Battle of Saipan (1944)

61

The Pittsburgh Press (July 7, 1944)

10,000 Jap civilians warned to surrender to Yanks on Saipan

Enemy remnants bottled up by Americans on northern tip of Marianas Island
By Rembert James, representing combined Allied press

Aboard joint expeditionary force flagship off Saipan (UP) –
U.S. military commanders today designated a road to surrender for the 10,000 to 15,00 civilians still hiding out on Saipan Island, while the victorious Yanks surged forward to deliver the death blow to the battered Jap garrison bottled up at the northern tip of the island.

A single highway was designated as the road to surrender for civilians, almost 7,000 of whom have already been interned.

The rest, including Saipan business owners, insular government officials and white-collar workers with their families, have cowered in hiding places in the hills and canebrakes on northern Saipan.

Pamphlets dropped

By word of mouth, and by pamphlets dropped from airplanes and shot from mortars, the Americans offered water, food and complete safety to those who accept.

Meanwhile, Marines and Army forces pushed in to destroy the remnants of the defending forces under circumstances in which no one could doubt that the end of military operations was in sight.

The Japs were penned into a space extending roughly two miles in each direction except for a slim area from Marpi Point at the northern end down the western coast toward Tanapag Harbor.

Hold only airfield

The Japs had already lost everything of value on Saipan except the Marpi Point airfield, where most of their troops have apparently chosen to die at the base of a sheer cliff 600 feet high.

They still held an entrenched pocket on the west coast, but were under heavy attack by the Army’s 27th Infantry Division troops there, while Marines pushed on northward.

The Americans on the other hand held approximately nine-tenths of the island, including the important Isely Airport (formerly Aslito), the town of Garapan and the harbor of Tanapag, as well as the island’s highest peak – Mt. Tapochau.

62

‘Gung Ho’ Raider chief wounded in Saipan battle

Col. Carlson hit while aiding Marine
By Mac R. Johnson, United Press staff writer

With U.S. Marines, Saipan, Mariana Islands – (July 23, delayed)
Lt. Col. Evans F. Carlson, 48-year-old founder and leader of the famed “Gung Ho” Marine Raiders, was wounded in one leg and one arm by Jap machine-gun bullets on the eighth day of the Saipan campaign and has been evacuated by transport plane.

Col. Carlson’s wounds, received while he tried to help a wounded private to safety, were not serious.

The Marine leader, plans officer for the 4th Marine Division, went to a forward observation post as a frontline observer June 22 while the Marines were assaulting the important Hill 500 on the southeastern slope of Mt. Tapochau, west of Magicienne Bay.

With him were Lt. Col. Justice M. Chambers of Washington, and Pvt. Vito A. Cassaro of Brooklyn, a radio operator.

Hit while aiding private

Japs spotted their observation post and sprayed the area with hundreds of rounds of machine-gun bullets, one of which hit Pvt. Cassaro in the leg.

Col. Carlson picked up the wounded radio operator and attempted to remove him from the area of fire but was hit himself in the leg and arm.

Meanwhile, Marines turned rifles, Browning automatic rifles and machine guns against the enemy positions and Col. Chambers, under cover or the protective fire, removed Col. Carlson.

Spurns help

When stretcher-bearers appeared on the scene, they attempted to get Col. Carlson out first, but the Raider chief turned down the offer on his prerogative as the ranking officer and refused to be removed, saying: “Vic Cassaro was wounded first. Take him back first.”

Col. Carlson organized his “Gung Ho” Raiders in San Diego, California, living up to the slogan which means work in harmony. Officers and men exchanged ideas at weekly meetings in which enlisted men had as much right of expression as their officers.

He led the Makin raid in August 1942, with then Lt. Col. Jimmy Roosevelt as second in command. His raiders killed all but two of Makin’s Japs in a 36-hour fight.

Fought on Guam

Another achievement of the hardened Marine leader was 20 days spent behind Jap lines on Guadalcanal, living off the land and captured stores while the raiders killed 500 of the enemy and gained valuable information.

An inspiration leader, Col. Carlson never took cover when he led his men through Jap snipers, defensive positions and machine-gun nests. He can be called the most beloved officer by the enlisted men of the Marine Corps.

Col. Carlson wears three Navy Crosses, a Purple Heart from a previous wound and two Presidential Unit Citation ribbons.

63

U.S. Navy Department (July 8, 1944)

CINCPAC Communiqué No. 75

Before dawn on July 6 (West Longitude Date), several thousand Japanese troops launched a desperate counterattack directed against the left flank of our line on Saipan Island. In this attack, our lines along the western shore were penetrated up to 2,000 yards, and the enemy reached the outskirts of Tanapag Town. The counterattack was halted before noon, and our troops began to push the enemy back. In this assault, the fighting was very severe and numerous casualties were incurred. It is estimated 1,500 Japanese troops were killed. Meanwhile, on the right flank, our forces continued their advance and are now a little more than a mile from the airfield at Marpi Point.

Small groups of enemy planes raided our positions on Saipan before dawn on July 6 and on the night of July 6‑7. Bombs were also dropped near some of our ships but did no damage. One enemy plane was shot down. Isely Field on Saipan was shelled by shore batteries on Tinian Island before dawn on July 6, but the enemy batteries were quickly silenced by destroyer and artillery fire.

Supplementing Communiqué No. 72, it has been determined that 32 enemy aircraft were destroyed and 96 damaged on the ground by our carrier aircraft in attacks on Chichijima and Hahajima on July 3.

Nineteen of the aircraft destroyed and 34 of those damaged were two-engine bombers.

Some of this total may have been damaged in previous strikes by our aircraft.

Liberators of the 7th Army Air Force dropped 43 tons of bombs at the Dublon Island Naval Base in Truk Atoll on July 6. Five of approximately 12 enemy fighters which attempted to intercept our force were shot down. Three of our aircraft received minor damage.

Nauru Island was bombed by Liberator and Mitchell bombers of the 7th Army Air Force on July 6. Incendiary bombs started fires visible for 30 miles.

Dauntless dive bombers and Corsair fighters of the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing attacked Wotje and Maloelap Atolls on July 6, bombing and strafing remaining enemy defense installations.

64

The Pittsburgh Press (July 8, 1944)

Jap force pinned in Saipan pocket

Enemy squeezed in 6-square-mile area
By William F. Tyree, United Press staff writer

Pearl Harbor, Hawaii –
U.S. Marines and Army troops continued their drive today against the Japs squeezed into a six-square-mile area on the northern edge of Saipan, where the enemy defenses were cut off from escape or rescue.

Artillery along the American line across the island was trained on the northern coast, behind the Jap rear. It has already frustrated one enemy attempt to evacuate some of its forces from Saipan.

A communiqué from Adm. Chester W. Nimitz said that about 200 Japs tried to flee the island Tuesday night but either were killed, drowned or swam ashore when artillery shattered their barges.

8,914 Japs buried

Adm. Nimitz also reported that a total of 8,914 Japs had been buried by the Americans, or nearly half the estimated enemy forces on Saipan when it was invaded.

In the campaign to neutralize Japan’s other defenses in the Marianas, carried-based planes raided he airstrips and ground installations on Rota and Guam, south of Saipan, Wednesday and Thursday.

A Tokyo radio broadcast said 60 U.S. bombers and fighters also raided Guam yesterday.

Two U.S. planes lost

The Japs on the two islands failed to put up aerial opposition, but two U.S. planes were lost, apparently to anti-aircraft fire.

Army Liberators raided Truk Atoll; in the Carolines Wednesday, hitting Moen Island with 32 tons of bombs, while other bombers and fighters attacked Wotje, Jaluit and Taroa in the Marshalls, all without loss.

65

Sick, tired and hungry –
Jap civilians on Saipan stream through U.S. lines

Vanguard of plain people forms procession which eventually will lead to Tokyo
By Richard W. Johnston, United Press staff writer

Aboard joint expeditionary force flagship, off Saipan –
Trapped Jap soldiers on Saipan still fought bitterly from the caves of Marpi Point today, but Jap civilians – sick, tired and hungry – streamed down a designated road into our lines, forming a procession which eventually will lead to Tokyo.

They were the vanguard of the Japanese people – plain people capable of recognizing defeat and not imbued with the Bushidō spirit of immolation. They were people who, though half-dead, still wanted to live.

The response to our invitation to surrender distributed by leaflets surprised military leaders, who feared many Jap civilians would either elect or be forced to remain with the enemy troops in the constantly diminishing area of the northern tip of the island.

Make hopeless counterattack

While civilians of all ages and sexes were moving down a specially designated road on which it was forbidden to fire, elsewhere the remnants of the Jap defenders attempted a hopeless, desperate counterattack not unlike those at Attu and Makin.

Hundreds of enemy soldiers died in an assault against U.S. Army lines and those penetrating safely were mopped up in cane fields and ditches along the western coast.

From a series of observation point, it is possible for our troops to see the Marpi Point airstrip. This airstrip has been the object of frantic night aerial activity for three days and it was believed the Japs are making desperate efforts to land at least one or two planes there to evacuate high-ranking officers.

Second attempt fails

Another Jap escape effort was foiled when barges launched from the northwest coast apparently in the hope of sneaking to Tinian under cover of darkness were discovered by our troops.

While our ships near Saipan were blacked out during an enemy air raid, the barges began to move out. Our artillery fire blew them out the water.

Army and Marine units thus far have buried 8,914 Jap soldiers and that by no means represents all that have been killed. Many Jap bodies are still inside caves and others are strewn over rocky cliffs and jungles where they have escaped the notice of burial parties.

Jap air attacks light

Although Jap raiders are overhead every night, taking advantage of the full moon, their efforts have come to naught so far. They are always in small force, thanks to the constant hammering of the Rota and Guam airfields by our carrier-borne planes.

Organization of the conquered section of the island is proceeding rapidly. Work details and Seabees equipped with giant bulldozers are leveling off the wreckage of Garapan – almost shelled to the ground – while other groups are widening and surfacing the primitive roads which apparently served the Japs as “military highways.”

The battle for Saipan is not yet over – but there is no longer any doubt in anybody’s mind, including the Jap soldiers and civilians, as to the outcome.

66

McGaffin: ‘Busy day’ on Saipan Island includes mop up of caves

Major tells how Yanks persuaded Japs in one cavern to surrender
By William McGaffin

With U.S. forces on Saipan, Mariana Islands – (delayed)
Today we visited the boys of Maj. James A. Donovan Jr.’s Command. The major himself ushered us into his command post, in a hollow under a spreading tree. “It’s been a busy day,” he said with a grin.

The young major, only 27 years of age, who hails from Winnetka, Illinois, and is second in command of this battalion, was very happy about the gains his boys had made yesterday – 1,400 yards – although one company had suffered 38 casualties from a sudden burst of enemy fire as they were digging in for the night. Since D-Day, this particular company has lost all but one of its original officers.

Clean out caves

Maj. Donovan explained that his men had come on a network of caves 50 yards away from us and that they were engaged in cleaning them out.

A couple of Jap soldiers rushed out at that moment in an attempt to put up some resistance. They were killed.

Then, as we watched, our boys approached the lip of the cave cautiously and, although their knowledge of Japanese is limited, managed to persuade the multitude inside to come out.

Civilians emerge

A long file of more than 150 began to emerge, some of them men in home guard uniform, but mainly Jap civilians – old men, young women carrying babies on their backs, and some old women too feeble to walk who were carried on litters by our medical corpsmen. Apparently, they had been in the cave ever since invasion day.

The sound of other caves being flushed out was also discernible. This time it was the lethal sound of dynamite and flamethrowers, for these caves were full of Jap soldiers who wouldn’t budge. It was dangerous business. Those cave-dwellers were well armed.

Maj. Donovan told how one of his lieutenants had shot a Jap sniper shortly before we arrived, right in the command post area, and 20 minutes later got it himself when he approached one of the surrounding caves.

67

Völkischer Beobachter (July 9, 1944)

Zwei weitere Flugzeugträger bei Saipan versenkt

Tokio, 8. Juli –
Zwei weitere US-Flugzeugträger sind in den Gewässern bei Saipan gesunken, wird von einem japanischen Stützpunkt im Zentralpazifik am Samstag gemeldet. Die Versenkung der beiden Flugzeugträger, die erst jetzt bestätigt werden konnte, erfolgte am 18. und 19. Juni.

Damit steigt der Gesamtverlust der Alliierten in den Gewässern der Marianen und der Bonininseln in der Zeit von dem ersten Erscheinen der alliierten Flottenstreitkräfte am 11. Juni bis zum 30. Juni auf 50 versenkte und beschädigte Kriegsschiffe.

68

U.S. Navy Department (July 9, 1944)

CINCPAC Communiqué No. 76

Our forces have completed the conquest of Saipan. Organized resistance ended on the afternoon of July 8 (West Longitude Date) and the elimination of scattered, disorganized remnants of the enemy force is proceeding rapidly.

Aircraft of our fast carrier task force attacked Guam and Rota on July 7‑8 (West Longitude Date). Runways, anti-aircraft batteries, coastal defense guns and barracks were subjected to rocket fire and bombing. On July 7, nine enemy fighters apparently attempting to fly from Guam to Yap Island were shot down by our combat air patrol. Six twin‑engine enemy aircraft were destroyed on the ground and two were probably destroyed near Agana Town at Guam. We lost one fighter and one torpedo bomber in these raids.

Twenty‑two tons of bombs were dropped on Truk Atoll on the night of July 7‑8 by Liberators of the 7th Army Air Force. There was no interception, and all of our planes returned safely.

During July 7, Mille, Jaluit, Taroa, and Wotje were harassed by Dauntless dive bombers and Corsair fighters of the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing, and a search Catalina of Group One, Fleet Air Wing Two, attacked Taroa before dawn on July 7. We lost no planes.

69

The Pittsburgh Press (July 9, 1944)

Suicide attack on Saipan costs Japs 1,500 killed

Enemy pierces U.S. lines in charge before dawn, but is halted after half day
By William F. Tyree, United Press staff writer

Pearl Harbor, Hawaii – (July 8)
Desperate Jap troops cornered on the northern tip of Saipan Island opened a string counterattack against U.S. forces before dawn Thursday and scored a net ground gain of about three-fourths of a mile at a cost of approximately 1,500 dead, Adm. Chester W. Nimitz announced today. U.S. casualties were also numerous.

A Pacific Fleet communiqué also disclosed a total of 66 Jap planes were destroyed and 96 damaged in the previous-announced carrier attacks on Chichi and Haha Islands in the Bonin group.

Marines and soldiers who have been closing in for the kill on Saipan halted the Jap counteroffensive after a half-day of severe fighting.

The enemy drove 2,000 yards into our lines before the U.S. troops smashed back and stopped the fanatic Japs trying to sell Saipan as dearly as possible.

The right flank of the U.S. forces continued to advance and reached a point slightly more than a mile from the uncompleted airfield at Marpi Point at the extreme northern end of the 15-mile-long island.

“Several thousand” Japs participated in the counterattack. They lunged against the American left flank before sunrise and reached the outskirts of Tanapag Town, captured by U.S. troops several days ago.

The enemy assault was pinned down before noon. Then the Americans began pushing the Japs back and recovered approximately 800 yards of the ground they had lost.

The counterattack appeared to be a hopeless gesture by the remnants of a garrison which now faces either death or capture on the narrow northern tip of Saipan.

While the ground fighting reached a new peak of intensity on the northwestern shore, the Jap garrison on Tinian Island, two and a half miles south of Saipan, opened an artillery barrage against U.S.-held Isely Airfield across the Tinian Channel.

U.S. destroyers and artillery on Saipan quickly silenced the Jap batteries.

70

Wheeler: Saipan Island dust worse than that of U.S. prairies

Disintegrated coral coats everything with gritty, yellow stucco
By Keith Wheeler, North American Newspaper Alliance

Saipan, Mariana Islands – (June 22, delayed)
I was born on the edge of the American Midwestern dust bowl and I’ve seen prairie gales lift the granulated top soil and draw it like a curtain across the sky.

But I’ve never seen anything like the dust of the Saipan beachhead.

Probably before we came, Saipan’s roads were no more dusty than coral-surfaced roads ever are – although that’s dusty enough. Now the narrow roads carry more traffic every 24 hours than they ever carried in any previous year.

Amphibious tractors, laden with men, ammunition, guns, water and barbed wire, claw into the coral with their steel-toothed treads. Tanks, halftracks and great track-laying prime movers churn through the dust. Jeeps, trailers, trucks, captured Jap vehicles, bicycles, oxcarts and tramping men crawl back and forth in an endless procession.

Under this pounding, the coral has disintegrated. The roads are eight inches deep in a fine yellow powder and the whole five miles of waterfront lies perpetually hidden under an opaque yellow pall.

“It’s like wading knee-deep in talcum powder,” one gasping Martine said. The dust permeates everything within 1,000 yards of the beach and dictates the life of the men that live there.

You plod 100 yards through the dust and your face is plastered in a gritty, yellow stucco so that not even your abundant sweat wets the outside later. It coats the palms, breadfruit, and papaya trees so thickly that they bend with its weight.

It blinds red-eyed drivers in rolling yellow clouds, picked up by their own vehicles, and all traffic moves at a crawl. It sifts down like a harsh unmalting snow into the faces of sleeping men, flavors their food, fills their clothing and packs and provides a thin burial shroud for the fetid Jap corpses that no one has yet had time to bury.

Neither dust nor bombs nor shells nor snipers can halt the great river of men and tools of war that flows painfully up from the sea to the land. Beach parties have contrived to land thousands of tons of food, water, ammunition, guns, wire, oil, gasoline, trucks and tractors each day. Hardly a day has passed that the pace has not been kept up. It is backbreaking, brutal, dangerous and utterly without glory.

71

Völkischer Beobachter (July 10, 1944)

US-Verluste im Fernen Osten und Pazifik –
Der lange Weg bis Tokio

Madrid, 9. Juli –
An die pessimistischen Erklärungen Roosevelts über den Verlauf des Krieges in China knüpft der Neuyorker Korrespondent der Agentur Efe an, die Worte Roosevelts haben in der nordamerikanischen Öffentlichkeit Unruhe hervorgerufen, schreibt Lucientes. Die Neuyorker Zeitung Journal American halte es für ausgeschlossen, daß sich die Situation in China in den nächsten Monaten bessern könnte. Die Transportschwierigkeiten Tschiangkaischeksseien zu groß. Die Wiedergewinnung der Burmastraße würde an dieser verzweifelten Lage ebenfalls nichts ändern, sagt die genannte Zeitung.

Auch die übrigen Blätter Neuyorks brächten zum Ausdruck, daß der Weg bis Tokio noch sehr lang, hart und kostspielig sein werde. Die Eroberung nur eines Teiles der Insel Saipan habe den Nordamerikanern fast 10.000 Mann Verluste gekostet. Dies sei nach dem eigenen Urteil der amerikanischen Journalisten aber erst der Anfang. Man habe bisher überhaupt noch keine Bekanntschaft mit den großen Armeen Japans oder auch nur eines Teiles derjenige, die in China, Mandschukuo, auf Java, den Philippinen und den Malaien stünden, gemacht.

72

The Pittsburgh Press (July 10, 1944)

Yanks finish conquest of Saipan Island

Win base in range of Japan, Philippines
By William F. Tyree, United Press staff writer

Pearl Harbor, Hawaii –
Completion of the conquest of Saipan in the bloodiest fighting of the Pacific War established U.S. forces today within bombing range of Japan and the Philippines.

Saipan, with two large airfields and deepwater harbors, opened a new springboard for further amphibious operations westward to the China coast and eventually to Japan itself.

The complete conquest of the 75-mile-square island, administrative center of the Marianas, was announced late yesterday by Adm. Chester W. Nimitz who said U.S. Marines and Army troops broke the last organized resistance by the Japs in the northern tip of Saipan Saturday.

11,300 Japs buried

The 25-day campaign for Saipan resulted in heavy losses to both the United States and Japan.

Of the enemy’s estimated 20,000-30,000 men originally on the island, more than 11,300 of them were buried by U.S. forces and hundreds taken prisoner.

Although U.S. losses for the campaign were not disclosed, Adm. Nimitz had previously announced that in the first 14 days of fighting, the United States suffered 9,754 casualties, of which 1,474 were killed, 7,400 wounded and others missing. It was believed, however, that the casualties were on a smaller scale since then.

Operations to continue

Adm. Nimitz’s communiqué gave no indication of the size of scattered enemy remnants still on Saipan, but operations to dig the stragglers out of the hills and caves will probably continue for some time.

Additionally, thousands of other Japs scattered through the remaining Mariana Islands from Guam in the south to Pagan in the north were virtually isolated by the conquest and faced continual aerial bombardment with little hope of assistance from home.

The final breakthrough of the Jap lines at the northern edge of Saipan was accomplished Saturday afternoon by battle-hardened veterans of the 2nd and 4th Marine Divisions and the 27th Infantry Division, most of the latter from New York State.

Follows suicide charge

The end of the campaign came two days after the trapped Japs made a desperate break from their hopeless positions and drove more than a mile down the western coast to near the town of Tanapag before they were stopped. More than 1,500 enemy troops were killed in the assault.

While Saipan was won at the expense of the greatest personnel losses the United States has suffered in any Pacific campaign, the conquest was considered one of the most important because of its strategic location at the apex of a triangle with the Philippines and Japan proper.

On Saipan, the largest island yet taken in the Central Pacific, the Americans gained control of two airfields – Isely and Marpi – within 1,499 miles south of Tokyo and 1,470 miles east of the Philippines.

Can harass Japs

Possession of the island enables Adm. Nimitz to protect his air and naval power deep into the last big sea area farther westward under Jap control and open bases for submarines closer to the fields where they have been harassing enemy supply lines since the war started.

With these lines narrowed by Adm. Nimitz’s strides through the Central Pacific and Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s advances in the southwest, the Japs faced a threat of a further pinch of supplies to their home industries.

The campaign on Saipan was perhaps the costliest yet suffered by the Japs. Since it opened on June 14, the Japs lost their key base in the Western Pacific, together with the entire garrison, and more than 1,000 planes and 100 ships destroyed or damaged.

Raid Guam, Rota

Adm. Nimitz disclosed that carrier-based planes again attacked Guam and Rota, south of Saipan, Friday and Saturday, while a U.S. combat patrol shot down nine Jap fighter planes apparently attempting to fly from Guam to Yap, in the Carolina Islands.

Six twin-engined Jap planes were destroyed on the ground and probably two others near Agana on Guam. The Americans lost one fighter and one torpedo bomber in the two-day raid.

A Jap Dōmei News Agency broadcast said U.S. planes raided Guam, Rota and Tinian yesterday and that “several” cruisers and destroyers shelled Guam.