“=Going In--First Wave= _For an hour we plowed toward the beach, the
sun above us coming down through the overcast like a silver burning
ball.... Over the gunwale of a craft abreast of us I saw a Marine, his
face painted for the jungle, his eyes set for the beach, his mouth set
for murder, his big hands quiet now in the last moments before the
tough tendons drew up to kill._”]
That “massif,” later to be called the Umurbrogol Pocket, was the first
of two deadly imponderables, as yet unknown to the division commander
and his planners. Although General Rupertus had been on temporary duty
in Washington during most of his division’s planning for the Peleliu
landing, he had been well briefed for the operation.
The first imponderable involved the real character of Umurbrogol, which
aerial photos indicated as a rather gently rounded north-south hill,
commanding the landing beaches some 2,000-4,000 yards distant. Viewed
in these early photos, the elevated terrain appeared clothed in jungle
scrub, which was almost entirely removed by the preparatory bombardment
and then subsequent heavy artillery fire directed at it. Instead of a
gently rounded hill, the Umurbrogol area was in fact a complex system
of sharply uplifted coral ridges, knobs, valleys, and sinkholes. It
rose above the level remainder of the island from 50 to 300 feet, and
provided excellent emplacements for cave and tunnel defenses. The
Japanese had made the most of what this terrain provided during their
extensive period of occupation and defensive preparations.
The second imponderable facing the Marines was the plan developed by
Colonel Kunio Nakagawa, the officer who was to command the force on
Peleliu, and his superior, Lieutenant General Sadae Inoue, back on
Koror. Their concept of defense had changed considerably from that
which was experienced by General Rupertus at Guadalcanal and Cape
Gloucester, and, in fact, negated his concept of a tough, but quick
campaign.
[Illustration: _As seen from the air on D-Day, 15 September 1944,
Beaches White 1 and 2, on which the 1st and 3d Battalions, 1st Marines,
landed. Capt George P. Hunt’s Company K, 3/1, was on the extreme left
flank of the 1st Marine Division._
Department of Defense Photo (USN) 283745
]
Instead of relying upon a presumed moral superiority to defeat the
attackers at the beach, and then to use _bushido_ spirit and _banzai_
tactics to throw any survivors back into the sea, Peleliu’s defenders
would delay the attacking Marines as long as they could, attempting to
bleed them as heavily as possible. Rather than depending upon spiritual
superiority, they would combine the devilish terrain with the stubborn,
disciplined, Japanese soldiers to relinquish Peleliu at the highest
cost to the invaders. This unpleasant surprise for the Marines marked
a new and important adjustment to the Japanese tactics which were
employed earlier in the war.
[Illustration: ASSAULT ON PELELIU