely done, many of them looked forward to the opportunity to be combat soldiers.
Just a week into the battle, the evacuation of the wounded reached a crisis point. On June 23 the hospital ships Relief and Samaritan, filled to capacity, left for Guadalcanal. Painted pure white with a red cross superimposed over a green stripe that ran around the ship, the Relief and Samaritan followed the route taken by a number of transports. The hospital ship Solace had already made a round-trip to Guadalcanal. With the lengthening and widening of the runway at Aslito Field, air evacuation from the island began on June 25. By the end of the operation, 860 casualties were taken to the Marshall Islands by air. During the early stage of air evacuation, planes were not supplied with medical attendants. Consequently, casualties died en route. Upon being taken on a ship, the wounded were classified based on the seriousness of their injuries and given red casualty tags that indicated who should be attended to first.
Details on the condition of the Japanese soldiers are from Hoffman, Sherrod, and G-2 report No. 21, “Re: Interrogation of Commander Jiro Saito of the 5th Base Force.” The translation was done by Lieutenant Colonel T. R. Yancey. In his diary, Saito wrote, “In everyone’s mind he is thinking that before he dies he would like to have a bellyful of water, but there is none to be had.”
General Saito made the decision to move his command post after surviving a fierce 8th Marines mortar barrage. The post was located one mile to the north of a line that stretched from the Tanapag Hill 221–Hill 112 area to the east coast.
Today Muchot Point is known as Micro Beach. It’s located inside the American Memorial Park between the boat marina (Smiling Cove and the downtown Garapan area right next to the Hyatt). It was the site of the first Carolinian settlement on Saipan in the 1815 diaspora of Satawalese homesteaders led by Chief Aghurubw. He is buried on Managaha Island, which is still called Ghalaghaal Island by the Carolinian population in Tanapag. The Carolinan name of that village was Arabwal (named after the green beach vine that still grows there).
Lieutenant Chaffin would win the Navy Cross for his leadership and heroism. The bad news for the men of the 29th was that they had lost Lieutenant Colonel Tompkins, who was wounded by a shell fragment. When General Edson, CO of the 2nd Division, came up to check on Tompkins, the colonel said, “Hey, Red, this battalion has had it. They should be relieved—they’re burned out.” Frank Borta overheard Tompkins say this to General Edson.
Liberator bombers started using the runway in August, and by mid-October B-29s began using it. This was the nightmare scenario that Hirohito so feared—planes with the capability of reaching Japan’s home islands.
Dead animals and bloated human corpses lay among the ruins of Garapan.
In early July, after weeks of contending with the island’s roughest terrain, the 8th Marines received a much-needed rest and the unit was moved into a bivouac rest area one mile inland from Red Beach 3, north of the Lake Susupe swamps.
Colonel Louis Jones, commanding officer of the 23rd Marines, pulled the 2nd Battalion out of reserve. Its job was to hold the American position against Japanese counterattacks.
The quote about the “hateful, bearded face of the enemy” is from a captured diary. Diary writing had a long history in Japan, especially field diaries, jinchu nikki/nisshi. According to Aaron Moore’s “Essential Ingredients of Truth: Soldiers’ Diaries in the Asia Pacific War,” the diary was considered the “mirror of truth” (makoto no kagami) and also one’s last testament (igonsho). Japanese soldiers often used their diaries for self-mobilization.
Notes on the gyokusai are from Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook’s article “A Lost War in Living Memory: Japan’s Second World War.”
Apparently General Saito was suffering from shrapnel wounds received in the bombing. Details from “The Last Days of Lieutenant General Saito.”
Details regarding the act of seppuku differ from historian to historian. These details are taken from Harold Goldberg’s D-Day in the Pacific and Victor Brooks’s Hell Is Upon Us.
“The Last Days of Lieutenant General Saito” is a captured Japanese officer’s personal account that was translated by Lieutenant Colonel T. R. Yancey. This document describes General Saito’s physical and emotional condition and his various command posts. It also provides a description of Saito’s death and the preparations for the gyokusai. This document is included in the appendix to Major Carl Hoffman’s Saipan: The Beginning of the End. Yancey also produced translations of many of the prisoner interrogations, including that
of Major Kiyoshi Yoshida, an intelligence officer of the 43rd Division. Yoshida’s confessions confirmed many of the American assumptions about the course of the battle: that the invasion had taken Saipan’s defenders by surprise; that naval gunfire had devastated many enemy positions; that the loss of Mount Tapotchau was a turning point in the battle; and that the Japanese radio and telephone communication during the battle was poor.
Robert Sherrod, Harold Goldberg, Gordon Rottman, and Francis O’Brien (Battling for Saipan) provide vivid details of the gyokusai.
CHAPTER 31: RED FLAGS
The Bryan had arrived at the Port Chicago Naval Ammunition Depot on July 13.
According to Lieutenant Terstenson, there was not a winchman who knew how to “pick up a load and check the swing of it [the load].”
According to Port Chicago’s regulations, Lieutenant Terstenson could have, or perhaps should have, halted all loading at the No. 4 hold. Port Chicago regulations said, “Any member of this detail is authorized to stop any loading or handling operation … which he deems unsafe … until such time [as] can be determined by the Loading Safety Officer, and if need be, referred to the officer-in-charge for a decision.”
In the past, Lieutenant Commander Holman had shut down a hold when a handle broke off a winch. That was a serious problem, since the handle was the operating lever for the throttle, the steam control. But a valve or brake problem was a different story. Holman was unconcerned about the brake problem on the No. 1 winch. “If a winch is working properly,” he said, “you don’t need brakes.” Later he testified that if the steam failed, the compression would lower the load slowly. What he apparently did not consider was how some of Port Chicago’s inexperienced winchmen, of whom he, too, had a low opinion, would react to the loss of steam.
Lieutenant Terstenson wanted to use a forklift with a pallet on which to place the bombs, or, at the very least, to use a thrum mat to cushion their fall. He also objected to the hoisting of Mk-47s in steel nets because of the inevitable shifting and clanging. He proposed standing the bombs on end on a tray surrounded by a guard board. That way, he argued, if the worst should happen and a lug become unhooked, the bombs would not fall to the deck or into the hold.
Captains Kinne and Goss had made it clear that “the handling and stowage of ammunition would be subject to the approval of the loading officer.” Had none of the loading officers talked with the seamen about handling Torpex-filled bombs, or was that another depot rule that would go unenforced? What was missing from Port Chicago was a uniformity of procedure. Everyone seemed to have different expectations and preferences. Tobin liked using nets for bombs, and Holman preferred slings; Cordiner insisted on using thrum mats, while Ringquist thought they were unnecessary. Some officers liked electric mules for breaking open railroad cars, while others felt that men using sledgehammers and pinch bars could do it better. There were lieutenants who punished negligence and inefficiency, and some who looked the other way.
Terstenson testified that the ship’s gear was the responsibility of the division officers. Prior to coming to Port Chicago on January 15, 1944, Lieutenant Terstenson was Pier Superintendent for the Army Transport Service at San Francisco.
Captain Goss wrote, “All bombs look alike to individuals of limited intelligence.”
The Navy Bureau of Personnel was not of much help, either. It did not issue a comprehensive “ammunition handling” manual until 1945, meaning that no standard practice for handling high explosives, much less 40-mm cartridges, even existed. The Port Chicago Naval Ammunition Depot had to rely on what officers considered the Coast Guard’s “impractical” regulations and an incomplete document called the “U.S. Naval Magazine, Port Chicago, California, Manual of Loading and Dock Procedure.” Lieutenant Woodland would later testify that those documents were seldom consulted. “They were kept on file,” he said, “but the officers were not notified that such material was available.” Lieutenant Tobin, for instance, had never seen the Coast Guard regulations, while Lieutenant Commander Ringquist did not know that a Port Chicago manual even existed. According to the testimony of some of the officers, a Coast Guard manual was kept down at the pier for officers to refer to. Captains Goss and Kinne were negligent for not insisting that all new officers read the manual.
CHAPTER 32: ISLAND OF THE DEAD
Regarding the 27th Division’s efforts to repulse the charging Japanese soldiers, Army historian Edmund Love wrote, “For the next four hours this group of men put up one of the great defensive fights in American history.” Lieutenant Colonel William O’Brien (from Troy, New York), commander of the 1st Battalion, 105th Regiment, was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously for his heroism. Edmund Love writes a riveting account of his heroism. Eventually, however, onrushing Japanese soldiers overwhelmed O’Brien.
The 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 105th Infantry Regiment killed an estimated 2,295 Japanese. Its Headquarters Company killed at least 650. In the area where the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 106th Infantry and the 3rd Battalion of the 105th Infantry fought, burial crews discovered 1,366 dead Japanese, raising the total to 4,311. The assumption among the 27th Division was that most of them had perished during the gyokusai. The Americans, too, suffered heavy casualties. Out of the 1,100 men who made up the 1st and 2nd Battalions, four hundred died and another five hundred suffered wounds sustained in the battle.
In “A Lost War in Living Memory,” Haruko Taya Cook suggests that exaggerations of how many civilians killed themselves on Saipan became part of the Allied propaganda to justify dropping the atomic bombs. The myth, she writes, was that “[b]ehind the soldiers are the people of Japan as a whole, themselves united in the cause of their Emperor … ‘One Hundred Million Bullets of Fire.’ ” Cook writes further that “[m]ore than any other event during the course of the war, with the exception of the atomic bombs themselves, the notion—engendered by propagandists—that the overwhelming majority of the Japanese civilian population of Saipan, largely women and children, willingly took their lives rather than submit to the Americans, shaped the memory of the final year of the Pacific War.… Was not any force, any action, any act, no matter how criminal it might appear under normal circumstances, justified if it meant the annihilation of such thinking? Was it not essential to stop treating the Japanese as rational beings, and proceed with the extermination of all, if necessary? Rather than being cleared up, the myths around Saipan have multiplied.… It is vital when considering the consequences of such thinking that we recall that most of the one million Japanese civilian casualties in the war … occurred in the last twelve months of the conflict. Between July 1944 and August 1945, as Japan’s leaders sought to protect themselves and the institutions they claimed to serve, the people of Japan were in fact sacrificed under a national slogan that was eventually refined into ‘One Hundred Million Die Together,’ a natural extension of the illusory image of Saipan. Death became a tool useful for the survival of the Imperial System itself at the end of the Lost War.” In other words, according to Cook, this wartime myth was “coordinated, calculated, mobilized and subsidized” by government fiat.
Some historians say thousands leaped. Cook maintains that the figure was in the hundreds.
James Fahey’s lurid account of watching bodies float by is from his Pacific War Diary.
Regarding the quote “Hell is upon us,” in Goodbye, Darkness, William Manchester says that Hirohito said this. Donald Miller, in D-Day in the Pacific, says that these were the words of one of Hirohito’s military advisers. Brooks, in Hell Is Upon Us, says it was Vice-Admiral Shigryoshi Miwa who said this. Miwa predicted that the loss of Saipan paved the way for the withering bombing campaign on the home islands.
Admiral King was right when he said, “The Marianas are the key of the situation because of their location on the Japanese line of communications between the home islands and the empire.” Robert Sherrod called Saipan “Japan’s Pearl Harbor,” while noting that in fact “Saipan is a thousand miles closer to Japan’s coast than
Pearl Harbor is to America’s.”
CHAPTER 33: HOT CARGO
Ordnance tonnage figures are 522 tons of M66 bombs, 247 tons of M65 1,000-pounders, and 283 tons of 500-pound M64s.
With Liberty and Victory ships, the practice was to load the heaviest cargo in the lower holds so that the ship’s center of gravity was well below the water line. In rough seas this helped to stabilize the vessels.
By 7:00 p.m. the E. A. Bryan was carrying a total of 4,379 tons of ammunition and explosives, including 328 tons of antiaircraft projectiles and another 320 tons of igniter charges in the lower portion of her No. 1 hold; and, in her No. 2 hold, 54 tons of Mk-47 Torpex-loaded aerial depth bombs and 1,052 tons of 500-, 1,000-, and 2,000-pound bombs.
In the Bryan’s No. 3 hold, the seamen had already loaded 1,049 tons of M65s. The No. 4 hold held 475 tons of 500-pound bombs (M64) and another 315 tons of 325-pound depth bombs (Mk-54) filled with Torpex. The No. 5 hold contained 166 tons of antiaircraft projectiles, 360 tons of 40-mm cartridges, and another 260 tons of projectiles for a three-inch, .50-caliber naval gun.
Exact tonnage figures for the Bryan vary. Port Chicago’s seamen were able to load between 800 and 1,100 tons every twenty-four hours.
Regarding the markings on the bombs, prior to 1941 the Army and Navy had separate manufacture and designs for all bombs, and each service had distinctive nomenclature to indicate a particular piece of ordnance. The Navy nomenclature was prefixed by the word “Mark,” abbreviated as “Mk.” The Army used much the same method until 1925, when it changed its nomenclature to avoid confusion with the Navy. All Army items since then have been named M (for model), followed by an Arabic numeral. In 1941 a joint committee for standardization of ordnance known as the Army-Navy Standardization Board was created. Since then bomb production has been approved by the Standardization Board for joint issue to Army and Navy forces. Designs accepted by this Board are designated by the prefix “AN” (Army-Navy) followed by the Army or Navy name of the design. Thus, an Army bomb approved for joint production would be named AN-M and a Navy bomb would be named AN-Mk. Bomb sections of Army-Navy manuals usually consisted of four parts: U.S. Army “modified mark” series bombs; U.S. Army “M” series bombs; U.S. Navy “Mk” series bombs; and U.S. Army-Navy “AN” series bombs.
The Color of War Page 50
