Meanwhile, heavy Seventh Air Force bombing as well as artillery and
naval shelling of enemy areas had been going on for days. Night
fighters were now assigned to support the advance, so even darkness
afforded the Japanese no protection. By that same 6 August, the defense
line that General Obata had set across Guam had been shattered and
overrun. Only isolated pockets now existed before Santa Rosa.
No American commander could say on 7 August when the fight for Guam
would be over. General Bruce in his attack first to Yigo and then Santa
Rosa would have a relatively fresh regiment, the 306th, which had come
up from the south where it had patrolled with the brigade. It was in
contact with the 9th Marines on the division boundary. Colonel Douglas
C. McNair, 77th Division chief of staff, was there, too, seeking a site
for a division CP and was killed by a sniper. Colonel McNair’s father,
Lieutenant General Leslie J. McNair, was killed in France 12 days
earlier during an American bombing raid.
The attack on Mount Santa Rosa began at noon, 7 August. Behind the
rumble of artillery and rattle of tanks, answered in kind by the enemy,
the 77th took Yigo, the door to Santa Rosa, and continued General
Bruce’s wheeling maneuver. Bulldozers blazed trails, and tanks and
infantry overran machine gun positions. The 77th was dug into positions
on the night of 7-8 August ready for the final attack on the mountain.
The expected big Japanese counterattack still did not come. The rapid
advance of the Americans accompanied by heavy artillery support likely
forestalled that forelorn hope.
[Illustration: _Sherman tanks of the Army 706th Tank Battalion pass
through Agana before taking the cross-island road to join the 77th
Division prior to the Barrigada action._]
Two regiments, the 305th and 307th, proceeded rapidly on 8 August. By
1240, the northern half of Mount Santa Rosa was in American hands,
and the troops moved to secure the rest of the mountain. By 1440 the
Army had reached the cliffs by the sea and could look right down to the
ocean. The 306th infantry had also completed an enveloping move to take
the northern slopes of Mount Santa Rosa.
Only 600 enemy bodies were found after the two-day fight for Yigo and
Santa Rosa. Yet, estimates of the enemy personnel at Santa Rosa had
been as high as 5,000. So this meant that enemy troops in significant
number now infested the jungled terrain everywhere on Guam. Worse, some
enemy tanks were also unaccounted for. Enemy survivors of the Mount
Santa Rosa battle kept drifting into the 9th Marines lines on the Army
flank, slowing the regiment’s advance. Sharp-eyed Marines noted more
than a smattering of enemy movement near a particular hill in the Army
zone. This was believed to be the command post area of General Obata.
The 3d Marines on the left of the division’s zone had progressed with
the same occasional enemy opposition. A 19-man roadblock held up the
Marines, but was taken out quickly. Searching a corridor between the
3d and the 9th Marines, the 21st Marines came upon the bodies of 30
Guamanians near Chaguian. They had been beheaded.
The brigade had it a little easier on the far west, for it found
negligible resistance as it advanced along fairly good trails. On
8 August, a patrol of the 22d Marines reached Ritidian Point, the
northernmost point of the island. Moving along a twisting cliff
trail to the beach, the Marines encountered less-than-aggressive
Japanese defenses which they quickly overcame. General Shepherd’s 1st
Provisional Marine Brigade had the distinction of being first to reach
both the southernmost point of the island in the early days of the
campaign and the northernmost section of Guam at Ritidian Point at this
time.
[Illustration: