BREACHING THE MARIANAS: The Battle for Saipan
by Captain John C. Chapin U.S. Marine Corps Reserve (Ret)
It was to be a brutal day At first light on 15 June
1944, the Navy fire support ships of the task force lying off Saipan
Island increased their previous days' preparatory fires involving all
calibers of weapons. At 0542, Vice Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner
ordered, "Land the landing force." Around 0700, the landing ships, tank
(LSTs) moved to within approximately 1,250 yards behind the line of
departure. Troops in the LSTs began debarking from them in landing
vehicles, tracked (LVTs). Control vessels containing Navy and Marine
personnel with their radio gear took their positions displaying flags
indicating which beach approaches they controlled.
Admiral Turner delayed H-hour from 0830 to 0840 to
give the "boat waves" additional time to get into position. Then the
first wave headed full speed toward the beaches. The Japanese waited
patiently, ready to make the assault units pay a heavy price.
The first assault wave contained armored amphibian
tractors (LVT[A]s) with their 75mm guns firing rapidly. They were
accompanied by light gunboats firing 4.5-inch rockets, 20mm guns, and
40mm guns. The LVTs could negotiate the reef, but the rest could not and
were forced to turn back until a passageway through the reef could be
discovered.
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The
first assault wave has hit the beach from the LVT (amphibious tractor)
that brought it ashore, and the Marines now prepare to fight their way
inland. Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 83261
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Earlier, at 0600, further north, a feint landing was
conducted off Tanapag harbor by part of the 2d Marines in conjunction
with the 1st Battalion, 29th Marines, and the 24th Marines. The Japanese
were not really fooled and did not rush reinforcements to that area, but
it did tie up at least one enemy regiment.
When the LVT(A)s and troop-carrying LVTs reached the
reef, it seemed to explode. In every direction and in the water beyond
on the way to the beaches, great geysers of water rose with artillery
and mortar shells exploding. Small-arms fire, rifles, and machine guns
joined the mounting crescendo. The LVTs ground ashore.
Confusion on the beaches, particularly in the 2d
Marine Division area, was compounded by the strength of a northerly
current flow which caused the assault battalions of the 6th and 8th
Marines to land about 400 yards too far north. This caused a gap to
widen between the 2d and 4th Marine Divisions. As Colonel Robert E.
Hogaboom, the operations officer of the Expeditionary Troops commented:
"The opposition consisted primarily of artillery and mortar fire from
weapons placed in well-deployed positions and previously registered to
cover the beach areas, as well as fire from small arms, automatic
weapons, and anti-boat guns sited to cover the approaches to and the
immediate landing beaches."
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As a result, five of the 2d Marine Division assault
unit commanders were soon wounded in the two battalions of the 6th
Marines (on the far left), and in the two battalions of the 8th Marines.
With Afetan Point in the middle spitting deadly enfilade fire to the
left and to the right, the next units across the gap were two battalions
of the 23d Marines and, finally, on the far right, two battalions of the
25th Marines.
Although the original plan had been for the assault
troops to ride their LVTs all the way to the O-1 (first objective) line,
the deluge of Japanese fire and natural obstacles prevented this. A few
units in the center of the 4th Division made it, but fierce enemy
resistance pinned down the right and left flanks. The two divisions were
unable to make direct contact.
A first lieutenant in the 3d Battalion, 24th Marines,
John C. Chapin, later remembered vividly the extra ordinary scene on the
beach when he came ashore on D-Day:
All around us was the chaotic debris of bitter
combat: Jap and Marine bodies lying in mangled and grotesque positions;
blasted and burnt-out pillboxes; the burning wrecks of LVTs that had
been knocked out by Jap high velocity fire; the acrid smell of high
explosives; the shattered trees; and the churned-up sand littered with
discarded equipment.
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"D-Day at Saipan" Watercolor by SSgt John Fabion.
Marine Corps Art
Collection
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When his company moved in land a short distance, it
quickly experienced the frightening precision of the pre-registered
Japanese artillery fire:
Suddenly, WHAM! A shell hit right on top of us! I was
too surprised to think, but instinctively all of us hit the deck and
began to spread out. Then the shells really began to pour down on us:
ahead, behind, on both sides, and right in our midst. They would come
rocketing down with a freight-train roar and then explode with a
deafening cataclysm that is beyond description.
It finally dawned on me that the first shell bursts
we'd heard had been ranging shots, and now that the Japs were "zeroed
in" on us, we were caught in a full-fledged barrage. The fire was
hitting us with pin-point accuracy, and it was not hard to see
whytowering 1500 feet above us was Mt. Tapotchau, with Jap
observation posts honeycombing its crest.
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That night the lieutenant and his runner shared a
shallow foxhole and split the watches between them. Death came
close:
Slowly, very slowly, the hours of my watch passed,
and at last I leaned over and shook my runner awake. "It's time for your
watch," I whispered. "Look out for that place over there, maybe Japs in
it. Keep awake." With that I rolled over on the ground and was asleep in
an instant.
Right away, it seemed, someone was shaking me and
insisting, "Wake up!" I jerked bolt uprightin combat your reflexes
act fast and you never go fully to sleep. A glance at my watch showed
that it was almost dawn.
I turned to my runner who was lying against me,
asleep. "Let's go!" I said, "Pass the word to the squad leaders to get
set." He didn't stir. I shook him. He still didn't move. He was dead.
With the callousness that war demands, I rolled him over, reached for
his canteen, and poured the precious water into my own canteen. Then I
left him lying there ....
All the assault regiments were taking casualties from
the constant shelling that was zeroed in by spotters on the high ground
inland. Supplies and reinforcing units piled up in confusion on the
landing beaches. Snipers were everywhere. Supporting waves experienced
the same deadly enemy fire on their way to the beach. Some LVTs lost
their direction, some received direct hits, and others were flipped on
their sides by waves or enemy fire spilling their equipment and
personnel onto the reef. Casualties in both divisions mounted rapidly.
Evacuating them to the ships was extremely dangerous and difficult.
Medical aid stations set up ashore were under sporadic enemy fire.
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Marines dig in on the beachhead, consolidating their
positions, and at the same time preparing to move out on the attack
inland. Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 81917
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As the Marine artillery also landed in the late
afternoon of D-Day and began firing in support of the infantry, it
received deadly accurate counter-battery fire from the Japanese. The
commander of the 4th Division, Major General Harry Schmidt, came ashore
at 1930 and later recalled, "Needless to say, the command post during
that time did not function very well. It was the hottest spot I was in
during the war...."
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Members of the Japanese garrison on Saipan pose for a
photograph during a more peaceful time before the Marine landing.
Col James A.
Donovan Collection
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Capt Carl W. Hoffman, executive officer of the 1st
Battalion, 6th Marines, endured a mortar barrage that had uncanny timing
and precision:
We entered a little village called Charan-Kanoa. We
paused there to get some water. We had been pinched out of our zone of
action. We were washing up and resting when all of a sudden mortar
shells started to fall on us. We didn't know it at the time, but in a
tall smokestack nearby was a Japanese forward observer. He was directing
the fire, looking right down on us. It didn't occur to us that somebody
could be up in that smokestack after all the preparatory naval gunfire
and everything that had been fired into the area, but he was up there
all right. He really caused a great number of casualties in G
Company.
He caught us without foxholes. We had that false
sense of security from having been pinched out of the line. We thought
we had a chance to relax. We didn't. So all had to dig holes in a hurry,
and it's hard to dig a hole when you're lying on your stomach digging
with your chin, your elbows, your knees, and your toes. It is possible
to dig a hole that way, I found, but we lost far more Marines than we
should have before someone finally located that observer up in the
smokestack. I don't know how tall the smokestack was, but I would say
probably the equivalent of two or three stories high. From up there he
could see the entire picture, and he really gave it to us.
Lieutenant General Holland M. Smith
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LtGen Smith in his command post ashore on Saipan uses a
high-powered telescope to observe his troops in action. Department of Defense
Photo (USMC) 89883
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Lieutenant General Holland M. Smith, one of the most
famous Marines of World War II, was born in 1882. He was commissioned a
second lieutenant in 1905. There followed a series of overseas
assignments in the Philippines, Nicaragua, Santo Domingo, and with the
Marine Brigade in France in World War I. Beginning in the early 1930s,
he became increasingly focused on the development of amphibious warfare
concepts. Soon after the outbreak of war with Japan in 1941, he came to
a crucial position, command of all Marines in the Central Pacific.
As another Marine officer later described him, "He
was of medium height, perhaps five feet nine or ten inches, and somewhat
paunchy. His once-black hair had turned gray. His once close-trimmed
mustache was somewhat scraggly. He wore steel-rimmed glasses and he
smoked cigars incessantly." There was one other feature that
characterized him: a ferocious temper that earned him the nickname
"Howlin' Mad" Smith, although his close friends knew him as "Hoke."
This characteristic would usually emerge as
irritation at what he felt were substandard performances. One famous
example of this was his relief of an Army general on Saipan. A huge
interservice uproar erupted!
Less than two years later, after 41 years of active
service, during which he was awarded four Distinguished Service Medals
for his leadership in four successive successful amphibious operations,
he retired in April 1946, as a four-star general. He died in January
1967.
The night of D-Day saw continuous Japanese probing of
the Marine positions, fire from by-passed enemy soldiers, and an enemy
attack in the 4th Division zone screened by a front of civilians. The
main counterattack, however, fell on the 6th Marines on the far left of
the Marine lines. About 2,000 Japanese started moving south from
Garapan, and by 2200 they were ready to attack. Led by tanks the charge
was met by a wall of fire from .30-caliber machine guns, 37mm antitank
guns, and M-1 rifles. It was too much and they fell back in disarray. In
addition to 700 enemy dead, they left one tank. The body of the bugler
who blew the charge was slumped over the open hatch. A bullet had gone
straight up his bugle!
One of the crucial assets for the Marine defense that
night (and on many subsequent nights) was the illumination provided by
star shells fired from Navy ships. Japanese records recovered later from
their Thirty-first Army message file revealed, "... as soon as
the night attack units go forward, the enemy points out targets by using
the large star shells which practically turn night into day. Thus the
maneuvering of units is extremely difficult."
As the weary Marines finally tried to get some sleep,
all along their irregular line of foxholes, two things were very clear
to them: they had forced a precarious beachhead in the teeth of bitter
enemy fire, and a long, tough battle obviously lay ahead.
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Department of
Defense Photo (USMC) A412992
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The 2d Marine Division
The origins of this division lay in the activation of
the 2d Marine Brigade as part of the Fleet Marine Force on 1 July 1936.
A year later the brigade deployed to Shanghai, China, returning in 1938
to San Diego, California.
On 1 February 1941, the unit was redesignated as the
2d Marine Division. Its component regiments, the 2d, 6th, 8th, and 10th
Marines, brought with them impressive histories of service in Vera Cruz
(Mexico), World War I in France, and the Caribbean.
In World War II, elements of the division served in
Iceland, in Hawaii during the attack on Pearl Harbor, and on Samoa, then
the full division in the Guadalcanal campaign, followed by the bloody
assault of Tarawa for which it was awarded a Presidential Unit Citation,
and on to Saipan, Tinian, and Okinawa.
The 2d Marine Division Patch
This 2d Marine Division shoulder patch was worn on
Saipan. Designed and approved in late 1943. the insignia is in the
official Marine Corps colors of scarlet and gold. The insignia displays
a spearhead-shaped scarlet background with a hand holding aloft a
lighted gold torch. A scarlet numeral "2" is superimposed upon the
torch, and the torch and hand are encircled by five white stars in the
arrangement of the Southern Cross constellation; under this the
division's first World War II combat took place at Guadalcanal.
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While the thoughts of the riflemen focused on
survival and the immediate ground in front of them, the senior command
echelons saw the initial success of the landings as a culmination of
months of planning, training, and organization for a strategic strike on
a crucial Japanese stronghold. The opportunity for this sprang from
earlier Central Pacific victories.
The Marine conquest of Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands
in November 1943, followed by the joint Marine-Army capture of Kwajalein
and Eniwetok atolls in the Marshall Islands in January-February 1944,
had broken the outer ring of Japanese defenses and set the stage for
succeeding operations.
These earlier victories had moved up the entire
American operational timetable for the Central Pacific by three valuable
months. After discussions of various alternatives (such as an attack on
the vast Japanese base at Truk), the Joint Chiefs of Staff had settled
on the next objective: the Mariana Islands. There were to be three
principal targets: Saipan, Tinian, and Guam. It was a daring decision,
for Saipan was 1,344 miles from the Marshalls and 3,226 miles from
Hawaii, but only 1,250 miles from Japan. Furthermore, the islands were
linchpins in the revised inner defense line which the Japanese felt they
absolutely had to hold after their previous losses in the Central and
Southwest Pacific.
The 4th Marine Division
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Department of
Defense Photo (USMC)
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This division had its roots in the shifting and
redesignation of several other units. The 23d Marines began as infantry
detached from the 3d Division in February 1943, the same month that an
artillery battalion became the genesis of the 14th Marines and engineer
elements of the 19th Marines formed the start of the 20th Marines. In
March the 24th Marines was organized, and then in May it was split in
two to supply the men for the 25th Marines.
This war-time shuffling provided the major building
blocks for a new division. The units were originally separated, however,
with the 24th Marines and a variety of reinforcing units (engineer,
artillery, medical, motor transport, special weapons, tanks, etc.) at
Camp Pendleton in California. The rest of the units were at Camp
Lejeune, North Carolina. This East Coast echelon moved to Pendleton by
train and also by ship through the Panama Canal in July and August 1943.
All the units were now finally together, and thus the 4th Marine
Division was formally activated on 14 August 1943.
After intensive training, it shipped out on 13
January 1944, and in 13 short months made four major assault landings:
Roi-Namur, Saipan, Tinian, and Iwo Jima, suffering over 17,000
casualties. It was awarded two Presidential Unit Citations and a Navy
Unit Commendation, and then deactivated 28 November 1945. In February
1966, however, it was reactivated as the lead division in the Marine
Corps Reserve, and it furnished essential units to Desert Storm in the
liberation of Kuwait.
The 4th Marine Division Patch
Worn on Saipan, it had a gold "4" on a scarlet
background, the official colors of the U.S. Marine Corps. This emblem
was designed by SSgt John Fabion, a member of the division's public
affairs office before the Marshalls campaign. His commanding officer was
astonished to find that, when the division attacked Roi islet in
Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands (January 1944), the layout of
the runways on the Japanese airstrip there were "an exact replica."
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Saipan represented a wholly new kind of prickly
problem for an American assault. Instead of a small, flat coral islet in
an atoll, it was a large island target of some 72 square miles, with
terrain varying from flat cane fields to swamps to precipitous cliffs to
the commanding 1,554-foot-high Mount Tapotchau. Moreover, the Japanese
considered it "their own territory," in spite of the fact that it was
legally only a mandate provided by the terms of the Versailles Treaty
following World War I. The fact that Japan held the islands led it to
install a policy of exclusion of all outsiders and the start of military
construction, forbidden by the treaty, as early as 1934.
Attacking a formidable objective such as Saipan
called for complex planning and much greater force than had previously
been needed in the Central Pacific. An elaborate organization was
therefore assembled. Admiral Raymond A. Spruance was in overall command
of the force detailed to invade the Marianas as well as the naval units
needed to protect them. Admiral Turner was in command over the
amphibious task force, while Marine Lieutenant General Holland M. Smith
was to direct the landing forces on Saipan and then on the neighboring
island of Tinian. (A similar command structure, but with different
combat units, was set up for the attack on Guam to the south.)
The operation plan for Saipan, code-named Forager,
called for an assault on the western side of the island, with the 2d
Marine Division on the left and the 4th Marine Division on the right.
The Army's 27th Infantry Division was in reserve, ready to be fed into
the battle if needed. While each of the two Marine divisions had
previously fought as a complete unit, the 27th had experienced only two
minor landings (at Makin and Eniwetok islets) for some of its regiments
and battalions.
The intensive training for these three divisions took
place in the Hawaiian Islands with Major General Harry Schmidt's 4th
Marine Division on Maui, Major General Thomas E. Watson's 2d Marine
Division on the "Big Island" of Hawaii, and Army Major General Ralph C.
Smith's 27th Infantry Division on Oahu. As Lieutenant Chapin described
it:
(These) months were busy, hard-working ones. The
replacements that arrived to fill the gaps left by Namur's casualties
(in the Kwajalein battle) had to be trained in all the complexities of
field work. Most of these replacements were boys fresh from boot camp,
and they were ignorant of everything but the barest essentials. Week
after week was filled with long marches, field combat problems, live
firing, obstacle courses, street fighting, judo, calisthenics, night and
day attacks and defenses, etc. There were also lectures on the errors
we'd made at Namur. Added emphasis was placed on attacking fortified
positions. We worked with demolition charges of dynamite, TNT, and C-2
[plastic explosive], and with flame throwers till everyone knew them
forward and backward.
The Army 27th Infantry Division
This division, before the national emergency was
declared in 1940, was a State of New York National Guard organization.
It contained many famous old regiments, some dating from the
Revolutionary and Civil Wars. In World War II, the division's 165th
Infantry had been the renowned old 69th New York Infantry, also known as
the "Fighting 69th" and "Fighting Irish" of World War I fame. The first
unit of this regiment was organized in 1775.
As the war in Europe grew in intensity, the Selective
Service Act gave the President the power to federalize the National
Guard. Thus, the 27th Division was activated by President Roosevelt on
25 September 1940. It was first sent to Fort McClellan, Alabama, for
intensive training, and then, in December 1941, to California.
On 28 February 1942, the first elements of the
division sailed from San Francisco and landed at the town of Hilo on the
"Big Island" of Hawaii. During the next two months, the division units
were scattered through out the island for local defense and training.
That was the start of the longest wartime overseas service of any
National Guard division in the United States Army.
In the fall of 1942, the division was directed to
assemble on the island of Oahu. MajGen Ralph C. Smith took over command
at that time. Then in midsummer 1943, orders came to prepare the 165th
Infantry Regiment, reinforced by a battalion of the 105th Infantry and
an artillery battalion, for an assault to capture the coral atoll of
Makin, in the Gilbert Islands chain. Following a four-day battle there,
in November 1943, the division furnished a battalion of the 106th
Infantry for the unopposed occupation of Majuro in the Marshall Islands
in January 1944.
The final prelude to Saipan for units of the 27th
came the next month. Two battalions of the 106th fought at Eniwetok
Atoll in the Marshalls.
After the division's struggle on Saipan, it went on
to the battle for Okinawa in April 1945, and then to the occupation of
Japan in September 1945.
The final chapter came in December 1946 when the 27th
Infantry Division was deactivated.
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The month of May 1944 brought final maneuvers and
practice landings for all three divisions. The operation plan looked
neatly and efficiently organized on paper.
In practice it looked different to that
lieutenant:
To us in the lower echelons it was just the same old
stuff that we'd been doing for a solid year: filing up from compartments
below decks to your assigned boat station, going over the side, hurrying
down the net to beat the stopwatch, into the heaving LCVP (Landing
Craft, Vehicle, Personnel), and away. Then the interminable hours of
circling, meanwhile getting wet, hungry and bored. The K rations (in a
waxed box) tasted like sawdust; the weather got rougher and rougher.
Some of the men got seasick, and all of us were soaking wet and
cold.
Finally we headed back to our transport and clambered
up the cargo net with a sigh of relief. The next day it was the same
thing all over again, except that this time we went ashore. This, too,
had an awfully familiar feeling: wading through the surf, getting your
only pair of shoes and socks wringing wet, and then onto the beach where
all the sand migrated inside your shoes. A series of conflicting and
confusing orders flowed down through the chain of command: halt and move
on, halt and move on, go here, go there.
The vast attack force now gathered at Pearl Harbor.
Although there were unfortunate accidents to some of the landing craft,
over 800 ships set out in the naval component, some for direct fire
support of the troops, some for transport, and some (the fast carrier
task force) to make advance air strikes and then to deal with the attack
which the landing probably would incite from the Japanese Navy. Holland
Smith's V Amphibious Corps, totaling 71,034 Marine and Army troops,
sailed with some slow elements starting on 25 May. The specialized craft
for the ground forces ran the gamut of acronym varieties. After staging
through the Marshalls, the armada headed for the target: Saipan.
At sea the troops got their final briefings: maps of
the island (based on recent American aerial and submarine photographs of
a hitherto "secret island"), estimates of 15,000 enemy troops (which
turned out in the end to be 30,000 under the command of Lieutenant
General Yoshitsugu Saito and Vice Admiral Chiuchi Nagumo), and detailed
attack plans for two Marine divisions.
Simultaneously, the American fast carriers' planes
began, on 11 June, their softening-up bombing, combined with attacks on
Japanese land-based air. Two days later, the main enemy fleet headed for
the Marianas for a decisive battle. Then, on 14 June, the "old
battleships" of the U.S. Navy, reborn from the Pearl Harbor disaster,
moved in close to Saipan to pound the Japanese defenses with their heavy
guns. That night underwater demolition teams made their dangerous swim
in close to the assault beaches to check on reefs, channels, mines, and
beach defenses. All was now in readiness for the landings.
The bloody business of D-Day was, as the troops well
realized, only a beginning, for the long, grueling fight which began
the next morning.
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