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They were coming out of the lagoons—out of Majuro, out of Kwajalein, out of Eniwetok—coming with a bright white bone in the teeth of their prows.
They sortied out of the reef passages, battleships leading, while the blue sea water boiled white and frothy over the reefs and curled away in the round distance. Escort ships heeled over and broke column, stiffening their strings of signal flags as they bent it on and raced around the others in protective circle. Up ahead were the fast aircraft carriers—16 of these new queencraft of the seas—guarded by seven big new battleships, 13 cruisers and 58 destroyers.
In all there were 800 ships standing out of the lagoons, carrying 162,000 men and all the guns and airplanes necessary to take the Marianas Islands away from Japan.
For this was early June of 1944. It was exactly two and a half years since Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo had gathered his armada and sailed for Pearl Harbor, thereby incurring the terrible vengeance now drawing closer to Japan, and Nazi Germany as well. Even as these ships sailed to battle in early June, the greatest amphibious force ever assembled was preparing to cross the English Channel to the beaches of Normandy. And yet, though the Channel force was the greater, it was both American and British and it would sail hardly 20 miles. Here in the Pacific, these Marines and soldiers under Lieutenant General Howlin’ Mad Smith were sailing a total of 3,700 miles from the Hawaii staging areas and 2,400 miles from those in Guadalcanal—and every ship but three was American. More, this Pacific force was going to make three separate landings——on Guam, Tinian and Saipan. Saipan would be the first.
Already the assault battalions of the Second and Fourth Marine Divisions had been told that Saipan was their objective. They had learned that this island fourteen miles by six had caves like Tulagi’s, mountains and ridges such as those of Guadalcanal and Bougainville, a reef like Tarawa’s and a swamp like Cape Gloucester’s—while also possessing such novelties as cities, a civilian population of Japanese and Chamorros, and open plains where maneuvering would come under heavy artillery fire. Saipan did not look appealing, and it sounded specially repugnant to those men of the Fourth Division who listened to their battalion surgeon explain some of the island’s other defects.
“In the surf,” he said with solemn relish, “beware of sharks, barracuda, sea snakes, anemones, razor-sharp coral, polluted waters, poison fish and giant clams that shut on a man like a bear trap. Ashore,” he went on with rising enthusiasm, “there is leprosy, typhus, filariasis, yaws, typhoid, dengue fever, dysentery, saber grass, hordes of flies, snakes and giant lizards.” He paused, winded, but rushed on: “Eat nothing growing on the island, don’t drink its waters, and don’t approach its inhabitants.” He stopped, smiled benignly and inquired: “Any questions?”
A private’s hand shot up.
“Yes?”
“Sir,” the private asked, “why’n hell don’t we let the Japs keep the island?”
The answer, if the doctor had known, would have been fourfold.
Those islands which an angry Magellan had named Los Ladrones, or The Thieves, in honor of light-fingered Chamorro natives, and which a priest had renamed Las Marianas, in honor of Spain’s Queen Maria Anna, were important to the Pacific strategy because possession of them would cut off Truk irrevocably, would pierce Japan’s second line of defense, would provide a base to bomb Japan with those huge B-29’s now coming off the assembly lines, and might lure the Japanese Fleet into all-out battle.
Saipan was the chief target because it was 1,500 miles from Tokyo and already possessed a good air base in Aslito Airfield to its south and a new one being built in the north at Marpi Point. It was the heart of the Marianas, the headquarters of Japan’s Central Pacific Fleet commanded by Admiral Nagumo as well as of that 31st Army which Japan had formed by siphoning off battalions from its celebrated Kwantung Army in China (thereby setting up a pushover for the Russian rush a year later). On Saipan were 30,000 troops, mostly soldiers of the 43rd Division, the 47th Mixed Independent Brigade and the usual clutter of Army detachments and groups under the command of Lieutenant General Yoshitsugu Saito.
Lieutenant General Saito was an aged and infirm man. He had taken over on Saipan after the 31st Army’s commander, Lieutenant General Hideyoshi Obata, had departed on a far-flung inspection tour. Saito did not get on with Nagumo, for the hero of Pearl Harbor had been powerless to prevent the steady sinking of Marianas-bound ships by American submarines.
On February 29 the submarine Trout sank the transport
“We cannot strengthen the fortifications appreciably now unless we can get materials suitable for permanent construction,” he informed the Central Fleet commander. “No matter how many soldiers there are, they can do nothing in regard to fortifications but sit around with their arms folded. The situation is unbearable.”
Nagumo did not think the situation unbearable at all. He did not think the Marianas would come under attack before November. He was positive, as was Japanese Imperial Headquarters, that the Americans’ next step would be along the New Guinea-Philippines axis, probably in the Palaus. For this reason Japan had spent most of her material and energy in fortifying the Palaus, especially a postage stamp of an island named Peleliu. Admiral Soemu Toyoda had assembled the Combined Fleet at Tawi Tawi in the Sulu Sea preparatory for a dash to the Palaus to engage the American invasion fleet in the all-out battle he sought as much as had Toga before him and, before him, Yamamoto.
And so, while General Saito got his abundant artillery in place in the hills, grumbling over his inability to emplace coastal guns to carry out his plan “to destroy the enemy at the water’s edge,” Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, like almost everyone else in the Army and Navy, kept his eyes fixed on the Palaus.
Lieutenant General Smith, in command of all Marianas ground troops, planned to attack Saipan on June 15. Three days later Guam would be assaulted. Tinian would be taken a few days after the fall of Saipan. That was the over-all plan.
The plan for Saipan called for a two-division assault on the island’s western side just south of the coastal city of Garapan. The left or northern beach would be hit by units of the Second Marine Division, now commanded by Major General Thomas Watson, who had earned his second star after Eniwetok. The Fourth Division, still led by the Stolid Dutchman—Major General Harry Schmidt—would strike the right or southern beach. In reserve would be the Army’s 27th Infantry Division under Major General Ralph Smith.
While some 700 amtracks carried the assaulting battalions ashore, another force drawn from the Second Division would make a feint at the heavily defended beaches north of Garapan.
Four days before this attacking force dropped anchors off Saipan the planes and guns of the fast carrier fleet began striking the culminating blows of the preliminary bombardment. Three days later, on June 14, the carrier force sent two smaller groups racing north to pin down enemy aerial strength at Iwo Jima and at Chichi Jima and Haha Jima in the Bonins.
That same June 14 Admiral Chuichi Nagumo changed his mind. “The Marianas,” he wrote, “are the first line of defense of our homeland. It is a certainty that the Americans will land in the Marianas Group either this month or the next.”
But a tank officer named Tokuzo Matsuya figured the ships offshore meant something more immediate and he filled his diary with bitter lamentation.
“Where are our planes?” he wrote. “Are they letting us die without making any effort to save us? If it were for the security of the Empire we would not hesitate to lay down our lives, but wouldn’t it be a great loss to the ‘Land of the Gods’ for us all to die on this island? It would be easy for me to die, but for the sake of the future I feel obligated to stay alive.”
And on June 14 the commander of Task Force 58, Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher, got off an exuberant message
