_For Tinian, as in the Marshall Islands and the Saipan and Guam
operations, DUKWs (amphibian trucks) were loaded with artillery pieces
and ammunition at the mount out area. At the objective beaches, they
were driven ashore right to the designated gun emplacements enabling
the gun crews to get their weapons laid in and firing quickly. Here, an
A-frame unloads a 75mm pack howitzer from an Army DUKW._]
A Marine combat correspondent, described this action:
[Showers and Daigle] held their fire until the Japanese were 100
yards away, then opened up. The Japanese charged, screaming,
“Banzai,” firing light machine guns and throwing hand grenades.
It seemed impossible that the two Marines--far ahead of their own
lines--could hold on.... The next morning they were found slumped
over their weapons, dead. No less than 251 Japanese bodies were
piled in front of them.... The Navy Cross was awarded posthumously
to Daigle and the Silver Star posthumously to Showers.
Just before daybreak, Chambers recalled, two tank companies showed up,
commanded by Major Robert I. Neiman. They “wanted to get right at the
enemy” and Chambers sent them off to an area held by Companies K and L.
Neiman returned in about a half hour and said, “You don’t need tanks.
You need undertakers. I never saw so many dead Japs.”
[Illustration: _On the night of 24-25 July, a Japanese counterattack
accompanied by tanks failed completely with heavy losses. Here a Marine
inspects the enemy dead near a destroyed tank. Note the placement of
the bullet holes in the helmets in the ditch._
Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 91047
]
Another large contingent of Japanese troops was “stacked up” by the
75mm pack howitzer gunners of Battery D of the 14th Marines, supported
by the .50-caliber machine guns of Batteries E and F: “They literally
tore the Japanese ... to pieces.” Altogether about 600 Japanese were
killed in their attack on the center.
On the left flank, 1st Battalion, 24th Marines, came under attack at
0200 from about 600 _Special Naval Landing Force_ troops out of the
barracks at the Ushi Point airfields. Company A, hit so hard it was
reduced at one point to only 30 men with weapons, was forced to draw
reinforcements from engineers, corpsmen, communicators, and members of
the shore party. Illumination flares were fired over the battlefield,
allowing the Marines to use 37mm cannister shells, machine gun fire,
and mortars to good effect. The fight continued until dawn when medium
tanks from the 4th Tank Battalion lumbered in to break up the last
attacking groups. At that point, many Japanese began using their
grenades to commit suicide.
As the sun rose, 476 Japanese bodies were counted in this sector of the
defensive crescent, most of them in front of the Company A position.
The last enemy attack that night hit the right or southern flank of the
Marines beginning at 0330 when six Japanese tanks (half of the Japanese
tank force on Tinian) clattered up from the direction of Tinian Town
to attack the 23d Marines position. They were met by fire from Marine
artillery, anti-tank guns, bazookas, and small arms. Lieutenant Jim
Lucas, a professional reporter who enlisted in the Marine Corps shortly
after the attack on Pearl Harbor and was commissioned in the field, was
there:
The three lead tanks broke through our wall of fire. One began to
glow blood-red, turned crazily on its tracks and careened into a
ditch. A second, mortally wounded, turned its machine guns on its
tormentors, firing into the ditches in a last desperate effort to
fight its way free. One hundred yards more and it stopped dead in
its tracks. The third tried frantically to turn and then retreat,
but our men closed in, literally blasting it apart.... Bazookas
knocked out a fourth tank with a direct hit which killed the
driver. The rest of the crew piled out of the turret screaming.
The fifth tank, completely surrounded, attempted to flee. Bazookas
made short work of it. Another hit set it afire and its crew was
cremated.
The sixth tank was chased off, according to Colonel Jones, by a Marine
driving a jeep. Some appraisers of this action believe only five tanks
were involved. In any case, the destruction of these tanks did not end
the fight on the right flank. Infantry units of the _50th Regiment_
continued to attack in the zone of 2d Battalion, 23d Marines. They were
repulsed and killed in great numbers, largely through the effective
use of 37mm anti-tank guns using cannister shot. In “the last hopeless
moments of the assault,” Hoffman wrote, “some of the wounded Japanese
destroyed themselves by detonating a magnetic tank mine which produced
a terrific blast.”
[Illustration: _A line of skirmishers was the formation normally used
at Tinian even where there was no enemy contact. A platoon from the
2d Marines pushes forward while an observation plane (OY) circles
overhead. High ground in the distance is part of a long spine extending
straight south from Mount Lasso, an objective to be taken._
Marine Corps Historical Collection
]
From the Japanese standpoint, the night’s work had been a disaster:
1,241 bodies left on the battlefield; several hundred more may have
been carted away during the night. Fewer than 100 Marines were wounded
or killed. “The loss of these [Japanese] troops,” the historian Frank
Hough has written:
... broke the back of the defense of Tinian. With their
communications shattered by sustained fire from Saipan and
increasing fire from Tinian itself ... the survivors were capable
of only the weakest, most dazed sort of resistance.... Now and
again during the next seven days, small groups took advantage of
the darkness to [launch night attacks], but for the most part
they simply withdrew in no particular order until there remained
nowhere to withdraw.
That was a common judgment after the Tinian battle had ended. But
at the time, according to the 4th Division intelligence officer,
Lieutenant Colonel Gooderham McCormick, a Marine Reserve officer who
later became mayor of Philadelphia, things were not so clear: “We still
believed [after the counterattack] the enemy capable of a harder fight
... and from day to day during our advance expected a bitter fight that
never materialized.”
Nevertheless, a lot of hard work lay ahead. One of the most demanding
tasks was the simple but exhausting job of humping through cane fields
in terrific heat, humidity, and frequent monsoon downpours, fearful
not only of sniper fire, mines, or booby traps, but fearful as well of
fires that could sweep through the cane fields, incinerating anyone in
their path.
[Sidebar (page 12): Preparatory Strikes
No battle in the Pacific was a “piece of cake.” But there was less
apprehension among the Americans about the outcome at Tinian than in
any major operation of the war. Admiral Raymond A. Spruance later
described it as “probably the most brilliantly conceived and executed
amphibious operation of World War II.” Lieutenant General Holland M.
Smith, commander of the Expeditionary Troops during the seizure of the
Marianas, called it “the perfect amphibious operation.”
It took place under optimal conditions for success. The small Japanese
garrison on the island had no hope of relief, resupply, escape, or
victory. Three miles away, across the narrow Saipan Channel, three
battle-tested American divisions--more than 50,000 men--were available
for the inevitable invasion. For seven weeks the bombardment from
U.S. air and sea armadas, joined by the big guns on Saipan, had been
relentless, day and night.
The effect on Tinian’s civilian inhabitants was recorded by James L.
Underhill, later a Marine lieutenant general, who became the island’s
military commander at the end of the battle:
The state of these people was indescribable. They came in with no
possessions except the rags on their backs. They had been under a
two-month intense bombardment and shelling and many were suffering
from shell shock.... They had existed on very scant rations for six
weeks and for the past week had had practically nothing to eat.
They had been cut off from their own water supply for a week and
had caught what rainwater they could in bowls and cans. Hundreds of
them were wounded and some of their wounds were gangrenous. Beri
beri, syphilis, pneumonia, dysentery, and tuberculosis were common.
[They needed] shelter, food, water, clothing, medical care, and
sanitation.
The bombardment began on 11 June--four days before the Saipan
invasion--when carrier planes from Vice Admiral Marc A. Mitscher’s Task
Force 58 launched a three-and-a-half day pummeling of all the principal
Mariana Islands. A fighter sweep on the first day, carried out by 225
Grumman Hellcats, destroyed about 150 Japanese aircraft and ensured
American control of the skies over the islands.
Following the raid, a member of the Japanese garrison on Saipan, wrote
in his diary: “For two hours, enemy planes ran amuck and finally left
leisurely amidst the unparalleledly inaccurate antiaircraft fire. All
we could do was watch helplessly.”
Over the next two days, bombers hit the islands and shipping in the
area with no letup. There was a fatalistic diary entry by one of the
Tinian troops: “Now begins our cave life.” Another soldier wrote of
the ineffectual antiaircraft fire--“not one hit out of a thousand
shots”--and reported that “the Naval Air Group has taken to its
heels.” Yet another diarist was indignant, too: “The naval aviators
are robbers.... When they ran off to the mountains they stole Army
provisions.”
Fast battleships from Task Force 58 joined the bombardment from long
range on 13 June. Their fires, analysts later said, were “ineffective”
and “misdirected” at soft targets rather than at the concealed gun
positions ringing the island. But, as an element in the cumulative
psychological and physical toll on soldiers and civilians alike,
harassing fires of this nature were not inconsiderable.
Over the next six weeks, the effort to degrade and destroy the defenses
and garrison of Tinian escalated. On 18 June, Navy Task Force 52,
commanded by Rear Admiral Richmond K. Turner, added its guns to the
mission. Air strikes involving carrier planes and Army P-47s were
ordered. From 28 June until the Tinian landing on 24 July, massed
artillery battalions, firing from Saipan’s southern shore, poured
thousands of tons of steel into the island. By mid-July, 13 battalions
were engaged in the mission, firing 160 guns--105s and Long Tom
155s--around the clock. The six battalions of the XXIV Corps Artillery
alone undertook 1,509 fire missions in that period, firing 24,536
rounds.
The precise effect of the artillery fires from Saipan will never be
known, but it is reasonable to assume there were many scenes of the
kind retired Brigadier General Frederick Karch described in his oral
history memoir. He was a young major, serving as operations officer for
an artillery regiment--the 14th Marines--during the Tinian campaign,
and he recalled:
I remember going by a [Japanese] machine gun crew. They had been
trying to get to a firing position and had been caught by the
artillery barrage, apparently, and they were laid out just like
a school solution, with each man carrying his particular portion
of the gun crew’s equipment. And that was where they had died in
a very fine situation, except they were on the wrong side of the
barrage.
During the two weeks from 26 June to 9 July, the cruisers
_Indianapolis_, _Birmingham_, and _Montpelier_ hit the island daily.
Their fires were supplemented in the week preceding Jig Day (the D-day
designation for Tinian) by the battleships _Colorado_, _Tennessee_,
and _California_; the cruisers _Louisville_, _Cleveland_, and _New
Orleans_; 16 destroyers; and dozens of supporting vessels firing a
variety of ordnance ranging from white phosphorous aimed at wooded
areas around the Japanese command post on Mount Lasso to 40mm fire and
rocket barrages by LCIs (landing craft, infantry) directed at caves and
other close-in targets.
]
[Sidebar (page 18): Aerial Reconnaissance and Photography
In the months leading up to the invasion, intensive reconnaissance was
undertaken. The first aerial photos of 1944 had been acquired back in
February when U.S. carrier planes attacked Saipan. Others were obtained
in April and May by photo planes based at Eniwetok. These early
photographs were of little use to invasion planners. Their quality was
poor and many were taken at angles that distorted the terrain.
These inadequacies hampered the Saipan planners but Tinian was another
story. “Perhaps no other Pacific island ...,” Marine Corps analysts
later concluded, “became so familiar to the assault forces because of
thorough and accurate [photography and] mapping prior to the landings.”
A lot of the familiarization came from first-hand observation by
division, regimental, and battalion commanders who used observation
planes to conduct their own reconnaissance of the Tinian beaches and
inland terrain. Lieutenant Colonel Justice M. Chambers, commander of
the 3d Battalion, 25th Marines, described his preinvasion visit to the
island:
There was a lieutenant commander Muller, a naval aviator, who
apparently had a set of roving orders. He had brought his flight of
three Liberators to Saipan.... I thought it would be a good idea
to take my company commanders and overfly the beaches that we’re
going to use.... So the 3rd Battalion group took the flight and
practically all the battalions did the same.
We took off from Saipan and of course the minute you were airborne
you were over Tinian. I had talked it over with Muller and told him
that the last beach we would overfly would be the one we were going
to hit. I said, “Let’s take a look at a lot of other beaches first
and fly over the interior.” We made passes at several beaches. I
was standing up in a blister where I could see and my officers had
the bomb bays open and were looking down. We flew around maybe
20 or 30 minutes, and then we made a big loop and came back over
the beaches we were going to land on. I’m glad we did because we
spotted ... mines in the water which the Navy got out.
We zoomed in on Mount Lasso, which was the only mountain on
Tinian. The island was just one big cane field, and Mount Lasso
was directly ahead of our beaches. Muller started pulling out
and I began to see white things zipping by outside the plane....
I was fighting to keep my stomach down because a fast elevator
is too much for me. I asked: “What’s that?” He replied, “Twenty
millimeter. Where do you want to go now?” I said, “Saipan. There
are no foxholes up here.”
The photographic coverage of Tinian, along with prisoners and
documents captured at Saipan, and other intelligence available to U.S.
commanders, made them, according to the official history, “almost as
familiar with the Japanese strength at Tinian as was Colonel Ogata [the
Japanese commander].”
]
_The Drive South_
Lieutenant Colonel William W. “Bucky” Buchanan was the assistant naval
gunfire officer for the 4th Division at Tinian. His career later took
him to Vietnam. After his retirement as a brigadier general he recalled
the Tinian campaign:
We used the same tactics on Tinian that we did on Saipan: that is,
a hand-holding, linear operation, like a bunch of brush-beaters,
people shooting grouse or something, the idea being to flush out
every man consistently as we go down, rather than driving down the
main road with a fork and cutting this off and cutting this off in
what I call creative tactics, you see. But this was the easiest
thing and the safest thing to do. And who can criticize it? It was
successful. Here, again, what little resistance was left was pushed
into the end of the island ... and quickly collapsed.
The grouse-shooting metaphor is simplistic but even the 4th Division
commander, Major General Clifton B. Cates, thought the campaign had
its sporting aspects: “The fighting was different from most any that
we had experienced because it was good terrain.... It was a good clean
operation and I think the men really enjoyed it.”
Before the “brush beating” could begin in proper order, three things
needed to be achieved. First, the 2d Marine Division had to be put
ashore. This task was completed on the morning of 26 July--Jig plus 2.
[Illustration: TINIAN