eaten the last of their food and drunk their water, they prepared to make a break-out born of desperation. Their commanding officer, one Captain Sasaki, issued this final order:
“Casualties will remain in their present positions and defend Nafutan Point. Those who cannot participate in combat must commit suicide. The password for tonight will be
Shortly after midnight, Sasaki’s men slipped down from their high caves and stole through the outposts of the 105th Infantry. Many of them wore American uniforms, most of them were half-crazed with thirst-and all were bent on destroying Isely Field before wheeling east to Hill 500, where Captain Sasaki imagined brigade headquarters to be.
On Hill 500, most of Jumpin’ Joe Chambers’ men were already asleep.
The battalion had been placed in reserve, along with the remainder of the Twenty-fifth Marines, and ordered back to the hill they had captured on June 20.
Men such as Pfc. Tom McQuabe and Pfc. Bill Cramford-a BAR team holding down a foxhole outpost to the south or rear of Chambers’ command post—could hear the sound of sporadic firing to the north and be grateful for the chance to rest behind the lines.
Captain Sasaki’s band had gotten past the American soldiers. By two o’clock in the morning they had penetrated about a mile to the north. They blundered into the 2nd Battalion, 105th Infantry’s command post and fought a savage close-in fight, inflicting 24 casualties on the soldiers while losing 27 of their own men. Then they swept on to Isely Field, reaching it a half-hour later.
The Japanese set one P-47 on fire and damaged a few others, before they were beaten off by a counterattack of Seabees and Marine engineers. Sasaki’s men turned right and headed for Hill 500, about three miles above them. It was getting light.
“Japs!”
Tom McQuabe and Bill Cramford yelled the warning with a single astonished voice, even as they saw the short men slipping through the half-light toward Hill 500.
The Japanese replied by hurling a grenade which landed in the Marines’ outpost foxhole and wounded McQuabe. Cramford got his BAR going, shooting off three clips before he, too, was wounded—and the Japanese rushed past screeching,
Huddled in a hole beneath a strip of galvanized iron, Pfc. Jim Ferguson and Pfc. Ed Martin heard the shrieking and the sound of gunfire. Ferguson knocked aside the roof with the muzzle of his tommy gun. A helmeted Japanese stared down at him. Ferguson shot him dead with a stream of .45 slugs. Now Sasaki’s men-many of them armed with only “idiot sticks”—were hacking wildly at the Marines. One of them bayoneted Pfc. Robert Postal-but Postal killed him with a rifle shot as he struggled to withdraw the blade. Another knocked Pfc. Jim Davie down with a shovel. A third charged Pfc. Ken Rayburn with a lowered bayonet. Rayburn’s carbine jammed. He seized a pick mattock and hurled it into the Japanese’s stomach.
While Chambers’ men quickly recovered from the surprise of finding the “front” to their rear, the rest of the Japanese were battling with the artillerists of the Second Battalion, Fourteenth Marines.
The American uniforms they wore helped them get close to the artillerymen between Isely Field and Hill 500. The Marines let them come, mistaking them for an Army patrol scheduled to appear at about that time.
By the time a sharp-eyed Marine yelled, “Those ain’t doggies, those are Japs!”—it was almost too late. But the machine guns set up by the artillerymen to protect their guns opened up quickly. The battle raged on for most of the morning, until the men of the Fourteenth Marines had killed 143 of the attackers and lost 33 killed and wounded themselves, and the Twenty-fifth Marines had come down from Hill 500 and cleaned out the remainder of Sasaki’s band.
It had not been anything like “seven lives to repay our country.” It had been a massacre. And as the men of the Twenty-fifth turned to march back to Hill 500, they stopped to watch a Japanese bomber trying to get down through the storm of antiaircraft fire puffing over Isely Field.
“Blow up, you son of a bitch!” a Marine yelled.
The bomber did blow up, and a yell of fierce delight rose from the throats of thousands of Americans who had been watching the plane’s descent. Then the crackling of small arms and the booming of artillery signaled that the attack to the north was still running into enemy resistance.
6
Even with Tapotchau captured, the attack to the north could not become an all-out lunge until the three divisions had spent some time shifting, pinching out, and tidying up the front.
In the days between the mop-up of Nafutan Point on June 27 and resumption of full-scale attack on July 1, the Fourth Marine Division on the right or eastern flank had to clean out Kagman Peninsula before it pushed still farther north.
In the center the 27th Infantry Division still had difficulty moving, and General Jarman relieved one of his regimental commanders. By July 1, however, the 27th had drawn even with the Marines on both flanks and had also received a new commander-Major General George Griner.
On the left the Second Marine Division held fast on the coast beneath Garapan while it hit slowly through The Pimples, the four hills north of Tapotchau. Once The Pimples had been passed, the Second would hurl one regiment into Garapan—now flattened by naval gunfire-while the other units swung left or northwest into Tanapag Harbor just above the city.
Also during this interval the Guam invasion was postponed and the Third Marine Division was sent back to Eniwetok Lagoon while the First Marine Brigade was held in floating reserve. Saipan had been much too tough to allow the Guam landings to proceed. The Japanese had fought with a doggedness and skill which had slowed the American advance beyond expectation. Without water, forced to chew leaves and eat snails or hunt big tree frogs, the Emperor’s soldiers had made the invaders’ life a hell of exploding shells and flying rock splinters.
But the invaders had also taken a fierce toll among the defenders and Howlin’ Mad Smith was confident that his renewed assault would quickly overrun the northern half of Saipan. On June 29, Smith and General Watson of the Second Division went up to Mount Tapotchau to study the terrain Watson’s men would be attacking two days later. It was nearly their last look at any terrain, for Japanese mortars began crashing around them. They jumped from their jeep and ran for a foxhole, waiting there until the barrage stopped-and then quickly departing Tapotchau.
Next day a fierce American mortar barrage produced the same effect upon Lieutenant General Saito. He pulled back to his sixth and last headquarters, another cave, and the main body of his, troops began retreating north to new positions.
The following day—July 1—the Second Marines attacked Garapan and found hardly a building intact in a city that had once housed 15,000 people. Hanging everywhere among the ruins, making a poignance of the desolation, were thousands of bright silk
Throneson’s men routed them next day after vicious fighting. By dusk the Marines held the lower half of the city. A command post had been set up on “Broadway” across the street from the ruined Bank of Taiwan and alongside a Spanish-style Catholic Church which was one of the few buildings still undamaged. Some of the Marines went in. They paused, shocked. Up on the altar was a plaster statue of Christ with the face blown away.
Underneath Sugar Loaf Hill in the foothills to the right or east of Garapan the face of a young Marine had been blown away. An enemy gunner had shot him as he slithered forward over a rock. The bullet tore off the top of
