Battle for Saipan, Part Five
By David H. Lippman
April 2014

You can read Part Four here.

To buck up spirits on Saipan, Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo signaled the 31st Army, “Because the fate of the Japanese Empire depends on the result of your operation, inspire the spirit of the officers and men and to the very end continue to destroy the enemy gallantly and persistently, thus assuaging the anxiety of our Emperor.”

Saipan radioed back, “Have received your honorable Imperial words and we are grateful for boundless magnanimity of the Imperial favor. By becoming the bulwark of 10,000 deaths, we hope to requite the Imperial favor.”

Even so, Tokyo was sending more help than inspiring words: the Combined Fleet had left its lairs in Japan and Singapore, bristling with guns, planes, and hate for Americans, and was headed for the Marianas.

The Americans knew they were coming. Between code-breaking and submarine reconnaissance, Spruance had a clear picture of the incoming Japanese naval counterblow. He delayed the June 18 date for the invasion of Guam and ordered the US Army’s 27th Infantry Division to commence landing on Saipan.

Meanwhile, on Mount Donnay, Shizuko Miura was wrapping up a tough night. She’d assisted in gory amputations. More than 1,000 wounded men jammed the makeshift hospital, moaning and screaming. As dawn broke, she plucked maggots out of a wounded lieutenant, who clutched a photograph of his wife, in a kimono. He babbled about having joined the Army three days after his wedding, and how he was going to die here and now. “If there is a hell,” she thought, “this is it.”

American losses had been harsh, too: the 2nd Marine Division alone lost 238 killed, 1,022 wounded, and 315 missing in action.

As dawn broke on Saipan, the Americans resumed the offensive. Sherman tanks coughed and spluttered to life and started rumbling across the shell-pocked terrain, accompanied by Marines. Navy F6F Hellcat fighters swooped overhead, strafing Japanese positions. From their trenches and blockhouses cut into the ridges, Japanese machine guns, mortars, and artillery spewed heavy fire at the advancing Marines.

“The Japs from their mountainside dugouts were looking down our throats,” wrote Robert Sherrod, covering the invasion for Time magazine. “Not only our front lines were being pounded. Our beaches still crowded with shore parties unloading supplies. In a 1,500-yard walk down the land Captain Thomason and I hit the sand four times!”

The Americans did not advance too deeply on this second day of the invasion, instead devoting their energy to consolidating their positions, mopping up, and most importantly, unloading the rest of the two Marine divisions, and bringing ashore Maj. Gen. Ralph Smith’s 27th Infantry, starting with the division’s 165th Infantry Regiment, under Col. Gerard W. Kelley. The division HQ landed at noon, and the regiment that evening.

Ralph Corbett Smith was different from his Marine Corps commander; a Mayflower descendant, he’d grown up in Nebraska and Colorado, teaching in a country school there after graduating from Colorado State College. His military advancement rose through the Colorado National Guard and the 1st Infantry Division, the “Big Red One,” in World War I. He’d studied at France’s famed Ecole de Guerre and the Sorbonne, and spoke French fluently. He was expected to lead a division in Europe. Instead, with typical Army logic, he commanded a division of New York National Guardsmen in the Pacific. Now this diplomatic officer would have to work with a Marine general noted for personal ferocity.

Meanwhile, Japanese ferocity had a sharp impact on the battlefield. Second Marine Division ended the day with half of its company and battalion officers dead or wounded. In the 4th Marine Division’s sector, Lt. Col. Maynard Schultz, boss of the 1st/24th Marines, was killed by artillery. Also impacted by Japanese shells were five companies of black Marines, the first employed in combat in the war, who came under fire while hauling ammunition and supplies to the front lines.

That night, the Japanese tried to counterattack again. Saito sent in the 136th Infantry Regiment and Col. Takashi Goto’s 9th Tank Regiment to launch a coordinated attack at 5 p.m. against the 6th Marine Regiment. The Navy’s 1st Yokosuka Special Naval Landing Force would take part as well. But his men were so disorganized that the attack did not go in until 3:30 a.m., with Goto himself saddling up in his command T-97 tank, infantrymen riding the huge vehicles, some blaring bugles. Japanese tanks commanders directed their men from open turrets. Their objective was the captured Saipan radio station and its huge towers. It would be the biggest Japanese tank attack of the Pacific war.

Unfortunately for Goto, American aerial snoopers had spotted the T-97s rumbling to their assembly points before dusk, and the 2nd Marine Division deployed 1st/6th Marines, under Lt. Col. William Jones, with bazookas, machine-guns, and Sherman tanks along the likely route of advance.

When the Japanese tanks lumbered toward battle, they made a vast noise that alerted the Marines and worried Jones – he’d been told the Japanese might have as many as 200 tanks on Saipan. It sounded to him like all 200 were headed straight for him.

In their dugouts, the Marines watched as the tanks rolled over and past them, spewing oil on their uniforms. Capt. James Rollen leaped out of his foxhole and fired a grenade launcher at a T-97. It bounced off and Rollen staggered out of the battle, eardrums damaged by concussion. Capt. Norman Thomas took over moments later, and was quickly killed.

The battle became, as 1st/6th Marines’ executive officer, Maj. James Donovan said later, “a madhouse of noise, tracers, and flashing lights.” American bazookas and tanks opened fire on the Japanese T-97s, setting them ablaze, which illuminated other enemy tanks. The flash of American fire blinded American gunners, and the action was fought at point-blank range, with American bazooka teams playing hide-and-seek with Japanese tanks.

Marine Pvt. Herbert Hodges had been a mechanic in a tank company before being transferred to an infantry unit, so he told his officer, “I’m from tanks. I’m not scared of tanks. I know what they can do and what they can’t do. If you’ll give me a bazooka now, I’ll take care of them.” Joined by Pvt. Charles Meritt, Hodges went off, and the pair destroyed seven tanks, earning Navy Crosses for each of them. Pvts. John Kounk and Horace Neverson went out with four bazooka rockets and scored three kills. Cpl. John Watson threw incendiary grenades into the hatches and vents of an approaching T-97 and killed the crew as they scrambled out. One Marine reported, “The Japanese would halt, then jump out of their tanks. Then they would sing songs and wave swords. Finally one of them would blow a trumpet, but jump back into the tanks if they hadn’t been hit already. Then we would let them have it with a bazooka.”

As dawn broke, so did the Japanese attack. The surviving Japanese began retreating towards Mount Tipo Pale, while an offshore destroyer hurled shells after them, blasting a surviving tank. The Marines counted 31 wrecked T-97s and the bodies of more than 700 mangled Japanese soldiers and Marines, for a loss of about 70 Leathernecks. Worse, Saito could not replace his losses of tanks or men while the Americans had plenty more of both.

Lt. Gen. Holland M. Smith now cut orders placing the 2nd Marine Division as the northern pivot of a wheeling attack by Maj. Gen. Harry Schmidt’s 4th Marine Division, which would push across the farmlands of southern Saipan to the east coast at Magicienne, then drive northward into the central highlands. The 27th Infantry would operate on the 4th Division’s flank, reaching for Aslito Airfield. Once that was accomplished, the three divisions would undertake the daunting task of storming Mount Topatchau, and driving across the island to the northern peak at Marpi Point.

Holland Smith sketched out these plans from his new tactical HQ, one of Charan Kanoa’s few buildings that were still relatively intact. The only problem was a dead carabao (the local water buffalo) in the back yard, but a Marine bulldozer that shoved it away.

Loud, crusty, and opinionated, Holland Smith had a common touch and concern for his Marines. Adm. Spruance provided regular gifts of five-gallon drums of ice cream from his ships’ reefers, and every time they arrived at his HQ, Smith would shout out from his front window that any Leatherneck in earshot should hurry over for the ice cream. Tired, dusty, filthy Leathernecks would run up, clutching canteen cups, cracked teacups, Japanese rice bowls, or any other container possible, and the three-star general would personally dole out scoops of ice cream to the amazed and delighted Marines. After doing so, Smith would then return to his office and resume his task of running the battle.

Steadily the Marines and GIs began their advance across Saipan. Under their boots and vehicles, the island’s dirt roads turned to dust and mud. The southern third of Saipan was dominated by well-tended farms and villages, which grew sugar cane, corn, peas, cantaloupe, and potatoes. Many of the houses were abandoned as Japanese colonist farmers and their families fled the Americans, terrorized by Tokyo propaganda about the “barbarians.” The Americans found the farmhouses and village homes contained cases of Japanese Asahi beer and soft drinks, photographs of everyone from Jesus Christ to Adolf Hitler, photo albums of families at baseball games and school graduations, and record players with both Japanese and Western music. The homesick GIs and Leathernecks ground out the captured phonograph needles playing familiar songs from home.

Not all Japanese civilians fled the Americans. Navy medical corpsmen soon found their hands full with wounded, sick, and famished Japanese families.

The advance yielded bizarre scenes close to each other. A unit might be engaged in harsh firefight while a mile away another American unit might be checking out a farmhouse, drinking beer from its refrigerator. The experiences presaged Vietnam. Americans might find one Japanese civilian eager to give up, and the next one whipping out a grenade or pistol, eager to take a “foreign devil” with him in death. A case of beer in a farmhouse might be an enjoyable treat or a deadly booby trap.

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.