by Bill Sloan
Sergeant Grant F. Timmerman, of the 2nd Marine Tank Battalion, blocked with his body a Japanese hand grenade that otherwise would have fallen through his tank’s open turret, probably killing the other crewmen inside. In giving up his own life for his comrades, he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. (US Marine Corps)
Marines look over piles of dead Japanese soldiers following the gyokusai. (US Marine Corps)
The ravaged remains of a sugar treatment plant at the town of Charan Kanoa. (US Marine Corps)
A battle-weary Marine leads a Saipan family toward a temporary home. The defeated Japanese army killed thousands of civilians. (US Marine Corps)
Hundreds of Saipan civilians committed suicide by flinging themselves—and their children—down these jagged coastal rocks. (US Marine Corps)
Although Tinian was highly valuable to the United States for its flat terrain, not all of the island’s terrain was easy going. (National Archives)
The open terrain of central Tinian permitted a rapid advance by the 4th and 2nd Marine Divisions. In four days the Americans had pushed their lines ahead by as much as ten thousand yards. As General Cates expressed it, the Marines were “heading for the barn.” (US Marine Corps)
The USS Colorado took heavy damage and casualties during the support phase of a mock attack during the Tinian invasion. (US Naval Institute)
Ushi Point Airfield in the northern portion of Tinian, which was expanded with lightning speed by hundreds of US Seabees, would play a major role in the American A-bomb attacks on the Japanese mainland. (US Marine Corps)
Photo of Lieutenant David Braden’s stricken B-29 taken moments after a crash at sea. (Shannon Braden/Kimberly Chamlea Collection)
Lieutenant David Braden was a survivor of two B-29 crashes at sea. (Shannon Braden/Kimberly Chamlea Collection)
Lieutenant Norman Westervelt (front row, third from left) and Lieutenant Gordon Nedderson (front row, fourth from left) were killed in one of the B-29 crashes at sea. (Shannon Braden/Kimberly Chamlea Collection)
As the “father of the atomic bomb,” General Curtis LeMay was called “Old Iron Pants” because he was such a tough cookie. He was “ecstatic” when he heard that the first fire raid on Tokyo had killed eighty-three thousand people and left 1 million people homeless. He was also called the “George Patton of the Air Force.” There is no question that he put the United States on the path to winning the war. (US Air Force)
Colonel Paul Tibbets waves from his B-29, the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, as he prepares to take off from Tinian. (National Archives)
The ruins of Hiroshima after the B-29 raid. “Hiroshima was no longer a city… to the east and to the west everything was flattened.” (National Archives)
Sergeant Harold Haberman of the 2nd Marine special weapons company lost count of the Japanese he killed during June 15 and 16. He had a bazooka and started firing at the enemy, and he didn’t stop until he had killed—literally—everything in sight. (US Marine Corps)
Mr. and Mrs. Harold Haberman slice their wedding cake, but the worst was yet to come for the young married couple. (Haberman Family Album)
When the fighting was over, the newly completed Saipan Cemetery held 3,426 American servicemen who were killed in action. A total of 16,500 were wounded in the twenty-four-day battle. (US Marine Corps)
After narrowly escaping death as a machine gunner/radio operator in an amphibious tank, Private First Class Wayne “Twig” Terwilliger played for five Major League Baseball teams during a sixty-three-year career as a player and a coach. Here he poses for a picture with the immortal Ted Williams during a stint with the Texas Rangers. (Terwilliger Collection)
Ordinarily Corporal Canara Caruth spent his time guiding a Marine amphibious tank across Saipan, but here (second Marine in photo) he catches a few winks of sleep on a pile of rocks. (US Marine Corps)
Acknowledgments
In all likelihood this is my final book on World War II. It’s not because there aren’t any more stories but because only a rapidly vanishing handful of the people who lived those stories are still around. My first book on the war was published in 2003, when hundreds of thousands of veterans were still alive. Today the vast majority of them are gone.
This book featured “live” interviews with seven veterans of Saipan, and several of them passed away before the book was completed. If I hadn’t had the wholehearted cooperation of people like Reagan Grau, archivist for the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredricksburg, Texas; Jim Gandy, research librarian for the New York State Military Museum in Saratoga Springs, New York; and Floyd Cox and Chuck Hodge, conductors of scads of interviews for the National Museum of the Pacific War and other sources, the book most likely would never have happened.
I owe a lasting debt of gratitude to a host of different people who helped make the book come alive: Paul Haberman of Denver, Colorado, who supplied pictures of and information about his father, Sergeant Harold Haberman of the 2nd Marine Division, who was kind enough to conduct a phone interview with me from his sick bed; Bob Talbot, a member of the 2nd Marines, who shared his story with me on a long and enjoyable afternoon at his home in Cibolo, Texas; Canara Caruth, who commanded a tank in the 2nd Armored Amphibious Battalion and relived some of his more memorable episodes for me; Wayne Terwilliger, who served aboard Caruth’s tank; James Reed, who told me of the real-life nightmare when a series of LVTs blew up at Pearl Harbor; and Carl Matthews of the 2nd Marines, who told me of the death of his platoon leader and his own collapse to a mystery disease that affected him for many months.
I also owe a tremendous thank you to Bob Greene of Loudonville, New York, who helped bridge the gap between his uncle, Sergeant John Sidur of the 27th Infantry Division, and me. John died in January 2015, but while he lived—to the ripe old age of ninety-seven—he was an absolute inspiration to me.
My wife, Lana Henderson Sloan, also deserves a round of thanks for putting up with me when the going got tough. She came to my rescue many times.
I also want to thank my longtime friend and literary agent, Jim Donovan, for all the encouragement he provided along the way.
To my editor, Bob Pigeon, and everyone else at DaCapo: thank you.
Finally, to all the Americans who fought at Saipan and Tinian—both the living and the dead—you are the heroes of this book. Godspeed.
Bill Sloan
Dallas, Texas
Sources
BOOKS
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Beevor, Antony. D-Day: The Battle for Normandy. New York: Viking, 2009.
Blair, Clay, Jr. Silent Victory: The U.S. Submarine War Against Japan. Vol 2. New York: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1975.
Bryan, J. III, and Philip Reed. Mission Beyond Darkness. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1945.
Campbell, James. The Color of War: How One Battle Broke Japan and Another Changed America. New York: Crown Publishers, 2012.
Cant, Gilbert. The Great Pacific Victory. New York: John Day, 1946.
Crowl, Philip A. Campaign in the Marianas: The War in the Pacific. Washington, DC: Historical Division, U.S. Army, 1960.
Eggers, John H. The 27th Division: The Story of Its Sacrifices and Achievements: New York: John H. Eggers Company, 1919.
Frank, Richard B. Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire. New York: Random House, 1999.
Gabaldon, Guy. Saipan: Suicide Island. Saipan Island: Self-published, 1990.
Gailey, Harry A. Howlin’ Mad vs. the Army: Conflict in Command, Saipan 1944. Navato, CA: Presidio Press, 1986.
Goette, John. Japan Fights for Asia. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1943.
Goldberg, Harold J. D-Day in the Pacific: The Battle of Saipan. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007.
Graves, John. Goodbye to a River. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960.
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Hoffman, Carl W. Saipan: The Beginning of the End. Washington, DC: Historical Division, U.S. Marine Corps, 1950.
Hornfischer, James D. The Fleet at Flood Tide: America at Total War in the Pacific 1944–1945. New York: Bantam Books, 2016.
Hoyt, Edwin P. Japan’s War: The Great Pacific Conflict, 1853 to 1952. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986.
. To the Marianas: War in the Central Pacific: 1944. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1980.
Love, Edmund. The 27th Infantry Division in World War II. Nashville, TN: Battery Press, 1949.
Miller, Donald L. D-Days in the Pacific. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005.
Morison, Samuel Eliot. History of United States Naval Operation in World War II: New Guinea and the Marianas, March 1944–August 1944. Boston: Little, Brown, 1953.
O’Brien, Francis A. Battling for Saipan. New York: Ballantine Books, 2003.
Prefer, Nathan M. The Battle for Tinian: Stepping Stone in America’s War Against Japan. Havertown, PA: Casemate, 2012.
Reader’s Digest. Illustrated Story of World War II. Pleasantville, NY: Reader’s Digest Association, 1969.
Rottman, Gordon L. Saipan and Tinian 1944: Piercing the Japanese Empire. Westminster, MD: Osprey Publishing, 2004.
Smith, Holland M., and Percy Finch. Coral and Brass. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948.
Williams, Kathleen Broom. The Measure of a Man: My Father, the Marine Corps, and Saipan. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2013.
INTERVIEWS
Personal interviews with Canara Caruth, Harold Haberman, Carl Matthews, James Reed, John Sidur, Bob Talbot, and Wayne Terwilliger.
National Museum of the Pacific War interviews with Warren Adams, Edward Bale, James Donovan, James Fulbright, Anthony Ganarelli, Jack Gilbreath, John Graves, George Gray, Robert Groves, Ed Harrell, Ray Harrison, Jack Lent, Arthur Liberty, Henry Michalak, Floyd Mumme, H. L. Obermiller, Jim O’Donnell, Charles Pase, Carl Peltier, Olian Perry, Raymond Renfro, Rod Rohling, James Rothermel, William Roush, James Saunders, James Sigrist, Samuel Spencer, Bill Steele, Tommy Thompson, Tom Tinsley, Chris Walker, Lew Weber, and B. R. Whitehead.
New York State Military Museum interviews with Myron Bazar, William Corcoran, Nick Grinaldo, Edwin Luck, Mark Marquandt, Joseph Meighan, and Arthur Robinson.
Index
Ackerman, Louis, 157
Adams, Warren, 19–20
Agerholm, Harold, 160–161, 192
Air Medal, 257
Albert (Heimberger), Eddie, 55
Allen, Leonard, 201
antitank grenade description, 57
Armstrong, Jack, 52–53
Army’s 27th Infantry Division
activities/travels before Saipan, 85–86
description/location origins, 81–82
Fort McClellan, Alabama/treatment and, 82–85
Smith/Smith and, 60, 120–127
See also specific individuals
Army’s 27th Infantry Division/Battle of Saipan
arrival/landing and, 87–92
Aslito Airfield/Nafutan Point and, 92–97, 118–119, 120–122, 124, 125, 126
Death Valley and, 127–128, 131–134, 135–137
Japan’s last attack and, 156, 157
medics and, 101–102
order/need for, 60–61
Aslito Airfield
condition/airplane parts and, 97–98
Nafutan Point and, 92–97, 98
US takeover/control and, 9, 90, 92–97, 147–148
atomic bombs
Hiroshima and, 226, 238–239, 241–242, 246–247, 250–252
Nagasaki and, 226, 242, 252
Tinian airfield and, 214, 238–239
Auzis, Anthony, 162–163
Ayers, Russell, 127
B-29 Superfortress (US)
incendiary bombings, 237–238, 245–247
Japanese civilians views of, 244
Saipan importance and, 9
Tinian and, 235, 237–239, 241–242
See also atomic bombs
Baker, Thomas, 100, 120, 175–176
Bale, Ed, 143
Banzai meaning, 8
Baralis, William, 180
Battle of Saipan
Death Valley and, 126–127, 131–134, 135–137
Garapan and, 67–71, 129
Japanese attack on Marine headquarters (June 27), 134–135
Japanese soldier on US tank, 72–73
Ridge 300 and, 99–100, 126, 131
seventieth anniversary, 259–260
significance, 12, 202–204, 245
smokestack/spotter and, 74
US tanks vs. Japanese tanks, 57, 66
See also specific individuals; specific places
Battle of Saipan/Japan
caves and, 68, 69, 76–77, 80, 94, 119, 121, 122, 132, 135, 141–143, 148, 154, 185, 186, 187–190, 196, 201, 220, 261
civilians and, 76, 143, 144
defense scheme, 15–16
food/water and, 76–77, 144, 148, 188, 191
group operating after, 204
“line of security” and, 128–129
night fighting and, 43–44, 49–50, 55–56, 57–58, 64–66, 71, 76, 231
Red Cross/emblem and, 68
Saito on Japanese situation/defense, 128–129, 144, 145
situation following US landing (June 16), 61–62
soldiers dressed as civilians, 138
soldiers in Garapan and, 68, 69, 70–71
Battle of Saipan/Japan’s gyokusai attack
aftermath/continuing conflict, 185–202
deaths/casualties estimates, 182–183, 194–196
First Perimeter, 157, 161, 169, 178
Gabaldon saving Japanese/publicity and, 186, 187–189
gyokusai meaning, 154
insults, 197–198
Japanese preparations/banzai buzz, 151, 152, 153, 154–155
Japanese “weapons” and, 155–156, 172
Little Perimeter, 178–179, 181, 182
overview/description, 148–183
Saito’s letter/suicide and, 148–150
Second Perimeter, 171–175, 178–179, 180–181, 182
US help/tanks arriving, 179
US requests for reinforcements and, 150–152
US soldier joining Japanese soldiers incident, 182
warnings and, 146–147
Battle of Saipan/US
heroes/Japan attack (June 17), 67
Japanese interpreters, 141–143
landing/fighting, 3–4, 10, 17–19, 23–29, 33–40, 43–44, 48–50, 51–59, 63
location nicknames, 94
mistake/Tinian and, 44–45
“O-1” line and, 37–38, 39, 40, 53
plan of attack/problems, 3, 10–11, 12, 60
preliminary bombardment, 16–17
reefs and, 3–4, 10, 31–32, 39, 40, 43, 52–53, 87, 88, 145–146, 178, 195
situation following landing (June 16), 61–62
supplies and, 77, 79–80
underestimating Japanese troop numbers, 118
vehicle problems, 3–4, 26, 27, 28–29, 34–36, 91–92
See also Army’s 27th Infantry Division/Battle of Saipan
Battle of the Philippine Sea
descriptions, 67, 107–116
importance, 107, 203
Japanese Operation A-Go and, 107–108
Japanese planes downed, 98, 108, 109, 110, 115–116
Navy’s “lights out” rule and, 113
nonexistent planes (Japanese) and, 108
US returning planes/problems, 113, 114–115
US submarine victories, 108, 110–111
warnings on coming battle, 108–109
Bazar, Myron, 102–105
Bendix, William, 79
Bennett, John, 165
Berberick, Private First Class, 4
Berger, W.A., 162
bicycle ride through Japanese territory, 97
Bishop, Leonard
, 120–121, 122, 126
Blair, Leon Nelson, 14, 15
Bloomenshine, Gus, 138
bombing
incendiary bombings/civilian deaths, 237–238, 245–247
See also atomic bombs
Bornich, Elmer, 160
Bowden, Arwin, 69–70
Boynton, David, 161–162
Braden, David
B-29s and, 237–239, 257, 258
background/after the war, 236–237, 258
Bronze Star, 55, 84, 89, 261
Brown, Dale, 34–36
Brown, George, 112
Brown, Joe, 48–50
Browner, Ralph, 198
Brusseau, Gregory, 134
burials at sea, 25, 199–200
Bush, George W., 167
Carlson’s Raiders, 31
Carrier Corporation, 103–104
Caruth, Canara, 28–29, 190
Cates, Clifford, 213, 215, 221
Chamorros
descriptions, 6, 7
US soldiers/unmarked graves and, 47–48
Charan Kanoa, Saipan
Battle of Saipan/destruction, 39, 52, 60, 61, 74, 88, 98
before war, 52, 74
US Marine headquarters at, 98–99
Clark, Joseph (“Jocko”), 113
“comfort women,” 229
Conlon, Arthur, 87
Coral and Brass (Holland Smith), 131, 194
Corcoran, William, 89–90
Corlett, Charles H., 123
Covell, Robert, 84–85
Cunningham, Saipan/injuries, 56–57, 58–59