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

by Bill Sloan

  So the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The explosion annihilated the center of the city. The official death toll was about 80,000. Other sources suggested that 200,000 would be more appropriate.

  A Japanese journalist described the scene:

  Everything standing upright in the way of the blast—walls, houses, factories and other buildings—were annihilated and the debris spun round in a whirlwind and was carried up in the air.… Horses, dogs and cattle suffered the same fate as human beings…

  Beyond the zone of utter death in which nothing remained alive, houses collapsed in a whirl of beams, bricks and girders. Up to about three miles from the center of the explosion, lightly built houses were flattened as though they had been built of cardboard. Those who were inside were either killed or wounded. Those who managed to extricate themselves by some miracle found themselves surrounded by a ring of fire.…

  By the evening the fire began to die down and then it went out. There was nothing left to burn. Hiroshima had ceased to exist.

  Doctor Michihiko Hachiya was the director of the Hiroshima Communications Hospital, which was fifteen hundred yards from the center of the blast. He began keeping a diary the evening the bomb hit:

  Suddenly a strong flash of light startled me—and then another.… Through swirling dust I could barely discern a wooden column that had supported one corner of my house. It was leaning crazily and the roof sagged dangerously.

  Moving instinctively, I tried to escape, but the rubble and fallen timbers barred the way.… A profound weakness overcame me, so I stopped to regain my strength. To my surprise I discovered that I was completely naked…

  All over the right side of my body I was cut and bleeding. A large splinter was protruding from a mangled wound in my thigh, and something warm trickled into my mouth.… Embedded in my neck was a sizable fragment of glass.

  Doctor Hachiya and his wife, Yaeko, who was also injured, managed to escape the house. Just as they entered the street, a house across from theirs collapsed almost at their feet.

  “Our house began to sway, and in a minute it, too, collapsed in a cloud of dust,” said Hachiya.

  Fires sprang up and whipped by a vicious wind began to spread. It finally dawned on us that we could not stay there in the street, so we turned our steps toward the hospital. Our home was gone; we were wounded and needed treatment; and after all, it was my duty to be with the staff.… I was still naked although I did not feel the least bit of shame…

  The streets were deserted except for the dead. Some looked as if they had frozen to death while in the full action of flight; others lay sprawled as though some giant had flung them to their death from a great height. Hiroshima was no longer a city, but a burnt-over prairie. To the east and to the west everything was flattened.… How small Hiroshima was with the houses gone.

  Of Hiroshima’s 76,000 buildings, 70,000 were destroyed or damaged severely.

  The second bomb, dropped on Nagasaki on 9 August, killed another 60,000 people.

  Late in the morning of 10 August President Truman received Japan’s “conditional” acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration. Japan would surrender, but only if the Emperor retained his sovereignty.

  Not a problem, Truman responded, as long as the Emperor would submit to the authority of the Supreme Allied Commander in Japan: the Emperor would stay, but the United States would control his role and authority. As Truman wrote in his diary, if the Japanese wanted to keep the Emperor, “we’d tell ’em how.”

  If only the Japanese had known how many thousands of lives could have been saved.

  Epilogue

  IT WOULDN’T be much of a stretch to call every American who served on Saipan or Tinian a hero. Here are a few, however, who stand out in my memory.

  LIEUTENANT JOHN GRAVES was not only a tough Marine who lost sight in one eye to a hand grenade at Saipan but also a writer of widespread acclaim, whose brilliant Goodbye to a River tells of a three-week trip down the Brazos River of Central Texas, into which is woven a history of the people who have lived along its banks—settlers, Indians, warriors, and renegades.

  Originally published in 1959, fourteen years after Graves was discharged from the Marine Corps, it is one of the all-time nonfiction classics of American literature. It glances back in time for two hundred or so years as it also offers a glimpse of how life may look far into the future.

  Graves was once called “the best-loved writer in Texas and one of the least known beyond the state lines.” He was also called “a 20th-century Thoreau.”

  Two of his other books, Hard Scrabble and From a Limestone Ledge, are also “invigorating, inspiring and engrossing,” to quote one reviewer. His last work, Myself and Strangers: A Memoir of Apprenticeship, published in 2004, is “a lovely memoir of young manhood,” in the words of author Larry McMurtry.

  Graves died at the age of ninety-two in what he called his “country place” outside the small town of Glen Rose, Texas, on 31 July 2013.

  PRIVATE FIRST CLASS WAYNE TERWILLIGER. When it comes to running, “Twig” Terwilliger may have set some new marks during the battle for Saipan, but it was nothing compared to what he would do later on with five major league baseball clubs.

  “We put together a ball team on Saipan after the battle was over,” he said, “and we won twenty-five straight games without a loss before we went to Tinian. That’s when I knew for sure what I wanted to do when I got out.”

  When Twig was discharged in late 1945 he returned to Western Michigan University, where he quickly became a star shortstop. Just one year later he was drawing attention from major league scouts. In July 1948, after finishing college, he signed a contract with the Chicago Cubs, who assigned him to the Triple-A Los Angeles Angels. He batted .275 in 115 games before being called up to the bigs in August and playing in 36 games.

  Terwilliger spent the entire 1950 season with the Cubs as their starting second baseman, hitting .242 with ten home runs, thirty-two RBIs, and thirteen stolen bases. He also played with the Washington Senators for two seasons and the New York Giants for two seasons. He spent an official nine years as a major-league ballplayer.

  After his playing days were over, Twig started a career as a coach and manager. He was the third-base coach, under Ted Williams, of the Senators from 1969 to 1971, and of the Texas Rangers in their first season in 1972. He again worked for the Rangers as a major league coach from 1981–1984. In 1986 he was hired as first-base coach for the Minnesota Twins, handling the job when the team won the World Series in 1987 and 1991.

  In 2003 he was named manager of the Fort Worth Cats in the independent Central Baseball League and won the 2005 Central League championship. At the age of eighty-one he accepted a job as first-base coach for the Cats and remained with the team through the 2010 season.

  “I spent sixty-four years altogether in professional baseball,” he said. “And I enjoyed every minute of it.” In 2006 Twig’s autobiography, Terwilliger Bunts One, was released.

  LIEUTENANT DAVID BRADEN. When you’ve flown thirty-five bombing missions against Japan as a navigator in a B-29 Superfortress, received the Distinguished Flying Cross and an Air Medal with three Oak Leaf Clusters, and survived a ditching in the Pacific Ocean in which two of your crew members were killed in the crash, what do you do as an encore?

  If you’re David Braden, and you’re coming in from your final mission in a B-29 when all four of your plane’s engines run out of fuel at once and the plane coasts to a stop halfway down the runway, you do the only thing you can think of. “You get out and kiss the ground,” he said.

  Braden was born and raised in Dallas, where he graduated from North Dallas High School. He was a student at North Texas Agricultural College, now the University of Texas at Arlington, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He enlisted in the Army Air Force on his eighteenth birthday and was among the first trainees on the B-29. “It was a superb airplane,” he said, “but in the beginning it had serious trouble with overheating engines. Our
results in the beginning were awful where high-altitude, strategic bombing was concerned.”

  After the war Braden became an architect, a popular after-dinner speaker, a humorist, and a construction arbitrator, not necessarily in that order. As someone who loved flying, he served on the board of D/FW Airport, one of the busiest in the world, for six years and was its chairman in 1994–1995.

  “We didn’t think of ourselves as heroes,” he said. “We thought of ourselves as guys that had to get a job done and fly thirty-six missions and then you could go home. When you’re nineteen or twenty years old, you don’t think about stuff like that. Going on a mission was an opportunity, because it was another one you wouldn’t have to do. It was like a convict marking an X on the wall.”

  Braden died of natural causes at his home in Dallas at age ninety on 25 April 2015.

  PRIVATE FIRST CLASS CARL MATTHEWS not only suffered a most peculiar wound and recurrences for several years, but when he left the Marine Corps he weighed barely 110 pounds. He underwent treatment for a condition similar to a stroke at hospitals in New Caledonia, San Francisco, and Oakland. Even recently, more than seventy years after the fact, he couldn’t recall details of his recovery period.

  But Matthews never forgot the death of Lieutenant James Stanley Leary Jr., his platoon leader, constant companion, and closest friend, on the next-to-last day before the battle of Saipan ended.

  “They told us to go to the bottom of the ridge, and it was very steep,” he said. “The instant he gave the command, the lieutenant fell down, and I knew instantly that he was dead. We were talking, and I was his runner, and I’ll never forget how I felt that day when it happened. I passed out completely after that. They said I just sat there and wouldn’t respond to anything anyone said. The next eight days are still a complete blank for me.”

  When Carl’s son was born after the war, he named him James Stanley Matthews in memory of the fallen lieutenant.

  But there was also something else that set Carl apart. He was the only Marine I ever encountered who admittedly took the side of the Army troops of the 27th Infantry Division in their “feud” with General “Howlin’ Mad” Smith.

  “I think the Army got a bad deal,” he said. “When ‘Howlin’ Mad’ decided to use the Army to take the airport, our intelligence said most of the Japanese troops had already left, and that was wrong. And later on, most of the heavy fighting was right in the middle of our lines, and that’s exactly where the Army was.

  “The more I read about ‘Howlin’ Mad’ Smith,” Matthews recalled in one of his last interviews, “the less I like him!”

  Matthews, who was born in Corsicana, Texas, died at the age of ninety-two on 7 January 2017. His obituary related how he returned to Saipan in 2014 for the seventieth anniversary of the battle. He and two Japanese soldiers were the only veterans of the historic island conflict to return. As Matthews requested, part of his ashes were buried in the family cemetery in Dawson, Texas, and the remainder will be taken to Saipan to be scattered from the mountainside where Lieutenant Leary was killed.

  STAFF SERGEANT JOHN SIDUR. If one person could be identified as the reason I wrote this book, John Sidur of Cohoes, New York, is that person. When I first became acquainted with John, the son of two Polish-born parents, he was ninety-six years old and had lost his hearing to such an extent that he had to utilize his nephew, Bob Greene, to retell his amazing story.

  In the midst of the gyokusai John rescued two GIs from almost certain death and carried them back to where they could receive treatment. One of them was Corporal Spike Mailloux, also from Cohoes, who served with Sidur in the 105th Infantry Regiment. A Japanese officer had stabbed Mailloux in the thigh, and he lay in a ditch for several hours before Sidur discovered him.

  When they were released from the Army, Sidur and Mailloux got into a habit of meeting each other for breakfast on the first Tuesday of every month. It became a ritual that lasted for decades.

  Sidur was huddled next to Sergeant Attilio Grestini when an artillery shell blew off Grestini’s arm. Sidur and Sergeant John Goot managed to drape Grestini’s body over a rifle and walk him away from a mass of incoming shells to find first aid. Grestini lived through the battle and returned home to raise a family.

  Colonel O’Brien appointed Sidur to conduct patrols to clean out hostile caves of enemy soldiers who often held captive civilians against their will. In one instance he heard a small child crying in a cave, but he was powerless to save the child—a situation that filled him with helpless regret.

  John came home from Saipan and Okinawa with two bullet wounds, a Bronze Star, and a Purple Heart. Four weeks after he returned he married Josephine Depta, whose photo he had held onto until the night of the biggest banzai of World War II, when a wild rainstorm swept away his helmet with the photo inside. They were married for sixty-eight years.

  John died at age ninety-seven on 23 January 2015.

  An artist’s conception of the 27th Infantry Division smashing through Germany’s—supposedly impregnable—Hindenberg Line in the fall of 1918. (27th Division History)

  The 105th Regiment of the 27th Infantry Division on parade in 1941 shortly before leaving camp at Fort McClellan, Alabama. They were the first full US division to go overseas in World War II. (27th Division History)

  John Sidur and a couple of buddies pose at their newly erected tent at Fort McClellan in the wilds of Alabama. (27th Division History)

  John Sidur, a private first class at the time, poses for a picture in his “dress khakis.” (27th Division History)

  John Sidur shows off his collection of medals, including the Purple Heart he was awarded many years later. (Courtesy of the New York State Military Museum)

  General George C. Marshall, US Army Chief of Staff, is greeted by members of the staff of the 27th Division at Fort McClellan, Alabama. Marshall congratulated the 27th for its splendid record in both war and peace. (27th Division History)

  Alex Vracui, the Navy’s ranking air ace, shot down six Japanese planes in the Marianas Turkey Shoot in a matter of eight minutes. (US Navy)

  The biggest story to come out of Saipan—at least as far as the newspaper and magazine coverage was concerned—was the blowup that caused General Ralph Smith (left) of the US Army to lose his job as commander of the 27th Infantry Division. He was relieved of command by General Holland M. “Howlin’ Mad” Smith (right) of the US Marine Corps. (US Army and US Marine Corps)

  Major General George W. Griner, who assumed command of the 27th Infantry Division on June 28, 1944, after Major General Ralph Smith was relieved from duty. (US Army)

  Taking cover behind the “King Kong,” a medium tank, these Marines try to locate the source of automatic rifle fire cracking above them. (US Marine Corps)

  Marines dig up a 123-pound bomb found in Garapan. Buried with noses protruding above ground, the bombs could be set off by almost any US vehicle. (US Marine Corps)

  A bazooka-man and his assistant cautiously search for targets on the outskirts of the destroyed capital of Garapan. (US Marine Corps)

  At Mount Tapotchau’s peak men from the 1st Battalion, 29th Marines, prepare positions by building foxholes from the ground up rather than digging in. (US Marine Corps)

  A ragged Marine sits on a sixteen-inch naval shell while returning several days’ worth of topsoil to Saipan. (US Marine Corps)

  Captain Frank Olander, commander of G Company, 105th Infantry: in a deadly game of “baseball” with live hand grenades, “We cut the Jap attack to ribbons, but we left many, many dead men on the field.” (27th Division History)

  Lieutenant Colonel William J. O’Brien, commander of the 1st Battalion, 105th Infantry, after slaughtering several dozen Japanese soldiers during the gyokusai, seized a machine gun and shouted in the face of the enemy, “Don’t give them a damned inch!” until he was cut down by masses of enemy troops. When his body was found the next day he was surrounded by thirty dead Japanese soldiers. He was awarded the Medal of Honor. (27th Division History)r />
  Captain Bernard A. Toft of the 249th Field Artillery Battalion picked up wounded future Medal of Honor recipient Sergeant Thomas Baker and carried him for a while until Toft himself was critically wounded. Later, when Toft realized he was dying, he asked Sergeant Robert Smith, also of the 249th Field Artillery, to stay with him until he died. “Please don’t let the Japs take me alive,” Toft said. “I’ve seen what they are capable of doing.” Smith stayed with Toft until his death. (27th Division History)

  Sergeant Thomas Baker, A Company, 105th Infantry, killed dozens of enemy soldiers over a period of several days but was grievously wounded in the process. Unable to move by himself, he asked for a freshly loaded .45-caliber pistol containing eight shots—and a lighted cigarette. Then, leaning against a tree trunk, he waited for the enemy. When his body was found, his pistol was laying empty beside him and eight Japanese soldiers lay dead at his feet. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. (US Army)

  Private First Class Harold C. Angerholm made repeated trips through an area swept by heavy hostile fire in an ambulance-equipped Jeep to singlehandedly load and evacuate forty-five wounded men of the 3rd Battalion, 10th Marines. He was mortally wounded by an enemy rifleman and posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. (US Marine Corps)