by Daniel Wrinn
After thirty minutes, the LVCPs (Landing Craft Vehicle Personnel, or Higgins boats) from the Calvert made a run toward the beach, taking on heavy artillery and mortar fire from shore. Rear Admiral Hill, trying to avoid casualties, ordered the boats to withdraw and reform. A second run followed and took on heavy fire from Japanese resistance on shore. Several of the boats were sprayed with shell fragments but continued until less than four hundred yards off the beach before turning back.
While the small boats engaged in this maneuver, the battleship Colorado came under fire at a range of just over 3,000 yards from two Japanese 6-inch guns near Tinian Town. These guns had gone undetected during the pre-invasion reconnaissance. Within fifteen minutes, Japanese gunners scored twenty-two direct hits on the Colorado and six on the destroyer Norman Scott. The casualties among the Marine detachments and crews were costly: 227 wounded and 69 killed. The Colorado limped back to Saipan. That Japanese battery survived for four entire days until finally destroyed by the battleship Tennessee.
The losses taken by these two ships alone exceeded those suffered by the larger Marine landing forces on the northwestern beaches. But this deception served its purpose. One battalion of the Japanese 50th Infantry Regiment and elements of the 56th Naval Guard Force froze in place around Tinian Town. This deception also convinced the Japanese commander Colonel Kiyochi Ogata that he had thwarted an invasion. His message to Tokyo described his forces repelled over one-hundred landing barges.
These “barges” reloaded back onto the Calvert at 1000. The convoy steamed north to the White Beaches, where the Marine 4th Division troops had landed after a mishap. A UDT party using floats and carrying explosives swam to White Beach 2 before dawn to blast away boulders and destroy beach mines. But a squall caused this mission to fail. Now the floats were scattered and explosives lost. The Marines would pay a heavy price for this aborted mission a few hours later.
To offset the UDT mission’s failure, airstrikes were ordered at 0630. Observers claimed that five of the fourteen known beach mines had been destroyed. One battery of 155mm “Long Tom” guns on Saipan fired smoke shells at the Japanese command post on Mount Lasso. They also laid smoke in the woods, the bluffs, and beaches to hinder Japanese observation.
The 24th Marines were tasked with assaulting White Beach 1 while White Beach 2 went to the 25th Marines. Almost at once, two battalions of the 25th Marines loaded into sixteen LVTs and landed in columns of companies on White Beach 2. The 2nd Battalion was on the right and the 3rd Battalion on the left.
Units of the 24th Marines loaded into twenty-five LVTs and crossed the line of departure 3,500 yards offshore at 0715. Ahead of them were LCIs (landing craft, infantry) and a company of the 2nd Armored Amphibian Battalion. They raked the beaches with barrage rockets and automatic cannon fire. In the twenty-five-minute run to the beach, the trip-laden LVTs took scattered small arms and machine-gun fire.
At White Beach 1, a small Japanese beach detachment holed up in caves and crevices put up a fierce resistance with small arms fire. Company E gunners quickly destroyed them.
In less than an hour, the entire 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 24th Marines were ashore on White Beach 1 and prepared to move inland. The 2nd Battalion faced erratic small arms, mortar, and artillery fire during the first few hundred yards of its advance. After that, the battalion had an easy walk for the rest of the day, gaining their O-1 line objective by 1600. They also occupied the western edge of Airfield 3 and cut the main road that linked Airfield 1 with the eastern coast and southern Tinian. Still receiving sporadic small-arms fire, the battalion dug in for the night.
On the left flank, heavy fire stalled the 1st Battalion. Enemy shooters hid in patches of vegetation and cave positions. Flamethrower tanks were set up against these positions, but the Japanese kept up a stiff resistance. As a result, the 1st Battalion did not reach their objective—400 yards short of their objective by the afternoon. This left a gap between the two perimeters. The regimental 3rd Battalion waiting in reserve was called up.
The 25th Regiment ran into problems. The beach in the surrounding area had been seeded with mines that the UDT teams and offshore gunners failed to destroy. It took five hours to clear them out. Three LVTs and a jeep were destroyed in the process. Several booby traps were left for the Marines to deal with: Cases of beer and watches wired to explode in the hands of careless souvenir hunters.
Inland, troops from Ogata’s 50th Infantry Regiment put up a vigorous defense with mortars, anti-boat and anti-tank guns, and other automatic weapons placed in fortified ravines, pillboxes, caves and field entrenchments. A pair of 47mm guns kept Marines on the defensive. After they finally bypassed the difficult positions, they left fifty dead Japanese in the gun pits.
Colonel Chambers, the 3/25 Marines commander, later wrote of the confusion on the beach, “the confusion you always get when you land, and trying to reorganize under fire.” One of his company commanders was killed fifteen minutes after landing. It took a while to get a replacement on scene and up to speed. Then there was still the problem of mines and artillery fire from the Japanese command post on Mount Lasso, less than two miles away.
By late afternoon Colonel Chambers’ battalion had reached its objective of 1,500 yards inland to the center of the line and had tied the 24th onto its left flank. Other battalions of the 25th came up short of their O-1 line. This created a crescent-shaped beachhead that was 3,500 yards wide at the shoreline and bulged inland 1,500 yards at sunset.
But the day’s greatest confusion came from the 23rd Marines. The regiment had been waiting on LSTs in division reserve during the landing. At 0740, troops were ordered to board LVTs parked cheek to jowl in the tank decks. Their engines were running and spewing carbon monoxide. After thirty minutes, the cooped-up troops developed headaches, got nauseous, and started vomiting.
Colonel Louis Jones ordered the men to unload and return topside until a launch order was finally received at 1030. The regiment debarked and eventually got ashore at 1400 despite an incredible series of communication breakdowns, where Colonel Jones at crucial times, was out of touch with his battalions and divisions.
Besides disrupted radio communications, Colonel Jones was stuck in an LVT with a bad engine. He waited seven hours to get ashore with his staff, leading to a division complaint about his regiment’s tardiness. Command noted that “fortunately no serious harm was done by the delay.”
But at the end of the operation, Colonel Jones left the division. He was promoted to brigadier general and assigned a position as assistant division commander of the 1st Marine Division leading up to the Okinawa landings.
A similar problem happened involving the 2nd Marine Division. After the feint at Tinian Town, the division sailed north and waited offshore of the White Beaches throughout the day. At 1530, the landing force commander, General Harry Schmidt, ordered a battalion from the 8th Marines to land on White Beach, backing up the 24th Marines. General Schmidt wanted a battalion ashore by 1600.
Because of the poor communications and transport confusion, the deadline was missed. It wasn’t until 2100 when the unit entered into its log, “Dug in in assigned position.”
But while all the details weren’t perfect, the overall operation had gone well in the morning and afternoon. By the standards of Saipan and Tarawa, casualties were light—225 wounded and 15 dead. The Japanese body count was over 435 men.
Despite narrow beaches, undiscovered mines, and drizzling rain, over 15,500 troops were still put ashore. Along with massive quantities of equipment and material, including four artillery battalions, twenty-four half-tracks with 75mm guns. Forty-eight medium and fifteen flamethrower tanks, which found the Tinian terrain agreeable for tank operations.
Tanks got into action early that morning and led the 24th in tank-infantry attacks. They’d also come to the aid of the 23rd Marines as the regiment moved inland to take over the division’s right flank. Despite some units failing to reach their first objectives, the beachhead was large and
extended inland nearly a mile and embraced defensible territory.
Not bad for a day’s work.
Japanese Counterattack
At 1630, General Clifton B. Cates, in command of the 4th Marine Division, ordered his forces to button up for the night. Command expected a nighttime counterattack. Barbed wire, preloaded on amphibian vehicles, was strung along the front.
Stockpiled ammunition could be seen in every weapons position. Machine guns were emplaced to allow interlocking fields of fire. Target areas were assigned to mortar crews. Artillery batteries in the rear were pre-registered to hit enemy approach routes and fire illumination shells to light up the battlefield. Anti-tank 37mm guns with canister ammunition (antipersonnel shells firing large pellets for close infighting) were positioned upfront. This would ensure severe casualties and do the greatest damage to the enemy.
The Marines dug in and waited for whatever the night would bring. The 24th Marines were backed up by the 1/8 Marines, occupying the northern half of the crescent defense. The 25th with a battalion of the 23rd occupied the southern half of the crescent. The rest of the 23rd were in reserve, along with artillery battalions from the 10th and 14th Marines, waiting in the rear on high alert.
The Japanese prepared for their counterattack. Because of their shattered communication lines, it would not be a coordinated operation. Units would need to act independently. Colonel Ogata issued a general order on June 28: “destroy the enemy on beaches with one blow. Especially where time prevents quick movement of forces within the island.”
The Japanese had 850 naval troops at the Ushi Point airfields on the Marines’ northern flank. Opposite the center of the Marine lines, near Mount Lasso, were another two battalions of the 50th Infantry Regiment and a tank company of 1,500 Japanese troops in total. On the west coast facing the Marines’ right flank were another 250 men from an infantry company of the 50th Regiment—along with an anti-tank squad and an anti-tank detachment.
The Japanese Mobile Counterattack Force—a 750-man battalion of the 135th Infantry Regiment, equipped with new rifles and demolition charges, waited six miles from the White Beaches. Japanese movement toward the northwestern beaches within the Marine lines was treacherous. All daylight movement was closely monitored by air surveillance and vulnerable to American firepower.
But the battalion set out under its commander, Captain Izumi, and was hit frequently by unobserved artillery and naval gunfire. Izumi advanced and made his objective through skillful use of terrain for concealment. At 2230 he probed the center of the Marine lines where the 2/24 Marines were tied in with the 3rd Battalion.
According to a Marine Combat correspondent: “While most of the Japanese crept along forward of the lines, a two-man reconnaissance detail climbed up on a battered building forward of the 24th Marines and audaciously jotted notes or drew sketches of the front lines. When Marines recognized this impudent gesture, they rewarded them with a thundering concentration of artillery fire.”
Another Marine wrote of his vivid memory that night: “A big gully ran from southeast to northwest into the western edge of our area. Anyone in their right mind would have figured that if there were going to be any counterattacks—they’d come from that gully.
“Throughout the night, Marines reported they heard a lot of Japanese chatter from down in the gully. Then they hit us at about midnight in K Company’s area. They hauled a couple of 75mm howitzers by hand with them, and when they got up to where they could fire at us—they hit us hard. I believe K Company did a damn good job, but about two-hundred Japs pushed through us [1,500 yards] to the beach area.
“Once the Japs hit the rear areas, all the artillery and machine guns started shooting like hell. Fire came in from the rear and grazed right up over our heads. During this, the enemy that hit Company L was putting up one hell of a fight about seventy-five yards from where I was—and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
“Over in Company K’s area is where the attack really developed. That was where Lieutenant McGuire and his 37mm guns on the left flank were firing canister. I watched two Marines manning a machine gun layout a cone of dead Jap bodies in front of them. A dead Jap officer laid right in there with them.”
A Combat Marine correspondent later described this action: “Marines held their fire until the Japanese were less than a thousand yards away—then they opened up. The Japanese charged. Screaming ‘banzai’ and firing machine guns and throwing grenades. It was near impossible for the Marines to hold on and continue firing. The next morning, we counted the Jap bodies piled in front of us. Over 250 dead Japanese soldiers.
“Just before sunrise, two tank companies showed up. They wanted to get right at the Japs and were sent off to an area held by Companies L and K. The major returned in less than fifteen minutes and said, ‘you don’t need tanks. You need undertakers. I’ve never seen so many dead Japs.’”
Another large party of Japanese troops was stacked up by the 75mm howitzer gunners of the 14th Marines supported by the 50-caliber machine guns of batteries E and F. These machine guns literally tore the Japanese to pieces. Over 600 Japanese were killed in their suicidal attack on the Marine center.
On the left flank, the 1/24 Marines came under attack at 0200 from 550 Special Naval Landing Force troops out of the barracks at the Ushi Point airfields. Company A was hit so hard it was at one point reduced to only 30 men with weapons. Company A was forced to draw reinforcements from corpsmen, engineers, communicators, and members of the shore party.
Illumination flares soared over the battlefield. This allowed Marines to use 37mm canister shells, mortars, and machine-gun fire to good effect. The fight continued until dawn, when medium tanks from the 4th Tank Battalion lumbered up to break up the last attacking Japanese troops. By this point, many Japanese had used their grenades to commit suicide.
As the sun rose, 470 Japanese bodies were counted in the defensive crescent, mostly in front of Company A’s position.
The last enemy attack that night hit the right flank of the Marines at 0330. A handful of Japanese tanks rattled up from Tinian Town’s direction to attack the 23rd Marines’ position. They were met with fierce fire from anti-tank guns, Marine artillery, small arms, and bazookas.
Lieutenant Jim Lucas was a professional reporter who enlisted in the Marine Corps after the attack on Pearl Harbor and was commissioned in the field. He later wrote: “Three lead tanks broke through the wall of fire. One glowed a blood-red and turned crazily on its tracks before careening into a ditch. A second, mortally wounded, turned its machine guns on its tormentors, firing into the ditches in one last desperate effort to fight its way free. After another hundred yards, it stopped dead in its tracks.
“The third tank tried frantically to turn around and retreat, but our boys closed in and literally blasted it apart. Bazookas knocked out a fourth tank, killing the driver. The rest of the crew piled out of the turret screaming. The fifth tank was now surrounded and tried to flee. Our bazookas made quick work of it. Another hit set it on fire, and its crew was cremated.
“The sixth tank was chased off by a Marine driving a Jeep. But destroying these tanks did not end the fight on the right flank. Infantry from the Japanese 50th Regiment continued to attack the 2/23 Marines. While they were repulsed and killed in large numbers, mainly through effective use of anti-tank 37mm guns with canister shot. In the last hopeless moments of the assault, some wounded Japanese destroyed themselves by detonating a magnetic tank mine, producing a horrific blast.”
From a Japanese standpoint, that night’s work was a disaster. Over 1,200 bodies were left on the battlefield: several hundred more carted away during the night. With fewer than one hundred Marines wounded or killed, losing these Japanese troops broke the back of the already poor defenses of Tinian. Now that their communications were shattered by sustained fire from Saipan and increasing fire from Tinian, survivors were capable of only the weakest, most dazed sort of resistance. During the next seven days, small groups of Japanese
took advantage of the darkness to launch night attacks, but mostly, they only withdrew in no particular order until there was nowhere left for them to withdraw.
Most agreed that the battle for Tinian was over. But 4th Division intelligence officer Colonel Gooderham McCormick, a Marine reserve officer, later to become the mayor of Philadelphia, did not agree: “we believed after the counterattack the enemy was capable of a still harder fight. And from day-to-day during our advance expected an even more bitter fight that never materialized.”
Hard work still lay ahead. A demanding task was the exhausting but straightforward job of humping through the cane fields and humidity with frequent monsoon downpours. Fearful of not only sniper fire, booby traps and mines but also fires that could sweep through the cane fields and incinerate anyone caught in its path.
People Shooting Grouse
Colonel “Bucky” Buchanan was an assistant naval gunfire officer for the 4th Division at Tinian. He wrote of his experiences: “We fought the same way at Tinian that we did on Saipan. It was a handholding, linear operation, like a bunch of bush beaters, people shooting grouse or something. The idea was to flush out every Jap consistently as we go down rather than driving down the main road with a fork and cutting this and that off in what I called creative tactics. This was the easiest and safest thing to do. Who can criticize it? We were successful. And again, what little resistance was left was pushed into the edge of the island—and quickly destroyed.”