Their Backs against the Sea: The Battle of Saipan and the Largest Banzai Attack of World War II

by Bill Sloan

  It was “Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!”

  chapter 8

  To Die with Honor

  AT APPROXIMATELY 0445 on the morning of 7 July between three and four thousand Japanese troops flung themselves at the thin American perimeter several hundred yards north of Tanapag along the northwestern coast of the island.

  A short time earlier Sergeant Ronald Johnson, Lieutenant Colonel William O’Brien’s radio man, had seen strange, shadowy figures and silhouettes moving back and forth far up in the hills in the predawn darkness. Now he knew exactly what they were. The shadowy silhouettes were Japanese soldiers, remnants of Saipan’s defenders, moving through a gap between the 1st and 3rd Battalions of the 27th Division’s 105th Infantry Regiment on the left and the Marines on their right flank.

  Johnson didn’t know that the Japanese troops on Saipan had been ordered to attack the American camp in a massive banzai charge, with the avowed purpose of killing as many of the “American devils” as possible. The goal for each individual was seven American deaths for every Japanese soldier who had died in the struggle for the island.

  Despite all that has been said and written about the less-than-satisfactory state of the Japanese soldiers’ weapons and equipment, each individual’s willingness to die honorably and to attempt to take seven American lives as a repayment for his country’s loss stands as a remarkable achievement. “Here was a determination which was seldom—if ever—matched by the fighting men of any other country,” the Marine Corps would later acknowledge.

  As Major Yoshida Hiyoshi, a captured intelligence officer, explained the Japanese soldier’s philosophy about death: “They knew at the outset that they had no hope of succeeding. They simply felt that it was better to die that way and take some of the enemy with them than to be holed up in caves and be killed.”

  They had a name for what they were doing. It was gyokusai, which means “to die with honor.”

  The gyokusai would also claim the lives of many other small groups of Japanese. Some were soldiers, and some were not. They came together to be killed by shots from the Americans or by self-inflicted hand grenades. In preparation for their final stand they celebrated by drinking the best Japanese whiskey and smoking their finest tobacco.

  Among the remaining Saipan defenders was a group of about twenty members of the Japanese Imperial Navy, including Mitsuharu Noda, who had been a paymaster for Admiral Chuichi Nagumo. Shouting together, the men resolutely marched toward the enemy lines. “We weren’t going to attack our enemies,” Noda remembered. “We were ordered to go there to be killed. It was a kind of suicide, but that last taste of Suntori Square Bottle whiskey was truly wonderful. We didn’t crawl on the ground, though bullets were coming toward us. We advanced standing up. We were even able to smile.”

  Above the sound of singing and shouting, there were explosions that grew more pronounced as they moved along. The men in Noda’s group had only a few weapons. “Some had shovels; others had sticks,” he recalled. “I had a pistol. I think I was hit by a machine gun. Two bullets in my stomach, one passing through me, one lodging in me. I didn’t suffer pain. None at all. But I couldn’t stand up either. I was lying on my back. I could see the tracer bullets passing over.”

  Noda saw a group of four or five men, all of them Japanese, crawling toward each other on their hands and knees. One of them held up a grenade in his right hand, he said, and called out to Noda.

  “Hey, sailor there!” he said. “Won’t you come with us?”

  “I have a grenade,” Noda said. “Please go ahead.”

  Noda heard “Long live the Emperor!” and the explosion of a hand grenade a split-second later. “Several men were blown away, dismembered at once into bits of flesh,” he said. “I held my breath at this appalling sight. Their heads were all cracked open, and smoke was coming out. It was a horrific way to die. Those were my last thoughts as I lost consciousness.”

  Despite his intentions, Noda was one of a tiny handful of Japanese who survived the largest banzai attack in modern history.

  Most of the marchers, however, were Japanese soldiers. Those who were wounded or unable to walk and bear arms were killed or took their own lives before the banzai charge began. Every military survivor was armed with something, although there were not nearly enough rifles to go around. Many officers gave away their pistols and kept only their sabers. Daggers and hunting knives were parceled out. When these were exhausted, some men armed themselves with shovels, the limbs of trees, or bamboo poles with sharp sticks—anything that would serve as a spear.

  At 0400 on 7 July the entire remaining Japanese force had headed south from the village of Makunsha, traveling through what they called Paradise Valley to reach the US forces. But the Americans had a much more fitting name for it: the Valley of Hell.

  The Japanese force had sent out patrols all along the front that quickly probed—and just as quickly discovered—the wide gaps between the American lines. They knew exactly where they were going, and they were determined to get there.

  Almost immediately the Japanese soldiers split apart and followed three principal routes toward the Americans. One main force moved along the water’s edge and railroad tracks that ran south and parallel to the sea, where they would strike with deadly fury at the isolated positions of the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 105th, dug in along the railroad tracks. Meanwhile a second large column on the left flank marched down Hara-Kiri Gulch and struck at elements of the 165th Infantry Regiment and the 3rd Battalion, 105th, at their positions above the gulch, the first point of high ground inland from the beaches. Finally, a smaller third column in the middle split the three-hundred-yard gap between the 1st and 2nd and continued south, mostly unimpeded.

  From Makunsha it had taken the main body of Japanese about forty-five minutes to get to the combined perimeter of the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 105th Infantry Regiment. Shortly before 0500 hundreds of Japanese troops stormed the two battalions in what would subsequently be called the Old or First Perimeter with such force that they overwhelmed the Americans.

  FROM THE HIGH GROUND of Hara-Kiri Ridge Lieutenant Donald Speirling, executive officer of G Company, 2nd Battalion, 105th Infantry Regiment, looked down on the three-pronged Japanese attack developing below. He heard what he thought was the sound of a truck motor, then discovered a bevy of Japanese tanks with hordes of Japanese troops following along behind them.

  Captain Bernard Tolf, battalion forward observer for the artillery, called back and forth across the railroad tracks to Colonel O’Brien, trying to get clearance to call the artillery into action, but the noise became so loud that neither party could hear. Tolf conferred with Captain Louis Ackerman, the leader of A Company, and the two decided to try a series of interdiction fire by the artillery along the railroad and roadway south of Makunsha.

  The use of artillery was effective, and the firing was almost constant. The bombardment caused no great casualties, but it touched off complete disorganization in the advancing column. Every few steps the Japanese had to stop and dive for cover, and men who had held their positions until now were dispersed and never managed to get back together again. Japanese officers urged their men out of the ditches, collected stragglers, and herded them back into the road.

  But the artillery didn’t stop the attack. The 2,666 rounds of ammunition the Americans fired only slowed it down. The enemy column inched ahead, with Japanese soldiers singing songs and shouting encouragement to one another, relentlessly moving forward in the dark. The left flank began climbing the hills toward the American positions.

  Above them from Hara-Kiri Ridge and its surrounding terrain American troops could see the massive destruction of their comrades unfolding below, but they could do little to halt the Japanese assault. They too were under attack.

  Lieutenant Arthur Hansen of G Company, 2nd Battalion, 105th, watched as comrades in the 1st and 2nd Battalions were overrun and the Japanese ran willy-nilly over the ground formerly occupied by American troops. Hansen’s ca
rbine couldn’t reach that far from the top of an outcropping of Hari-Kiri Gulch. As he watched, however, an engineer with G Company managed to drop a few Japanese with his M-1.

  Lieutenant George O’Donnell, also of G Company, later observed that the Japanese were “like a crowd moving after a big football game, with everyone trying to get out at once.” It was raining at the time, and O’Donnell and his men were having a hard time keeping the Japanese from overrunning them. They had a field day firing until their ammunition started running low. The nearest any Japanese got was about ten yards, and the Americans were hitting most of them at several hundred yards.

  It reminded Tech Sergeant J. F. Polikowski of G Company’s 1st Platoon of Yankee Stadium after a big victory. The crowd of Japanese milled out on the field, pushing, shoving, yelling, and shouting. There were so many of them that the Americans could just shut their eyes, pull the trigger, and hit someone.

  Sergeant Edwin Luck, the squad leader of the 1st Squad, 1st Platoon of G Company, 105th Infantry Regiment, was at a listening post near the road on a hillside overlooking Hara-Kiri Gulch when he saw Japanese soldiers struggling to carry a large Hotchkiss-type machine gun and trying to get across the road about two hundred yards away from him. The gun was so heavy that it took two soldiers to carry it.

  Luck took aim and killed one enemy soldier, and when others came to help, he started picking them off, one by one. “I believe I killed or wounded about nineteen or twenty Japs that morning,” he said later. “That’s not bad for an old crow hunter from upstate New York.”

  Luck was finally wounded by an incoming mortar fragment that struck him in the upper left chest. The splinter went into the shoulder bone and completely immobilized him. He was lucky enough to get picked up and taken to a field hospital in Charan Kanoa, where he underwent surgery. Then they moved him to the hospital ship USS Relief, and he ended up in Kwajalein, where it took a couple of months to recover. Luck found out later that he was one of only two men from his G Company who survived.

  With its two machine guns knocked out and a lack of other ammunition, the troops of Captain Frank Olander’s G Company, 105th Infantry Regiment, watched the Japanese creep as close as fifteen yards to the company’s foxholes. When the enemy started tossing hand grenades, the men scooped them up and threw them back. It was a dangerous—and deadly—game of catch.

  Within a period of about thirty minutes the game had resulted in heavy casualties on both sides. Five G Company members were seriously wounded, including Olander. After his left arm was almost blown off by an exploding grenade, he had a rough tourniquet placed on his arm above the break and continued to lead the defense of G Company’s position.

  The company was unable to stop the Japanese from infiltrating the rear of Hara-Kiri Gulch. Their gunfire killed Private First Class Elmer Bornich and wounded two other G Company men. The company was hemmed in on three sides and almost out of ammunition. Then the enemy started placing heavy knee-mortar fire on the position. Three men were hit, and Olander collapsed from loss of blood.

  Lieutenant O’Donnell took command and quickly had his men move back about a hundred yards. Moving the wounded back with him, O’Donnell ordered the remaining men to dig in alongside L Company, 3rd Battalion.

  “My own company didn’t give an inch,” Olander remembered. “It stayed put and we fought it out. It cut the Jap attack to ribbons, but we left many, many dead on that field.”

  AFTER THE JAPANESE—including the Imperial Army’s last three tanks—overran the two battalions of the 105th and the 10th Marine Artillery Battery placed at the rear of the 105th, they spread out. Part of them focused on the 3rd Battalion’s Command Post, where they quickly interrupted communications. They also overran the 10th Marines’ 3rd Battalion. But when they turned on the 105th Regimental CP they came away with heavy losses.

  When the Japanese knocked out the neighboring artillery battalion, Private First Class Harold Agerholm of the 4th Battalion, 10th Marines, volunteered to help evacuate the many wounded. Commandeering an abandoned ambulance Jeep, he made repeated trips under intense rifle and mortar fire, single-handedly loading and evacuating forty-five seriously wounded men. He worked tirelessly, disregarding his own safety, for a period of more than three hours. Despite unrelenting enemy fire, he ran out to aid two wounded Marines but was himself gunned down by a Japanese sniper. He would receive the Medal of Honor posthumously.

  AT THE FIRST PERIMETER the harsh sound of rifle, machine gun, and antitank gunfire echoing through the darkness awakened Lieutenant Luke Hammond of the 1st Battalion, 105th Infantry Regiment. From his foxhole it sounded as though “everything we had and everything the Japanese had was being thrown back and forth at a very short range.” Enemy bullets zipped overhead, and tracers streamed over his foxhole. Hammond dug deeper and prayed. It had just stopped raining, and he and his comrades were wet and cold.

  Sergeant Nick Grinaldo of C Company in the 105th opened his eyes in the dawn of 7 July with Japanese soldiers shooting down at him with small arms. He turned and saw his lieutenant go down after a Japanese bullet knocked off the bottom of his jaw. Grinaldo got to his feet and had run a couple of steps when his rifle was shot out of his hand. When he bent to pick it up, he couldn’t close his fingers. He’d been shot through the shoulder and didn’t know it. Only when another soldier helped him get to his feet and he saw a trickle of blood on his shoulder did he know he had been hit.

  Private First Class David Boynton of A Company, 105th, twenty-one years old and from Honolulu, was caught up in the midst of the first charge by the Japanese when the sun came up. He stayed in his foxhole beside the railroad track, repelling attack after attack.

  Wounded by a grenade, Boynton was last seen standing in his foxhole with blood running down his face, yelling, “Come on, you yellow bastards, and fight!” No one saw him fall, but his body was found later in the foxhole. The bodies of Private Frank Gooden and Private First Class Leon Pittman, both of A Company, were found nearby.

  Sergeant Felix Giuffre, A Company, 1st Battalion, 105th, had seen three of his comrades—Sergeant Edgar Theuman; Private First Class Clement Mauskemo, a full-blood Cherokee; and Sergeant W. A. Berger—killed beside him. Giuffre had also caught a bullet in his leg as he tried to escape. Seconds later he stumbled across Private First Class William Priddy, a BAR man from A Company who was trying his best to kill three Japanese soldiers trapped in a ditch, but he couldn’t get his BAR to fire. Giuffre grabbed the gun, unjammed it, then killed all three enemy soldiers. He gave the BAR back to Priddy and never saw him again. Priddy was killed a short time later, and Giuffre was wounded severely in the head and lost consciousness.

  Sergeant Anthony Auzis, with A Company, 1st Battalion, was wounded in the leg and arm, but he was crawling around searching for ammunition when he came across Giuffre, who was unconscious and suffering from two wounds. Although it was all he could do to drag himself along, Auzis somehow picked up Giuffre and carried him a short distance south down the railroad tracks. Then Auzis was hit in the leg, so he laid Giuffre down at the edge of a minefield just north of Tanapag and managed to crawl on to the village, where he was hit in the back by a large shell fragment. That afternoon he would be removed to a base hospital.

  Giuffre awakened later in the day and tried to pull himself along, tearing out chunks of ground with his hands as he moved. He was wounded a second, third, and fourth time by enemy fire before he was rescued and evacuated later that afternoon. He would survive the battle.

  At the rear of the assault formations hundreds of sick and wounded Japanese—men swathed in bandages, men on crutches, and scores of walking wounded—tried to help each other. Some carried weapons, but many had none at all.

  Hit from three sides, the 105th’s headquarters was cut off quickly with no chance of spreading the word. The 1st Battalion CP straddled the railroad tracks just behind the foxholes occupied by three rifle companies and D Company of the 1st Battalion. Fully half the CP’s men were killed or wounded in a
matter of minutes.

  Private First Class Cassie Hill of A Company, 105th, was struck by a rifle bullet in his upper arm, shattering the bone and leaving him unable to fire his rifle. So he gave the weapon to Private First Class Armin Kunde, who was sharing the same foxhole. At that point Hill and Kunde became a team, with Hill using his one good arm to load and keep Kunde’s rifles operational.

  They held their position until they were completely out of ammunition, then they moved south, with Hill methodically stripping ammo from dead and seriously wounded men and collecting quite a batch. When Hill was hit in his good arm he was unable to do anything but struggle along, carrying the rifles under his arms, and sometime later his leg was shattered by a bullet. With three crippling wounds, he was finally forced to quit. Much later that evening he would be evacuated to a field hospital.

  The fighting soon devolved into small groups of men fighting for their lives against an onslaught of thousands of enemy soldiers. In the midst of it Colonel O’Brien, leader of the 1st Battalion, 105th, ran up and down the line of foxholes with a pistol in each hand, slapping his men on the backs and urging them to hold the line. When he saw that they couldn’t hold out, he ordered a retreat south to Tanapag village, where he had heard that a new defensive perimeter was being established.

  By then hundreds of O’Brien’s men were dead. But the last message he was able to send was met with such skepticism that the 165th CP didn’t even record it in its journal—they were certain it was a Japanese trick. It was not until Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Hart climbed atop a hill and looked down on the plain below that he realized what had happened. Hart was regimental commander, and O’Brien was his best friend. He only needed one look at the burning vehicles and dozens of dead Americans lying on the ground to assess the scope of the destruction.