Battle for Saipan, Part Three
By David H. Lippman
March 2014

You can read Part Two here.

On the shore, Sgt. Takeo Yamauchi and his 13-man squad awaited the assault, eating steak and eggs at 2 a.m., not sure whether to call it a late dinner or early breakfast.

The amphibious force neared Saipan, the skies glowing red from fires in the pre-dawn darkness, Navy ships still bombarding the Japanese. On shore, a Japanese soldier wrote in his diary, “We are waiting with Molotov cocktails and hand grenades ready for the word to rush forward recklessly into the enemy ranks with our swords in our hands. All that worries me is what will happen to Japan after we die.”

Precisely at 5:42 a.m., (ahead of Tokyo Rose’s deadline), Turner issued the traditional order from his flagship, the Rocky Mount: “Land the landing force.” Over loudspeakers, chaplains gave last-minute prayers and blessings. One chaplain told his men, “Most of you will return, but some of you will meet the God who made you.” A Marine lieutenant colonel quipped to Time magazine correspondent Robert Sherrod, “Perish-the-thought Department!”

At 7 a.m., the shelling stopped, and 34 landing ship tanks steamed up to the line of departure, two miles from shore, and began disgorging amtrac armored amphibious vehicles. More than 719 of them, jammed with eight battalions of Marines, headed ashore, as 155 planes roared over them, strafing and bombing the beaches. Landing craft armed with 4.5-inch rockets began firing them at the Japanese. Eighteen amphibious tanks clambered over the barrier reef, ahead of the amtracs. They hit the ground first, engaging Japanese machine-gun and mortar emplacements, the first wave of Americans hitting the beach at 8:44 a.m.

On the shore, the Japanese were awake. Sgt. Yamauchi heard men yell, “The American army is coming!” He recalled later, “I lifted my hand as they advanced like a swarm of grasshoppers. The American soldiers were all soaked. They were so tiny wading ashore. I saw flames shooting up from American tanks hit by Japanese fire.”

At Saito’s tactical HQ, an American shell smacked down amid the general and his staff. When the smoke cleared, Saito was still sitting unhurt and silent, sword stuck in the ground between his spread legs. Half the staff lay dead around their general.

As the American landing craft approached their beaches, the Marines got their first good look at Saipan. Unlike the dense jungles of the Solomon Islands and thin atolls of Tarawa, Saipan reminded the Marines of Hawaii, only with Japanese-style houses.

The Americans hit the beach under heavy Japanese fire. Like a week before in Normandy on the other side of the world, chaos immediately reigned. The 2nd Battalion, 8th Regiment, landed on Green Beach 1 instead of Green Beach 2, the 3rd/8th’s chosen assault site. Marines from the 6th Regiment landed on the wrong stretch of Red Beach. In a matter of minutes the commanding officers of all four invading battalions of the 6th and 8th Marines were wounded.

Saito had placed his guns and positions well, keeping them concealed and in depressions to avoid destruction from American shells, and now they hammered the invaders. The shelling was so intense, the Americans thought the beach was mined. Marines dashed past a “destroyed” Japanese tank, and suddenly her crew came to life and swept the beach with heavy fire, raking reinforcements from 1st/6th Marine Regiment as they came ashore.

On the southern beaches, Yellow 1 and 2, 25th Marines came ashore also under heavy fire. 1st/25th Marines hit Yellow 2 Beach, and the battalion’s Landing Vehicles Tracked (LVTs) headed back out to sea without unloading ammunition, mortars, or machine guns. The battalion was pinned down for an hour. 2nd/25th was able to get 700 yards inland, but the 23rd Regiment only 100 yards inland.

Among the young Leathernecks invading Saipan that morning, serving in the 3rd/24th Marines, was Pfc. Lee Marvin. He and his buddies came ashore and reached a trench 1,800 yards from shore when the Japanese began shelling it with artillery. Marvin would endure severe fighting, and take a bullet that just missed his sciatic nerve, a millimeter from permanent paralysis. Marvin would spend 13 months in hospitals, but survived to become an Oscar-winning movie star.

Despite the heavy fire, the Americans refused to be dislodged from their beaches, and more than 700 LVTs shuttled from the invading force to the shore and back, bringing troops, supplies, and equipment ashore, and taking wounded men back to LSTs configured as temporary hospital ships.

In a cave overlooking Garapan, Japanese nurse Shizuko Miura huddled with other civilians, watching Japanese tanks rumble towards the fighting. Her brother was one of the tankers. From cave, she could also see the amtracs swimming ashore and tiny figures – US Marines – leaping out onto the Garapan pier, and scrambling up the docks. Against them, she saw burned-out buildings, corpses littering the streets, Japanese tanks on the beaches, unmoving. She realized they had been knocked out, and that her brother was probably killed. She wondered if the Americans were attacking Tinian Island, where her parents and younger sisters were, and if her older sister, in Garapan, was still alive. She decided to head over to Mount Donnay and assist the other nurses in the military hospital there.

En route, she met up with her older sister and her husband, standing in line for hardtack. “You can’t go alone to a place where there are only men!” the brother-in-law said. “Your parents entrusted you to my care. If something happened to you, how could I apologize to them?”

“The rest of the family is dead,” Shizuko burst out. “Do you want to be the only one alive?” She headed on to Mount Donnay, reaching the hospital by sunset. It was a barren field full of wounded men. An Army surgeon looked at Shizuko through round, thick glasses, and said to her, “Women can’t do anything here. Besides, this is the Army and we can’t permit civilians to remain. Go back down the mountain before it gets too dark.”

Shizuko told the surgeon that her father, mother, and younger sisters were dead on Tinian and her brother killed in Garapan. The doctor walked away, but Shizuko pleaded to help. The doctor told her, “All right, from now on you are a nurse.” He gave her his Red Cross armband and clapped a helmet on her head. “This is the Army, never act selfishly,” the doctor said. “Obey your commander’s order at all times. Many painful and sad things are going to take place. Don’t give up and do your best.” Shizuko, three doctors, and seven medics were there to care for hundreds of wounded and dying men.

With their usual determination and firepower, the Marines attacked into Charon Kanoa, the first time American troops invaded a full-scale Japanese community. They were surprised by what they found – instead of paper and wood homes, they found concrete houses, schools, taverns, restaurants, and even record stores, defended by enemy snipers. The Marines were astonished to find an impressive baseball stadium next to a Buddhist temple.

The invasion sites were not as grim as Omaha Beach in Normandy, but were just as ugly, with Japanese mortars and machine guns ripping into the American invaders. But unlike Normandy, the defenders had tanks on hand, and the rivet-hulled machines clanked into attack, aiming for the American battalion and regimental command posts. But every Marine was trained to be a rifleman first, and the headquarters men put down their maps, radios, and typewriters, reached for rifles and bazookas, and fended off the assault. Japanese coastal guns switched targets from the armada offshore and added to the din by hurling shells at the Marines on the beaches.

By noon, the 6th Marines had suffered 35 percent casualties, and the regiment’s boss, Col. James Risely, aware that most of his senior officers were dead or wounded, assigned junior officers to take over higher duties. He also got some help – by 2 p.m., the 10th Marines’ 75mm pack howitzers were in position and ready to fire on call.

Meanwhile, three companies of the 8th Marines faced Japanese guns and pillboxes in a woodland called Afetna Point, which enabled the enemy to pour enfilading fire on the Americans. The 8th Marines fought through pillboxes, shrubs, dense foliage, and Japanese troops. G Company of 2nd/8th Marines had been issued a generous supply of shotguns, and the Americans used them with good effect against the Japanese.

The story continues in Part Four.

Invade Saipan in Panzer Grenadier: Saipan 1944 - click here to order!

A shorter version of this appeared in the February 2014 issue of WW2 History magazine, published by Sovereign Media, and is used with permission.

David H. Lippman, an award-winning journalist and graduate of the New School for Social Research, has written many magazine articles about World War II. He currently works as a public information officer for the city of Newark, N.J. We're always pleased to add his work to our Daily Content.