The Free Lance-Star (June 16, 1944)
Yanks advancing on Saipan Island
Push against Japanese tanks, artillery and soldiers; Navy gives cover
USPACFLT HQ, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (AP) –
U.S. troops, landed by the most experienced invasion fleet in the world, advanced against Japanese tanks, artillery and soldiers today 1,500 miles southeast of Tokyo at Saipan in the Marianas – potential base for the B-29s which raided Japan Thursday.
Covered by battleship guns and rocket-firing carrier planes, the Yanks secured beachheads Wednesday, moving in from behind Saipan, 72-square-mile island 3,800 miles southwest of Pearl Harbor, the starting point of the war.
They captured Agingan Point, a headland on the southwest coast. They battled two miles north across cane fields to the sugar mill community of Charan Kanoa. They were placed in reports covering action through Thursday within five miles of Garapan, Saipan’s major town of 10,000 population.
Supported by shells of offshore warships and bombs of planes from aircraft carriers, they beat off a series of stiff counterattacks by Japanese tanks.
Strongly defended
“In general, fighting is heavy but good progress is being made against well-organized defenses,” Adm. Chester W. Nimitz announced last night in his second communiqué on the operation. He first announced the invasion, but supplied no confirmation of a Tokyo radio report that an attempt had also been made to invade nearby Tinian.
Battleships and cruisers, opening up with their guns after carrier planes knocked out Japan’s Southern Marianas Air Force Saturday and Sunday, silenced most of the Saipan coastal batteries and anti-aircraft positions.
Shells of the warships and rockets fired by planes and infantry landing craft effectively curtained the troops moving ashore.
“Initial reports indicate our casualties are moderate,” Adm. Nimitz said. Tokyo radio claimed, without confirmation, the invaders sustained 1,800 casualties and lost 40 landing barges.
Suitable for bombers
Saipan is relatively flat, adaptable for the Superfortresses which loosed their destruction Thursday on Japan’s industrial areas. But the same flatness prompted the invasion commander, VAdm. Richard Kelly Turner, to expect opposition for the first time in the Pacific amphibious campaign by mobile artillery. He warned that lightning victories in the Marshalls may not be duplicated at Saipan.
Saipan’s invaders leapfrogged 1,100 miles west of Nimitz’s previous forward base in the Marshalls.
They also sailed more than 600 miles past Truk, air and naval base fortified for a quarter of a century by Japan – and now bypassed.