Strong Men Armed

by Robert Leckie

  It was all over at Torokina by March 25. By then the three-pronged assault which Hyakutate had ordered had been shattered by the soldiers of the 37th and Americal Divisions, with considerable help from their artillery. Some 5,000 Japanese soldiers had been killed, and only 263 Americans had died. The long, bloody, toilsome climb up the Solomons ladder which had begun more than nineteen months before at Guadalcanal was at an end. The Slot was now an American canal, Haruyoshi Hyakutate had issued his last battle order and the surviving men of that 17th Army which he had lost twice over were reduced to grubbing for existence in the native gardens of Bougainville.

  A similar end soon overtook their counterparts in New Guinea, where units of Lieutenant General Hatazo Adachi’s 18th Army were being chopped up and isolated. On April 22 the soldiers of General MacArthur leapfrogged far up the New Guinea coast to land unopposed at Hollandia in Dutch New Guinea, and to move inland to a stiff fight.

  By then some 130 miles of New Britain’s coast were in Marine hands, Matsuda’s 65th Brigade had been all but annihilated, and the last battle had been fought at Linga Linga on March 20. A patrol of the Second Battalion, First, led by that same Charles Brush who had ambushed the vanguard of the Ichiki Detachment on Guadalcanal, ambushed Colonel Jiro Sato’s rear-guard. Of the 500 men whom Sato had gathered at Upmadung, not 100 had survived the march, and these were all killed by the Marines. Sato himself died like a soldier, with his sword in his hand at the head of his troops, concluding the delaying action which had enabled Matsuda and half his men to escape. Five thousand Japanese had been killed on New Britain and an unprecedented 500 had surrendered. All this was accomplished at a loss of 310 Marines killed and 1,083 wounded, proof of how low Marines could keep their casualties when maneuver was possible.

  By now also the men of the First Marine Division wanted to get away from the Army. In mid-April they awaited the arrival of their relief, the Army’s 40th Infantry Division. And yet, when the Army did arrive, there were actually some Marines who were reluctant to leave. That was because the Fifth had found a home at Talasea.

  They had found a beautiful grove of tall graceful coconut trees, they had found Bitokara Mission on the high bluffs overlooking blue and breezy Garua Harbor—a place of broad green lawns, of gardens riotous with the vivid blooms of the tropics, of neat white-painted buildings, all dominated by capacious St. Boniface Mission Church. There was also smiling San Remo Plantation and there were even sulphur springs. Some nights the Melanesians would stage “sing-sings” for the American Marines who had been so generous with their cigarettes and had guaranteed many, many years of labor trouble for Australian planters who bought work with “sticks tobac.”

  “Finding this place,” said one Marine, “is like finding Heaven in Hell.”

  But they were out of Talasea before May, sailing back to the norm of Hell-in-Heaven, the mud and rotting coconuts and rats and bats and dejection of a place called Pavuvu in the beautiful Russell Islands. From Pavuvu some of them went home, for the rotation system developed by the U.S. armed services was at last bringing relief to those men who had been overseas two years or more. But there were more Marines coming out from the States than going in, for there were now five full divisions and a brigade in the field.

  On the same twenty-eighth of April on which the last Marine quit New Britain, the Navy struck the blow which would send this striking force charging off in a new direction.

  On that day Truk was destroyed.

  American carriers stood about 150 miles to the west of the once-fearful base in the Carolines and flew off flights of Hellcats. They swept over Truk to clear the skies for the bombers. They tangled with 62 Japanese fighters and shot most of them down. In two days they destroyed 59 in aerial combat and knocked out 34 on the ground. Truk was left with 12 planes.

  Though there were no ships of any size in the lagoon, everything afloat there was sunk. Everything above ground on the airfields was knocked down. So thorough was this obliterating blow, so devastated were the Japanese, that the Americans could rescue their downed airmen in Truk Lagoon. A float-plane pilot from North Carolina went after three men on a raft there. He capsized in choppy seas, but another of North Carolina’s floats came in, took the raft under tow, and taxied out to the waiting submarine, Tang, which had patrolled the reef on lifeguard duty. Of 46 Americans shot down, more than half were rescued.

  Truk was through. Task Force 58, which had finished it, was already wheeling and steaming north to give Marianas bases a foretaste of the storm which would soon blow up the northwest route to Tokyo.

  Guadalcanal, New Georgia, Choiseul, Bougainville, Tarawa, Kwajalein, Eniwetok, New Britain—all those fights in the air, in water, on earth—were now history. Kavieng, Rabaul, Truk —the three terrors of the Pacific—were penned in and chained up.

  “The seasons do not change,” wrote Vice Admiral Chuichi Hara, the commandant at Truk. “I try to look like a proud vice admiral, but it is hard with a potato hook in my hands. It rains every day, the flowers bloom every day, the enemy bombs us every day—so why remember?”

  III. Brisk and Bold

  “They want war too methodical, too measured; I would make it brisk, bold, impetuous, perhaps sometimes even audacious.”

  —Antoine Henri Jomini

  1

  They were coming out of the lagoons—out of Majuro, out of Kwajalein, out of Eniwetok—coming with a bright white bone in the teeth of their prows.

  They sortied out of the reef passages, battleships leading, while the blue sea water boiled white and frothy over the reefs and curled away in the round distance. Escort ships heeled over and broke column, stiffening their strings of signal flags as they bent it on and raced around the others in protective circle. Up ahead were the fast aircraft carriers—16 of these new queencraft of the seas—guarded by seven big new battleships, 13 cruisers and 58 destroyers.

  In all there were 800 ships standing out of the lagoons, carrying 162,000 men and all the guns and airplanes necessary to take the Marianas Islands away from Japan.

  For this was early June of 1944. It was exactly two and a half years since Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo had gathered his armada and sailed for Pearl Harbor, thereby incurring the terrible vengeance now drawing closer to Japan, and Nazi Germany as well. Even as these ships sailed to battle in early June, the greatest amphibious force ever assembled was preparing to cross the English Channel to the beaches of Normandy. And yet, though the Channel force was the greater, it was both American and British and it would sail hardly 20 miles. Here in the Pacific, these Marines and soldiers under Lieutenant General Howlin’ Mad Smith were sailing a total of 3,700 miles from the Hawaii staging areas and 2,400 miles from those in Guadalcanal—and every ship but three was American. More, this Pacific force was going to make three separate landings——on Guam, Tinian and Saipan. Saipan would be the first.

  Already the assault battalions of the Second and Fourth Marine Divisions had been told that Saipan was their objective. They had learned that this island fourteen miles by six had caves like Tulagi’s, mountains and ridges such as those of Guadalcanal and Bougainville, a reef like Tarawa’s and a swamp like Cape Gloucester’s—while also possessing such novelties as cities, a civilian population of Japanese and Chamorros, and open plains where maneuvering would come under heavy artillery fire. Saipan did not look appealing, and it sounded specially repugnant to those men of the Fourth Division who listened to their battalion surgeon explain some of the island’s other defects.

  “In the surf,” he said with solemn relish, “beware of sharks, barracuda, sea snakes, anemones, razor-sharp coral, polluted waters, poison fish and giant clams that shut on a man like a bear trap. Ashore,” he went on with rising enthusiasm, “there is leprosy, typhus, filariasis, yaws, typhoid, dengue fever, dysentery, saber grass, hordes of flies, snakes and giant lizards.” He paused, winded, but rushed on: “Eat nothing growing on the island, don’t drink its waters, and don’t approach its inhabitants.” He stopped, smiled b
enignly and inquired: “Any questions?”

  A private’s hand shot up.

  “Yes?”

  “Sir,” the private asked, “why’n hell don’t we let the Japs keep the island?”

  The answer, if the doctor had known, would have been fourfold.

  Those islands which an angry Magellan had named Los Ladrones, or The Thieves, in honor of light-fingered Chamorro natives, and which a priest had renamed Las Marianas, in honor of Spain’s Queen Maria Anna, were important to the Pacific strategy because possession of them would cut off Truk irrevocably, would pierce Japan’s second line of defense, would provide a base to bomb Japan with those huge B-29’s now coming off the assembly lines, and might lure the Japanese Fleet into all-out battle.

  Saipan was the chief target because it was 1,500 miles from Tokyo and already possessed a good air base in Aslito Airfield to its south and a new one being built in the north at Marpi Point. It was the heart of the Marianas, the headquarters of Japan’s Central Pacific Fleet commanded by Admiral Nagumo as well as of that 31st Army which Japan had formed by siphoning off battalions from its celebrated Kwantung Army in China (thereby setting up a pushover for the Russian rush a year later). On Saipan were 30,000 troops, mostly soldiers of the 43rd Division, the 47th Mixed Independent Brigade and the usual clutter of Army detachments and groups under the command of Lieutenant General Yoshitsugu Saito.

  Lieutenant General Saito was an aged and infirm man. He had taken over on Saipan after the 31st Army’s commander, Lieutenant General Hideyoshi Obata, had departed on a far-flung inspection tour. Saito did not get on with Nagumo, for the hero of Pearl Harbor had been powerless to prevent the steady sinking of Marianas-bound ships by American submarines.

  On February 29 the submarine Trout sank the transport Sakíto Maru bound for Saipan with 4,100 troops. Only 1,680 men survived to be shipped on to their destination at Guam. It went on intermittently, this submarine scourging, and as late as June 6 the submarines Shark, Pintado and Pilotfish sank five of seven ships bringing 3,463 soldiers to Saipan, causing the loss of 858 men. Almost as bad was the loss of cement and construction steel with which Saito hoped to emplace his numerous coastal guns. Of this he complained bitterly to Nagumo.

  “We cannot strengthen the fortifications appreciably now unless we can get materials suitable for permanent construction,” he informed the Central Fleet commander. “No matter how many soldiers there are, they can do nothing in regard to fortifications but sit around with their arms folded. The situation is unbearable.”

  Nagumo did not think the situation unbearable at all. He did not think the Marianas would come under attack before November. He was positive, as was Japanese Imperial Headquarters, that the Americans’ next step would be along the New Guinea-Philippines axis, probably in the Palaus. For this reason Japan had spent most of her material and energy in fortifying the Palaus, especially a postage stamp of an island named Peleliu. Admiral Soemu Toyoda had assembled the Combined Fleet at Tawi Tawi in the Sulu Sea preparatory for a dash to the Palaus to engage the American invasion fleet in the all-out battle he sought as much as had Toga before him and, before him, Yamamoto.

  And so, while General Saito got his abundant artillery in place in the hills, grumbling over his inability to emplace coastal guns to carry out his plan “to destroy the enemy at the water’s edge,” Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, like almost everyone else in the Army and Navy, kept his eyes fixed on the Palaus.

  Lieutenant General Smith, in command of all Marianas ground troops, planned to attack Saipan on June 15. Three days later Guam would be assaulted. Tinian would be taken a few days after the fall of Saipan. That was the over-all plan.

  The plan for Saipan called for a two-division assault on the island’s western side just south of the coastal city of Garapan. The left or northern beach would be hit by units of the Second Marine Division, now commanded by Major General Thomas Watson, who had earned his second star after Eniwetok. The Fourth Division, still led by the Stolid Dutchman—Major General Harry Schmidt—would strike the right or southern beach. In reserve would be the Army’s 27th Infantry Division under Major General Ralph Smith.

  While some 700 amtracks carried the assaulting battalions ashore, another force drawn from the Second Division would make a feint at the heavily defended beaches north of Garapan.

  Four days before this attacking force dropped anchors off Saipan the planes and guns of the fast carrier fleet began striking the culminating blows of the preliminary bombardment. Three days later, on June 14, the carrier force sent two smaller groups racing north to pin down enemy aerial strength at Iwo Jima and at Chichi Jima and Haha Jima in the Bonins.

  That same June 14 Admiral Chuichi Nagumo changed his mind. “The Marianas,” he wrote, “are the first line of defense of our homeland. It is a certainty that the Americans will land in the Marianas Group either this month or the next.”

  But a tank officer named Tokuzo Matsuya figured the ships offshore meant something more immediate and he filled his diary with bitter lamentation.

  “Where are our planes?” he wrote. “Are they letting us die without making any 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 this island? It would be easy for me to die, but for the sake of the future I feel obligated to stay alive.”

  And on June 14 the commander of Task Force 58, Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher, got off an exuberant message characteristic of all bombardiers or artillerists captivated by the sound and fury of their cannonading.

  “Keep coming, Marines!” he signaled. “They’re going to run away!”

  2

  Saipan burned fitfully beneath a drifting pall of smoke, and yet, she did not seem menacing. She was, along with Tinian, absolutely ringed round by American warships. They sailed back and forth, firing, and some of them lay in the strait between Saipan and Tinian to hurl broadsides at Saipan’s southern tip. Others in the strait fired along the beaches which would shortly be swarming with American Marines.

  Yet, Saipan was silent, almost dreamlike. The western beaches were quiet. The peak of 1,554-foot Mount Tapotchau seemed to float on a sea of smoke in the middle of the island. Behind the landing beaches, in their center, the ruined village of Charan Kanoa smoldered, and the blackened smokestack of a wrecked sugar mill seemed to cleave the air like a marker dividing the front. Far to the left, upcoast, lay the city of Garapan, marked only by an occasional ray of sunshine glinting off roofs of corrugated iron.

  Above Garapan the Marines of the diversionary force had boarded their landing boats. They were roaring inshore, naval gunfire breathing heavily overhead. They were drawing off a regiment of General Saito’s force—but no more. The aged defender of Saipan had guessed that the true effort was coming at Charan Kanoa’s beaches, and he had prepared his artillery for it. His guns were emplaced behind Mount Fina Susa, the ridge overlooking Charan Kanoa. They were firing with skill, for they had the water between beaches and reef thoroughly registered, and they had sown it with little colored flags to mark the range.

  Counterbattery shells screamed seaward. Tennessee was hit. Shells burst on the decks of the cruiser Indianapolis, the flagship of Admiral Spruance. But the American warships lashed back. Dive-bombers shrieked down on both islands. The shore batteries were silenced, a flight of 161 Navy bombers came down a staircase of clouds to pound Charan Kanoa once more—and the LST’s had run in close to the fringing reef and were disgorging amtracks filled with Marines, discharging also those amphibious tanks or “armored pigs” which would lead the assault in flaming V’s.

  Halfway inside the 1,500-yard run to the beach the amtracks began to take hits. Officers and men could almost guess the caliber of the next enemy barrage by the color of the flags they passed.

  On the right sector attacked by the Fourth Marine Division, riflemen were vaulting from the amtracks and running in low toward Charan Kanoa. Shells we
re exploding among them. Some of the combat teams remained aboard their amtracks, fighting from them as they swayed inland. But the amtracks were targets for the enemy artillery, as were the amtanks, and soon the Marines preferred to advance on foot toward Charan Kanoa.

  On their right, at the southernmost beaches, the assault of the Twenty-fifth Marines had split up into squad-to-squad battles. Lieutenant Fred Harvey led his platoon up the beach. A Japanese officer rushed him, swinging his saber. Harvey parried with his carbine, jumped back and shot his assailant dead. A Marine fell and Harvey seized the man’s M-1. With other Marines he closed on three Japanese in a shellhole. Harvey’s M-1 jammed. He drove in slashing with the bayonet. A grenade landed. Harvey hit the deck, the explosion picked him up and slammed him down again. He arose helmetless to help finish off the enemy.

  So the battle raged, moving steadily inland through the wrecked village, moving over gently rising hills made labyrinthine by hidden caves, spider holes and interconnected dug-outs. The Marines and Japanese fought each other among bleating goats, lowing oxen, mooing cows and scampering, clucking chickens. Soon the Japanese soldiers began to fall back behind Mount Fina Susa, and then their artillery fire increased.

  On the left the Second Marine Division passed through a rhythmical, flashing hell of artillery and mortars. Every 25 yards, every fifteen seconds of their ride to the beaches, a shell exploded among the amtracks. On Afetna Point in the center of the landing beaches an antiboat gun began clanging. Shore batteries opened up again. Close-in destroyers roared back at them, silencing them. But there were amtracks smoking and burning, there were bloody Marines writhing on their twisted decks. And the antiboat gun was driving the amtracks farther and farther north, forcing some of the battalions to land on the wrong beaches.