_by Cyril J. O’Brien_
With the instantaneous opening of a two-hour, ever-increasing
bombardment by six battleships, nine cruisers, a host of destroyers
and rocket ships, laying their wrath on the wrinkled black hills, rice
paddies, cliffs, and caves that faced the attacking fleet on the west
side of the island, Liberation Day for Guam began at 0530, 21 July 1944.
Fourteen-inch guns belching fire and thunder set spectacular blossoms
of flame sprouting on the fields and hillsides inland. It was all very
plain to see in the glow of star shells which illuminated the shore,
the ships, and the troops who lined the rails of the transports and
LSTs (Landing Ships, Tank) which brought the U.S. Marines and soldiers
there.
The barrages, which at daylight would be enlarged by the strafing
and bombing of carrier fighters, bombers, and torpedo planes, were
the grand climax of 13 days (since 8 July) of unceasing prelanding
softening-up. Indeed, carrier aircraft of Task Force 58 had been
blasting Guam airfields since 11 June, while the first bombardment of
the B-24s and B-25s of the Fifth, Seventh, and Thirteenth Air Forces
fell as early as 6 May.
Up at 0230 to a by-now traditional Marine prelanding breakfast of
steak and eggs, the assault troops, laden with fighting gear, sheathed
bayonets protruding from their packs, hurried and waited, while
the loudspeakers shouted “Now hear this.... Now hear this.” Unit
commanders on board the LSTs visited each of their men, checking gear,
straightening packs, rendering an encouraging pat on a shoulder, and
squaring away the queues going below to the well decks before boarding
the LVTs (Landing Vehicles, Tracked).
Troops on the APAs (attack transports) went over the rail and down
cargo nets to which they--weighed down with 40-pound packs as well as
weapons--held on for dear life, and into LCVPs (Landing Craft, Vehicle
and Personnel). These troops would transfer from the landing craft to
LVTs at the reef’s edge, if all went as planned.
Aircraft went roaring in over mast tops and naval guns produced a
continuous booming background noise. Climaxing it all was the voice
of Major General Roy S. Geiger, commanding general of III Amphibious
Corps, rasping from a bulkhead speaker:
You have been honored. The eyes of the nation watch you as you
go into battle to liberate this former American bastion from the
enemy. The honor which has been bestowed on you is a signal one.
May the glorious traditions of the Marine Corps’ esprit de corps
spur you to victory. You have been honored.
[Illustration: _SOUTHERN MARIANAS_]
In the crowded, stifling well decks of the LSTs, the liberators climbed
on board the LVTs and waited claustrophobic until the LST bow doors
dropped and the tracked landing vehicles rattled out over these ramps
into the swell of the sea. As the amphibian tractors circled (about
0615) near the line of departure, a flight of attack aircraft from
the _Wasp_ drowned out the whine of the amtrac engines and whirled
up clouds of fire and dust, obscuring the landing beaches ahead.
Eighty-five fighters, 65 bombers, and 53 torpedo planes executed a
grass-cutting strafing and bombing sweep along all of the landing
beaches from above the northern beaches of Agana, south for 14 miles
to Bangi Point.
“My aim is to get the troops ashore standing up,” said Rear Admiral
Richard L. Conolly, Southern Attack Force (Task Force 53) commander,
who earned the nickname “Close-in Conolly” during the Marshalls
operations for his insistence on having his naval gunfire support ships
firing from stations very close to the beaches.
Private First Class James G. Helt, a radioman with Headquarters and
Service Company, 1st Battalion, 3d Marines, in the bow of an LVT moving
towards shore, wondered, as did many others, if anything could still
be alive on Guam? Ashore, Lieutenant Colonel Hideyuki Takeda, on the
staff of the defending _29th Division_, said the island could only
be defended if the Americans did not land. In a diary, one Japanese
officer noted that the only respite from the bombardment was a “stiff
drink.”
The next best thing to a welcome mat for Marine assault waves had been
laid by the audacious Navy Underwater Demolition Teams 3, 4, and 6, who
cleared the beach obstacles. Navy Chief Petty Officer James R. Chittum
of Team 3 noted that these pathfinders were usually close enough to
draw small arms fire. At Asan, they exploded 640 wire obstacle cages
filled with cemented coral, and at Agat they blew a 200-foot hole for
unloading in the coral reef. Team 3, under Navy Reserve Lieutenant
Thomas C. Crist, also removed half of a small freighter from a channel
blocking the way of the Marines.
Swimmers as well as scouts, the “demos” reconnoitered right up on the
landing beaches themselves. They left a sign for the first assault wave
at Asan: “Welcome Marines--USO This Way.”
At 0730 a flare was shot in the air above the waiting flotilla and
Admiral Conolly commanded: “Land the Landing Force.” At 0808, the first
wave of the 3d Marine Division broke the circle of waiting LVTs to form
a line and cross the 2,000 yards of water to the 2,500-yard-wide beach
between Asan and Adelup points. At 0829, the first elements of the 3d
Marine Division were on Guam. Three minutes later, 0832, lead assault
troops of the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade crossed the shelled-pocked
strand at Agat, six miles south of the Asan-Adelup beachhead.
[Sidebar (page 2): General Roy S. Geiger
[Illustration]
Major General Roy S. Geiger, as the other general officers in the Guam
invasion force, was a World War I veteran. He also was an early Marine
Corps aviator. He was the fifth Marine to become a naval aviator--in
1917--and the 49th in the naval service to obtain his wings. He went
to France in July of that year and commanded a squadron of the First
Marine Aviation Force. In the war and after, he saw service with Marine
Corps air units. He also was well educated professionally, for he
attended the Army Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth
in 1924-1925 and was a student in the Senior and Advanced Courses at
the Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island, 1939-1941. In August
1941, he became commanding general of the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing
and led it at Guadalcanal during the difficult days from September
to November 1942. Back in Washington in 1943, he was Director of
Aviation, until, on the untimely death of Major General Charles D.
Barnett, Commanding General, I Marine Amphibious Corps, just prior to
the Bougainville landings, General Geiger was rushed out to the Pacific
to assume command and direct the landings at Empress Augusta Bay on
1 November 1943. He was the first Marine aviator to head as large a
ground command as IMAC, which was redesignated III Amphibious Corps
in April 1944. He led this organization in the liberation of Guam
in July 1944, and in the landings on Peleliu on 15 September 1944.
General Geiger led this corps into action for the fourth time as part
of the Tenth Army in the invasion of Okinawa. Upon the death of Army
Lieutenant General Simon B. Buckner, Geiger took command of the Tenth
Army, the first Marine to lead an army-sized force. In July 1945, at
the end of the Okinawa operation, General Geiger assumed command of
Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, at Pearl Harbor. In November 1946 he
returned to Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, in Washington, and died
the following year. By an act of Congress, he was posthumously promoted
to the rank of general.
]
_Coming Back to Guam_
Guam, along with the Philippines, became a territorial possession of
the United States with the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1899,
ending the Spanish-American War. Earlier, on 21 June 1898, First
Lieutenant John Twiggs “Handsome Jack” Myers had led a party of Marines
ashore from the protected cruiser _Charleston_ to accept the surrender
of the Spanish authorities, who didn’t know that a state of war then
existed between Spain and the United States. Thus began a long Marine
presence on Guam. The island, southernmost of the Marianas chain, was
discovered by Ferdinand Magellan in 1521, but not occupied until 1688
when a small mission was established there by a Spanish priest and
soldiers. When control of the rest of the Mariana Islands, including
Saipan and Tinian, all once German possessions, was given to Japan as
a mandate power in 1919, Guam became an isolated and highly vulnerable
American outpost in a Japanese sea.
This American territory, 35 miles long, nine miles at its widest and
four at its narrowest, shaped like a peanut, with a year-long mean
temperature of 79 degrees, fell quickly and easily in the early morning
of 10 December 1941. Much of the Japanese attack on Guam came from her
sister island of Saipan, 150 miles to the north.
The governor of Guam, Captain George J. McMillan (the island governor
was always a U.S. Navy officer), aware that he could expect no
reinforcement or relief, decided to surrender the territory to
Japanese naval forces. Foremost in his mind was the fate of the 20,000
Guamanians, all American nationals, who would inevitably suffer if
a strong defense was mounted. He felt “the situation was simply
hopeless.” He sent word to the 153 Marines of the barracks detachment
at Sumay on Orote Peninsula and the 80-man Insular Guard to lay down
their arms. Even so, in two days of bombing and fighting, the garrison
lost 19 men killed and 42 wounded, including four Marines killed and 12
wounded.
[Illustration: _RAdm Richard L. Conolly, Southern Attack Force
commander for the Guam landings, confers on Guadalcanal with the
commanders of the Northern Attack Group during rehearsals prior to the
departure for the Marianas target. From left to right: BGen Alfred H.
Noble, assistant division commander, 3d Marine Division; Cdr Patrick
Buchanan, USN, commander, Northern Transport Group; Adm Conolly; MajGen
Allen Turnage, commanding general, 3d Marine Division._
Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 50235
]
_Operation Forager_
In late 1943, both the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and, later, the
Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS) agreed to the further direction of the
Pacific War. General Douglas MacArthur, commander of the Southwest
Pacific Area, was to head north through New Guinea to regain the
Philippines. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief, U.S.
Pacific Fleet, and Pacific Ocean Areas (CinCPac/CinCPOA), proposed a
move through the Central Pacific to secure a hold in the Marianas.
The strategic bombing of Japan would originate from captured fields
on Guam, Saipan, and Tinian. The new strategic weapon for these
attacks would be the B-29 bomber, which had a range of 3,000 miles
while carrying 10,000 pounds of bombs. The code name of the Marianas
operation was “Forager.” The Central Pacific drive began with the
landing on Tarawa in November 1943, followed by the landings in
Kwajalein Atoll on Roi-Namur, Eniwetok, and Kwajalein itself.
In January 1944, Admiral Nimitz made final plans for Guam, and selected
his command structure for the Marianas campaign. Accordingly, Admiral
Raymond A. Spruance, the victor at Midway, was designated commander of
the Fifth Fleet and of all the Central Pacific Task Forces; he would
command all units involved in Forager.
Vice Admiral Richmond K. Turner, who had commanded naval forces for
the landings at Guadalcanal and Tarawa, headed the Joint Expeditionary
Force (Task Force 51). Turner would also command the Northern Attack
Force for the invasion of Saipan and Tinian. Admiral Conolly, who
had commanded the invasion forces at Roi and Namur in the Marshalls,
would head the Southern Attack Force (Task Force 53) assigned to Guam.
Marine Major General (later Lieutenant General) Holland M. Smith, the
Expeditionary Troops commander for the Marianas, would be responsible
for the Northern Troops and Landing Force at Saipan and Tinian,
essentially the Marine V Amphibious Corps (VAC). Major General Roy S.
Geiger, an aviator who had conducted the Bougainville operation, was
to command the Southern Troops and Landing Force, the III Amphibious
Corps, at Guam.
D-Day for the invasion of Saipan had been set for 15 June. It was an
important date also for the 3d Marine Division, commanded by Major
General Allen H. “Hal” Turnage; the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade
under Brigadier General Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr.; and the Army’s 77th
Infantry Division under Major General Andrew D. Bruce. They were to
land on Guam on 18 June, but the 3d Division and the brigade first
would wait as floating reserve until the course of operations on Saipan
became clear. The 77th would stand by on Oahu, ready to be called
forward when needed.
Admiral Spruance kept the floating reserve well south and east of
Saipan, out of the path of an expected Japanese naval attack. A
powerful Japanese fleet, eager to close with the American invasion
force, descended upon the Marianas. The opposing carrier groups clashed
nearby in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, one of the major air
battles of the war. The Imperial Navy lost 330 out of the 430 planes it
launched in the fray. The clash (19 June), called “the Great Marianas
Turkey Shoot,” was catastrophic for the Japanese and ended once and for
all any naval or air threat to the Marianas invasion.
With the hard fighting on Saipan turning gradually but inevitably in
favor of the American Marines and soldiers battling the Japanese, the
U.S. Navy was ready to direct its attention to Guam, which was now
slated to receive the most thorough pre-landing bombardment yet seen
in the Pacific War. After weeks at sea, the 3d Division and the 1st
Brigade were given a respite and a chance to go ashore to lose their
“sea legs” after so long a period on board ships. The Task Force 53
convoy moved back to Eniwetok Atoll, whose huge 20-mile-wide lagoon was
rapidly becoming a major forward naval base.
The Marines welcomed the break and the chance to walk on dry land
on the small islands of the atoll. There was even an issue of warm
beer to all those on shore. The Marine veterans of the fighting on
Bougainville, New Georgia, and Eniwetok had a chance to look over the
soldiers of the 305th Regimental Combat Team, which now came forward
from Oahu to be attached briefly to the brigade for the landing on
Guam, set for 21 July and designated W-Day. The rest of the Army
contingent, the 77th Infantry Division, was well trained and well led,
and was scheduled to arrive at the target on W plus 1, 22 July.
[Illustration: