_In an impromptu command post set up behind his 8th Marines, Col
Clarence R. Wallace checks the progress of his frontline troops on
a situation map. The overhead poncho provides some protection from
Tinian’s constant rains._]
The 2d Division remained in the Marianas, setting up a base camp on
Saipan where the 2d and 6th regiments took up residence in mid-August.
The 8th Marines remained on Tinian for mopping-up purposes until
October 25, when the 2d and 3d Battalions moved to Saipan, leaving an
unhappy 1st Battalion behind until its relief at the end of the year.
The campaign for Tinian had cost the division 760 casualties, including
105 killed. These numbers did not include casualties suffered after the
island was “secured” on 1 August.
Japanese military losses, based on bodies counted and buried, totaled
5,000. Other thousands are assumed to have been sealed up in caves and
underground fortifications. The number of prisoners taken was 250 by
some counts and 400 by others.
[Illustration: _It was not long after the initial landing that Marines
encountered the civilian population of Tinian. Here Marines bathe a
tiny Tinian girl after she and her family had been removed from a
hillside dugout. Following the scrubbing, new clothes were found for
the children and the entire family was taken to a place of safety in
the rear._
Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 90441
]
The capture of the Marianas gave the Army Air Corps the B-29 bases it
needed for the bombing of Japan. They were located 1,200 nautical
miles from the home islands of Japan, a distance ideal for the B-29
with its range of 2,800 miles. Tinian became the home for two wings of
the Twentieth Air Force. Three months after the conquest of Tinian,
B-29s were hitting the Japanese mainland. Over the next year, according
to numbers supplied by the Air Force to historian Carl Hoffman, the
B-29s flew 29,000 missions out of the Marianas, dropped 157,000 tons
of explosives which, by Japanese estimates killed 260,000 people, left
9,200,000 homeless, and demolished or burned 2,210,000 homes.
[Illustration: