The Pictorial History of Guam: Liberation 1944 9780930839000, 0930839005

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The Pictorial History of Guam

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Also by the author The Americanization of Guam: 1891 – 1918 Sacrifice of Guam: 1919 – 1943 Guam, A Brief History Tinian, A Brief History Saipan, A Brief History Rota, A Brief History History of the Northern Mariana Islands History of the Mariana Islands to Partition

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The Pictorial History of Guam By Don A. Farrell

LIBERATION-1944 EDITOR Phyllis Koontz DESIGNER AND ILLUSTRATOR Ariel Dimalanta

Published by

Micronesian Productions P.O. Box 5 Tinian, MP 96952 [email protected]

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The Pictorial History of Guam: Liberation – 1944 (Second Edition) Copyright 1984 by Don A. Farrell. All rights reserved. Published by Micronesian Productions, P.O. Box 5, Tinian, MP 96952 No part of this book may be used whatsoever without the written permission of the publisher, except for brief passages used in a book review. LC CALL NUMBER: D767.99.G8 F37 1984 ISBN 978-0-930839-00-0

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To the Chamorro people, proud survivors of 400 years of military colonialism

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They say it was a shocking sight, After the field was won, For many thousand bodies here Lay rotting in the sun; But things like that you know, must be After a famous victory, - ROBERT SOUTHEY “The Battle of Blenheim”

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CONTENTS Acknowledgements   ix Introduction   1 Prologue   3 Prelude to Invasion   5 The Chamorros: Proud Survivors   27 Liberation Day   55 Securing the Final Beachhead Line   93 The Drive North   125 The Last Days of the Japanese Occupation   157 Epilogue   171 Bibliography   189 Index   191 Picture Credits   193

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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he creation of this volume of The Pictorial History of Guam series began with a thorough analysis of the U.S. Marine Corps monograph, “The Recapture of Guam” by Major O. R. Lodge, U.S. Marine Corps. His exhaustive research conducted shortly after the end of World War II served as the basis for my descriptions of the planning and the battle for the recapture of Guam. Many veterans of the Guam campaign have returned to Guam, either for a visit or to live. For one reason or another, their time here in 1944 remains the most memorable period of their lives. I was very fortunate to have made the acquaintance of one of those men, John J. “Jack” Eddy, Major, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired). His endless and sometimes mentally painful hours of walking the battlefields of Guam with me, describing the events of war as he lived them and as his comrades died during them, have given me an immense admiration for the United States Marine Corps and the very unpleasant tasks they are called upon to perform, during our nation’s darkest hours. “Semper fi!” Jack. The pages herein on the prelude to invasion are my own view of the events and world political situations that led up to the Japanese capture of Guam, and then the American plans to recapture it. I am extremely grateful to Dirk Anthony Ballendorf, Ph.D., Director of the Micronesian Area Research Center of the University of Guam and to Robert F. Rogers, Ph.D., University of Guam for their review of this section. Of utmost importance in developing a balance between the American military perspective and the Chamorro civilian perspective were the critical readings of the manuscript by Commodore Dale N. Hagen, Commander Naval Forces Marianas; Robert Underwood, Ph.D., University of Guam; Vicente Blaz, Brigadier General, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired); and Adolph Peter Sgambelluri, Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired), Guam Community College. Enough kind words cannot be said for the advice given me by Dr. Pedro C. Sanchez, educator, historian, and author, who reviewed this manuscript and graciously allowed me to quote from his book, Uncle Sam, Please Come Back to Guam.

Thanks also go to Ralph J. M. Reyes, Superintendent of the War in the Pacific National Historical Park, for allowing me to reproduce the illustrations created by Jimmy Garrido, and to Jimmy, of course. Rose Manibusan has been most helpful since the day I walked into her office. For help in gathering documents and photographs, enough cannot be said of the help provided me by the professional research assistants at the U.S. National Archives and Research Agency, College Park, Maryland; the USMC Archives and Visual Media Repository, Quantico, Virginia; Charles Haberlein, Director and his assistants, Edward Finney, Jr. and Robert Hanshew of the Still Photograph Collection, Navy Historical Heritage, Washington Navy Yard; Seth Paridon, Manager of Research Services, The National World War II Museum, Orlando, Florida; and the staff and management of the Micronesian Area Research Center, University of Guam, particularly Emilie Johnston, Lourdes Nededog and Perry Pangelinan. Many other people gave of their time and memories to the creation of this book, including Archbishop Felixberto Camacho Flores; Senator Antonio R. Unpingco; Senator Francisco R. Santos; Lieutenant Steve Burnet, U.S. Navy; Captain Woody Broadus, U.S. Marine Corps; Jack Guerrero; Pat Santos; Bill Wurch; Magdalena Taitano; Geraldine Gutierrez; David Cruz; Matilde Olmos; Joe Q. Taitano; Tun Pedro Rosario; Tun Pedro Cruz; Ignacio S. Cruz; Commissioner Jose R. Tyquingco; Commissioner Antonio C. Babauta; and most assuredly David B. Tydingco. I was most fortunate to have the services of Ariel Dimalanta for layout and design. His sensitivity to the subject and artistic talent helped bring the book to life. A large measure of credit also goes to Phyllis Koontz, who accepted the responsibility of taking the first draft of the manuscript and turning it into the professional document that it has become. Her dedication to perfection is surpassed only by her patience with the author. Last, but far from least, I would like to thank the spouses and families of the editor, the designer, and the author. They endured the creation of this book in creditable silence.

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INTRODUCTION

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he Chamorro civilization of the Mariana Islands had flourished, without external influence, for over 4,000 years. Then, in the sixteenth century, the isolation of this tropical Pacific paradise was shattered by the expanding Spanish empire. In the succeeding generations, the islands’ Chamorro culture was infused with Spanish Catholicism, and the rebellious male population was virtually exterminated. In 1898, a growing and confident America usurped the colonial rule of Spain on Guam, largest and most strategic of the Marianas. Forty-three years later, Japan took Guam from the United States, and two and a half years after that, America retrieved it. No single event more dramatically altered the course of Guam’s future than did the American recapture of the island from the Japanese, in July and August of 1944. The horrendous preinvasion bombardment obliterated the architectural masterpieces of Guam’s Spanish-Chamorro heritage. The Dulce Nombre de Maria Cathedral and the Governor’s Palace—traditional symbols of religion and government for the Chamorro people—were pulverized. Homes and businesses were destroyed. The Guamanians, bearers of the ancient Chamorro bloodlines, were trapped, innocent victims caught between a clash of titans. When the battle for Guam was over, the island was securely in the hands of the United States military; what had been a distant, almost-forgotten stepchild of Uncle Sam, was suddenly the springboard for America’s final act of revenge against Japan. Guam became the forward base for stockpiling military equipment and supplies, submarine tending and ship repair, as the U.S. prepared for an invasion of the Japanese homeland, an invasion that was rendered unnecessary by the atomic bomb. World War II was finally over, but there was no going back to the prewar days of a benevolent naval administration. The war had awakened the Chamorro leaders to the intrinsic value of Guam, by virtue of its location, to U.S. global military strategy. The people of Guam had earned the right to American citizenship and the right to govern themselves. They demanded these rights, and eventually received them. There was no going back to the old days of a subsistence economy. As in prior centuries in other parts of the world, trade followed the flag, bringing Guam a privatesector economy to supplement that of the military. Today, Guam is being developed into the tip of America’s spear in the Western Pacific. And, even though the federal government continues to control a large percentage of the island, Guam’s private economy and local government have suc-

cessfully developed side-by-side with the military community and are taking part in the economic and political affairs of the region. The Chamorros have managed to survive this metamorphosis with dignity and pride, and with more than a trace of the old days still very much in evidence. The continuity of the Chamorro culture has been maintained. The Chamorro language still lives. Fiestas demonstrate both the religious heritage and the warm-hearted hospitality of the people. Traditional methods of fishing and weaving and healing are still practiced. Many of the ancient ways live on—some in everyday life and others in the collective memories of the older generation, who share them with succeeding ones. The reader may notice that I use the terms Chamorro and Guamanian interchangeably. This book is not an anthropological treatise. It is a pictorial history. And for whatever reason, many of Guam’s people refer to themselves and one another as both Chamorro and Guamanian. I have taken the liberty of doing the same. Neither is this book a detailed account of every battle in the Guam campaign. That can be found in other works intended for that purpose and listed in the bibliography. As with the first volume in The Pictorial History of Guam series, “The Americanization of Guam: 1898 - 1918,” the primary purpose of this book is to help record the story of the Chamorros and the events that make up the history of their island. Their story is one of survival, of meeting the onslaught of progress, while still maintaining their unique cultural identity. And, as recounted in this volume, of confronting with courage the hardships of occupation and the horrors of war. I realize that no one who did not live through the experiences set out in this book can adequately portray them from the perspective of those who did. However, it is my hope that today’s older generation of Chamorros and the veterans of the Guam campaign will use the photographs and illustrations reproduced here to show and tell their children and grandchildren their history, as they lived it. I can only hope that, could they see this book, the Chamorros who lost their lives on Guam during World War II and the American fighting men who gave their lives here liberating them would be pleased with my effort to ensure that their ordeal and their sacrifice will never be forgotten. 

DON A. FARRELL

Tamuning, Guam January 18, 1984 1

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PROLOGUE S

Japanese left. After several seemingly endless moments, Juan slowly pushed the dirt from his face and peered around. He saw no one. With his head hanging to one side, he sat up and then, in incredible pain, struggled to his feet and stumbled away. In the woods nearby he fell and stared back at the crater that had been his intended grave. In a macabre scene, his friend Jose Camacho soon got up and also walked away. Then Beatrice sat up. With blood and mud caked on her neck, she wandered aimlessly into the woods. Juan, in shock from his slashed neck, could not call out to her, and was in too much pain to go to her. Two days later. Juan found Beatrice still wandering in the woods. Together they made their way to Juan's home in Agana. By now the Americans had landed and the Japanese were fighting them to the south of the capital. The ruined city was abandoned. Silently staring at each other's wounds, Juan and Beatrice ate rice together and rested. For three days they struggled back through the Japanese lines, through the jungle and the mud, and finally reached the Manengon concentration camp on the eastern side of the island. There, Joaquina Siguenza, assistant chief nurse at the prewar Agana Hospital, removed the maggots from their wounds and washed away the blood and dirt. They proudly survived the Japanese occupation, these Chamorros. They and many more like them bear boldly the scars of war. It is the Chamorros' wish that these stories be told – not out of a smoldering sense of revenge against the Japanese, for those wounds have long since passed into unspoken memories, but to have the world understand the horrors of a war inflicted on an innocent people, and to have the events and effects of that war well recorded.

ixteen-year-old Juan Cabrera and his fifteen-year-old friend Beatrice Flores Perez were captured by the Japanese in Agana, Guam, on July 18, 1944. The capital city had been declared off-limits to the Chamorros ever since the frantic Japanese had incarcerated them in concentration camps a week before. Found scrounging for food, the two youths were herded together with another nine Chamorro captives, beaten, and dragged away. The Americans had been bombing the island continuously for ten days. Beatrice and Juan were charged with waving flags at the American pilots – aiding the enemy. Without discussion, the eleven Chamorros were convicted and locked into a damp, dark cave for two days without food or water. At three in the morning on the third day, they were awakened, marched to a large bomb crater, and ordered to kneel and bow their heads. On this tiny island knitted together by an extended family system of intense loyalty, each Chamorro drew courage from his friends and relatives in the circle as sabers and bayonets were raised into the air behind them. Each knew his fate. Many others had faced the blade in the last few weeks, some publicly. At the order from their commanding officer, eleven Japanese soldiers simultaneously struck their individual victims. Beatrice was jarred by a blow that slashed her neck and threw her into the crater. Juan, kneeling beside her, also fell forward under the blade of his executioner. Juan never lost consciousness. Although he had been cut deeply, the bayonet had missed the jugular vein. Frightened beyond speech, his neck bleeding profusely, he lay silent and motionless. He felt dirt being shoveled in on top of him. Bodies nearby jerked spasmodically. Then the dirt stopped falling and the bodies stopped moving. The 3

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Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, commander-in-chief, Pacific Fleet and Pacific Ocean Areas, seen above enjoying a moment on the deck of a destroyer, surprised the Japanese with an early invasion of the Marianas.

PRELUDE TO INVASION T

claim to “special interests” in northern China. This foreign policy decision on the part of the United States and Great Britain gave Japan the confidence to embark on a political, and eventually a military, campaign to establish a sphere of influence in northern China. This decision would eventually lead America to war with Japan. When hostilities broke out between Germany and Great Britain at the start of World War I, Japan—invoking the terms of its naval treaty with Great Britain—chased Germany’s fleet out of the Pacific, and seized all the German-held islands of Micronesia north of the equator and the German colony at Tsingtao on the southern coast of the Shandong Peninsula in northern China. As the German U-boat threat to the British Navy increased, Great Britain agreed to recognize Japan’s claim to Micronesia after the war if the Japanese Fleet would support the British Navy in the Mediterranean. During the negotiations for the Treaty of Versailles ending World War I, the United States refused to recognize the Japanese claim to what had been German Micronesia. President Woodrow Wilson, trying to salvage his League of Nations vision, eventually gave in to British pressure, but

he close of the nineteenth century saw Great Britain struggling to hold on to its colonies in Asia as the United States, Japan, and Germany attempted to gain a larger share of the imperial pie. Germany’s increasing military thrusts in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean were pressuring the British to withdraw their aging fleet from Asia. Thinking that Japan would never be so foolish as to force a conflict with the United States, Britain entered into a naval alliance with Japan. The Japanese Imperial Fleet and the British Royal Navy pledged their mutual support should either be attacked by Germany, France, or Russia. By the turn of the century, Japan was flexing its economic and military muscles. Resisting aggressive thrusts by her arch-rival, Russia, Japan launched her warships on a surprise attack on the Russian Navy in the harbor of Port Arthur in northeastern China. On February 8, 1904, the Japanese caught Russia’s fleet at anchor and destroyed it. At the conclusion of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, Great Britain extended its naval treaty with Japan, quite pleased that Russia’s naval presence in the Far East had been neutralized. President Theodore Roosevelt recognized the Japanese 5

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obtained an agreement from the Japanese that Japan would administer her Micronesian islands under a Class C mandate, providing a civilian and not a military government. This Japan agreed to in 1920, and the United States acquiesced. Thus, just as America had allowed its Guam colony to become surrounded by Germany before World War I, America had now permitted Guam to be surrounded by Japan before World War II. In a futile attempt to stop the growth of Imperial Japan, America convinced Japan, at the 1921-1922 Washington Conference for Arms Limitations, to freeze military expansion in the Pacific. During these negotiations, Great Britain finally chose to break from its pro-Japanese tendencies. In the words of Winston Churchill, then colonial secretary, “No more fatal policy could be contemplated than that of basing our naval policy on a possible combination with Japan

against the United States.” The Anglo-American bond was reaffirmed. Regrettably, Japan received the better end of the deal in the ensuing Naval Limitation and Non-Fortification Treaty, as the agreement effectively prevented the United States from fortifying the Philippines, Guam, and Wake. But even before World War I, American military strategists had been analyzing the situation in the Far East with misgiving, and had begun developing a portfolio referred to as Plan Orange – Orange meaning Japan. The Navy initiated these documents with a directive from the Office of Naval Intelligence, asking the various service branches to develop their own plans for an anticipated operation against Japan. Prior to the Spanish-American War, isolationist-minded America had seen itself as an Army power, essentially landlocked and expanding on its own continental boundaries. Admiral Alfred T. Mahan, the foremost proponent of American sea power, pushed for a stronger Navy and fostered the

Before World War II, Guam’s capital city of Agana housed nearly half of the island’s population.

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idea of the Marine Corps as the naval assault force, or as some called them, “the soldiers of the sea.” Colonel Earl H. Ellis, United States Marine Corps, contributed a paper to the ever-evolving Plan Orange entitled “Advance Base Operations in Micronesia.” Ellis predicted that, just as the Japanese had surprised the Russian Navy at Port Arthur in 1904, beginning the Russo-Japanese War, the Japanese would surprise America at its naval base in Pearl Harbor. And Ellis envisioned that, just as in Russia, America’s Navy would be destroyed at anchor. In 1931 the Japanese Army reached out and seized Manchuria. That same year the United States Secretary of the Navy ordered the naval governor of Guam to demilitarize the island to avoid antagonizing Japan. All shore guns, mounts, and mobile battalions were to be removed from Guam. In the mid-1930s naval cadets at Annapolis were studying the “Guam Problem”: how to defend or invade a high coral is-

land. Some of these future officers would later have the opportunity to put their classroom solutions into practice. It was also in the mid-1930s that America, in an effort to block further Japanese expansion in the Pacific, called attention to Japan’s excesses in Manchuria, and also pointed out that one of the covenants of the Japanese mandate prohibited the construction of military bases. Successive naval governors of Guam had reported Japanese bases in the Mariana Islands. America demanded inspections in Manchuria and in Micronesia, a demand that caused the Japanese to walk out of the League of Nations. Now, finally, Depression-torn America awoke to the realization that something was fundamentally wrong in the Pacific. In 1937 Japan invaded China. The seasoned army that slaughtered Chinese peasants would eventually be assigned to defend Guam’s Asan beachhead against America’s invading 3rd Marine Division.

By the time the island was recaptured from the Japanese, Agana was a city of ruins.

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The United States Navy changed its mind in 1939 over the value of Guam and asked Congress for $5 million to dredge Apra Harbor. “A dagger in the throat of Japan!” warned New York’s Hamilton Fish. “A small kumquat in the hands of Japan,” taunted Wisconsin’s Stephen Balles. When the House turned down the Navy’s request, Bruce Barton of New York sang out, “Guam, Guam with the wind.” Admiral Robert “Fighting Bob” Evans sarcastically said of Guam’s military defenses, “Anyone who wants it can take it in an hour.” Admiral Mahan, in his book Influence of Sea Power on History, gave his opinion on the feasibility of fortifying Guam: “Neither strength nor resources should be accumulated there unless the whole is made so strong that it cannot be easily reduced. If Guam was to fall to a surprise, or to a siege, better it fall a bare situation than provided with works and armament and supplies valuable for such a land force

as Japan could spare it. Should Japan seize, she must also hold; and, to hold, she must provide that which we, the present owners, also need.” The Joint Chiefs of Staff decided that it was better to sacrifice Guam, undeveloped, than to reinforce it at great expense only to lose it anyway. Guam was written off. After war broke out in Europe in 1939, Germany – now fighting Russia – asked Imperial Japan to join the Axis and conquer the Russian Bear. Later, Hitler assured Japan, they could deal with the sleeping giant, America, together. Instead, Tokyo chose to fight a “limited” war with the United States. Japan’s formidable Army and prideful Navy elected to capture easily accessible Southeast Asia, with its badly needed oil and rubber, rather than suffer a war in the cold of Siberia. To protect their ever-expanding Greater East Asia CoProsperity Sphere, the Japanese high command decided

Marine Colonel Earl H. Ellis had predicted that Japan would launch a surprise attack on America’s naval installation at Pearl Harbor.

Hideki Tojo was the premier of Japan when the plans were laid for the attack on Pearl Harbor. He assured the Japanese emperor that the decadent Americans would never expend the blood and treasure necessary to recapture their Pacific islands.

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U.S. Navy minesweeper Penguin was sunk off Orote Peninsula. The war against America had begun. Shortly after midnight on the morning of December 10, 1941, two Saipanese were caught coming ashore on Guam. They told the Guamanians that a Japanese invasion force would soon be landing. At about 2:00 a.m., members of the all-Chamorro Guam Insular Force formed up outside the Governor’s Palace at the Plaza de Espana, where they were issued weapons and ammunition. Pedro Cruz, armed with a machine gun, Vicente C. Chargualaf, and Roman Camacho waited tensely at one corner of the plaza. The Japanese approached the palace grounds, and Cruz started firing. Many Japanese fell, but others immediately fired back. Chargualaf was hit first, then Camacho. Cruz continued to fire until his gun jammed and he heard Navy Chief Lane screaming, “Cease fire and retreat! Cease fire and retreat!”

that America’s fleet had to be neutralized. And to safeguard the Japanese homeland, scores of central and western Pacific islands would be taken to form concentric defensive rings extending outward from Japan. The Japanese cabinet scoffed that the decadent democracies “would not expend the blood and treasure necessary to take back what they would lose.” Premier Hideki Tojo approved the plan. Guam, undefended and helpless, stood ripe for the picking in a Japanese-dominated ocean. While an excited Japanese pilot was screaming “Tora! Tora! Tora!” above the waters of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Chamorros of Guam, on the other side of the international date line, were preparing for the December 8 Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Suddenly they heard the strange, frightening thunder of bombs exploding on their island as Japanese fighter-bombers from Saipan attacked naval installations in Apra Harbor. The

(Left) Captain George J. McMillin was the commander of the Naval Station and the naval governor of Guam in 1941. His family and those of all other military personnel on Guam were shipped home by mid-October of that year. On December 6, 1941, McMillin had all classified documents burned. Two days later the island was bombed by Japanese aircraft from Saipan. On December 10, Major General Tomitara Horii (below) landed his shock troops of the South Seas Detachment on Guam, and Governor McMillin surrendered. Horii was responsible for many Chamorro deaths that day and during the ensuing weeks until he left for the attack on New Guinea. He died an inglorious death during his retreat across New Guinea’s Owen Stanley Range.

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By 5:45 a.m., all firing on Guam had stopped. Major General Tomitara Horii and his more than 5,000 shock troops of the South Seas Detachment from the 5th Defensive Force were too much for the poorly equipped Guam Insular Force. Captain George J. McMillin, naval governor of Guam, surrendered his command to General Horii that same day, and the flag with the blazing red sun was raised on Guam. Thus began two and a half years of Japanese occupation of the American colony of Guam; two and a half years of indignity, terror, death – and honor – for the Chamorros. Other islands fell as well – Singapore, Wake, and the Philippines among them. With much of the Pacific Fleet resting at the bottom of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese Navy sailed freely where it chose. There were encounters with American carriers that had escaped the disaster at Pearl Harbor; but for all intents and purposes, the entire western Pacific had

become a Japanese lake. Meanwhile, the United States withdrew into the security of its mainland defenses, licked its wounds, and began the long process of gearing up for war. As a result, 1942 became known as the lost year in the Pacific. Japan exploited its Pacific islands and pushed south toward Australia. America built war machines and sold war bonds. What Japan did not realize, as Hitler did, was that the preemptive attack against America had inevitably sealed the coffin on both Germany and Japan. Hitler perceived the Americans as pacifists and isolationists. He understood that Americans were not generally warlike. But the infamy of the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on a peaceful, church-going Sunday morning would coalesce the Americans into total, global war. Hundreds of thousands of men who ordinarily wouldn’t take the time to vote now stood in line to sign up for a chance to avenge the unprovoked attack on their

(Above) On December 7, 1941, Ambassador and Retired Admiral Kichisaburo Nomura and Special Envoy Saburo Kurusu waited outside Secretary of State Cordell Hull’s office to deliver Japan’s last note to America. Bombs were already falling on Guam and Pearl Harbor. (Right) In 1942 America was selling the war bonds that would build the military machine to win the global conflict. War bond posters such as this appeared on the walls of public buildings all over America.

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country. The United States emerged from the Depression and went to work—and to war. The second year of the Pacific war, 1943, found newly trained American recruit—most of them nineteen to twentythree year old boys—learning how to kill and stay alive, while the Japanese learned how to die with honor, at such places as Guadalcanal, Bougainville, Tarawa, Kwajalein, and Eniwetok. By the time Uncle Sam was ready to come back to Guam, the U.S. Marine Corps was a well-oiled fighting machine. The American preparations for the invasion of the Marianas were as mechanical as a Ford assembly line. In December 1943, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, President Franklin Roosevelt, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill met in Cairo, Egypt. They were there to decide on the strategy they hoped would win a global war.

General Douglas MacArthur, commander of the Southwest Pacific Area, promoted his plan to recapture the Philippines. From there, he said, he and Nimitz would capture Formosa. From Formosa, they would launch the ultimate invasion of Japan. At the behest of Admiral Ernest J. King, Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Fleet, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Fleet, argued for a drive across the Pacific to the Marianas. King considered the Marianas the “Key to the Pacific.” Supporting King’s plan was General Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, commanding general of the Army Air Forces. Arnold had planned to attack Japan with B-29 Superfortresses from mainland China, but the distance was too great. Too many aircraft could be lost in the attempt to evade the extensive numerous Japanese fighters based along the flight routes. The Mariana Islands, thought Arnold, lay in exactly the right

Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, commander of the Fifth Fleet; Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King, commander in chief of the U.S. Navy; and Admiral Nimitz (left to right) designed Operation GRANITE. This plan envisaged a strategy of leapfrogging across the Pacific from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo.

General Douglas MacArthur (left), commander of the Southwest Pacific Area, argued that the attack on Japan should come from a return to the Philippines, followed by the capture of Formosa. President Franklin Roosevelt (center) listened to both MacArthur and Nimitz, and decided that both operations should proceed, but that priority would go to Nimitz.

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location to launch the aircraft that would set the Rising Sun. King maintained that the real attack on Japan should come by leapfrogging across the Pacific. He and Arnold agreed that launching the offensive from the Marianas would offer the fleet greater striking power and base security. During the Cairo conference, Churchill and Roosevelt agreed that priority in the world war would go toward winning the war in Europe first. They also agreed, however, to a simultaneous campaign in the Pacific against their common enemy, Japan. Priority there, they decided, would go to Nimitz’s leapfrogging strategy; meanwhile, MacArthur would return to the Philippines. On the scale of global warfare, Nimitz, in Hawaii, saw Guam’s left flank exposed to Truk, then considered the Pearl Harbor of Japan. He published his plans for the central Pacific operations, code-named GRANITE, on December 27,

1943. In February 1944, he sent his Fast Carrier Task Forces on sneak attacks against Truk, the western Carolines, and the southern Marianas. These carrier-borne air attacks brought renewed hope of liberation to the Chamorros. But the attacks also marked the beginning of the harshest period of the occupation. As the Marianas-based Japanese prepared to defend the islands to the death, Chamorro lives became expendable. Atrocities increased in both frequency and ferocity. Admiral Nimitz’s dispatching of Fast Carrier Task Force 58, under the command of Vice Admiral Marc A. Mitscher, compelled the Japanese fleet to evacuate Truk. This immobilized 30,000 Japanese troops, who were stranded there without their fleet, and neutralized an air attack force that had been a significant menace to General MacArthur’s return to the Philippines. The outer-island screen of the

Vice Admiral Marc A. Mitscher (above) commanded Fast Carrier Task Force 58 when it attacked Truk, forcing the Japanese fleet stationed there to abandon 30,000 of the emperor’s best troops. Three months later, Admiral Soemu Toyoda (far right), commander in chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet, warned his commanding officers, “The war is drawing close to the lines vital to our national defense.” Major General Andrew D. Bruce (right) commanded the Army’s 77th Infantry Division in the battle for Guam.

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Japanese defensive perimeter was crumbling under the boots of several ever-more-confident Marine amphibious corps. Although MacArthur was making progress toward the Philippines, Nimitz’s rapid advance across the Pacific caused the 3rd Marine Division to be diverted from an intended invasion at Kavieng, New Guinea, to the Marianas campaign. Planning for the invasion of Guam got under way when the respective commanders met in Hawaii on March 30, 1944. There the plans for the Marianas campaign, codenamed FORAGER, were outlined. The Guam campaign was code-named STEVEDORE, reflecting its planned destiny-to become the forward naval supply and repair depot for the expected invasion of mainland Japan. Rear Admiral Richard L. “Close In” Conolly was given the responsibility of delivering, landing, and protecting the invasion forces with his

Task Force 53. Marine Major General Roy S. Geiger, commander of the III Amphibious Corps, was ordered to capture the island. Admiral Soemu Toyoda, commander in chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet, recognized that the collapse of the entire strategic concept of Imperial headquarters was at hand. He warned his commanding officers on May 4, 1944, “The war is drawing close to the lines vital to our national defense. The issue of our national existence is unprecedentedly serious; an unprecedented opportunity exists for deciding who shall be victorious and who defeated.” That unprecedented opportunity was the battle for the Marianas, and in particular the capture of Aslito Airfield on Saipan and Apra Harbor at Guam. The capture of the Marianas would do several things for the American war effort. Besides cutting Japan’s strategic lines of communication and supply, it

Marine Major General Roy S. Geiger served as commander of the III Amphibious Corps during the Guam campaign, and had the responsibility of capturing the island from the Japanese.

Rear Admiral Richard L. “Close In” Conolly was given the command of Task Force 53 and the responsibility of delivering, landing, and protecting the troops of the III Amphibious Corps.

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would also give the United States new land bases from which to launch B-29 air raids on Japan, a submarine refueling station in enemy waters, and an advance base for the Pacific Fleet. In the Marianas battle plan, Saipan would necessarily have to be taken first to eliminate its airfields and defensive headquarters. Tinian would then be invaded from Saipan. Guam would follow. (Rota was never invaded; its airfields were neutralized, and its Japanese garrison surrendered with the emperor of Japan in September 1945.) The battle for Guam in 1944 was one of maneuvers, consisting of a two-pronged attack designed to secure the Orote Peninsula airfields and adjacent Apra Harbor. The U.S. 3rd Marine Division, veterans of Bougainville, would attack the entrenched 29th Division of Japan’s Kwantung Army across the beaches between Adelup Point and Asan Point, later labeled the “devil’s horns.” The 1st Provisional Marine Brigade would land in the south across the beaches in front of Agat village. Of these southern forces, the 4th Ma-

rine Regiment had just completed the invasion of Emirau in the Bismarck Archipelago, in March, and the 22nd Regiment was still fighting in the Marshalls. But by May 17, all troops in the landing force had been gathered at Guadalcanal and a tentative landing date of June 18 had been selected for Guam. Marines who had been expecting to make another New Guinea landing were told aboard ship, “Our destination has been altered. You will have the honor of returning the first American soil captured by the enemy to the American flag. Gentlemen, we’re going to Guam.” The well-trained Marines left Guadalcanal in troopships on June 4 and arrived at Kwajalein on June 8. En route they were told that the Allies were landing in Europe, an event that would eclipse their glory in the Marianas invasion. After refueling and resupplying, they left on June 9 and arrived at the Saipan rendezvous on June 12. The III Amphibious Corps, destined for Guam, would be held in floating reserve off Saipan. On June 15,

General Roy Geiger, USMC, left, studies a plaster model of Guam with his commanding officers aboard ship en route to the Marianas.

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members of the V Amphibious Corps disembarked and began the assault on Saipan. Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, the commander of the Japanese naval forces at Saipan, was certain that the U.S. Pacific Fleet had been buried at Pearl Harbor in 1941 – he himself had commanded the carrier strike forces in that attack. Yet here before his eyes was that very fleet – risen from its watery grave and reinforced by new ships. The resurrected Pacific Fleet now covered the ocean surrounding Saipan with a sheet of deadly steel. Even from an airplane, no single man could view the entire spread of the 600-ship armada that carried a quarter of a million sailors delivering a hundred thousand ground troops that would attempt to wrest the Marianas from the grip of their Japanese overlords. Nagumo frantically wired Tokyo for help. The Imperial Mobile Fleet, still in Tawi-Tawi, Philippines, and hoping for a decisive naval battle, confidently sortied toward Guam. Admiral Raymond Spruance, com-

manding the American invasion fleet, conservatively decided to retire his floating reserve, then stationed his fleet west of the Marianas to intercept Admiral Ozawa. In the subsequent Battle of the Philippine Sea, popularized as the Marianas Turkey Shoot, United States naval air units under Admiral Marc Mitscher’s command, destroyed those of the Japanese, shooting down 402 enemy planes and sinking three aircraft carriers. This operation ended any serious threats from the Japanese Navy or its air wing in the Marianas campaign. The Japanese defensive troops based in the Marianas were left without air cover or the possibility of naval reinforcement. Spruance and Mitscher mercilessly renewed their attack against the Japanese, now stranded in the Marianas, with multiple aircraft carrier task forces, heavy battleship task forces, and two battle-hungry Marine amphibious corps. When Task Force 58 sailed off to its turkey shoot, the Guam-destined Marines sailed in circles just to the east of

Admiral Raymond A. Spruance (left) led the American Fifth Fleet that faced the Japanese Imperial Mobile Fleet in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, later popularized as the Marianas Turkey Shoot. Pilots from U.S. carriers shot down 402 enemy planes and sank three aircraft carriers. Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo (below), commander of the Japanese naval forces at Saipan, was shocked to see the U.S. Pacific Fleet, which he had sunk at Pearl Harbor, now back on the ocean and expanded to a 600-ship armada that surrounded Saipan.

s.

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the Marianas from June 16 to 25. Admiral Spruance and Vice Admiral Richmond K. Turner, commander of landing forces, then decided that the extended battle had depleted the fleet’s stores, and the men were in need of rest before beginning the Guam campaign; the III Amphibious Corps was withdrawn to Eniwetok. With nothing to do there but wait, the Marines trained some more. “Get on the beaches, get back on the boats.” Meanwhile, the Japanese forces on Guam had been tipped off by the preliminary bombardment as to precisely where the Americans would land. In accordance with the original Guam battle plan, Rear Admiral W. L. Ainsworth had arrived off Asan and Agat beaches on June 16, and began the preinvasion bombardment at 8:15 a.m. When Admiral Spruance received word of the advancing Japanese naval force two hours later, he cancelled Guam’s June 18 invasion. A Japanese soldier, Leading Private Murano Kaki,

noted in his diary that “the chances seem to be that the enemy main force plans to land in the Agana-Piti area.” Although the assault troops had been trained and drilled on their individual targets until “Guam was coming out of their ears,” the initial preinvasion bombardment gave the Japanese five weeks to reinforce the Asan and Agat beachheads. To prepare the officers of the Guam campaign for their own invasion, the commanders of Operation STEVEDORE visited another invasion that was in progress. On June 29, they flew to Saipan and made a front-line tour to examine the effects of naval gunfire, air bombardment, and artillery support. After viewing the tough going on Saipan and learning through captured intelligence that the defenses at Guam were even more formidable than expected, Turner and Spruance requested and received permission to reinforce the III Amphibious Corps with the Army’s 77th Infantry Di-

In accordance with the original invasion plans, Rear Admiral W. L. Ainsworth arrived off Guam’s beaches on June 16 and began the preinvasion bombardment. Two hours later the invasion was postponed, and the Japanese had five more weeks to reinforce their beachhead defenses.

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vision, itself reinforced with artillery. That would bring the combined American landing force for Guam to nearly fifty thousand men against the almost twenty thousand Japanese defenders. That was not the three-to-one advantage that Nimitz wanted; but considering that the Japanese troops were poorly armed and without either air or sea support, Spruance felt he was adequately prepared for a successful invasion. An immense logistics game plan operated side by side with the invasion tactics. Ships had to be manned and maintained, troops fed mountains of food, bandages supplied for the casualties, new uniforms issued to the survivors, and surgeons available for amputations. Tractors, 358 in all, had to be landed to make roads, and bullets carried ashore for 50,000 rifles, along with tons of water for thirsty fighting men. Ironically, American intelligence information about

Guam was sketchy. In spite of forty-three years of United States naval occupation, Guam had not been accurately mapped. Some aerial photographs were available, and, fortunately, there were a few officers in the fleet who had been assigned to Guam before the war. Nevertheless, more than one Marine fighting in the jungle found rivers and mountains where none appeared on the map. One battalion commander noted, “Battalion 1/3 never had a photo showing the terrain in its zone of action between the reservoir and the Tenjo Road. There was always a big white spot marked ‘cloud’.” Colonel Wendell H. Duplantis wrote in 1952, “I have been waiting almost eight years to put in my two cents on this score. Ground forms were inaccurately shown all over the map that we used. It is deplorable that we had owned this island approximately forty years and still did not have an accurate map.” In his book The Island War, Marine Corps Major Frank

Vice Admiral Richmond K. “Terrible” Turner (left) planned and directed the landing of amphibious troops under Lieutenant General Holland M. “Howlin’ Mad” Smith (above) at Makin and Tarawa in the Gilberts; Kwajalein and Eniwetok in the Marshalls; Saipan, Guam, and Tinian in the Marianas; Iwo Jima; and Okinawa – all in fifteen months.

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O. Hough commented on the fact that the only overall survey of the island had been done by an engineering unit from the Philippines in 1916 (headed by Nieves Flores). Comparing the American and the Japanese military occupations, Hough said, “In short, the best that can be said of our long administration is that the Japanese managed to do very much worse during their brief occupation. This and the Guamanians’ own sense of decency and human dignity served to keep them loyal to their stepmother country through some very dark days, and caused them to welcome with almost pathetic enthusiasm invaders who were ‘liberators’ in the most literal sense of that much overworked term.” To aid assault elements, Commander R. F. Armknecht, a public works officer who had been assigned to Guam before the war, was given the responsibility of developing an

accurate large-scale plaster model of the immediate beach area. Tactical strategy involved detailed plans for the attack of a full Marine division and a complete Marine brigade on two fronts, followed by the landing of an Army division. Two battalions of 155mm guns had to be landed in the south behind the 1st Provisional Brigade, and one in the north behind the 3rd Marine Division. Brigadier General Pedro A. del Valle was given command of all firepower, artillery, aerial bombardment, and naval gunfire. To concentrate the heaviest possible firepower on the enemy, a coordinated plan was developed by all fire centers. Ships’ guns and artillery restricted their maximum shell trajectory to 1,200 feet, while pilots were ordered to pull out of their bombing runs at 1,500 feet. In that way, both forces could fire on the same target at the same

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time without hitting each other. To coordinate all of this fire support, the naval gunfire officer and the air officer worked together in the same tent, for the first time, and had a direct telephone line to corps artillery. Men from the Joint Assault Signal Unit were trained to call in fire-support missions from the front lines. All of these new developments were part of the evolution of amphibious warfare as it was designed by General Holland M. Smith, USMC, and his Marines. On July 8, Admiral Conolly rescheduled the Guam invasion for July 21, and an intense preinvasion bombardment was begun that would continue without letup for thirteen successive days. Saipan finally fell to U.S. forces on July 9. Among the dead there was Admiral Nagumo, commander of the aircraft carrier strike force that had attacked Pearl Harbor. The Japa-

nese defenders of Guam braced themselves for invasion. Surrounded by fifteen aircraft carriers, five escort carriers, six battleships, nine cruisers, and fifty-seven destroyers, the Japanese on Guam were cut off from all relief and pinned to the ground during daylight hours. The American flagship for the Guam invasion, the U.S.S. Appalachian, ordinarily not engaged in fighting while the commanding officer is on board, arrived off Guam on July 14. Admiral Conolly, tired of waiting and eager to fight, ordered the ship’s gun crews to commence firing and sent a message to CinCPac that “the Appalachian, ably supported by other elements of the fleet, this day bombarded Guam.” A second Conolly directive sent all embattled ships close to shore to deliver point-blank fire. From only a few hundred yards off the reefline, battleships and destroyers smashed

While fighting ships bombarded the invasion beaches, troopships carried the III Amphibious Corps from Eniwetok to Guam. With the postponement of the Guam invasion to July 21, the III Corps spent over six weeks aboard the troopships.

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the extensive Japanese gun emplacements between Agat and Agana. Houses and business structures also fell to the overriding need to deprive the Japanese of any building which could be fortified. In preparation for the invasion, underwater demolition teams spent four days clearing the beaches under cover of landing craft and smoke. At night the teams moved across the reef to study the beach defenses. They were in constant contact with the fleet, and any enemy fire on the reconnaissance teams received a broadside in return. Some 640 obstacles were blown off Asan Reef and 300 off Agat. Cover from naval and air gunfire was so complete that only one man was lost in the operation. In the tradition of their unit, the underwater demolition teams left crude hand-printed signs on the beach saying, “Welcome Marines.” Admiral Conolly later said that “positively, landings could not have

been made on either Agat or Asan beaches nor any other suitable beaches without these elaborate but successfully prosecuted clearance operations.” Imperial headquarters in Tokyo closely followed the land, sea, and air battles around the Marianas. In light of their defeat in the Marianas Turkey Shoot and the fall of Saipan, Japan’s Combined Fleet headquarters decided that it “had no intention of trying to carry out large-scale counterattacks, having assumed that Guam and Tinian would be lost.” Knowing that Japanese soldiers were sworn under Bushido to victory or death, Tokyo resigned its best veterans to the latter. The valiant Japanese soldiers accepted their fate and prepared to die. The U.S. Marines who were about to face the desperate Imperial soldiers had faced others like them before; they were prepared for a grisly cave-to-cave, hand-to-hand fight.

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Recognizing the American invasion strategy after the aborted mid-June bombardment of Asan and Agat, Lieutenant General Takeshi Takashina, commander of the Japanese ground forces on Guam, divided his troops into northern forces and southern forces, each flanking the now obvious American effort to capture Orote Peninsula. To best oversee the Japanese defense, Takashina designated the caves behind the high ground above Asan Beach as his defensive command post. This hill, then called Fonte Plateau, would be the scene of the key battle of the invasion. After the recapture, Nimitz claimed the hill for his own headquarters. It would be renamed Nimitz Hill, in honor of the man who led the Marianas campaign. As the American preinvasion bombardment increased, the Japanese maneuvered their defensive forces into position. They began marching Chamorros along the roads in

brightly colored clothes, hoping to dissuade the Americans from bombing as the Japanese troops moved along nearby. Nevertheless, harassing fire hampered their every movement. Chamorro laborers working on defense sites were no longer allowed to go home at the end of the day. They slept in foxholes or temporary camps where they were called on at all hours of the day and night to dig tunnels, carry ammunition, and move equipment. Japanese commanders were ordered to execute Chamorros who might later disclose the whereabouts of key defensive installations. The psychological advantage of the Americans over the Japanese was immense. Thirteen days of continual, ‘roundthe-clock’ naval gunfire with shells that weighed a ton apiece rocked the Japanese as they huddled in their concrete-reinforced caves. The defenders drank themselves into oblivion from a liquor depot that had been intended to sup-

Approximately 640 obstacles were blown off Asan’s reef and another 300 off Agat by Sergei Alto and other aggressive members of the Navy’s underwater demolition teams. Under cover of naval gunfire, they accomplished this mission with the loss of only one man.

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death at the landing Marines. Lieutenant Colonel Hideyuki Takeda, operations officer of the Imperial 29th Division and ranking survivor of the Japanese garrison, described the damage of the preinvasion bombardment:

ply all of the Japanese-held Pacific islands. Later, Marines throwing grenades into caves found not only dead Japanese but also case upon case of Scotch, brandy, and saki – all shattered. On July 15, the day after Admiral Conolly’s Task Force joined the bombardment of Guam, General Takashina moved his battle command post to Fonte Plateau, high above Asan Beach, and made final preparations to “seek certain victory at the beginning of the battle . . . to utterly destroy the landing enemy at the water’s edge.” Meanwhile, the 3rd Marine Division had left Eniwetok and now sailed for Guam. Destination: Asan Beach. During lulls in the naval gunfire, thousands of deathsworn Japanese soldiers zeroed in their rifles, machine guns, and artillery on every square foot of Asan Beach. Although many weapons were destroyed by the bombardment, those protected by reinforced concrete survived to spit

FORTIFICATIONS

1. Construction consisting of ordinary simple buildings reinforced on an emergency basis which received direct hits were completely destroyed. 2. Field positions hit by shells were completely destroyed. Over 50% of all installations built in the seashore area of the landing beaches were demolished. 3. Half permanent positions in which hard agent cascajo [coral] was used and which were reinforced with concrete about 50cm thick remained in good con-

Many Japanese gun emplacements, such as this coastal defense gun at Bangi Island (right), were still unfinished when the Marines landed. Others were undisturbed by the American naval bombardment. (Opposite, lower right) Communication centers were built in dead spaces that could not be reached by naval gunfire. They survived intact.

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since they were constructed in dead spaces where they could not receive direct hits. 4. Harbor installations received almost no damage. 5. Only once did water pipes receive a direct hit. 6. Power installations were not damaged because generating was done in caves. 7. Most boats in military use were sunk, but by strafing rather than by naval gunfire.

dition except in cases of direct hits. Positions receiving direct hits were more than half destroyed. 4. Permanent construction (concrete over one meter thick) positions which received direct hits without exception remained perfectly sound. DEFENSE INSTALLATIONS

1. All naval gun emplacements in the open were completely demolished before the landings. About half of the guns emplaced in caves with limited fields of fire remained operational, but soon after opening fire at the time of the landings the cave entrances were demolished and the guns could fire little. 2. Antiaircraft artillery sustained damage from naval gunfire only once. 3. Communications installations were not damaged,

CASES WHERE NAVAL GUNFIRE HAD NO EFFECT

1. Antiaircraft gun positions were operational until the very last. 2. There was no effect against construction in valleys or in the jungle. Also there was very little effect against the interior of the island over four kilometers

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The Japanese defensive installations were formidable, and accounted for the sinking of many landing craft as the Americans headed for the invasion beaches.

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from the shore line. 3. Incendiary shells started fires in grassy areas and exposed our positions but had almost no demolition or antipersonnel effect.

then-Captain Earl H. Ellis (the same Marine officer who had predicted the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor) landed a field piece on Guam’s Orote Peninsula in 1914. On July 19, Premier Tojo and his entire cabinet resigned. With the strategic military defeat at Saipan, Tojo was also relieved as active head of the Japanese Army. General Kujioki succeeded Tojo, and ordered Lieutenant General Takeshi Takashina and Lieutenant General Hideyoshi Obata to defend Guam honorably. By July 20, all forces for Operation STEVEDORE were in position, and Admiral Conolly confirmed 8:30 a.m. on July 21 as H-Hour for the liberation of Guam. Although Takashina was not aware of H-Hour, he was well prepared to defend his beaches with an infantry regiment amassed in concrete reinforced bunkers behind his Fonte Plateau command post, and another in the south. Both regiments waited anxiously for the Marines to land. The stage was set for the battle for Guam.

A Marine officer said of the durability of some of the Japanese fortifications, “I was particularly impressed to see Japanese soldiers still alive right on the landing beaches after almost 24 hours of incessant bombardment by naval gunfire.” Although the Japanese fought bravely to the end, at least one Japanese soldier reported the demoralizing effect of the bombardment: “On this island no matter where one goes the shells follow.” Operation FORAGER was the first amphibious engagement in which Marines placed sizable artillery units of their own in the field. Interestingly, the Marines had first proved that artillery could be landed by an amphibious team when

Lieutenant General Takeshi Takashina commanded all Japanese ground forces on Guam during the American invasion. He had had five months to reinforce his defenses, and for five weeks knew precisely where the Americans would land. Takashina died on July 28, 1944, when the Marines overran his Fonte Plateau command post.

Lieutenant General Hideyoshi Obata, commander of the South Marianas Area Group, was trapped on Guam by the American invasion of Saipan. Assuming division command after General Takashina’s death, Obata withdrew his forces north to Mount Santa Rosa. He was found dead by his own hand after his command post at Mataguac was attacked on August 11.

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The Chamorros of Guam suffered through two and a half years of martial law under the Japanese before the Americans recaptured their island possession.

THE CHAMORROS Proud Survivors Bearing Boldly the Scars of War A

left Guam for the Rabaul invasion, a Japanese naval civil administration, the Minseibu, took control. Operating somewhat as the United States naval administration had done, the Minseibu – some 500 to 700 men – had the job of teaching the Chamorros the fundamentals of Japanese government and language, and indoctrinating them into a lasting relationship with Japan. Setting up an administration which they predicted would last 10,000 years, the Japanese changed the name of Guam to Omiyajima, the Great Shrine Island, and changed the name of the capital city of Agana to Akashi, the Red City, in honor of the rising sun on the Japanese flag. The 54th Keibitai, a naval guard unit, formed the Japanese security force. But Japan was rudely awakened from its dream of a 1,000-year rule when Admiral Mitscher’s carrier-based fighter-bombers strafed Orote airfield in February 1944. It was the Chamorros whose dream would soon become a reality: that Uncle Sam would return to their island. “Ti u apmam! Na’i animo,” said the Chamorros (“It won’t be long; take courage”). In response, the Japanese authorities let the word out that if the Americans should ever try to return to Guam, the only thing they would find would be flies. They stepped

The Occupation Years

long with the Americans, the Chamorros laughed at the idea of Japan going to war against the United States. They did become concerned, however, when the last of the American dependents left the island on October 17, 1941. It was also somewhat demoralizing to the local population when word slipped out that the governor, Captain McMillin, was having all classified documents burned at the power plant on December 6. The Japanese invasion itself left the Chamorros in shock. Although Guam had technically been under martial law during the American administration of the island, it was not until the occupation by the Japanese that the Chamorros came to understand the real meaning of the term. All Americans were rounded up immediately and shipped to prison camps and work details in Japan. The Chamorros were left to fend for themselves. Many fled to their ranches in the jungle. Others remained in the villages, under virtual slavery to the Japanese, and did what they were told, certain that their liberation was close at hand. Some actually thought that the Americans would return for Christmas. After the shock troops of the South Seas Detachment 27

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The Kaikuntai, the Japanese agricultural unit, conscripted men, women, and children not capable of working on defensive installations to work in the rice fields to feed the Japanese forces.

up surveillance of suspected American sympathizers and increased work details. All able-bodied men sixteen years and over were conscripted. Their primary job was the completion of the Tiyan airfield and the construction of coastal defensive installations. The men worked without pay and were nourished only by an occasional cup of uncooked rice. Korean laborers were also brought to the island, and received treatment similar to that given the Chamorros. The Japanese masters punched, kicked, and slapped the laborers at will, and often for mere pleasure. It was in March 1944 that the first units of the dreaded Kwantung Army began to arrive on Guam. This was the seasoned army that had invaded and occupied Manchuria. Their new job was to defend Guam against the American invasion. Whereas the Japanese naval administration had been tolerant of the Chamorros and had attempted to win the

respect of their new colony, the 29th Division of the Kwantung Army, commanded by General Takashina, dropped all pretense of goodwill. Their job was to win a war. Takashina commanded all ground forces in tactical action. General Obata, commander of the South Marianas Area Group, and trapped on Guam at the onset of the Saipan invasion, continued to supervise the plans for the defense of the Marianas from Takashina’s Fonte Plateau headquarters. The Army closed all schools and churches and stopped all civic activities. The Kempeitai, the dreaded army secret police, commandeered the ranch home of Mrs. Ignacia Bordallo Butler in Agana Heights for its headquarters. The last organization the Chamorros had to deal with was the Kaikuntai. This group has been referred to as agricultural Seabees. Their job was to feed the army. They set up their headquarters in Tai between Chalan Pago and Mangi28

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Father Jesus Baza Duenas was one of two Chamorro Catholic priests allowed by the Japanese to remain on Guam during the occupation to serve the religious needs of the people. He was beheaded by the Japanese for refusing to reveal the whereabouts of George Tweed, a Navy radioman.

lao, near where Father Duenas Memorial High School now stands, and conscripted all men, women, and children not capable of working on defensive construction to work in the fields.

The Japanese commanders found their island surrounded and cut off from reinforcement and resupply. The defensive headquarters on Saipan had fallen. The Imperial soldiers on Guam anticipated death. Abandoned by their homeland and its inept Imperial command, some took out their frustration and resentment on the Chamorros. Among the most respected men on Guam at the time was Father Jesus Baza Duenas, who was one of only two ordained Chamorro Catholic priests on the island during the occupation. For the most part, Father Duenas had been left alone by the Japanese. He administered to the religious needs of the Chamorros living in the southern part of the island, traveling by carabao cart or horse-drawn buggy over the bumpy dirt trails that connected the villages. At the beginning of the war, all priests other than Father Duenas and Father Oscar Lujan Calvo had been re-

The Story of Father Duenas Most certainly, the atrocities that occurred on Guam were instigated by a very small percentage of the nearly twenty thousand Japanese troops and civilians on the island. It should be noted that there were instances of humanitarian efforts by the Japanese soldiers, as well as instances where Japanese civilians who had been living on Guam for several years before the war sided with the Chamorros and the Americans against the Japanese. 29

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Radioman First Class George R. Tweed was the only American serviceman to survive the Japanese occupation without surrendering. Several Chamorros were beheaded for actually or allegedly harboring him. He is shown here with the mirror he used to signal the American ship that rescued him.

moved from the island with the American prisoners of war. The Reverend Joaquin Flores Sablan, an ordained Baptist minister, also remained on Guam to attend to his followers. To a community with nearly four hundred years of Catholic tradition, the loss of contact with their priests was a severe hardship, particularly in cases of death. There were only the two priests available for the Blessed Sacrament. Without the knowledge of the Japanese, Father Calvo said Mass and kept the Blessed Sacrament at the ranch house of Tun Kiko and Tan Chong Cruz in Agana Heights. (After the war, Father Calvo had the Church of Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament built on the same spot.) In November 1942, the Japanese naval administration brought two Japanese Catholic priests to Guam, Monsignor Fukahori and Father Petro Komatsu. Monsignor Fukahori

carried with him a letter from Bishop Olano, who had been removed from Guam and interned in Japan. In this letter, Bishop Olano named Father Duenas as pro-vicar and priest in charge of the vicariate, and directed him “to defend the Chamorros in their encounters with the Japanese government.” This was to cost Father Duenas his life. During the Japanese invasion of Guam in December 1941, several American servicemen had escaped into the jungle rather than surrender to the Japanese. By the time the Americans were prepared to return to Guam, these men had all been captured or killed except for one, Radioman First Class George R. Tweed. Tweed had been fed and hidden by a number of Chamorros for over two years. In an effort to bring Tweed out of hiding, Father Komatsu wrote him a letter: 30

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Father Duenas, his nephew Eduardo, and two other men were beheaded by the Japanese on July 12, 1944, only nine days before the Americans invaded Guam.

Parochial House, Santa Cruz September 1, 1943.

the Keibitai and the Minseibu, as a special respect to me, a Catholic priest. The Japanese Government will not kill you. After necessary examinations, you will be sent to Japan and be placed with the other American prisoners. As a priest, I ask you in the name of the natives here, to give yourself up and thus relieve the suffering and anguish of the Chamorros. Please believe my words. If you have any doubts about this proposition, please send me a letter in “secreto”by convenient method.

Mr. Tweed, Island of Guam. Dear Sir: I am a Japanese Catholic Priest, Petro Komatsu. The Japanese Government sent me here for the spiritual happiness of the Chamorro people. I work all the time as a Catholic priest. I wish to make you a proposition: if you surrender yourself to the Japanese Authorities, they will treat you as a prisoner with certain privileges. This is the promise of both

Yours sincerely, Father Petro Komatsu. 31

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The village of Inarajan was served by Father Duenas during the occupation years. He was tortured here by the Japanese before being taken to Tai and executed.

Tweed never surrendered and the Chamorros never divulged his hiding place, although several people were beheaded by the Japanese for harboring the American serviceman. The Minseibu authorities eventually attempted to exile Father Duenas to Rota. Monsignor Fukahori intervened in this action, however, and Father Duenas continued to serve his people until July 8, 1944. On that day the American preinvasion bombardment began and Father Duenas and his nephew Eduardo Duenas, an attorney, were arrested by order of Lieutenant Commander Homura, the Minseibucho. Hands tied behind his back, Father Duenas was marched to the Minseibu police substation and tortured for not reporting the whereabouts of Tweed. A waterhose was rammed up his nose and turned on. The two Duenases were then hog-tied and paraded through the narrow village streets of Inarajan. The workers

were brought in from the fields to witness the spectacle. One woman, after being warned not to utter any word of pity, cried out, “Ay Yu’us Tata loque. Na para” (“Oh, God the Father, please stop”). A Japanese soldier stepped forward and clubbed her into silence. Father Duenas never broke under the punishment, and never cried out for mercy. Father Duenas and his nephew had ostensibly been arrested as American spies. The Minseibu questioned them relentlessly. Ironically, while Father Duenas was being tortured to reveal the whereabouts of Tweed, the radioman had escaped from the island on a small boat sent ashore for him by a destroyer. One of the last men to talk to Father Duenas was Joaquin Limtiaco. He said Father Duenas and his nephew were terribly beaten, almost unrecognizable. Limtiaco offered to help the Father escape. Father Duenas refused, however, saying that “the Japanese know they can’t prove 32

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After the war, the people of Guam recovered the body of Father Duenas and buried him beneath the altar of Saint Joseph’s Church in the village of Inarajan.

their charges against me. You must know what would happen to them [their families] if we escape. I’m positive the Japanese will retaliate against them.” Father Duenas’s last words to Limtiaco were, “God will look after me. I have done no wrong.” By the evening of July 11, the Kempeitai took over the interrogation of Father Duenas from the Minseibu. They gave up after three hours and turned the Father over to the Kaikuntai, who were ordered to execute him. Early on the morning of July 12, Father Duenas, his nephew Eduardo, a retired Navy enlisted man named Juan U. Pangelinan, and another unidentified Chamorro were led to a spot in Tai, not far from the Kaikuntai headquarters, where four graves had been freshly dug. There were thirty-five Japanese in the execution party, and a Saipanese who had served as an interpreter for the Japanese on Guam since April 30, 1943. There, the four

Guamanians had their hands tied behind their backs and were made to kneel before their graves. An unnamed Japanese officer stepped forward, and with a slash of his saber beheaded the unidentified man, kicking his body and then his head into the grave. Then a Japanese officer by the name of Sakamoto stepped forward. He drew his sword and raised it above the praying Father Duenas. Without whispering a word other than to God, the thirty-year-old Chamorro priest was beheaded and kicked into his grave before the horrorstricken eyes of his nephew. Eduardo Duenas then asked his executioner, Ibuka, if he could make a statement, but was told that nothing could be done even if he made a statement. Eduardo was then beheaded, and the beheading of Pangelinan followed shortly afterward. The remains of Father Duenas are now buried beneath the altar of Saint Joseph’s Church in the village of Inarajan, which he served during the Japanese occupation. 33

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Beginning on July 12, three days after the fall of Saipan, the Chamorros on Guam were rounded up by the Japanese and marched to concentration camps. Many died along the way as the relentless Japanese drove them along with clubs, sabers, and bayonets.

The Manengon Death March

not told why they were being moved, or where they were going. Some suspected that the Japanese did not want them in areas where they could help the Americans by directing them to defensive installations – many of which they themselves had been forced to build. Others, recalling the recent atrocities, feared that the Japanese intended to kill them all. Whatever the reason for the order, the internment of the Chamorros in these camps far from the bombardment and the battlefields undoubtedly saved the lives of many of them. The Chamorros from Yigo and Santa Rosa, the northernmost villages on Guam, were ordered to pack up what belongings they could transport by bull cart, on oxen, or on their own backs and assemble at 6 p.m. By seven they were on the move. Pressed on by Minseibu officials and army guards, every man, woman, and child, including the sick and invalid, began what for many of them became the

With the fall of Saipan on July 9, 1944, and the increasing volume of American preinvasion bombing, General Takashina and General Obata faced critical strategic problems. They were aware that the American invasion would be mounted across the Asan and Agat beaches. The Imperial troops from the south had to be brought to Agat. Troops from the north had to be moved to Asan. In the event of the loss of the beachheads, a reserve defensive command post had to be established. Complicating matters were the more than twenty thousand Chamorros, who were sympathetic to the Americans. They could not be left at large to hinder the Japanese in the coming battle. On July 12, the Japanese command ordered that all the Chamorros be rounded up and herded into concentration camps on the eastern side of the island. The people were 34

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Manengon death march. Supervised by the same type of men who drove the defenders of Bataan to their prison in Tarlac, Philippines, the Chamorros carried their aging and their sick in a silence broken only by the sounds of thudding clubs and shrieking children. Throughout the night they marched south, then turned toward Barrigada. As the ever-enlarging group approached the northern end of Jalaguag airfield on top of the Barrigada plateau (later Brewer Field, Naval Air Station), the sky was suddenly lit by star shells and the ground was shaken by giant naval shells. The night was filled with screams as the Chamorros and their Japanese guards leaped off the road and into the jungle. After the bombardment ceased, the Japanese prodded the Chamorros out of the jungle and back onto the road. Arriving in Barrigada village early in the morning, and with only two hours to reorganize, the marchers continued to Mangilao. The walk that should have taken

an hour and a half took four hours. No one was permitted to stop, not even to relieve themselves. Exhausted and frightened, they finally reached Mangilao. Dr. Pedro C. Sanchez described the scene in Uncle Sam, Please Come Back to Guam: “When all the people of Yigo assembled near the old Price School, they simply could not hold back their emotions. Not knowing what was ahead, they broke down, cried and prayed and commiserated with one another. ‘Na’i animo’ (‘Take courage’), they told each other.” In the evening they headed for Maimai valley, where they were to spend several days before being ordered to move on to Manengon valley, inland from Yona. Young men carried their grandmothers on their backs. The trails from Yona village to Manengon quickly turned to mud as the summer rains began. Bare feet slipped, and women carrying babies fell to the ground. Japanese guards pounced quickly, 35

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slapping and kicking them to force them back into the line. Mrs. Hannah Chance Torres, carrying her baby daughter Geraldine, was beaten to death by a Japanese guard. Mrs. Mariquita Calvo Torres took the baby in her arms and made her way along the trail with the others. Other villagers were to follow. The ordeal of the march to Manengon was later recounted by Luis P. Untalan:

whatever you can. So we met at the school about 7 p.m. after dark. We were escorted by Japanese soldiers. We just followed them. There were about 500 people at first. So we marched on what is now the Father Duenas Road to the crossroad down to Pago. We marched past Yona till we got to the Ilig River. The march was long and slow because of the old people and the little children and the pitch dark night. At about 6 in the morning we arrived at the Ilig River. We turned right and marched along the trail which was on the bank of the river, far into the valley, about two miles in. And there at Manengon we were told to build our own camp. The place was muddy. It was raining. The men started to cut tangantangan posts and coconut leaves. The women wove the coconut leaves and the men put up the framework of the huts. There was no floor over the

Word was sent out to everyone to meet at Price School in the evening of a certain day. So we all packed whatever we could in the way of clothes and food. Livestock and pigs and chickens were left behind. Dogs could follow us. Our family had a bull-cart so all the necessary family belongings and the essential food we could get hold of we packed into the cart. They did not tell us why we had to gather at the school. They just said bring 36

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(Left) No one was spared the march to Manengon. The elderly and the sick were carried on the backs of the younger men or in improvised stretchers. (Below) While the majority of Chamorros were herded into concentration camps, a few of the strongest were used by the Japanese to carry bombs and ammunition to gun emplacements and pillboxes.

damp ground and many of us suffered from lumbago and rheumatism from the wet ground. Many people did not have food, but we picked corn, papayas, coconuts and breadfruit. We were instructed never to build fires during the day time. If anybody was caught building a fire he was punished. We cooked at night time. The Japanese ate dogs, the red dogs. They would ask us to clean the dogs and then chop them up to cook them. We ourselves ate all right at the camp, we always somehow managed. The Japanese soldiers built their own camp to the side of ours. At night they would round up several of the girls to go to their quarters to massage them. They had one big mosquito net. The Japanese would strip naked and lie down for the girls to massage them. Often at night they would summon all the men, line

them up and march them to different places to pick up ammunition to carry to their locations — not telling us where to go. The last I remember of the Japanese in the camp was when they called all the men out about ten p.m. They marched us to the jungle behind Sinajana village and they made us carry bombs up and down the hill until we got to where Joint Region Command [today] is across the river. We saw the American planes. There were about eighty of us carrying bombs. We dropped the bombs and ran. The American planes were strafing us so the Japanese ran too. We took off till we came back to the camp. When we came to the camp, some of the people who had stayed behind told us that they had seen Americans. We did not believe them till we saw the candy and chewing gum and American cigarettes and then we believed them. We ran up to [the] hill and 37

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(Below) When the Chamorro men had finished their final labors for the Japanese, their hands were tied behind their backs and they were executed. (Right) Throughout the month before the American invasion, Chamorros spent what time was available to them to build shelters to protect themselves and their families from the American bombardment.

looked out as far as we could, and we saw something moving and we believed they were the Americans coming towards the camp. That night the Japanese took forty men, [including] my nephew Juan Torre, from Manengon. The men had to carry provisions for the Japanese for their last flight to the north of the island where they retreated. According to the story told by my nephew, when they came near Tarague on the hills, they unloaded the equipment they were carrying. The Japanese did not want the natives to scatter, for fear they would tell the Americans where they were. So they kept only a few officers and soldiers to guard the camp. The forty men were tied, hands behind their backs, [and] tied to trees. They were then beheaded. My nephew was one of the few who managed to escape. Only about three or four men escaped. My nephew came back to the camp and told us what had happened.

Virtually no one on the island of Guam was spared the misery of the march. Villagers from Inarajan, Merizo, and Umatac camped behind Malojloj. Asan and Piti villagers were taken to Asinan. And the people of Sinajana, Agana Heights, Ordot-Chalan Pago, and Yona camped successively farther up the Manengon valley, toward Talofofo. For a month some fifteen thousand people lived in the fetid camp with only the Ilig River for sanitation. Some of the island’s most important families were taken to the Kaikuntai headquarters in Tai. There they suffered nightmarish indignities and atrocities in front of family members. Many Chamorros did not reach the camp. Nineteenyear-old Matilde Flores Sablan made the long march from Agana to Manengon. Walking with her brother and his friend Catalina Kamminga, Matilde found her grandmother under a coconut tree, dead from the walk. They buried her there with another older lady, Mrs. Rollie. A week later they buried their brother, Segundo, who had been killed by shrapnel from an American bomb.

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The Rapings at Fena Reservoir

invasion, Imperial agriculturalists, the Kaikuntai, turned the valley into a giant rice paddy. They ordered all able-bodied women and all children age twelve to sixteen to work in the fields from eight in the morning until sundown. The pay for the day’s work at the feet of their Japanese masters was five worthless yen, and one priceless cup of rice. The Chamorros so despised the Japanese money that some used it for toilet paper and left it for the soldiers to find. Every family had to build its own air-raid shelter. Most of these structures consisted of dugouts covered with coconut logs, tree trunks, leaves, and dirt. These shelters saved many Chamorro lives during the preinvasion bombardment. The Chamorros had to work on the community rice farms, as well as maintain quotas of chickens, pigs, bananas, and other crops on their family farms. By July, the quantity of food on Guam was so low that everyone was on rations. To ease their hunger, the Chamorros

The American servicemen who battled for the recapture of Guam in 1944, although constantly in fear for their own lives, lived with the solace that their families were safely at home in mainland America, isolated from the horrors of war. No such solace existed for the Chamorros of Guam, who for two and a half years lived with the torment of physical and mental abuse against their families. The Japanese who “captured” the undefended American island in 1941 committed atrocities on the eve of the 1944 recapture that live in the hearts of Chamorros as the indelible scars of war. The broad green expanses of Agat valley slope gently from black volcanic Mount Alifan to the coral beaches of the Pacific Ocean. Before the war it had been a peaceful farming community where small families raised their necessities and an occasional cash crop. After the Japanese

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While the rest of the families from the Agat area were sent to the Manengon concentration camp, fifty girls and an unknown number of men and boys were kept behind to serve the Taicho – the village’s Japanese commander.

resorted to eating kadon tinaktak, beef stewed in coconut milk and seasoned with the island’s hot chili peppers. The beef was good, but so hot that only small amounts could be eaten at anyone time, thus – deliberately or inadvertently – rationing what little meat they had. Compounding the food problem was an excessively long dry season earlier in the year. The rainy season had ended the previous December, and the spring of 1944 was one of the driest in years. Mass malnutrition spread among the Chamorros as the panicky Japanese soldiers began to forage for food from the farms, stealing livestock at will. Under pressure from steadily increasing American air attacks, and with dwindling food supplies, the Japanese grew irrational, and acts of violence against the Chamorros became commonplace. The Japanese recognized the impending American victory, and hated the Chamorros, who sympathized with the Americans. The tall coconut palms

that had shaded the Agat valley were gone, and the sun beat down mercilessly on the poorly clothed Chamorros as they dug in the earth to feed their Japanese masters. Scattered across the fields were occasional guards, clad in their battle gear. With or without reason, the bayonet-carrying guards indiscriminately kicked and clubbed the field workers. Mothers and sisters working side by side had to silently suffer the indignities of the indiscreet, indifferent guards. The field workers were divided into small groups, each led by another villager called a Kumicho, or field group leader. All reported to a Japanese commander called a Taicho. In the case of the Fena district of Agat village, everyone bowed to Taicho Takebena, the Minseibu’s Agat substation police officer. Working for Takebena was a lovely young Chamorrita who served as his secretary and interpreter. She had been chosen for the job because she had attended one of the first Japanese language schools on Guam, shortly after 40

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On the afternoon of July 12, 1944, the girls under Taicho Takebena’s command were told that the Americans had destroyed Agana and Agat villages, and that the Chamorros should support the Japanese, who would reward them after the battle.

the occupation. There she had learned to read, write, and speak Japanese. Takebena found her attractive and hired her. For her, it was the easiest way to survive the war. On July 11, 1944, Takebena and the other Taichos were informed by General Takashina, the island commander, that all of the residents of the island, other than those needed for work details, were to be sent to the proposed Manengon concentration camp. Takebena decided that fifty girls and an unrecorded number of men and boys should be retained at the Fena camp to serve as a basic work force. He ordered his secretary to produce the list of fifty girls who would be kept at his headquarters. The secretary then sent forty-threeyear-old Cerilo Reyes, a Kumicho, to collect them. Reyes visited each family, telling them to go to the Manengon concentration camp, where they would be safe from the American bombardment. But from each family, one or more young girls between the ages of sixteen and nineteen were

kept behind to serve Takebena. The threat, of course, was beheading for any father or mother who refused to send a daughter to Takebena. By the afternoon of July 12, these young girls were assembled at the Fena camp. Takebena stepped out of his headquarters. His hand constantly stroked the handle of his saber. He called his secretary and ordered her to speak to the girls. His words, translated by her (and reconstructed from American military documents), were as follows: “Do not worry about the American bombings. The Americans cannot possibly win the war. The Japanese will win the war. Your families are being protected by the Japanese at Manengon from the Americans. You girls have been chosen to serve the Taicho during the battle and afterwards you will be rewarded for your service by receiving the best jobs. The Americans have bombed and ruined our beautiful island. Agana and Agat no longer exist. So do your best to serve 41

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As the Americans were landing, the Japanese became aggressive toward the young Chamorro girls, who did their best to resist the armed Imperial soldiers.

the Taicho.” The other girls tried not to show their disgust at this speech. They hated the Japanese, and prayed daily for the Americans’ return. But there was nothing they could do except smile at Takebena and assure him that they would work for him. Those who had resisted before were taken away and never heard from again. During the next week, while their families made their way from Fena to Manengon, the girls worked in the gardens, foraged for food, wove coconut mats, and made coconut oil. As the bombings from the American fleet offshore increased, the girls were forced to hide during the day and work at night. They slept in cold, often water-filled trenches near Takebena’s headquarters. On July 19, as the bombing became intense, Reyes asked Takebena for permission to take the girls to several large caves that were within a two-hour walk from the head-

quarters. From the caves, the girls traveled daily to work for Takebena, dodging the falling bombs and the splintering trees along the way. On the twenty-first, as the Marines were landing on Agat’s beaches, Takebena allowed his secretary and four other girls to leave for Manengon. The next day the remaining girls were assembled at his headquarters. The girls fidgeted and glanced nervously at each other as several Japanese men, civilians and soldiers, milled about leering at them. Without their translator, the girls were bewildered and then frightened as they were broken up into small groups and led away by various Japanese. Takebena ordered Reyes to take seven of the girls and go to his cave where they would be safe from the steadily increasing preinvasion bombardment. In the confusion caused by the bombings, Reyes and the girls did not reach the cave until the following day. The girls had not eaten,

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After a night of horror for the girls, the retreating Japanese threw hand grenades into the cave entrance and then ran away. Some of the girls escaped, however, as the frightened Japanese fled into the jungle and away from the advancing Marines.

and were relieved when Takebena and several soldiers arrived with canned salmon, rice, and a dozen bottles of saki. They divided up the food, and ate and drank until it was all gone. Without warning, Takebena rose and ordered an armed guard to enter the cave and fix his bayonet. Takebena turned to the girls with a cold, stern face. In broken English, he said that the Japanese soldiers were fighting the Americans to defend the island for Japan – and would give their lives if need be. The girls should then give themselves freely to the soldiers. If they refused, the guard was ordered to kill them. The Japanese soldiers turned to the girls, whom they had just fed, and ripped the dresses off their bodies, slapping and beating those who tried to resist. The girls were raped all through the night. In another cave, not far away, another group of eighteen girls faced the same fate. When one

group of soldiers had satisfied themselves, another group entered the cave. After the horror of the night, the girls in Takebena’s cave awoke to a tremendous explosion nearby. The Marines were approaching and the Japanese had fled. Finding the guard at the entrance of the cave dead from the bombing, the girls ran into the jungle. Other girls in other caves were not so lucky. The retreating Japanese, fleeing from the American advance, tossed hand grenades into the caves, killing or wounding many of the Agat girls. Those who lived broke up into small groups and tried to make their way through the jungle to Manengon and their families. Along the way they hid from the American bombs and the Japanese soldiers, and eased their hunger with whatever fruit they could find. In several instances, the girls happened onto Japanese snipers, and were shot down in clear sight of their sisters

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In the southern village of Merizo, the Japanese rounded up the strongest and most patriotic Chamorros, marched them into a cave near Tinta, and slaughtered them.

following along behind. In one case, a group of eight girls ran into a cave for protection from exploding bombs, only to find thirty dead men and boys from their village sprawled on the ground, blown to pieces by hand grenades. Among them was the younger brother of one of the girls.

women represented the leadership of the village: schoolteachers, the village commissioner, mothers and fathers who had sons in the U.S. military, a woman who had refused to bow to the Japanese, her two daughters, and other rebellious Chamorros who might give trouble to the Japanese. As darkness began to settle over the valley and the summer rains began to fall, these thirty Chamorros were marched off. The Japanese, intoxicated on saki, teased and tormented their captives constantly until, at Tinta, they reached a cave which the Merizo people had previously been forced to dig as a Japanese ammunition dump. Fear and hatred ran through the Chamorros as they stood before the taunting Japanese in the ever-increasing rain. Even though the night was now pitch dark, the flashes of naval gunfire from the American ships just offshore occasionally lit the faces of the Chamorros. As they glanced at one another, they came to the realization that the cave was

The Merizo Massacre The villagers of Merizo had an equally frightening experience, but one with a heroic ending. Many brave men, women, and children played a part in this story; what follows is a synopsis of those events. On July 15, 1944, the 800 residents of Merizo were rounded up by the Japanese and taken to the Geus River valley. When they arrived that evening, the Japanese commander stood before the assembled villagers and read aloud a list of thirty names. This group of twenty-five men and five 44

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As the Americans fought their way in from the invasion beaches, they began to find evidence of how the Japanese had treated the Chamorros during the occupation years.

their intended grave. They dared not attempt a rebellion, however, for fear of reprisals against their families back in the valley. The thirty Chamorros were ordered into the cave and told to go to sleep because, their captors told them, “American airplanes are coming to bomb you tonight.” After a few moments of silence, the Japanese began to fire into the cave. Half a dozen Chamorros fell while the rest tried to find cover. Then the Japanese began to lob hand grenades at the Chamorros. Blood flew through the air, spattering on the walls of the cave and on the other Chamorros. Manuel T. Charfauros had attempted to dive for cover outside the cave, but a grenade exploded nearby, ripping the flesh from his leg. Unable to escape now, he lay face down in the dirt, pretending to be dead. Charfauros could hear the groaning of one of his comrades and the rasping sound of air escaping from another’s chest. The wounded men heard footsteps approaching. The

slashing saber of an officer killed two of them. Charfauros waited his turn, praying that he would only be wounded. Eight Japanese soldiers watched as another, who particularly hated Charfauros, flipped the Chamorro’s cap off with the tip of his bayonet, then raised his rifle and lunged, driving the bayonet through Charfauros’s shoulder. The Japanese officer then turned and casually tossed six grenades, one after another, into the cave. Felipe Santiago Cruz, inside the cave, had watched his father fall in the first volley of shots. When an exploding Japanese grenade wounded Felipe, he bolted out of the mouth of the cave and disappeared into the black depths of the jungle before a Japanese bullet could find him. Other Chamorros did not fare so well. Charfauros, still alive but still pretending to be dead, lay at the mouth of the cave and glanced at the scene of continuing horror. From the cave emerged a wounded Chamorro. Hands before 45

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him, he cried, “Please have mercy and excuse . . .” A Japanese officer enticed him: “Maila” (“Come”). The Chamorro approached and a Japanese saber cut through the darkness, severing the man’s head, which fell to the ground with a thud followed by its crumpling body. Another man came forward from the groans and cries in the cave. “Please have mercy.” Again the sword slashed, cutting the man’s throat but not killing him. He fell to the ground and played dead. A third man emerged, and was beheaded. Inside the cave, those men and women who had survived the grenades pulled the bodies of their dead friends over themselves and also played dead. Frank Anderson was able to survive by crouching in the recesses of the cave. Louisa Baza, who lost her mother and sister in the attack, survived by hiding partially beneath a dead body. The only other female survivor was Joaquina Concepcion, who hid in the dark part of the cave.

The rains now turned into a torrential downpour, and the half-drunken soldiers tried to hurry their job. They entered the cave to ensure that all were dead, but soon left for the shelter of their headquarters. The survivors of the massacre struggled out from under the carnage and fled into the jungle – except for the bleeding Charfauros, who crawled to a nearby shack where he found a jar of rainwater, his only sustenance for several days to come. The day after the slaughter at Tinta, the Japanese once again stood among the Chamorros assembled in the Geus valley. Once again, the Japanese began to select a group of Chamorros. This time, however, there was no list. Instead, the Japanese chose the biggest and strongest among the remaining Merizo villagers – anyone who might give them trouble in the future. Another group of thirty was marched away from their families, obedient under the threat of death to their loved ones if they resisted. They were taken to a 46

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Several of the men from Merizo, led by Jose S. Reyes, realized that the Japanese were slaughtering the Chamorros and plotted an uprising. The men overpowered and killed their Japanese guards, took their weapons, and continued the fight against the Japanese until the Marines finally arrived in the area on July 30, 1944.

cave at Faha, and there all thirty men were killed. The remaining 740 Merizo villagers now began the long trek to Manengon. They were marched out of the valley, past Tingtinghanum, and finally arrived at a place called Atate, a two-day walk. There the men and women spent three days digging a giant hole in the side of the hill. Several men were then ordered to walk back to Tingtinghanum to gather supplies that had been left behind. Along the way, a boy escaped and ran to hide at his family’s ranch. As it turned out, the ranch house was the shack in which Manuel Charfauros lay bleeding in semiconsciousness. The boy explained that the Japanese had told the people of Merizo that they were going to the refugee camp at Manengon, but had stopped at Atate where they were made to dig a giant cave for the entire village. Charfauros, recognizing the Japanese plot for another mass murder, told the boy to return to the camp and tell the men about the Merizo massacre.

At about the same time, the men who had gone to Tingtinghanum to gather supplies met one of the survivors of the massacre, Jose S. Reyes, who told them the story of the death of their fellow villagers. Dropping the equipment they were carrying, these brave men returned to the Atate camp to try to save the others. Reyes was the only one among them who had a rifle, which he had hidden at his ranch home. As they approached Atate, Reyes devised a plot to overcome the Japanese guards. Each day, the Japanese would form up and stack their weapons together. At that moment, Reyes said, the unarmed men would dash forward and grab the Japanese weapons. Arriving at Atate, Jose Reyes, Antonio Tyquinco, Juan Borja, Pat Taijeron, Juan Naputi, and Jose Nangauta hid in the jungle, awaiting the most opportune moment. But with only one rifle, one dagger, and some sharpened sticks among them to face seventeen guards, bravery began to give way 47

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(Above) In the southern village of Merizo, next to San Dimas Church, stands this monument honoring the Chamorros who were killed by the Japanese in the Merizo massacre. (Opposite) The names of the forty-six Chamorros slain at Tinta and Faha are inscribed on a plaque on the monument.

to fear. Reyes realized that any hesitation at this moment could mean death for all of them and reprisals against their families. He angrily urged his men forward. “What are you waiting for? Do I have to shoot one of you first to get you to make your move?” At that, the men rushed for the Japanese weapons. The guards reacted quickly as Reyes began to shoot. Borja attempted to take on a Japanese guard, dagger against saber, while Tyquinco fought with his bare hands. The other men seized the Japanese rifles and, as Reyes quickly showed them how to activate the weapons, began to shoot the Japanese, eventually killing all but one guard, who escaped. The freed Chamorros quickly dispersed to jungle hideouts and ranches, while Reyes and his men took all of the Japanese weapons and headed to a place called Finile, which was known as one of the best hideouts on the island. The day before, on July 21, Jesus Reyes Quinene, a former first sergeant in the Guam Militia, and three other

Chamorros were sent with a Japanese guard named Ijimi to clear trails from the Fena camp to the Atate camp. Quinene’s experiences over the next several days were set out in his diary: July23 ... So after a hasty supper we leave Fena and worked our ways towards Camp. It was a dark nite and when we can’t see any more (we were caught by a heavy rain and a howling wind) we slept about 4 o’clock in the morning under the sword grass, with soaked pants and shirt. We were awaked about 5:30 in the morning and hurrying towards the Camp we found on the trail and along the trail all signs of evacuation. Ijimi was suspicious of revolt and told us that if the Japs were dead he will comit suicide. When we reached Camp I saw two Japs in front and one behind the Camp all dead and signs of struggle 48

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present. He (Ijimi) inspected the Officer’s Qtrs and found the captain of the Japs dead. Right there he breaks his gun and turning back on us he gave me his Saber and told me to kill him. We know he meant it but we do not know whether it was done by Chamorros. Have I known it, I will have kill him and secure his gun and Saber right there but being ignorant of the originality of the struggle we cried and told him that we can’t kill him. So he took a shovel and told us to dig a grave for him and after he killed himself we will bury him. We beg him to go with us to Merizo and there he could kill him[self]. So he agreed to my advise and told me to start. We headed with him and when we reach Doding he stopped and told us that we will dig a grave for him there because he is sure of the Americans landing at

Merizo and he is sure they will get him. So after giving me his back[pack] for our remembrance we started to dig the grave. About five minutes before the completion of the grave he told me to take the Biscuits and Candies from his back[pack] and that we four Chamorros must eat. We ate and finally beg him to eat with us. He declined but when I told him that Jesus Christ held his last supper with his disciples before being persecuted he comes to eat with us. I grace the meal and after eating we falled in line and he showed us his hand grenade and how he will killed himself. After this he told us to [go] away to a place about 25 or 50 yards. So we leave and in about and hour we heard the grenade sound. We waited for half and hour and then went to the grave. I was first to approach it and I found Ijimi all burned and his guts and all blowned off. 49

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AGAT MANENGON

Ilig Riv er

FENA

TALOFOFO

UMATAC Atate er

s

eu

Faha

G

v Ri

MERIZO

INARAJAN

After covering him we headed for Merizo with all the necessary precautions taken. I met a dozen younger [friends] with rifles and they almost shoot at us. There we get all the information from them and so we headed straight to the hideout. We reached the hideout and found Pat Taijeron and N. Champaco in charge of all the people. Directly I was ordered to start a sensus of the people and to be the officer of supplies .... July 25 A Squad or two of Japs was sighted on single file and right away the guards were commanded to standby for action. All were ready–those without guns were provided with machetes and clubs. None showed at the hideout. A conference was held for the Election of Of-

ficers. The result were as follows: Commanding Officer – Aguigui, Ignacio S., General Eastern Front – Reyes, Jose S., [Major] General Isidro Manalisay – Colonel – Staff 6 Japs killed by the Chamorros at their Front Northeast of the American Officer’s Quarters. Western Front – and Hideout – Soriano, Jose N. – [Major] General Commanding. Champaco, Mariano N. – Colonel Soriano, Ignacio N. – Colonel Taijeron, Pat S. – [Major] (Supply Corps) Quinene, Jesus R. – [Major] (Chief of Staff) Charfauros, Bill L. – Captain (Intelligence) Quinene, Mariano R. – Captain (Medical Corps) First Lieutenant – Cruz, Jesus C.; Champaco, Jose 50

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A Marine talks with a group of Chamorros who have just made contact with American troops.

N.; San Nicolas, Juan C; Aguigui, Jose T.; Meno, Vicente N. Second Lieutenant – Leon Guerrero, Jose R.; Cruz, Jose C.; San Nicolas, Jesus B.; Quinata, Mariano A. July 27 By 5 a.m. we moved to another hideout. The reason for this is one [of] our men held up by the Japs and we are afraid of our being exposed. A Lone Japanese was sighted and I was stationed to guard wounded at the old hideout. No excitement. July 28 A Lone Japanese was sighted by Tainatongo, Ignacio S.N. and was shot dead (this happened in the morning). In the afternoon we start our attack at Looyao where a

squad of Japanese Artillery was stationed. They shot at us and we exchanged shots until we finished them. No casualty on our side. . . . July 29 We tried to moved to [Cocos] Island. 6 men were sent for fish and 6 men were sent for boats. They turned back without fulfilling mission when they heard the American fighting and bombing planes shooting at close range. July 30 Hearing that yesterday our young boys found on one of the Japanese trenches 30 men dead, so I arranged to go out and investigated. We found according to the clothes worn by the boys that they were the 30 chamorros boys from Mer51

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After their liberation, the survivors of the Merizo massacre and the families and friends of the dead gathered for a special funeral ceremony to honor the victims.

izo who were killed. Investigation convinced us that they were killed by hand grenade. We returned to our hideout in the evening. At about 7 o’clock this evening 3 of our boys and [two] americans reaches our hideout and boy are we happy. Good nite and sweet dreams. The first two americans marines to [be] looked at by this hungry chamorros are as follows: Staff Sgt. Harry A. Kolata, Pvt.1/c Jimmy J. Walker: Thanks a million and I knew everyone of us will be praying for the victory of U.S.  Quinene

hand crossed Charfauros’s wounded leg and he cried out in pain. A muffled light showed a knife held by a Chamorro. “I was ready to kill you had you been a Jap,” said the intruder. The men with him explained that they had come to find an American flag which they had hidden away shortly after the Japanese had landed two and a half years before. The Chamorros cut coconuts and poured the juice into the empty water jar for Charfauros, then took the flag and left. Three days later, Charfauros’s son and three other men rescued him from the shack, carrying him on a stretcher. On July 31, Manuel Charfauros was taken by a small boat from the sandy beaches of Merizo to an American hospital ship that was anchored off the reef. For Charfauros, it had been a fifteen-day nightmare. For the people of Merizo, the incident was one of heroism and valor. In the face of extermination, the Chamorros had fought and saved their families and their honor.

After the Merizo villagers had revolted, the families encamped at Atate escaped one by one to their jungle ranches to hide out for the duration of the battle. Manuel Charfauros still lay on the floor of his hut. During a night of delirium, Charfauros sensed a man entering his shack. A searching 53

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A salvo from the battleship U.S.S. New Mexico strikes at Japanese defensive positions during the preinvasion bombardment.

LIBERATION DAY July 21, 1944 J

sion bombardment; and the aircraft carriers were readying hundreds of planes to provide close air support for the infantry. Conolly glanced at his watch as the second hand slowly ticked off the last few moments before 5:30 a.m. Calmly, and almost with a sigh, he gave the order: “Commence firing.” The command was repeated into the ship’s microphone by the firing officer: “Commence firing!” The last lingering moments of night were shattered by the thunder of exploding cannons and the darkness was split by the light of a thousand giant guns belching yellow-orange tongues of fire. The final bombardment had begun. While the Marines aboard their cramped troopships ate a full breakfast and cleaned their rifles one last time, the Japanese cringed in their dank foxholes to survive three more nightmarish hours. Although the Japanese were rattled from the bombardment, the veteran Marines knew that most would survive. The enemy held the high ground. They were well protected under reinforced concrete bunkers and would be as means as wolverines when the bombardment stopped. There would be no surrenders this day. Shells from battleships screamed overhead as landing ships carried amphibious tractors to the starting line and lowered their ramps. The little waterborne tractors called Roebling

ust as with the aforementioned atrocities, it is impossible to relate here the events of every struggle that took place between the Japanese and American combatants. What follows is an overview of the battle that in twenty days of bitter, bloody fighting left twenty thousand human beings dead and a like number wounded – some so scarred and maimed that they would carry the memory of their part in the battle for Guam indelibly etched in their minds and on their bodies for the rest of their lives. Having bombarded Guam continuously for two weeks, Admiral Richard Conolly stood on the bridge of his flagship, his jaw firmly set, and analyzed his work. Virtually every building from Agana to Agat had been pulverized. He was satisfied that few Americans would die in the rubble of these villages, compared to the bloody, building-to-building battles of Anzio and Saint-Lo in Europe, and at Garapan in Saipan. Conolly was now ready to land his Marines. Although it was the beginning of the typhoon season, a factor that had been a serious concern during the planning of Operation FORAGER, the seas were calm. It was a perfect day for an invasion. Conolly peered through the predawn haze at his armada. The troopships were preparing to disembark two divisions of Marines; the gunships were in position for the final preinva55

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Ships like the light cruiser USS St. Louis (CL 49) above delivered covering fire for the Marines as they landed, right.

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(Below) The Roebling alligator is an amphibious tractor specifically designed for the U.S. Marine Corps’ amphibious operations in the Pacific in World War II.

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alligators drove out of their mother ships and splashed into the water, one after another, and churned the ocean white as they drove in circles awaiting the arrival of their armed passengers. Marines on some of the troopships heard, over the loudspeakers, the exhortation of General Geiger, III Amphibious Corps commander: “The eyes of a nation watch you as you go into battle to liberate this former American bastion from the enemy. . . . The honor which has been bestowed upon you is a signal one. . . . Make no mistake, it will be a tough, bitter fight against a wily, stubborn foe who will doggedly defend Guam against this invasion. . . . May the glorious traditions of the Marine Esprit de Corps spur you to victory. You have been honored.” The Marines began disembarking from troopships that had been their home since leaving Guadalcanal a month and a half before. Over the side they climbed and down the nets, fully packed for twenty-four hours of combat. Finally, each man made the breathtaking leap from the dangling net into a bobbing Higgins boat. Most men were out of their troopships and moving toward the line of amphibious tractors when the first sorties of fighter-bombers from the carriers Wasp and Yorktown screamed overhead toward the invasion beaches. For an hour, the fighter-bombers from Admiral Mitscher’s carrier task force strafed the fourteen miles of beachhead from Agana to Bangi Point. Only 1,000 yards from shore, the Marines climbed out of the high-walled Higgins boats and dropped into the circling amphibious tractors that would carry them to their assigned beaches. Marines down the line smoked cigarettes and mumbled the traditional Marine understatement: “Somebody’s going to get hurt.” By a quarter to eight, wave upon wave of landing craft was headed toward shore. Gunboats, loaded with rocket launchers, approached the shore first and fired a preinvasion barrage directly on the beachfront. While each of the eighteen gunboats fired its 504 rockets, all in a matter of seconds, crewmen on 20mm and 40mm cannons raked the sandy shoreline at point-blank range. Although this action actually killed very few Japanese, it was later verified that the intensive fire did prevent General Takashina from replacing his beachhead casualties with fresh men, who had been poised and ready for action in reinforced concrete bunkers behind his Fonte Plateau command post. The Marines watched the bombardment finale from just off the reef’s edge. Only eight minutes before the men were scheduled to jump onto land, battleships, cruisers, destroyers – anything that had a gun – fired on the invasion beaches at will. Those Marines who had never experienced an invasion before felt sure that whoever wasn’t blown up by the bombardment had died from fright. The veterans, on the other hand, who had tasted the sands of Guadalcanal and Bougainville, knew that the Japanese would be out of their holes and at the triggers of their guns in minutes. Those veterans understood from experience that the secret to survival on the invasion beach was to run recklessly through the enemy rifle and mortar fire with the smug confidence that only one man in twenty would be hit. They had to dash past the carnage on the beach to the relative safety of the hills beyond as soon as the Navy gunfire had lifted and before the Japanese retaliated. It usually worked, at least for the first wave of men.

(Above) When possible, landing craft carried personnel, equipment, and supplies directly to the reef’s edge.

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This photograph of Agana was taken on the same day the Marines landed on Saipan. The pre-invasion bombardment of Guam had not yet begun.

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Above are the remains of Agana following the pre-invasion air and naval bombardment. The objective was to prevent door-to﹣door street fight with the Japanese defending Guam.

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Just as the 3rd Marine Division drove over the reef’s edge, its alligator tracks digging into the colorful coral, squadron after squadron of Marine fighters and torpedo bombers attacked the beach. Marine pilots protected Marine riflemen. Then, along with the Navy, they lifted their field of fire another 1,000 yards inland, allowing the first wave of Marines to leap onto Guam’s white sand beaches. It was 8:29 a.m. on July 21, 1944. The invasion – and liberation – of Guam had begun. The Marines made a half-mile dash in full battle gear. The reef was 150 yards wide. The enemy was entrenched only 700 yards inland. In between were 300 yards of open rice paddies, agony, pain, and death. The field of green turned crimson with fire and blood. Armored tanks mounted with 37mm and 75mm guns led the riflemen ashore. These death-dealing giants rumbled up onto the beach and immediately began firing on targets of opportunity. The entire landing area was a cloud of dust and debris, fire and smoke, screaming wounded and silent dead. Within minutes, however, the Japanese had recovered; and artillery as well as small-arms fire began landing on the Marines. Commanding from the high ground, the Japanese could literally look down the throats of the Marines while directing their own artillery fire and troop movements. Direct hits on Higgins boats not yet to the reef line sent whole battleladen platoons to the bottom, drowning those who were not ripped apart by the shrapnel. Although the Japanese defenders had suffered the torment of the extensive preinvasion bombardment, they had adjusted somewhat to combat conditions: The Marines, on the other hand, were thrust into it. New replacements in succeeding waves were faced with the horror of leaping out of an amphibious tractor and onto a burning, stinking beach littered with the shattered corpses of previous waves that had already faced Japanese artillery and small-arms fire. In spite of the shock of mutilated bodies, the screams of wounded warriors, and the horrendous noise of thousands upon thousands of men shooting at each other, the Marines ran forward. In a state of shock, driven by adrenaline, the Japanese crawled out of their holes and returned to their firing positions. Concrete pillboxes, trenches, and machine-gun installations spit hate and death at the advancing Marines. Red Beach, Blue Beach; North Sector, South Sector; the same scene took place in bloody, sequential precision. For the Marines, the hours of training paid off. The battle plan for the invasion had been detailed right down to the individual rifle platoon leader. He had his assigned target and did not have to depend on the orders of a commanding officer who might be killed at any moment. Any platoon leader could assume command of any group of men at any time and attack his target. In the frenzy of the invasion, this individual initiative allowed the corps to move steadily forward as each platoon leader fought his own 100-yard battle. The battle plan for Guam called first for the capture of the Orote airfield and Apra Harbor. In a giant pincer movement, the 3rd Marine Division would land on Asan Beach, just to the north of Apra Harbor, and drive inland and then south toward the harbor. The 1st Provisional Brigade would land south of Orote Point and drive inland and then to the north. The two divisions would meet, isolate and capture Orote Peninsula and Cabras Island, and then regroup and drive the length of the island “until it was cleared of enemy troops.”

(Left, top) Admiral Marc Mitscher’s aircraft carrier task force not only provided complete air superiority for the invading American forces, but also provided close air support for the ground forces from the time they hit the beach until the island was declared secured. (Left) By 1944, the air arm of the United States forces was far superior to that of the Japanese in both men and machines. (Above) Climbing down the nets from a troopship into a Higgins boat was a dangerous operation. If a Marine misjudged his final drop, he could be trapped between the two hulls and crushed.

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Disembarking from their troopship, these Marines are now committed to combat.

Religious services on board ship were attended by the fighting men headed for the invasion of Guam.

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S.

RP O SC

Yigo

3rd Marine Div.

U

HI

P

M IA

O BI

II

Dededo

Tamuning Piti

Apra Harbor

ASAN

Barrigada

Agana

Orote Pen.

77th Infantry Div.

1st Marine Brig.

Yona

AGAT

Fena

Talofofo

Guam Campaign Battle Plan INVASION DAY 21 JULY 1944

Inarajan Merizo

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As invasion day wore on, the amphibious tractors scurried back and forth between ship and shore, carrying out wounded and returning with reinforcements and supplies.

Even after having spent six weeks on a troopship, many men became seasick while riding toward shore in the diesel-powered tractors.

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Asan Beachhead - The Northern Sector Within the 3rd Marine Division’s zone of action, three Marine regiments, each with a little over six thousand men, attacked abreast. In the 2,500 yards between the devil’s horns, the 3rd Marine Regiment would take Adelup Point on the left, while the 9th Marine Regiment would take Asan Point on the right and the 21st Marine Regiment would drive up the middle. The Asan beachhead was well defended. General Takashina, the Japanese commanding general, watched the landing and directed his defenses from his perch on the hill just above the battlefield. From there he directed his artillery and sent a constant stream of Japanese soldiers from reinforced bunkers, behind his command post, up to the front lines to replace others who had just given their lives honorably. In the hot July sun, pack-laden Marines sweated and soon exhausted their water supplies. Struggling forward in the face of an enfilade of fire, the riflemen stripped canteens and ammunition from fallen comrades and continued to fight forward, always forward. The word “retreat” just doesn’t exist in a Marine’s dictionary.

The Striking 9th Takes Asan Point The Asan landing has been compared to a mini-Salerno, an invasion in Italy which also featured a beach from which there was no escape from deadly enemy fire immediately upon landing. General Geiger, the Marine commanding general, was confident that he could establish a foothold on the beach, but had reservations about breaking out of the cliff-lined valley. The going got rough immediately for the 9th Regiment. Its objective, Asan Point, was riddled with machine gun-bearing caves. The point itself was covered by crossing fire from both of its rear flanks. Tanks that landed with the first wave provided close support for riflemen. Even with Marines crawling all over Asan Point and with tanks and aircraft providing support, tenacious Japanese on a well emplaced six-inch gun continued to fire at other Marines in the 3rd Regiment who were attempting to take the other horn, Adelup Point. As slow as the advance was up the rocky clifflines, it was fast over the rice paddies. Marine platoons landing just to the left of Asan Point dashed from the beach and across the open fields. Unfortunately, they had only bomb craters for cover. Often a Japanese machine gunner would single out a platoon, sending the men scrambling into a muddy hole. The Marines could only cringe and wait for the machine gunner to find another target, usually another Marine somewhere else in the open. Everybody got his turn to be shot at. By early afternoon all troops of the 9th Marines were ashore, and the 3rd and 2nd Battalions had completed their first objective by linking up with the 21st Regiment on their left. With the rice paddies cleared, regimental artillery moved in and set up supporting fire for the advance up the hills. The Striking 9th had succeeded in taking Asan Point, but they had paid for it with 231 casualties, including 20 officers, most of whom were second lieutenants.

ASAN BEACHHEAD - The Northern Sector

3rd Marine Div. 3rd Adelup Point 9th

21st

Asan Point

BAN

ZAI R IDGE

MT. TEN JO

BUND SCHU

Asan

AD RO

CHONITO CLIFF E DG RI

Fonte Plateau

The 21st Regiment Drives Up the Middle

Japanese Defense Command Post

In the center of the division’s action on the Asan valley beachhead, the 21st Marine Regiment faced the task of moving 67

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Fearless Seabees manned pontoons full of high octane gas to refuel landing craft, above. Below and right the battleship USS Missouri played a major role in the bombardment of Guam.

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(Right) Enemy mortar fire had been zeroed in on the suspected landing beaches. The deadly accurate shells prevented the amphibious tractors from advancing inland after they had crawled over the reef’s edge and approached the beach. (Below) Further complicating the armored advance were these six-foot-deep, ten-foot-wide antitank ditches south of Adelup Point.

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up treacherous river gorges and clifflines. The 21st also came ashore in a column of battalions, with the 3rd dashing across the open ground to the base of the hills, much as the 3rd Battalion of 9th Regiment had done on its right. Then as 2nd Battalion came ashore, they too ran up to join their comrades. With the 1st Battalion finally ashore and offering covering fire, 2nd Battalion peeled off to the left and maneuvered up a small valley, while the 3rd Battalion moved to the right and up the Asan River valley. The plan was to move up the valley as far as possible, and then spread out to the left and right to form a solid line of advancing riflemen. What the enemy didn’t stop, however, the terrain did. The red clay of the cliffs crumbled underfoot, and the dense jungle tangled tired legs. Japanese in caves and trees above hurled a constant stream of hand grenades down on the advancing Marines. Nests of machine gunners hid in the jungle waiting for the first line of advance to pass, and then attacked an unsuspecting second or third line. Cross fire caught the slowly advancing Marines between covers, killing officers and pointmen first. Marines pulled wounded buddies to cover as others viciously attacked the Japanese positions, eliminating them one at a time so that following platoons could advance safely to the next line of resistance.

The 3rd Regiment on Adelup Point Aboard the transport ships, before the battle began, each commander had checked the prebombardment plan to ensure that his target received adequate softening up. One particular nose of land reached out into the battlefield, and it received special attention from the commanders who studied the terrain. This exposed cliffline looked like such a death trap for the Marines who would face it that the ridge was named for the Company A commander, Captain Geary R. Bundschu, who was assigned the mission of capturing it. The Japanese defenders assigned to the Bundschu Ridge area knew that they were protecting their general’s command post, and were well prepared for the landing. They quickly drew the first blood, sinking landing craft even before they reached the reef. The 3rd Marine Regiment encountered stiff resistance when they finally landed on Adelup Point at the base of Bundschu Ridge. The point itself was honeycombed with caves and filled with machine gunners. The landing Marines faced a curtain of bullets from the low mound that stuck well out onto the reef. Immediately ashore from the point was a 480-yardlong seawall that protected the prewar coastal road. The only cover was bomb craters and broken coconut trees that lined both sides of the road to Agana. Marines who got this far were pinned down by Japanese machine guns that had been strategically placed at the rear of the point. Just above and to the right of the seawall was a sheer, 100-foot-high cliff. The Chamorros call it Chorito Cliff. The military maps show it as Chonito Cliff. But the Marines nicknamed it Sugar Ridge because it was such a sweet defensive position for the Japanese. Colonel W. Carvel Hall’s 3rd Marine Regiment took heavy losses in getting ashore near Adelup, but resolutely reorganized and began to attack the cliff face. Directly above Hall’s attacking Marines stood General Takashina. The most direct route to his headquarters from the Marines’ position on Ade-

It was 8:29 a.m. on July 21, 1944, when the first Marines jumped from their amphibious tractors onto Guam’s sandy beaches. Tractor drivers dispensed their special brand of ironic humor during the landings, shouting, “The ride’s over, boys – the hot dog stands are down the beach to the left.” The Marines jumped out, only to find underwater demolition team signs reading “Welcome Marines.” Once on the beach, they had only minutes to reorganize and move out before mortar fire found them.

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Above left, troop transports unload Marines into amphibious tractors, which circle up before forming a line and heading toward the beach.

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By early afternoon on invasion day, the Asan beachhead was covered with all manner of landing craft and equipment moving personnel and supplies. Throughout the day, Japanese machine gunners and artillerymen fired down from the hills overlooking the invasion beaches.

lup Point was a sweep around the left end and a run up the back side of Fonte Plateau. Takashina naturally recognized this and defended the approach more than adequately, refusing his flank to Lieutenant Colonel Ralph L. Houser’s 3rd Battalion, which was first ashore in this regiment’s column of battalions. Houser, under orders to take the cliff, countered with constant reinforcements and attacked the caves with flame throwers and hand grenades. Only by using tanks along the road, firing point blank into the caves, and by committing his reserve was Houser able to take the first few yards of cliffline. Even with tanks firing at the reverse slope of Adelup Point, with seaside destroyers hitting the front side, and with Marines attacking with satchel charges of dynamite, the Japanese continued a steady stream of harassing fire into the rear of 3rd Battalion’s precarious position and prevented it from advancing. Acting on his own initiative and with only his objective in mind, Captain Bundschu, commander of the battalion’s spearheading Company A, began his second attack against the well-entrenched and determined enemy. He divided his company, using half in a flanking maneuver to support the other. It was a time-consuming and costly battle, and the ridge above was not won until his reserve was committed. As bad as the initial fighting had been, the battle from there on up would be worse. Takashina had emplaced defensive machine guns that criss-crossed each other’s field of fire. It was impossible to attack one machine gun nest without coming under fire from the other. By two in the afternoon Bundschu requested permission to disengage. Permission was denied. He and his sole remaining officer, Lieutenant James A. Gallo, Jr., were ordered to organize the remaining men of the company into a two-pronged attack and take the cliff. Even with naval gunfire support, Bundschu’s company was picked away by the Japanese machine gunners as the Marines slowly inched forward. When Captain Bundschu finally fell, young Lieutenant Gallo assumed command. He worked his way forward until, with only a handful of men, he took the top of the cliffline. Still hundreds of yards above the battle-weary Gallo, Takashina ordered in still more reinforcements. Streaming over the reverse slope came a horde of fresh Imperial soldiers, pushing Gallo and his men off the hill, retaking their machine guns, and returning a fusillade of fire. Colonel Hall withstood the shock of the counterattack and drove his battalion forward again, until finally he and his commanders stood atop the first cliffline along Bundschu Ridge. Despite constant naval gunfire and aircraft carrier strikes, Takashina continued to move reinforcements into key positions and to hold the much higher Fonte Plateau cliffline. Although the 3rd Regiment did manage to capture Adelup Point, with heavy casualties, two-thirds of the regiment had been unable to attain its invasion day objectives. The Japanese defenders were resolute. After the initial duel between the Japanese Army’s 29th Division and the Americans’ 3rd Marine Division, the Marine beachhead at Asan was thinly established. On the right, the 9th Marine Regiment controlled Asan Point; to the front, the 21st Marine Regiment had dug into the base of Fonte Plateau; and clinging to the Adelup Point c1iff line on the left was the battered 3rd Marine Regiment. However, contact was never established between the 21st and the 3rd Marine Regiments. Anxious Marines knew that infiltrating Japanese would sneak

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Ship after ship unloaded its troops, until 50,000 Marines and soldiers had crossed the reef and faced enemy fire. Many never made it to shore. Many more died on the beaches, never having seen or fired at the enemy.

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(left) Some of these Marines had never seen combat. Others had survived both Guadalcanal and Bouganinville, and now resigned themselves to fate as they faced another beachhead. (Below) The majority of the soldiers in the Army’s newly organized 77th Division were raw recruits. Their enthusiasm, however, soon earned them the nickname “77th Marines.”

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The preinvasion bombardment destroyed the village of Agat, preventing the Japanese from using the buildings as defensive positions.

As a result of the heavy advance bombardment, the Marines of the 22nd Regiment were able to enter Agat village before noon on invasion day.

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through these breaks in the line as soon as darkness fell. By 4:40 p.m. all division artillery was ashore, and by 5:15 p.m. Major General Alan H. Turnage, the division commander, was ashore and had established his command post in a gully on the left bank of the Asan River. Bulldozer’s quickly began cutting roads through the jungle, roads which were quickly churned into mud by the ever-marching Marines, and desperately needed water trucks came ashore. The enemy still controlled the beachhead, and the 3rd Marine Division was badly exposed over its entire front. As expected, Takashina soon began sending a stream of probing nightfighters against the thinly stretched Marine lines. Bloodshot Marine eyes peered into the darkness and nervous Marine ears strained. There were no Marine reserves on the beach. An excellent opportunity existed for the Japanese to counterattack, and the Marines knew it. Comparing the Guam invasion to other bloody battles in the Pacific, a military historian said that invasion day at Asan was not quite as bad as Tarawa, in the Gilbert Islands, but added that it was worse than Chalan Kanoa, in Saipan; worse than Cape Gloucester, on the island of New Britain in the Bismarck Archipelago; worse than Roi-Namur at Kwajalein Atoll.

Agat Beachhead - The Southern Sector Brigadier General Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr., commanded the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade and its 10,000 veterans in two regiments. He had the responsibility of capturing a beachhead that stretched from Agat village to Bangi Point and Alutom lsland. Shepherd divided his sector into Yellow beaches 1 and 2 on the left, and White 1 and 2 on the right. The 4th Marine Regiment would land on White beaches and set up defensive positions to protect the right flank. The 22nd Regiment would land on Yellow beaches to capture Agat village and then wheel north to link up with the 3rd Division to isolate Orote Peninsula. The Army’s 77th Division would be held in floating reserve. These 20,000 men were not veterans and had only practiced an amphibious invasion on Hawaii’s beaches. It was therefore decided that rather than allow them to be slaughtered on the reef, they would be landed after the Marines, pass through the 4th’s lines, and protect the southern flank while the Marines drove north. The reefs off Agat village are much wider than those at Asan, and although the Japanese commander in the Agat sector had fewer troops, he had better defensive artillery emplacements. The Marines who waded ashore off Gaan Point faced murderous fire from concrete blockhouses that held 75mm and 37mm guns. Those heavy guns fired on the little amphibious tractors throughout their journey from the line of Higgins boats to the beach. Two dozen abreast, the tractors churned bravely toward the beach at six knots. For the Marines inside, there was the constant pinging of rifle fire bouncing off the walls, and occasionally the thunder and whoosh of a mortar shell falling just outside the vessel. The Japanese did not always miss. Most of the men in a whole wave were buddies. It took two tractors to carry a platoon, and periodically a platoon leader would glance over the side of his tractor to see to it that his other rifle squads were coming in all right. More than once

AGAT BEACHHEAD - The Southern Sector

1st Marine Brig.

RO A

D

22nd

Agat HA

RM

ON

AD

R HA

N

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4th

RO

GAAN POINT

MT. ALIFAN

OLD

ALUTOM ISLAND

BANGI POINT

HILL 40

FENA RESERVOIR

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For thirteen days before the III Amphibious Crops landed, American battleships hurled 2,000-pound high-explosive shells at Japanese strong points. “On this island,” wrote one Japanese soldier, “no matter where one goes the shells follow.”

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Moving inland, the Marines advance in the company of M-4 Sherman tanks.

Just as they had in the Northern Sector, the Japanese held the high ground above Agat village, in the Southern Sector. From there they poured down artillery fire and then launched a midnight banzai charge to push the Marines back into the sea.

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he would see a tractor somewhere down the line suddenly disappear in a geyser of water. Usually, after the spray settled, the tractor was still there, churning along. Much too often, however, there was nothing left but a patch of bubbles on the shark-infested water. Artillery fire from the cliffs of Orote Peninsula, flanking the invasion beach, knocked out twenty amphibious tractors before they even crossed the Agat reef. To neutralize this menace, Admiral Conolly sent the U.S.S. Pennsylvania close inshore where it delivered a point-blank salvo from its main batteries every twenty-two seconds until the Japanese guns were blasted from their concrete and rock emplacements in the cliffline. Just as General Takashina stood above the 3rd Marine Division landing on Asan Beach, so Colonel Tsunetaro Suenaga commanded the 38th Infantry Regiment from his perch atop Mount Alifan above Agat. Overlooking the battleground and his riflemen, Suenaga also directed an elaborate system of pillboxes and trenches around his three-gun battery. He had had plenty of time to heavily reinforce his area of responsibility, and was well prepared for the Marines.

The 22nd Regiment Takes Agat Village Lieutenant Colonel Walfried H. Fromhold commanded the 1st Battalion of the 22nd Regiment, on the left flank of the Agat beachhead. Naval gunfire had already leveled the village for him. It was American strategy to destroy buildings and thereby prevent costly street battles. Nevertheless, Japanese defenders filtered back into the rubble, which provided excellent cover. Concrete pillboxes, hidden among palm trees and covered with sand, opened fire on the Marines as they leaped from their landing vehicles. Seventy-five of these Marines died on Yellow Beach 2 alone, before having an opportunity to fire on the enemy. Fromhold’s 1st Battalion worked its way slowly into the rubble of Agat, with the Japanese defenders viciously resisting the American advance. Fromhold was finally forced to commit his reserve to maintain the battalion’s momentum. By 11:30 a.m. after three hours of tough fighting, he had his battalion dug in along the old Harmon Road, halfway through the village of Agat. General Shepherd, eager to get into the thick of it and assume command of his men, rode in with the last of his command echelon and set up headquarters in a coconut grove 200 yards southeast of Gaan Point. At 12:45 p.m. after an hour of reorganization and a can of cold C-rations, 1st Battalion jumped off from its positions along old Harmon Road. Tanks had to be drawn in to support the drive through Agat, firing point-blank at Japanese hiding in the rubble. The battalion progressed well until it reached a machine gun-reinforced enemy position just northeast of the village. This insignificant-looking hill was laced with trenches and fox holes situated to allow cross fire, Captain Charles F, Widdecke and his Company C attempted to take the hill with several flanking maneuvers, each repelled by deadly accurate machine gun fire. He committed his reserve platoon, but the concealed machine guns pinned them to the base of the hill. Widdecke reported to his battalion commander, “Company C committed all platoons, no reserve, weak, could not hold counterattack.” The battalion commander committed another reserve platoon to reinforce Widdecke’s position, but it

General Takeshi Takashina, at right, and Colonel Tsunetaro Suenaga developed the Japanese battle plan for Guam. Suenaga died on the night of invasion day when he personally led a banzai attack on the 1st Brigade in Agat. Takashina was killed while directing the retreat from his Fonte Plateau headquarters.

This 75mm gun faced the Marines who landed at Gaan Point.

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At approximately 1,000 yards from shore, just short of accurate enemy machine gun fire from land, troops transfer from the larger Higgins boats into amphibious tractors that would carry them to the beach. Naval bombardment of shore installations continued during the transfer operation.

This photograph was taken from the back of a Higgens boat on the way to Asan beachhead.

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This photograph was probably taken by the same photographer just as they hit the beach.

Hospital ships such as the U.S.S. Bountiful, protected among the ships off Guam, reassured the fighting men ashore.

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With land mines buried nearby, mortar fire coming in, and sniper fire overhead, the Marines hug the ground until ordered to move out.

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was not until well after dark that the hill was taken and all company commanders reported to Colonel Fromhold that their positions were secure for the night. The 2nd Battalion, on the right side of 22nd Regiment’s field of action, did not fare well in the second half of the day’s action. No sooner had they jumped off for the 12:45 p.m. attack than accurate enemy mortar fire began to inflict heavy casualties. Company E was stopped in its tracks by a Japanese dualpurpose gun. And when Company A called in air support, the strafing hit friendly front lines and ten bombs were dropped on Company F. With the Japanese continuing to fire from the high ground, corpsmen strove to remove the wounded and company commanders attempted to reorganize their riflemen. The battalion, beaten by Colonel Suenaga and friendly fire, was ordered to stop the advance and dig in for the night.

The 4th Regiment Establishes the Right Flank Lieutenant Colonel Alan Shapley and his 4th Marine Regiment had hoped to ride their amphibious tractors as far as 1,000 yards inshore off White Beaches 1 and 2 to the right of the 22nd Regiment’s field of operations. They met stiff resistance immediately after crossing the reef, however, and had to abandon the plan. This caused some anxious moments for one platoon that had carried out the original plan and found itself half a mile inland from any other assault units for two hours. Landing with four companies abreast, two from each of two battalions, Shapley’s 4th Marines took the south Agat area in a series of individually commanded, platoon-level flanking and counter flanking maneuvers. Both battalions moved in unison and established a roadblock on the old Harmon Road where it ran out of the battlefield to the south. Marines from the 22nd Regiment down the road to the left could be seen by Marines of the 4th as they prepared their night defenses. It comforted the Marines to pass the word that the defensive perimeter was complete. But General Shepherd knew that the lines were thin, and could only be held in depth at strategic strong points. He wired to General Geiger at 6:30 that evening: “Own casualties about 350. Enemy unknown. Critical shortages fuel and ammunition all types. Think we can handle it. Will continue as planned tomorrow.” General Geiger, commanding both the northern and southern beachheads of the III Amphibious Corps, viewed the invasion day activities with guarded optimism. Both the 3rd Marine Division and the 1st Provisional Brigade had established their respective beachheads. Artillery was ashore and in operation. Naval gunfire and air support were excellent. The last phase of Geiger’s invasion day battle plan called for landing the Army. The Army’s primary assignment was to defend the invaders’ right flank and to prepare for an attack, if necessary, on the southern end of the island, while the 1st Provisional Brigade turned left to attack Orate Peninsula from the south. The 3rd Division, meanwhile, would proceed with its attack on the high ground above Asan in the northern sector, while simultaneously driving south toward the 1st Brigade to isolate Orote. The Army’s 77th Infantry Division landed with considerable operational difficulty, to say the least. Although the original plan had called for their landing to begin at 10:30 on invasion 87

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Line after line of men waded ashore from landing craft across some of the toughest reefs in the Pacific. Once on the beach, they scrambled over debris left by others who had gone before them. (Left) An amtrac filled with Marines drives out of an LST (Landing Ship, Tank) for a ride inland.

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morning, they drove in circles on the departure line until 2:00 in the afternoon. Furthermore, with all of the amtracs tied up supplying the Marines, the soldiers had to wade ashore across the potholed coral reef. At 2:30 p.m. Marine Commanding General Geiger ordered Army Commanding Colonel Vincent J. Tanzola to complete the landing of the rest of his combat team. Due to communications problems, Tanzola could not verify this instruction until 5:30 p.m. With darkness quickly approaching, Tanzola questioned his orders. “Request clear order be issued. Expedite reply.” The expedited reply came: “Land your CT [Combat Team] at once in accordance with previous instructions.” Throughout the night, the soldiers groped their way ashore and to their assembly area 400 yards inland from Gaan Point. It was six the next morning before all units were ashore and seven before they were all accounted for. Many soldiers died during this night landing across the potholed reef. One medium tank dropped into a large crater, disappearing from sight and drowning its crew. Waterlogged vehicles had to be dragged in by bulldozers. It was for good reason that Agat’s reef has been called the “toughest reef in the Pacific War.”

Throughout invasion day and on until July 23, American troops continued to stream ashore from landing craft that shuttled to and from the troopships safely offshore. In difficult places, bulldozers created roads where none had been and tanks began moving forward.

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A weary Marine holds his Browning automatic rifle at the ready as he relaxes against a coconut tree.

SECURING THE FINAL BEACHHEAD LINE July 22 — July 29, 1944 T

cleaned up all of the Japanese infiltration parties that had sneaked down Bundschu Ridge the night before. Enemy mortar fire scored a direct hit on Hall’s communications command post, wiping it out and seriously complicating his job. Nevertheless, Hall mounted a full regimental attack, with supporting battalions attacking on both the left and right flanks of Bundschu Ridge. Although some units of the battalion did make it to the top, they were immediately driven off when General Takashina called in an extremely accurate barrage of 90mm mortar fire on the regiment and smashed the attack. With this, Takashina effectively ended the Marine drive on his command post for the second day. That evening General Turnage, in charge of the northern attack forces, sent a message to General Geiger: “Enemy resistance increased considerably today on Div[ision] left and center. All Bn’s [Battalions] of 3rd CT [Combat Team] have been committed in continuous attack since landing. 21st CT less 1 Bn in Div Res has been committed continuously with all units in assault. One of the assault Bn’s of 21st CT is being relieved on line by Div Res Bn today. Former is approx 40% depleted. Since further advance will continue to thin our lines it is now apparent that an additional combat team is needed. 9th CT is fully committed to capture of

he immediate objective of any amphibious invasion is to secure an advance defensive perimeter that will prevent the enemy from prosecuting an effective counterattack and reversing the invasion. In the case of the Guam invasion, this meant gaining control of the mountain ridgeline above the coastline all the way from Facpi Point north to Fonte Plateau. After achieving the invasion day objectives, therefore, the Guam campaign developed into three separate phases. Securing the final beachhead line included the battle for Fonte Plateau to gain control of the strategic high ground and the battle for Orote Peninsula to gain control of Apra Harbor. These battles were separate but simultaneous. The successful culmination of these two struggles then sent the Japanese into a general retreat to the north, a retreat that became a battle of attrition as the entire III Amphibious Corps swept the enemy into pockets of resistance that could be overcome en masse.

The Capture of Bundschu Ridge It was 8:30 on the morning after the invasion before Colonel Hall’s 1st Battalion of the 3rd Marine Regiment had 93

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Piti & Cabras. Accordingly it is urgently recommended that an additional CT be attached this Div at the earliest practicable date.” General Geiger denied General Turnage’s request for an additional combat team. The front lines were suffering from casualties everywhere, but it was too early for the commanding general to commit his last reserves. While weary troops attempted to hold their ground, the Navy poured heavy gunfire into suspected enemy positions. As yet, the 3rd Division had not been able to close its lines between the 3rd Regiment on Adelup Point and the 21st Regiment in the central Asan valley. This constantly posed a problem to division command for night defenses. No further advance could take place until these lines were closed atop the high ground. General Takashina used this break in the American lines to begin organizing his major counterat-

tack. By maintaining pressure on the 3rd and feeding infiltrators between them and the 21st, he seriously threatened the Marines’ beachhead. Takashina continued to pour a steady stream of artillery and machine gun fire from atop Fonte Plateau, while amassing reinforcements from the other side of the island for a decisive battle. Delaying the Marine attack on his immediate front, Bundschu Ridge, was the key to his defensive strategy. Ideally, an amphibious landing force should sweep out in a uniform fan from the invasion beach; but Takashina’s stubborn resistance was holding up General Turnage’s entire left flank. In addition to this steady and deadly accurate enemy fire from the high ground above the battle scene, the situation on Bundschu Ridge was further complicated by the lack of roads below. Box after box of ammunition, food, and medical supplies, along with five-gallon cans of water,

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had to be carried by hand from the invasion beach to the front lines, under constant fire. “My left flank is quite secure,” said Colonel Hall on the fourth day of his diligent attack on Bundschu Ridge, “so I am taking Weapons Company and attaching them to Aplington [1st Battalion commander]. They will give Aplington the men to make contact with 21st. I am going to try and advance up that mess in front of me. What I really need is a battalion whereas I have only 160 men to use on that 500yard slope. They might move to the top but they couldn’t advance on. Company A is down to about 30-40 men with an air liaison officer in charge, Company E is down to half strength. They have no strength to push on.” But push on they did. The 3rd Regiment jumped off to take Bundschu Ridge and link up with the 21st while Hall’s men attempted to take the ridge from the rear. They were

met by a firm counterattack from Takashina, which denied them the ridge and further depleted their ranks. Every available man was committed to the front line. Takashina’s Imperial soldiers drove into the Marine ranks. The battalion managed to repulse the enemy counterattack, but only with the support of excellent naval gunfire, air cover, and artillery. Even so, they suffered such heavy casualties that they could not renew the attack and were forced to dig in. Takashina sent two more counterattacks against the Marine units in the ravines below him. Each was repulsed, but each cost more Marine casualties and further weakened the Americans’ ability to withstand a full-strength counterattack. It was during this action that an ordinary Marine, Private First Class Leonard F. Mason, performed an extraordinary act. Realizing that he had been mortally wounded, the enraged Marine charged two enemy machine gun nests

Moving forward with a machine gun tripod in the hot, humid climate of Guam was an exhausting task.

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Wounded men on the fighting front received the best possible medical care from the corpsmen, who crawled to the battle scene to treat them before they were moved to medical evacuation stations. A pulley system gently lowers a Marine casualty from the steep slopes of Bundschu Ridge. Corpsmen and comrades carry the wounded to the beach, where they are transferred to amtracs for the ride out to a hospital ship.

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and destroyed them both single-handedly. Mason was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for this action. By nightfall of the fourth day ashore, the Marines had reached the crest of the first high ground, but their lines were thinly stretched. Platoons were separated by seventyfive yards of dense growth that afforded easy cover for knifewielding Japanese infiltrators. Anxiety-ridden Marines dug in along the approaches to Mount Tenjo Road, the final approach to Takashina’s Fonte Plateau headquarters. Division casualties continued to mount. A total of 2,034 men, or a little over one out of ten men who landed, were out of action by the end of the fourth day. Each required evacuation – or burial. Thousands of support personnel and their logistical counterparts went into operation as the Navy corpsmen moved the wounded Marines to the beach and sorted them for either medical relief ships, amputation

ships, or burial. Forward aid stations were established under constant sniper fire. Corpsmen individually led emergency, but ambulatory, cases to the rear. Other wounded men were lowered by stretchers on a pulley system from exposed forward hills to the valley below. Supplies were moving ashore quickly, with some ships completely unloaded and shuttling back for more. With most of his star shells spent, Admiral Conolly authorized ships’ searchlights to be used at night to protect his troops on the dangerous Guam hillsides. Bulldozers, manned by seemingly fearless Seabees, built roads twenty-four hours a day to carry needed supplies forward and wounded Marines to the rear, all while under fire. The remnants of the dead Captain Bundschu’s company huddled in their damp foxholes, fixed their bayonets onto their M-1s, and braced themselves for another night on the ridge with General Takashina.

Dead Japanese soldiers were sprayed with DDT before burial to prevent diseases that might infect American troops.

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The Battle of Fonte Plateau July 25 - July 26, 1944

victories in the war. In the jungle-covered hills above this macabre scene the battle was still raging and the men of the Striking 9th began to mumble once again that “somebody’s going to get hurt.” After an evening of semi-rest in foxholes half full of Guam’s summer rain, the men of Cushman’s battalion rose early on July 25 and carefully moved over the top of Bundschu Ridge and through the lines of 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines. The replacements, relatively unscathed by their battle for Piti, watched awkwardly as the few remaining men of Colonel Hall’s brave battalion crawled from their shallow foxholes, bedraggled, dazed, and glassy-eyed. For four days and nights these proud Marines had struggled against the Imperial Army’s best and strongest. For a hundred continuous hours these Marines had survived from minute to minute, from bullet to bullet, certainly not dead, but not really alive, either. They seemed no longer to be human beings, but rath-

The 1st Battalion of the 3rd Regiment had been so badly shot up during its repeated attacks on Bundschu Ridge that it was inadequate to face this battle, and had to be replaced. Fortunately, Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Cushman’s 2nd Battalion of the 9th Marine Regiment had successfully completed its mission of capturing Piti village, on the division’s right flank, with only minor losses. Now he and his men were given the privilege of spearheading the key battle for securing the final beachhead line on the left flank. As Cushman’s men marched from Piti to Bundschu Ridge, they passed by row after row of Marine dead, neatly covered with their own ponchos. The Asan battlefield was still littered with enemy dead, grotesque bloated corpses of men who had once shouted Imperial cheers for their early

Field guns like the one above were used to knock out Japanese tanks.

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er, single-minded gladiators killing to stay alive. From the top of Fonte Plateau, still several hundred yards above Bundschu Ridge, the Japanese commanders watched Colonel Cushman’s men moving into the open ground that led to the steep cliffs just below their command post on the plateau. General Takashina recognized that General Geiger was preparing for an offensive and called in mortar fire to slow down the American advance, because that night Takashina was going to launch his counteroffensive. The opposing forces were rapidly approaching the pivotal battle of the Guam campaign: the battle for Fonte Plateau. At 9:30 a.m. Cushman’s men made their first assault on the plateau. Within an hour they were halfway there and dug in along the Mount Tenjo Road below the final crest of the plateau and just out of Takashina’s sight. The Marines brought forward their tanks, called in the coordinates for naval gunfire support, and requested air cover. At 3:30 that

afternoon, Cushman felt he was ready to take the hill. Huge billows of white phosphorous smoke clouded the crest of the plateau and the Marines leaped from their shallow foxholes and sprinted for the top. Takashina immediately counterattacked, throwing back both Company E on the right and Company G on the left. Company F in the center, however, had dashed over the crest, not stopping to fire at individual targets but simply hurling hand grenades in front of themselves and spraying the field with hip-shot rifle fire. They ran forward blindly through the shower of lead until they reached the far side of the plateau. By late afternoon, this salient of the 3rd Marine Division had dug in on top. Their left flank was 400 yards to the rear; their right flank was 250 yards short. Lieutenant Jack Eddy, leader of the 2nd Platoon of Company F and the only platoon leader to survive the attack, deployed his men and prepared to defend his position. As a

Marines move forward, working with a tank. The Marine at far left is firing at a Japanese soldier spooked by the tank.

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second lieutenant, he was not privy to the overall campaign strategy, and had no idea that General Takashina’s command post was only 200 yards away and the Japanese general’s division reserves just another 100 yards behind that. What Eddy did realize, however, was that he was on the strategic high ground; it seemed that there were more Japanese in his gun sights than there were in Tokyo, but he and his little force of thirty-three men would be expected to hold on. Takashina had failed to defeat the Americans on the beaches; but from the vantage point of his command post he had carefully observed the Marines as they landed, and calculated that by now the American commander had expended most, if not all, of his reserves. Takashina had been unable to organize his men to take advantage of the tactical opportunity for a counterattack on invasion night, but he was now well organized for an in-depth, full-scale counteroffensive into the several weak points in the American lines.

He also knew it was either now or never. The Americans commanded overwhelming naval and air support, but the Marines were thirsty, tired, hungry, and low on ammunition. Those in the low hills below Takashina were nearing a state of battle fatigue. For five days the Japanese commander had weakened his enemy’s offensive forces. Behind the Fonte Ridge, Takashina was safely amassing troops that would be tired from marching, but certainly not suffering from combat fatigue as were the American Marines. Takashina believed that his Imperial soldiers could rise in a flooding tide out of the Fonte River valley, over the plateau, and down the flank of Bundschu Ridge. Once through the thinly stretched American front line, individual demolition units would attack preassigned targets, blowing up medical stations, communications centers, command posts, and artillery emplacements. The American advantage of naval and air superiority would be lost when the two

Lieutenant John J. “Jack” Eddy, at right, and Lieutenant John A. Fredenberger. Eddy was twenty-two years old when he graduated from Marine Officers Candidate School. Leader of the 2nd Platoon, Company F, 9th Marine Regiment, he received the Silver Star for his part in the action on Fonte Plateau on the night of July 25-26, 1944.

Bulldozers move a burning Japanese tank off the road.

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masses of soldiers and Marines met on the beaches for a climactic, bloody brawl. Each Japanese soldier was sworn to kill seven Americans before his own death. Information about Takashina’s planned counteroffensive began to filter in as Chamorros started to enter the American lines near Adelup Point. The Chamorros reported that the Japanese were moving large concentrations of troops from the Tumon Bay and Ilig-Pago Bay areas to the Mount FonteMount Tenjo region. The decisive battle, as both commanding generals realized, would come at Fonte Plateau. Takashina had carefully planned his counterattack, writing supporting orders for each individual unit: The 18th Imperial Regiment would attack the 9th Marine Regiment through the Asan River valley and the Nidual River valley. The 48th Independent Mixed Brigade would attack the 3rd Marine Regiment, now on Fonte Plateau and Bundschu

Ridge. Takashina would personally assemble the 29th just behind Fonte Plateau, and then drive up the Fonte River valley, over the top of the plateau, and down onto Red Beach 2. From there they would wheel north and attack the ammunition and supply dumps near the base of Chorito Cliff. After that it would be every man for himself. The order was given: “Fix bayonets!” Takashina was aware of the American unit – F Company – just outside his command post. He chose one of his better units to knock it out of action so that the rest of the Japanese regiment could safely move up the Fonte River valley. At about midnight Eddy’s men heard the Japanese shouting, taunting: “Marines, wake up and die! We drink your blood!” Then out of the darkness they came, fast and deadly. A few sober officers led a horde of saki-crazed, riflebrandishing Japanese soldiers. Seven times during the night

Japanese bodies littered the battlefield wherever that chose to make a stand.

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they charged Eddy’s position and seven times the small band of Marines repulsed the attack in bloody, hand-to-hand combat that left Marines bayoneted in their foxholes. Knives and .45s decided each action. One machine gunner killed eighty Japanese in front of his position and then stacked them up as a barricade against the next charge. Each time the little salient of Marines beat back the Japanese, but each time a few more men met violent deaths, often at the end of a bayonet. By predawn, Company F was down to less than two clips of ammunition per man. They scavenged Japanese weapons to turn against the enemy that threatened to exterminate them. The company was obliged to withdraw a tactical fifty yards. Their backs were now to the cliffs they had scaled the day before. They had lost 75 percent of their men, but they knew there would be no withdrawal. Their

previous position was radioed to naval gunfire. When the Japanese surged over the hill again, the sky immediately lit up with star shells from the ships below, and then the earth shook with intense naval gunfire, artillery, and mortar fire. The machine gunners covered the star shell-lit field with a spray far too intense for anyone to escape. The Japanese, caught in the open battlefield and clearly silhouetted by the drifting star shells, were annihilated. “We had been thinking that the Japanese might win through a night counterattack,” said one Japanese survivor, “but when the star shells came over one after the other we could only use our men as human bullets and there were many useless casualties and no chance of success.” Takashina even fired illumination flares of his own so that his troops could quickly find their way to the front. The 2nd Battalion of the Striking 9th Marine Regiment had suffered 40 percent casualties in their first twenty-

In a lighter moment, Marines and GIs alike enjoyed meeting Chamorros like this boy with his caribou cart.

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four hours on Fonte Plateau; but they had held the strategic high ground, and nearly a thousand Japanese now lay dead before them. Similar scenes were repeated all over the hills above Asan valley in those early morning hours of July 26, 1944. Company B of the 21st Marines, in the center of the Asan beachhead on a crest nicknamed Banzai Ridge, awoke to the yell, “Wake up American and die.” Major Chusa Maruyama’s battalion of Imperial soldiers rushed right over the top of Company B. Utilizing force in depth and the impetus of momentum, Maruyama drove his men down the draw and toward the beach. The cry ”Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!” filled the air. (An often misinterpreted word, banzai is a Japanese word with an idiomatic translation meaning “ten thousand years” or “forever.” The Japanese soldiers who charged the American lines knew that they were committing an honor-

able suicide, and were shouting to their emperor – their deity – and to their families that they were committing this ultimate physical act to attain a metaphysical immortality.) To stop this sudden surge of enemy forces, the Marines called in tank support. The tanks fired mercilessly into the surging mass of Japanese, but the momentum of the charge could not be stopped. One report described the Japanese attack on a tank: “Savagely they swarmed upon the mechanized vehicles, oblivious of the vicious machine-gun fire, and frantically pounded, kicked, and beat against the turrets in an attempt to get the crew within. When this seemed futile they leaped to the ground and continued their wild rush down the draw to the rear areas.” All along the front, Japanese company – and battalion strength units rushed the Marine line at predetermined weak points. Between the unlinked 9th and 21st, an 800-

These Japanese soldiers were blown out of their pillbox as the Marines continued their advance.

Burning tanks and equipment marked a trail of bloody fighting.

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yard gap existed where the enemy poured through. Marine machine gunners faced columns of Imperial soldiers madly running directly at them, teeth bared and bayonets lowered. The targets eventually overran the Marines, however, and within half an hour the Japanese had swarmed into the 1st Battalion’s command post, killing most of the mortarmen who had been firing in support of the front lines. Major Setsuo Yukioka drove his 3rd Battalion, 18th Imperial Regiment, through the gap between the 3rd and 21st Marines. Double-timing in column, the Japanese walked right into a roadblock established by Colonel Duplantis. Although the Marines surprised Yukioka’s column, the Japanese superiority in numbers overwhelmed and overran the Marines. Yukioka took command of the roadblock and established a field of fire of his own. This time the fire was directed toward the American beachhead and the helpless

wounded and support personnel camped on the sand. Major Harold C. Boehm, executive officer of 1st Battalion, and Lieutenant David H. Lewis planned a surprise flanking counterattack for Yukioka. Camouflaged, they moved undetected up a ravine at the base of the hill. With only 250 yards between them and the enemy, the Marines themselves staged a full-scale charge. Machine gun fire from the supporting company kept Yukioka’s men in their caves while Company L advanced. Meanwhile the support company on Boehm’s other flank waited in hiding. Boehm and Lewis drove into Yukioka’s men, forcing them to retreat directly into the hiding support company. Yukioka and his men were slaughtered. During the Japanese counterattack, every Marine on the beach – whether a truck driver, stretcher bearer, engineer, or communicator – reverted to his primary training as a rifle-

Marine gun crews fired throughout the night as General Takashina mounted his counterattack against the Marine beachhead. Often, the gunners would be forced to stop firing and pick up their rifles to fend off Japanese infiltrators.

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man and joined in the melee against the Japanese counterattack. Each artillery team was responsible for defending its own weapon, while doing what it could for neighboring units. Shells from invaders and defenders alike whined overhead as Japanese soldiers and American Marines faced each other, saber against bayonet. The executive officer of an artillery unit later wrote: “Shortly after the attack began, I was awakened by an unusual rate of artillery firing. In the early dawn light it could be seen that the shells were hitting the tops of the ridges in the vicinity of the 21st Marines front lines. Bodies could be seen flying in the air as the shells exploded. . . . not knowing of the counterattack, I rushed to the operations tent believing that the artillery was falling short on our own troops.” Several Japanese infiltrators who had been assigned the task of blowing up the 12th Marine Artillery Regiment crawled into caves near the Marine perimeter to wait out

the alerted Marines and possibly surprise them later. One cave was only twenty feet from the headquarters’ fire direction center. The regiment’s executive officer recounted a hair-raising incident: “A Marine was already in the cave and had gone to sleep. It was an excellent shelter from the nightly mortar and artillery fire. The Japanese crawled in on top of him and he could not get out. He couldn’t use his carbine because they were sitting on it. He stayed there with them all night without them discovering him. They must have thought, jammed against him in the darkness, that he was one of them. Just before daybreak the Japanese left the cave and the Marine got out and scrambled up the bank as the day light fighting got well underway. I don’t remember this Marine’s name, but as I recall he had to be evacuated that day as a mental patient. The strain of spending the night packed into the cave with the Japanese drove him insane, at least temporarily.”

The battle for the beachhead was a deadly encounter between Japanese who were sworn to defend their positions with their lives and American Marines who had committed themselves to recapturing the first American territory taken by the Japanese.

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Daylight on the morning of July 26 found the Asan beachhead littered with bodies. Takashina’s counteroffensive had come close, but had failed. All along the front line the Marines now advanced as the Japanese retreated. Takashina, just as he had done before his attack, gave his Fonte Plateau command post top priority in defense of his retreat. The remnants of the Striking 9th’s Company F still hung on tenaciously to their high ground. The morning after the counteroffensive brought reinforcements and ammunition for the seven men who lived. Companies E and G attacked the Fonte position to join Company F. Intense, impenetrable fire from a depression prevented the Marines of Company C from capturing it. The bowl was approximately thirty to fifty yards in diameter and ten to twenty feet deep. It was as if a portion of the plateau had collapsed into an underground cavern. The overhanging cliffs

and numerous caves and boulders gave excellent protection to the Japanese. This depression was the last major defense of the Japanese forward command post. Company G was down to one officer, and now had its fourth commander since the landing. The entire final beachhead line for the 3rd Marine Division had been achieved except for the bend in the line where Company G of 2nd Battalion, 9th, still fought for the Japanese-held depression. Lieutenant Eddy received the Silver Star for this action, and his company commander, Captain Louis H. Wilson, Jr., received the Congressional Medal of Honor. (Some years later, Wilson succeeded Cushman as commandant of the Marine Corps.) General Takashina, directing the withdrawal of his command post while the Marines were still fighting the last line of defenses in the depression above him, died at the hands of a Marine machine gunner who drew a bead on the retreating general and ended his part in the Guam campaign.

Captain Louis H. Wilson, Jr., was the commanding officer of Company F, 2nd Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his action on Fonte Plateau on the morning of July 26, 1944.

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Later, Marine intelligence divulged that the Fonte position had been defended by a full battalion of Japanese. When the Marines began to inflict heavy casualties on the Japanese defenders, Takashina had ordered another one and a half battalions to reinforce them. Eleven separate counterattacks had been launched by the Japanese to hold their commanding position. In the battle for Bundschu Ridge and Fonte Plateau to capture the Japanese defensive command post, the 1st Battalion of the 3rd Marine Regiment, spearheading the fight, suffered 75 percent casualties taking the ridge, as did Company F of the 9th taking the plateau. The 3rd Marine Division suffered a total of 3,626 casualties, of which 619 were killed in action. Proud Marines would later call it “one hell of a fight.”

The Isolation of Orote Peninsula Action in the south during the first four days of the battle for Guam was no less intense than it had been in the Asan valley and on Fonte Plateau. Colonel Tsunetaro Suenaga, commanding officer of the 38th Imperial Infantry Regiment headquartered on Mount Alifan, already had most of his men poised for counterattack on the evening of invasion day. That night he attempted to push the Marines back into the sea, and personally led his own full-strength banzai charge. Even after being shot through the leg, Suenaga continued to fight forward until finally killed by a bullet in the chest. The enemy offensive had begun on the night of July 21 with a midnight mortar barrage on the far right flank of

More than 11,000 Japanese and over 1,500 Americans died during the battle for Guam. The Japanese soldiers knew that from Guam the Americans would be able to bomb the Japanese homeland, and they defended Guam tenaciously.

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the beachhead. Frenzied but well-disciplined enemy troops attacked the front lines with demolition charges and small land mines, tossing them like hand grenades. Six Marines were bayoneted in their foxholes before the attack was repulsed. Marine Major Hamilton M. Hoyler and his 3rd Battalion had the responsibility of holding Hill 40, so named for its forty-foot height. The hill bordered the Old Harmon Road, a main route of attack for Suenaga’s men. The hill was taken and retaken twice during the night. After the first thrust, the Japanese reorganized so close to the Marine lines that Hoyler’s men could watch them from their foxholes. The Marines lined their foxholes with hand grenades, checked their weapons for the best fields of fire, and alerted the artillery. The situation became even more nerve-wracking as the

Japanese began infiltrating the Marines’ lines. The executive officer of a pack howitzer battalion described the night’s action: “At 2330 I challenged two figures edging along the side of the crater, but they turned out to be communicators checking a wire line. About 30 minutes later, I saw four figures creeping along the same line, but when I challenged them they hit the ground and rolled away from the hole, muttering in Japanese. The ‘Gunny’ in the hole with me threw a grenade, killing one and the other three were picked off by the gun sections. After this, reports of crawling figures started coming in from gun sections and outposts all around the battery. Simultaneously with these reports, fire missions started pouring in. By about 0130, we were up to our necks in fire missions and infiltrating Japanese. Every so often, I had to call a section out for a short time so it could take care

SECURING THE FINAL BEACHHEAD LINE ADELUP POINT ASAN POINT

Asan

CABRAS ISLAND

3rd

Fonte Plateau

APRA HARBOR

Sumay MT. CHACHAO

Or

ote

MT. ALUTOM

Pe

nin

sul

a MT. TENJO

1 st 77 th

GAAN POINT

Agat

MT. ALIFAN FENA

BANGI POINT Northern and Southern Beachheads 25 July 1944 77th Division 28 July 1944 Final Beachhead Line 29 July 1944

FACPI POINT

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of the intruders with carbines and then I would send it back into action again. Somehow, one Japanese Nambu machine gunner managed to get between our guns and the front lines and all night harassed us with fire.” The Japanese had committed their infantry to an attack on the right flank at Hill 40. At the same time, they had sent a tank-infantry force down the Harmon Road and toward Company B’s roadblock. There, Private First Class Bruno Oribiletti confronted a column of four tanks and several truck-mounted guns with his single bazooka, a weapon which had not yet been tried in this battle. Kneeling beside his roadblock, the gutsy Marine got the first two tanks before they got him. The rest of the enemy armor was destroyed by the tanks General Shepherd had so strategically placed the evening before. The Japanese infantry that had been advancing with their own tanks deferred to the Marine

tanks and retreated behind Mount Alifan. On July 22, the Marines of the 1st Provisional Brigade began a persistent drive north to link up with the 9th Regiment of the 3rd Marine Division. While the 4th Regiment of the 1st took Mount Alifan, high above the Agat battlefield, the 22nd Regiment of the 1st had completed its drive through Agat village and was moving north, looking for the men of the 9th Regiment. By nightfall of the third day after the invasion, the brigade had established a permanent defensive perimeter. On the morning of July 24, General Shepherd sent two battalions in column up the old Agat-Sumay Road to effect a breakthrough into the enemy’s rear and allow the battalion to perform a flanking maneuver on any enemy strong points. In preparation for this drive, the Army was ordered to take over the Marine defensive positions that

On the morning of July 23, 1944, Marines of the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade were moving forward from the invasion beachhead for the drive on Orote Peninsula and its airfield.

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had been established along the beachhead. Shepherd then twice called for half-hour extensions of the air, artillery, and naval gunfire preattack bombardment before launching his strike. The enemy was well prepared. Immediately after the 10 a.m. jump-off time, the 22nd Battalion received an artilleryreinforced counterattack. Further confusion was generated when naval gunfire began to fall in the Marines’ front lines. It was 1:00 in the afternoon before the complete attack was organized and under way. At one point in the day’s action, the battleship Pennsylvania fired fifty-three tons of fourteeninch shells in half an hour at one stubborn Japanese strong point. The 22nd was eventually successful in driving across Orote Peninsula and isolating it, trapping 3,500 Japanese troops in the eight-square-mile area. Shortly, it would be the 22nd’s pleasure to drive the length of the peninsula and capture it.

The 1st Provisional Brigade now had its beachhead well established, having survived intense, uninterrupted fighting against a determined and well-entrenched enemy. The Japanese were bottled up on Orote Peninsula, and it would only be a matter of time – and work – to end their occupation and put Marine aircraft on the Japanese-built runway. Army defense battalions and automatic weapons battalions established lines of defense to prevent the possibility of any counterattack’s proving decisive. General Geiger ordered General Shepherd to take Orote Peninsula. Shepherd replied: “Due to delay in relief of 4th Marines which was not completed until 1500 today, necessity for moving 4th Marines to assembly areas and relief of 22nd Marines in line, reorganization and preparation for attack, strongly recommend assault Orote Peninsula be delayed until 26 July. Troops greatly fatigued by 4 days and nights continuous fighting.”

Orote airfield had been a key launching and landing pad for the Japanese; from here, they had attacked Admiral Spruance’s fleet. The airfield was captured by the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade, and would now be used to launch Marine and Navy aircraft for the attack on northern Guam.

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Air Group Commander Asaichi Tamai planned the breakout of his 3,500 men from Orote Peninsula for that night. It was, coincidentally, the same night that General Takashina was planning his counteroffensive on the Asan beachhead. Tamai faced considerably more difficulty, however; he realized that the Marines in his sector had strength in depth, and there was little room for him to maneuver on the narrow peninsula. Having unsuccessfully attempted to evacuate part of his troops across Apra Harbor, Tamai recognized, as did his men, that a counterattack would be futile. Nevertheless, the attack must be carried out and the greatest possible number of Marines killed. Saki replaced training as the Japanese soldiers drank and chanted themselves into a frenzy. Synthetic Scotch bolstered the bravery of soldiers who knew their end was near. According to one Marine, the Japanese preparation for the counterattack “sounded

like New Year’s Eve in the zoo.” Hough, in The Island War, indicates that American success in some actions in the Guam campaign was at least partially abetted by the drunkenness of the enemy. The banzai charges experienced by the Marines were often cases of shooting galleries for riflemen and machine gunners as the intoxicated Imperial soldiers shouted out their presence and then staggered forward into the deadly accurate fire of expert marksmen. Apparently, Guam was a shipping point for Japanese alcohol supplies. Scotch and American whiskies, saki, and beer were found in massive dumps. Battlehardened Marines who would give half a month’s pay for a canteen cup full of jungle juice became choosy over which brand of booze went best with pork and beans. Most of the captured liquor went into division reserve where it was guarded by military police and Dobermans until after the

Capturing Orote Peninsula was no easy task. It required flamethrowers, heavy tanks, and artillery to break through the Japanese lines. In a futile suicide attack, Japanese soldiers intoxicated on stockpiled synthetic liquor (later appropriated by the Marines) charged the Marine lines, shouting, “Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!”

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battle was finished. The night on Orote Peninsula turned evil for the Marines. The summer rains increased, filling foxholes and making defensive preparations even more difficult than usual. Shortly before midnight, the nervous Marines heard the blood-curdling cry they all feared: “Banzai!” Thousands of saki-crazed Japanese dashed from the mangroves in front of 3rd Battalion, 22nd Marines. Brandishing baseball bats, sticks, broken bottles, and pitchforks, along with the normal complement of infantry weapons, the Japanese soldiers surged forward fanatically, bent on an honorable death. The Marine commanders called in blocking fire to stop the advancing swarm. The area was saturated by 37mm guns, 81 mm mortars, machine guns, rifles, and grenades. Between midnight and two in the morning, 26,000 shells blanketed the mangrove swamp area. Ac-

cording to one observing officer, “Arms and legs flew like snowflakes. Japs ran amuck. They screamed in terror until they died.” Nevertheless, the momentum and fury of the Japanese attack carried it into the Marine lines. Another banzai charge on the right flank of the 22nd Marines was described by Hough: “At its height, flares revealed an out-of-this-world picture of Nipponese drunks reeling about in our forward positions, falling into foxholes, tossing aimless grenades here and there, yelling such English phrases as they had managed to pick up, and laughing crazily, to be exterminated in savage close-in fighting. Succeeding waves were caught in a deadly crossfire. Not until dawn did this attack finally dwindle out, at which time more than four hundred bodies were counted in front of the position.” In the nearby 4th Regiment’s field of operation, there was no concerted counterattack. The Japanese

Wave after wave of Japanese soldiers charged into the Marine lines only to be caught in a deadly cross fire. Not until dawn did this attack finally subside, at which time hundreds of broken Japanese bodies were found on the battlefield.

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soldiers simply wandered about at random, giving the Marines a shooting gallery in which they killed 256 Imperial soldiers – without the loss of a single Marine. Daylight revealed a gruesome scene at the neck of the peninsula. Weary Marines, after a full night of combat, helped wounded buddies across a battlefield that had turned into a bloodstained quagmire. In front-line foxholes, Marines and Japanese soldiers still grimaced at each other in death. But Commander Tamai had failed to break the Marine lines. The Japanese troops could not escape from the peninsula. It might have brought a feeling of grim satisfaction to the Chamorros to know that many of the men under Tamai’s command had belonged to the 54th Keibitai, the naval garrison security force on Guam during the long, harsh occupation period.

The Capture of Orote Peninsula Bright and early on the morning of July 26, the 4th Marine Division jumped off for the capture of Orote Peninsula. As the Marines advanced through the tangle of mangrove roots and swamp grass, the Japanese fired from concealed emplacements. It was a slow and bloody process, but by shortly after noon the Marines had cleared the area and joined the 4th Regiment for the advance on the 200-yardwide corridor to Orote that was lined by a mangrove swamp on the right and a marsh on the left, with a path of aerial bombs buried up the middle. The battle raged as the Marines fought their way from tree to tree, breaking out of one coconut grove only to be stopped by more defenses in the next one. As the Imperial

Daylight revealed a gruesome scene at the neck of Orote Peninsula. Commander Asaichi Tamai had failed to break the Marine lines.

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soldiers were pushed farther and farther toward the Orote cliffs, their fighting became more and more fierce. But as defeat and death loomed nearer and nearer, actions of insane futility began to occur. A lone officer attacked a tank with a saber. A platoon-sized column marched, with battle flag upraised, directly at a tank, which annihilated them. Nevertheless, it finally required a massed armored advance of five tank platoons to crack the Japanese defensive line and allow the Marine infantrymen to advance. At the end of their attack they counted 250 pillboxes and gun emplacements that were individually overrun. Soon the leathernecks advanced on the old Marine Barracks. Although the installation was heavily defended by the Japanese, it was finally retaken by the 2nd Battalion of the 22nd Regiment. Only a cigar box full of prewar PX papers, a

bronze plaque, and a star-covered pillow made by a Japanese from the blue field of an American flag gave evidence of the previous Marine occupants. Early on the morning of July 29, after a preattack bombardment that was the heaviest since invasion day and that included six battalions of artillery and eight ships’ naval gunfire, the Marines advanced half the length of the Orate airstrip. By 2 p.m. they had established a defensive perimeter 150 yards beyond the end of the airstrip, and the dauntless Seabees had their bulldozers on the runway preparing for the landing of the first Marine aviators. With sporadic gunfire still crackling only a few hundred yards away, Admiral Spruance, Major General Geiger, Major General Larsen, Lieutenant General Holland “Howlin’ Mad” Smith, Brigadier General Shepherd, and General

The church in Sumay village was also one of the casualties of the battle for Orote Peninsula.

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Sumay village had been the commercial transportation and communications center of Guam before the war, and the home of the Pan American Clipper and a Marine air squadron.

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Solders landing at Agat rolled past this Japanese airplane forced down by American air power.

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Turnage gathered at the ruins of the old Marine Barracks. Heavy gunfire could be heard in the distance as “To the Colors” was sounded on a captured Japanese bugle and the American flag was officially raised above the Marine Barracks for the first time in two and a half years. General Shepherd’s words on this occasion were profoundly moving to all present: “On this hallowed ground, you officers and men of the First Marine Brigade have avenged the loss of our comrades who were overcome by a numerically superior enemy three days after Pearl Harbor. Under our flag this island again stands ready to fulfill its destiny as an American fortress in the Pacific.” Only six hours after the first bulldozer hit the field, and only one and a half hours after the flag-raising, the Marines prepared for the landing of their first aircraft on the newly captured airfield. Much to the chagrin of the Marines, how-

ever, a Navy TBF intercepted the radio message that the airstrip was ready, and the Navy pilot touched down before the Marine aircraft could arrive. At 6 p.m. on July 29, the entire final beachhead line had been achieved from Adelup to Agat. While General Geiger began to shuffle men and equipment to defend weak points along the front line, the nineteen- and twenty-year-old Marines who had left San Diego only a few months before now gazed at the shell-pocked battlefield with the unblinking eyes of veterans. With their lines thinly stretched and their backs to the sea, the Marines had given valiant proof of their ability as invasion shock troops. For their courageous and tenacious fighting during the four days of the battle for Orote Peninsula, the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade was awarded the Navy Unit Commendation by the Secretary of the Navy. The battle had cost

On July 29, 1944, with gunfire still crackling in the area, “To the Colors” was sounded on a captured Japanese bugle and the Stars and Stripes was raised above the Marine Barracks for the first time in two and a half years.

This ancient bell was rescued during the liberation of Guam.

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115 Marines dead, 721 wounded, and 38 missing. Later, 3,372 Japanese were buried in a mass communal grave dug by Seabees driving bulldozers. Many more Marines would die before the island was declared secure, but the battle for Guam had been won for all intents and purposes. The Japanese counterattack had been well planned. The military principles of mass, objective, surprise, security, cooperation, offensive, movement, economy of force, and simplicity were well utilized. However, the best of the Japanese field officers actually led the charges and were among the first killed. Without their leaders, the sometimes inebriated Japanese soldiers lost direction and most died futilely, either by stumbling into a Marine stronghold, or religiously dashing into a fusillade of fire in a suicidal attempt to detonate a magnetic mine. Lieutenant Colonel Hideyuki Takeda of the 29th Divi-

sion, captured later, gave this analysis of the counterattack: It was estimated that it was no longer possible to expel the American forces from the island after the results of the general counterattack of the night of 25 July were collected in the morning to about noon of the 26th. After this it was decided that the sole purpose of combat would be to inflict losses on the American forces in the interior of the island. The chief reasons for the foregoing estimate were: 1. The loss of commanders in the counterattack of 25 July, when up to 95% of the officers (commissioned officers) of the sector defense forces died. 2. The personnel of each counterattacking unit were greatly decreased, and companies were reduced to several men.

When the Marine Barracks was recaptured, only a cigar box full of prewar PX papers, a bronze plaque, and a starcovered pillow made by a Japanese from the blue field of an American flag gave evidence of the previous occupants.

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3. The large casualties caused a great drop in the morale of the survivors. 4. Over 90% of the weapons were destroyed and combat ability greatly decreased. 5. The rear echelons of the American forces on Agat front landed in successive waves and advanced. There was little strength remaining on that front and the strength for counterattacks became nonexistent. 6. The Orote Peninsula defense force perished entirely. 7. There was no expectation of support from Japanese naval and air forces outside the island. Considering the foregoing points all together, it became clear that it was impossible to counterattack and expel the enemy alone.

General Turnage said, “It was a grand victory for us.” General Geiger still expected the worst from the Japanese and prepared defenses for the possibility of another Japanese counterattack. As corps headquarters made preparations for the next phase of the battle, only the Japanese knew that there would be no more counterattacks. Those Imperial soldiers who had survived the beachhead invasion, those same men who had jeered at the American defeats of 1941, now lay broken and frightened in the steaming but protective Guam jungle, “saving their faces by blowing out their intestines,” as Hough put it. A few fanatical line officers led remnants of the once-powerful army into the northern jungle. From there, the Japanese vowed to carry on a hit-and-run battle of attrition against the Americans.

Contributing greatly to the overall success of the amphibious assault was the efficiency, bravery, and ingenuity of the shore party. These men labored all hours of the day and night to unload supplies from landing craft and move them up to the front lines. All of this was accomplished while under fire from Japanese snipers and artillery. (Top, right) A 75mm pack howitzer comes ashore from an amphibious truck.

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Behind the Front Lines

The Army faced serious supply problems when it landed without the aid of amphibious tractors. The operations officer of the 4th Amphibian Tractor Battalion said, “I can remember long lines of GI’s from the reef to the beach trying to bring in even a bare minimum of supplies for their troops. Our CO noticed this condition and immediately contacted their Shore Party Commander who literally wept over the offer of part of our LVI’s to help him out.” A new concept was introduced into amphibious warfare by General Geiger during the Guam campaign: the replacement battalion. This fully operational combat battalion was utilized as a shore party during the initial phases of the assault. When the front line became depleted by casualties, the replacement battalion left the supply lines and joined the front lines.

Contributing greatly to the overall success of the amphibious assault was the efficiency, bravery, and ingenuity of the shore party personnel assigned the task of unloading and moving forward a constant stream of supplies. The twenty-five cranes that had been mounted on pontoon barges to transfer supplies at the reef’s edge were inadequate for the job. Rubber boats and life rafts were lashed together to form improvised piers. Over six and a half tons of supplies were moved from ship to shore each day during the first week of the campaign. When accurate mortar fire from the Japanese reduced the number of landing vehicles, pure Marine muscle carried supplies ashore.

Corporal Kurt, wounded in action, receives medical treatment, while his handler sooths him. (Top Left) The job’s not finished until the paperwork is done. Here, Captain Hugh S. Fitch, at left, of the 77th Infantry Division, and Technical Sergeant George P. Raines work in an open-air office on the division reports for July 24, 1994. Two days after hitting the beach, Marines line up for their first hot meal. Anything hot with spices was a delicacy after fortyeight hours of mud, dirt and C-rations.

When mail arrived on Guam, it was distributed as quickly as the exigencies of battle would allow. For some of these men, it would be the last letter from home they would ever read.

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War dogs proved useful in both patrolling and security missions. If a dog entered a cave and nothing was heard by the Marines outside, then a rifleman would inspect the cave with the relative confidence that no live Japanese were inside. Although the dogs had not been specifically trained for this job, and were not infallible, the vicious Dobermans proved generally reliable at the task. One training sergeant for the dog platoon said of the Dobermans, “They are a mean dog and we make them meaner.” Combat correspondent Robert “Pepper” Martin wrote of the war dogs on patrol: “Each night, while star shells, flares, mortars, and naval guns flicker fantastically against clouds overhanging Guam, faint barks can be heard from the perimeter defenses. The dogs alert the outposts whenever there is movement. Then our sentries open fire, and almost invariably dead [Japanese] are found in the morning. Dur-

ing daylight the dogs roam the hills, cliffsides, and jungles, searching for [Japanese]. They [the dogs] are death to snipers, whose chief defense is their ability to remain screened from sight but who have not yet discovered a method for eliminating human odor.” The Dobermans also carried ammunition for their handlers, 150 rounds per dog, to the front lines following their master’s scent. The dogs’ close association with their handlers is attested to by a dog that clung to the body of its dead master, killed by sniper fire, for thirty minutes. The Japanese were prevented from intercepting secret messages passed over Marine wires because of the use of Navajo Indian communicators who spoke in their native language. These Native Americans had been recruited by the Marine Corps specifically for this purpose, and served well in the Guam campaign.

War dogs proved to be very valuable at patrolling and security missions. Although not specifically trained for the job, the vicious Dobermans would enter caves and check them out for lurking Japanese. One dog trainer said of these animals, “They are a mean dog and we make them meaner.” Shown here wounded on a stretcher, Corporal Kurt received the same care accorded to a Marine.

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The Marine Corps doesn’t have its own medics; they are provided by the Navy. These corpsmen often became the fighting man’s best friend, crawling to the front to treat and tag the wounded. Band members put aside their trumpets and flutes and carried empty stretchers to the front and full ones to the rear, often down the sides of cliffs and while under heavy fire. The 3rd Medical Battalion commander said of these medical evacuation teams, “Too much praise cannot be heaped upon these units for the marvelous performance in the evacuation of casualties.” Quick evacuation to waiting hospital ships can mean the difference between amputation and corrective surgery, or between life and death, to a Marine who is wounded in action and has finished his part in the war. At the beach, the wounded were separated into groups for first aid and a return trip to the front lines, evacuation to the amputa-

tion ship, or treatment for a “million-dollar wound” and a ride back to San Francisco. Less than an hour after the first troops landed, casualties had already been received on board medical ships. A total of 2,552 men were on the first hospital ships that left the area one week after invasion day. Credit for another first during the Guam campaign goes to the U.S.S. Solace. This hospital ship brought the first known waterborne blood bank to a fighting front. To the front-line Marine, taking a moment’s respite on the stark face of Bundschu Ridge, the distinctive red crosses on the white hospital ships just offshore were a reassurance that the corps would give him the best medical help available should he be wounded. That, and the constant presence of corpsmen and stretcher bearers on the front lines, gave the Marines added confidence during each day’s drive.

(Top) An island house served as a regimental command post. (Left) Medical teams commandeered existing buildings for emergency hospitals. (Right) Navajo Indians were recruited by the Marine Corps and trained as communicators. Japanese who had learned English were stymied by messages sent in the Navajo language.

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It took ten days to secure the final beachhead line, but by July 31 the III Amphibious Corps had broken the Japanese defenses and was driving the enemy toward the island’s northern cliffs.

THE DRIVE NORTH July 31 — August 10, 1944 W

and looked back on the initial phase with grim satisfaction. The beachhead had been established against a determined and well-organized defense. The Americans had lost 989 dead, 4,836 wounded, and 302 missing by midnight of July 30. The Japanese had suffered 6,205 counted dead; several thousand more were estimated to have been sealed in caves; and 50 prisoners of war had been taken. Additional Japanese dead still lay unburied and uncounted in recently active areas. General Obata and his men realized that any chance of effectively counterattacking the Americans was gone. Ultimate defeat was inevitable. The Americans could be seen already at work launching Navy, Army Air Force and Marine aviators from the newly won Orote airstrip for close support in the northern sectors. Nevertheless, it was suspected that Obata still had over 6,000 soldiers and 2,500 civilian laborers at his command. They could still inflict serious casualties in a war of delaying tactics, costly ambushes, and carefully chosen open-field battles. But few competent line officers remained under Obata’s command. Most had been lost during the initial stages of the battle. As the Marines advanced, the hungry and demoralized Imperial soldiers made futile,

hile the Marines were establishing the final beachhead line, the Army Infantry reconnoitered the southern stretches of Guam. General Geiger did not have enough troops for two simultaneous attacks, one to the south and one to the north. He suspected the Japanese would move north. To corroborate this, he sent the Army south. In a series of patrols led by Chamorros, the Army discovered that there were few if any troops in the south. This allowed Geiger to confidently lay his plans for the advance to the north. Geiger set 6:30 a.m. on July 31 as the jump-off time for this next phase of the recapture of Guam. July 30 was designated for regrouping, resting, and resupplying in preparation for the culmination of the campaign. The Japanese were in full retreat. After General Takashina was killed on July 28, General Obata assumed division command. Following his overall plan, Obata withdrew his forces to Mount Santa Rosa, leaving strong delaying forces on Mount Barrigada and at Finegayan. These two defensive positions were deployed in depth and prepared to delay Geiger’s attack. Marines and soldiers rested in their foxholes and cleaned their weapons for the next phase of the attack, 125

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THE DRIVE NORTH Dededo

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TUMON BAY

SATPON POINT

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3rd

FADIAN POINT

ADELUP POINT ASAN POINT

Asan

Fonte Plateau

CABRAS ISLAND

PAGO BAY

31 July

1st

OR

OTE

PEN

MANENGON VALLEY

INS

Yona

ULA

AGAT BAY BANGI POINT 29 July FACPI POINT

ILIG BAY

MT. ALUTOM

MT. TENJO

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Mt. Barrigada

YPAO POINT

AGANA BAY

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Agat MT.

ALIFAN

MT. LAMLAM

TALOFOFO BAY

77th

FENA INARAJAN

ill-directed attempts to fulfill Obata’s orders, and then either cut out their entrails or disappeared into the jungle to begin guerrilla tactics. Although facing certain annihilation, the Japanese still tried desperately to keep up their morale. As they moved to their Santa Rosa defenses, one of the Imperial soldiers of the 29th Division wrote, “In an environment how different from last year, I was deeply moved. There was only a little saki to drink each other’s health. The American . . . shelling is awful.” Now, halfway through the Guam campaign, General Geiger had an entirely different situation to deal with. The southern end of the island was secure, and the Guamanians who had escaped from Manengon and other concentration camps began to filter into Marine lines. Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., in The Long and the Short and the Tall, recounted his Marine unit’s first encounter with the newly liberated Guamanians: “The first contact we had with civilians came soon

after we widened our perimeter to include the outskirts of the battered city of Agana. One day a radio message came back from one of our outposts: ‘Twenty women, several babies, one cow, and a sewing machine coming through our lines.’ More groups followed — old, gnarled men with sticks; crones with wispy white hair, lace dresses, and no shoes; young girls in mud-stained rags, carrying naked babies; little boys and girls holding onto each other’s hands fearfully. . . . One woman had a tiny American flag that she had made on her sewing machine in a cave; it had seven red and white stripes and a field of blue, and was fashioned from a dress.” The men of the 77th Infantry had the privilege of liberating the first large group of Guamanians — some two thousand — from a concentration camp near Asinan, Yona. “The ex-captives were almost beside themselves with joy,” said one account. “Not knowing whether to kiss their liberators, bow to them, or shake hands with them, they tried 126

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Emerging from concentration camps and jungle hideouts where they had survived the last days of the Japanese occupation, the Chamorros were happy to cross the American lines into safety. This was the first time they had felt secure in two and a half years.

to do all three at once. Many carried tiny American flags which they had hidden from the Japanese.” From another account: “Soldiers willingly gave their rations and cigarettes to the undernourished men and women who were almost overcome with joy at once again seeing Americans. Men of the 77th Division soon forgot the long, tiresome cross-island march as the full realization of the expression, ‘liberation of enslaved peoples’, came to the troops.” As the Chamorros from Manengon marched across the island, the Catholic Mass was offered on Mount Alifan for the undetermined number of Guamanians who lay dead in recently active areas. During their walk back to the sea, they saw the ugliness of the fierce battle that preceded their liberation. The ground was scraped bare by bulldozers to cover the quickly rotting bodies that no one had been able to properly bury. Here and there among the limbs of the Japanese, a helmet sat atop an M-l bayoneted into the ground to mark where a Marine had fallen.

When the Chamorros came to the Fonte waterfall and saw the Americans on the beach and the ocean covered with American warships, and fully realized that the Americans had beaten the Japanese and that their liberation was complete, all of the frustration and fatigue, hate and humiliation, fear and torment burst from their hearts and they broke down en masse, crying and laughing and kissing and hugging. The Navy’s civil affairs department gradually took charge of the Chamorros as they came through the lines seeking aid. Unfortunately, the four civil affairs officers initially attached to the higher echelons had been unable to obtain high priorities for the tentage, bedding, food, transportation, medical supplies, and personnel necessary to perform their functions. To make do for the time being, the concentration camps were renovated for use as refugee centers. Determined to start rebuilding their lives, some Chamorros from the Agat area voluntarily crossed the lines to return to their 127

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Steward First Class Manuel Cruz Perez served in the U.S. Navy during the Japanese occupation of Guam. Returning to his home island with the liberation forces, he was overjoyed to find his grandmother, Conchita, alive and well.

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As the American troops advanced inland and northward, the Chamorros began to stream into now-secure areas. Combat correspondents recorded the scenes: “The ex-captives were almost beside themselves with joy. Not knowing whether to kiss their liberators, bow to them, or shake hands with them, they tried to do all three at once. Many carried tiny American flags which they had hidden from the Japanese.” “One woman had a tiny American flag that she had made on her sewing machine in a cave; it had seven red and white stripes and a field of blue, and was fashioned from a dress.” “Soldiers willingly gave their rations and cigarettes to the undernourished men and women who were almost overcome with joy at once again seeing Americans. Men of the 77th Division soon forgot the long, tiresome cross-island march as the full realization of the expression, ‘liberation of en slaved peoples,’ came to the troops.”

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The battle-hardened Marines were stunned by the condition of the Chamorros, many of whom had marched across the island barefoot. The Marines and Navy civil affairs personnel soon organized transportation for the refugees with whatever vehicles could be found. The women immediately went to work washing what clothing they had managed to carry with them since being forced from their homes by the Japanese over a month before for the march to Manengon.

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The Bordallo family. (Back row, from left) Irene Bordallo Little, Baltazar Jerome Bordallo, Josefina Pangelinan Bordallo, Paul Bordallo, Norma Bordallo (Phillips), Loraine Bordallo Calvo holding Rosamunde Bordallo and Fred Bordallo. (Front row) Michael Bordallo, Donald Bordallo, Josephine Bordallo (Coad), June Bordallo (Arroyo). Baltazar Bordallo had traveled to Washington, D.C., in 1935. to request United States citizenship and a bill of rights for Guam’s Chamorro residents. It was not until 1950 that Congress passed legislation giving U.S. citizenship to the Chamorros of Guam.

The McDonald family. (Back row, from left) Dolores Mariano McDonald, Veronica McDonald Calvo, Eduardo T. Calvo, Charles McDonald, Josephine Mariano McDonald (Palomo). (Front row) Paul McDonald Calvo, Edward McDonald Calvo, Thomas Jerome Calvo.

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Unfortunately, the Navy’s civil affairs department was given low priority during the loading of transport ships for the Guam invasion. Although many tents were donated by various Marine and Army units, most Chamorros lived in makeshift shacks and coconut frond huts until adequate supplies could be landed. Even cemeteries became homes for the refugees.

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By July 25, 1944, a refugee camp had been established in old Agat village. Some 350 tents were borrowed from the 3rd Marine Division to help shelter the Chamorros, and trucks loaned by the motor pool hauled food supplies to the camp.

village. Without adequate supplies, they built shelters for their families from the rubble of their destroyed town. Civilian relief efforts got under way, and a refugee camp was established in old Agat village on July 25. Some 350 tents were borrowed from the 3rd Marine Division; from the Army came tentage for a 100-bed hospital to supplement the 250 beds made available to civilians by the corps medical battalion. Trucks borrowed from the motor pool hauled captured enemy food supplies, along with materials salvaged from bombed buildings. By July 31, a total of 1,331 civilians had come under American protection. By August 4, the corps had 12,100 refugees to care for. While Navy civil affairs personnel organized refugee camps for the Chamorros, General Geiger laid his plans for a sweep of the island. He would line up the entire III Amphibious Corps, virtually arm in arm, across the width of the island from Agana to Pago Bay, and then march them to the

northern tip of Guam. He set August 10 as the target date for securing the island. Geiger sent the 77th Infantry Division on a ten-mile hike across rugged mountain terrain to the Pago Bay area. He sent the 3rd Marine Division up the coast from Adelup Point, with one group heading for Agana and another going down the Fonte River valley to the Chalan Pago area. By 6:30 a.m. on July 31, this cross-island line was beginning to form. The men in both groups met with little resistance, and the Marines were in the Plaza de Espana in the center of Agana by 10:45 that morning. Robert Martin, the combat correspondent, described the city of Agana as the Marines entered it: “The cathedral and churches were gutted by shells and fires. It was not wanton destruction but incidental to the overall necessity of neutralizing Agana, which the [Japanese] had made into one of their chief supply bivouac areas. Power lines were stripped, but the steel poles reached gauntly toward the sky. Virtually every build134

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By 10:45 a.m. on July 31 the Marines were in the capital city of Agana. The Dulce Nombre de Maria Cathedral was one of the casualties of war.

ing was a shambles, most of them beyond recognition. The coconut trees which once shaded the streets had broken like snapped twigs withered by fires, while debris littered every foot of the once beautiful Plaza de Espana in the city’s heart.” Numerous white rags dotted the road where the wary Marines had found land mines. With just two machine gun positions offering resistance to the advancing Marines, only the rugged terrain slowed their advance. By early afternoon, the entire Marine division had reached its objective and was lined up along the Agana-Pago Bay Road, cutting the island cleanly in half at its narrow waist. The infantry movement toward Page Bay had been almost without incident, but it was also without support vehicles to carry supplies. Even the ubiquitous jeeps could not follow the trail. The advance was later described by an infantryman: “The distance across the island is not far, as the crow

flies, but unluckily we can’t fly. The nearest I came to flying was while descending the slippery side of a mountain in a sitting position. . . . After advancing a few yards you find that the [bolt] handle of the machine gun on your shoulder, your pack and shovel, canteens, knife, and machete all stick out at right angles and are as tenacious in their grip on the surrounding underbrush as a dozen grappling hooks. . . . . The flies and mosquitos have discovered your route of march and have called up all the reinforcements, including the underfed and undernourished who regard us as nothing but walking blood banks. We continue to push on.” The greatest problem faced by the corps was the lack of adequate roads to move supplies. Not only did food and water have to be brought forward; but the artillery battalions and troops had to be moved up the road to provide close support for future advances. The same procedure was also necessary for the Army, and along the same road. Many 135

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Marine First Lieutenant Richard C. Bryson leads the advance into Agana. Of the 3,500 buildings that stood there before the war, only 350 ruins could be recognized afterward.

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Marine Sergeant Williford stands amid the rubble of a bombed-out chapel. Miraculously, the statue survived unscathed.

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Marine Technical Sergeant Terry took this photograph of Agana as he saw it from San Ramon Hill in 1944.

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The Dulce Nombre de Maria Cathedral was built by the Chamorros for the early Spanish priests. Legend has it that the chief of Agana village gave the land to the Spanish to ensure that the center of government and society would remain in Agana. The cathedral had survived over three centuries of typhoons and earthquakes, only to be destroyed in one month of war.

This handmade American flag was found by these 3rd Division Marines in the ruins of the Agana cathedral.

Agana was the business center of Guam. The island’s richest merchants had their homes and their businesses here. After being liberated from the Japanese, Agana residents returned to a city of ruins.

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(Left) Heiberger’s camera also found this wayside shrine on the road into Agana. It was hardly damaged after more than two weeks of continuous shelling. As a result of the devastating preinvasion bombardment of the city, only one Japanese sniper was found among the ruins when the 3rd Marine Division came marching in. (Below) Another Marine combat photographer took this photograph as his unit marched past an ancient cemetery on their way into Agana. In war, even the dead have no peace.

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(Above) A wary Marine inspects one of Agana’s ruins with his .45 at the ready. (Below) Soon tanks were rolling through Agana in pursuit of the Japanese who were now in full retreat to the north.

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As Marines began to flow north, they passed by the prewar homes and businesses that had been destroyed by the invasion.

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(Right) By August 2, battalion after battalion of Marines and soldiers were marching through the streets of Agana and on to the front. (Below) While the troops were moving up, forward observers with the 307th Army Infantry Regiment were spotting enemy movements.

things happened on Guam which were not according to the books. For instance, it was generally agreed that two divisions could not possibly share the same road to supply their respective troops. Nevertheless, the Marine and Army divisions lined the Agana-Pago Bay Road, moving supplies brought forward from the invasion beaches. Army Major General Andrew D. Bruce later wrote: “The books would say it can’t be done, but on Guam it was done — it had to be.” As the men prepared for the advance on Barrigada and Finegayan, the Agana-Pago Bay Road became a scene of bumper-to-bumper traffic bringing supplies and armor forward. So secure did the American commanders feel that the movement carried on after dark with trucks using their headlights. While the men dug in on the night of July 31, word was

received and passed down the line that the men of the V Amphibious Corps had secured the island of Tinian. General Geiger’s plan called for a rapid advance to the north. He did not want to allow the Japanese time to organize serious defensive positions that would require taking heavy casualties to reduce. After leaving the Agana-Pago Bay Road, the corps met little resistance other than from the jungle itself. The Tiyan airfield was taken with only token resistance. Whereas the determined Japanese defenders had allowed the Marines only 5,000 yards of beachhead during the first eight days of the battle for Guam, the Marines and infantry now advanced 8,000 to 12,000 yards in three days. The advance north was not only rugged, it was also dry. The northern end of the island had few fresh water supplies, and many soldiers were lucky to quench their thirst

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(Below) On the front lines, Marines of the 1st Provisional Brigade study the situation maps and lay their plans for the day’s advance. With the 3rd Marine Division, the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade, and the 77th Army Infantry Division all moving north in unison, commanders had to be careful not to fire on adjacent friendly forces while still vigorously attacking the enemy.

that day on coconuts. Captured Japanese canned salmon added variety to the K-rations carried by the Army and the C-rations of the Marines. Both groups were eager to capture Barrigada Hill and its 30,000-gallon-per-day well. The 77th Infantry moved quickly through Barrigada village, captured its well intact, and by the afternoon of August 3 stood on the summit of Mount Barrigada, looking toward Finegayan and Mount Santa Rosa. On that same afternoon the first Army aircraft arrived from Saipan: sixteen P-47s and three B-25s of the Seventh Air Force commenced flying deep support missions. Contact had not been reestablished between the 3rd Marine Division and the 77th Infantry Division since they had left the Agana-Pago Bay Road. The object of the August 4 attack was to establish that contact. Division headquarters ordered the 2nd Battalion of the 9th to advance toward

the 77th Army and establish a roadblock on the FinegayanBarrigada Road, which Company G accomplished. A tankreinforced platoon of soldiers was ordered to advance to the division’s left in search of the Marines. After reducing two enemy roadblocks, they attacked a third. Unfortunately, the third one was manned not by the enemy, but by men of Company G, 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines — the same Marines who had reduced the depression on Fonte Plateau with such high casualties. Captain Francis L. Fagan of Company G jumped up in a barrage of machine-gun and 75mm fire, frantically waving his helmet, and finally halted the firing — but not before seven of his men had been wounded. The lines had become so disorganized that General Geiger sent out the following message: “Corps commander is sorry but he feels he will have to hold up advance of 3rd [Marine Division] until 77th [Division] lines are a little better

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As the Marines drove north, they had to pause occasionally for tanks and demolition teams to blast Japanese pillboxes. In spite of the tank support, it was a costly battle of attrition for the American riflemen who advanced into line after line of determined Japanese snipers firing from well-concealed positions. (Opposite) Marines, already weary from ten days of combat, move forward for the next phase of the Guam campaign, which would have them marching and fighting their way across twenty miles of rugged jungle terrain.

organized and gap between divisions is closed. Orders to Turnage are being issued accordingly.” This situation would change as the Marines reached the Finegayan area. The 3rd Regiment, on the coast road, advanced without resistance. But as the 9th Regiment neared the village of Finegayan, enemy fire became intense. The 777 rounds of harassing and interdictory fire from division artillery the night before had not destroyed the Japanese at the road junction just outside Finegayan. As Company B of 1st Battalion neared the junction, they were stopped cold by a well-conceived and well-camouflaged Japanese ambush. The platoon, reinforced with two tanks and a weapons company offering supporting fire, overran the strong hold, killing 105 enemy in half an hour. Five hundred yards farther down the road toward Mount Santa Rosa, the company ran

into an even heavier concentration of Japanese. This junction was secured and the troops were told to dig in for the night. In the meantime, one of the few Marine fiascoes in the battle of Guam was about to occur. At about eight o’clock that morning the 21st Marines had been alerted to furnish one company of men for a motorized patrol to the north end of the island. In the scramble to obey the order, vehicles were arbitrarily pulled from other assignments. As a result, men and vehicle s arrived at the assembly point ill-informed and poorly equipped. At 2:55 p.m. Lieutenant Colonel Hartnoll J. Withers sent a message to division headquarters: “Patrol is held up at front lines where firefight is going on. Recommend patrol remain together behind front lines tonight and clear at 0730 tomorrow. Insufficient time 146

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Private First Class Frank P. Witek of the 1st Battalion, 9th Marines, provided covering fire as his platoon withdrew with a wounded comrade. He then killed sixteen enemy soldiers before being fatally shot. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

remains today to accomplish mission.” Headquarters wanted the mission completed and directed Withers to proceed. With vision limited by the dense jungle, the lead half-track took a wrong turn and headed right into the battle of Finegayan. The men of 1st Battalion, 9th Regiment, looked up in surprise as the column drove through their embattled front lines and into the enemy. They didn’t cover 400 yards before the Japanese opened up with heavy fire, destroying one half-track and damaging a truck and a tank. One Marine was dead and fourteen wounded. During this action, Private First Class Frank P. Witek of 1st Battalion, 9th Marines, offered covering fire for his withdrawing platoon. He exposed himself to intense enemy fire while his comrades removed one of their wounded. Then he personally attacked the enemy position, taking out a ma-

chine gun and sixteen enemy soldiers before being killed. He was awarded the Medal of Honor, posthumously. The island of Guam widens toward the north, and as the front line was extended in the general advance, other units had to be added to the line to maintain contact in the thick underbrush. To fill this void, the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade was brought north to support the general corps advance. The general advance on Mount Santa Rosa began again on the morning of August 5. The 3rd Marines advanced up the coast while the 9th Marines continued up the Santa Rosa Road through Finegayan. The 3rd continued to meet light resistance and moved forward quickly, but haltingly, as it attempted to maintain contact with the 9th. The 9th battled at individual strong points in the Finegayan area, General Obata’s outer ring of defense for 147

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While the wounded from the Guam campaign were arriving back in San Francisco and San Diego, other men, such as Marine Private Ben Lucas (below) of Calumet, Illinois, were learning how to use Pacific island modes of transportation to move supplies.

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As quickly as the Seabees could get their equipment ashore, they began building what is now known as the Glass Breakwater to protect Apra Harbor, being used here to dock LSTs.

Apra Harbor, which had been a repair and refueling station for Japanese submarines such as this one, now served the purposes of the United States.

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With the worst of the fighting now behind them, the Marines and soldiers spend time getting to know island ways and island people. Roast pig prepared. Guamanian style and local watermelon provide a welcome change from military fare. John Schempfk of Passaic, New Jersey, and Joe Perez of Guam talk about their recent experiences.

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As the Marines began to realize that the battle for Guam was going their way, they found a little time to relax. Sergeant Ivan Hamilton of Butte, Montana, squeezes himself into a bathtub; a weary Marine catches up on some sleep; and two buddies team up for a flag-raising photo.

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Lieutenant Sheldon Dietz, U.S Navy, exchanges salutes with enthusiastic Chamorro children in Agat, far from his home in Newton, Massachusetts.

American troops examine Japanese sake and other souvenirs of the battle for Guam.

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(Left) Marine Corps Lieutenant General Alexander A. Vandegrift (at left) congratulates Major General Alan H. Turnage, commanding officer of the 3rd Marine Division, on a job well done at Asan beachhead and during the drive north. Vandegrift then informed Turnage of the impending invasion of Iwo Jima. (Below) These Marines at the Orote airfield ham it up by showing off their unit slogan, “Hold High the Torch,” above a captured Japanese flag.

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Men of the 306th Regiment, 77th Infantry, move carefully through Guam’s dried sword grass.

Mount Santa Rosa. The Marines met stiff resistance in deep jungle growth where it was impossible to see even a few feet. Enemy snipers fired at point-blank range from completely undetected positions. The foliage was so thick that in one instance a tank scout found a camouflaged enemy tank only fifteen feet in front of his men. The day’s advance was good, but by nightfall there was still no contact between the Marines and the Army. To the Japanese advantage, the successful delaying tactic had prevented by a whole day the use of Dededo village as a substation. This allowed Obata another full day to prepare his final defenses. Each day he spent in preparing his positions meant that more Americans would have to die trying to take them. The final plan of attack called for the 1st Provisional Brigade to pass through the 3rd Marines’ lines along the coast and then aggressively patrol to clear the enemy from the northern tip of the island. Although the Navy maintained heavy gunfire support on the Mount Santa Rosa area, the

Japanese continued to harass the Americans with at least seven artillery pieces. They fired these weapons during rain squalls or at night, making their detection almost impossible. At daylight the guns became silent again. When the Marines renewed their attack on the morning of August 6, with three regiments abreast, the men of the 9th Marines continued to meet scattered resistance in the Finegayan area. At nine that morning, General Turnage changed his plan of attack. Intelligence reports indicated that the Japanese were establishing delaying forces only along the trails and roads. Turnage issued orders directing columns to advance along all roads and trails. Each advancing column would be responsible only for its route and a distance of 200 yards to each side of the road. Using this procedure, all units advanced rapidly, with 2nd Battalion of 9th Marines only being stopped when U.S. Army artillery fire began to fall on Marines as they approached a common objective along a different trail. The Marines had successfully broken General Obata’s outer perimeter 154

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As the advance north proceeded, every dirt road and trail became a scene of tanks and riflemen working as a team to rout the enemy from jungle hideouts.

of defense in the four days of hand-to-hand combat in the Finegayan area. The Marines left 737 enemy dead on the battlefield, and carried back 18 dead comrades and 141 wounded. Although Turnage was pleased with his tactical success, the leathernecks were far more impressed with the 100 cases of Japanese beer they uncovered at Finegayan. Before a serious dent could be made in the cache, division headquarters had the discovery displaced to the rear and guarded for distribution to the thirsty Marines after the campaign was declared ended . The Japanese continued to fight with determination, but the unrelenting air, artillery, and naval gunfire bombardment took its toll on the enemy’s morale. One Japanese officer wrote the following in his diary: “The enemy air force seeking our units during the daylight hours in the forest, bombed and strafed even a single soldier. During the night, the enemy naval units attempting to cut our communications were shelling our position from all points of the pe-

rimeter of the island, thus impeding our operation activities to a great extent.” By the evening of August 6, the 1st Provisional Brigade had brought its troops forward to assist in the final advance to the north. The next morning, the 3rd Division, the 1st Brigade, and the 77th Infantry would attack abreast to complete the campaign for Guam. A map overlay showing the battle plan for the reduction of the northern sector of the island had gone out to each unit involved. The Army’s 306th Regiment would sweep up the east coast, while the 307th would capture Yigo with its all-important road junction. The 305th would take Mount Santa Rosa. Naval gunfire, P-47s, B-25s, corps artillery, and the division’s own organic artillery would ensure that the foot soldiers had all the support they needed in this final stage of Operation STEVEDORE, the recapture of Guam.

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For the first time in the Pacific War, Japanese soldiers began to show signs of wavering from their Bushido code. Some 1,200 prisoners were taken on Guam, whereas almost none had been taken at Tarawa – very few on Saipan or Tinian.

THE LAST DAYS OF THE JAPANESE OCCUPATION O

As the 3rd Marine Regiment advanced with the division, the 21st Marines were placed in division reserve and spent the day of August 8 patrolling the area between the 3rd and 9th Marines. During that patrolling mission, the 3rd Battalion made the startling discovery of a Japanese truck in the Chaguian area filled with the bodies of thirty Guamanian men who had been beheaded only the day before. The next morning another patrol found twenty-one more bodies. These men were from the Yona concentration camp and had been brought north to work on the Yigo defensive area. To prevent the Chamorros from disclosing the whereabouts of the Japanese defensive positions, they had been executed. As the 1st Provisional Brigade advanced up the west coast, an air strike on Ritidian Point reported receiving antiaircraft and small-arms fire. Although corps artillery and naval gunfire silenced the position, General Shepherd ordered 2nd Battalion, 22nd Regiment, to patrol to Ritidian Point. By three in the afternoon, with air strikes leading the way, the 2nd Battalion reached Ritidian Point and a patrol of Company F reached the beach. This gave Shepherd’s units the distinction of being the first to reach both the northernmost and southernmost parts of Guam. The American advance on August 8 had been rapid,

n the morning of August 6, when the entire III Amphibious Corps launched its final attack on the northern end of Guam, General Obata still commanded over 7,500 men, or so American intelligence reported. In actuality the majority of the Japanese were already beaten men. Under the leadership of a few brave Imperial officers, a few hundred of the Japanese continued to fight against the steadily advancing flood of American military forces. Japanese headquarters, under the command of Obata in the Mataguac area of Yigo, still considered its defensive campaign organized. However, with the overwhelming numbers of Marines and soldiers obviously meeting more resistance from the jungle than from the Japanese, it soon became apparent that there was little or no organization left among the Japanese forces. Colonel Edward A. Craig set up the command post for his 9th Marine Regiment in the Mataguac area. He did not know at the time that General Obata’s command post was only 300 yards from his own. Patrolling units killed twenty five enemy, but did not suspect a concentration nearby. They did take considerable unexpected rifle fire from a small, jungle-covered hill in the Army’s zone of action, however, and Craig withdrew his patrols to allow the Army units assigned to the area to reduce it. 157

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(Right) Radio operators working in forward positions received and relayed target coordinates. (Below) The 75mm howitzer was an effective weapon for supporting the infantry advance.

(Right and below) All along the front, men moved forward each day, and then dug in each night.

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As the Americans moved north, field guns and high explosives were used to root out Japanese hiding in well-disguised bunkers.

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and although Radio Tokyo continued to claim that the defense of Guam was still bravely organized, they began to prepare the homeland for the inevitable announcement by admitting that the Americans now held nine-tenths of the island. The 9th Marine advance on August 9 came to a sudden halt when a Guamanian said there were 2,000 Japanese located in the cliffs along the north coast. Corps artillery was called in, and in two and a half hours the 7th 155mm Gun Battalion hurled an unprecedented 1,000 rounds from its twelve guns. Division artillery threw another 2,280 rounds of 75mm and 105mm shells into the same target area. No resistance was met when the 9th attacked the area after the barrage ended. Nor were there enough Japanese bodies to justify the reported concentration. As one artillery officer wrote later, “The intelligence information on which all the firing had been based was wrong, and we had made this great effort for nothing. However, it did provide a bang-up end to the campaign.” At six that evening 3rd Battalion of 9th reached Pati Point. Members of the 22nd Marines descended the Ritidian cliffs and those of the 4th, the Mergagen Point cliffs. General Shepherd announced that all organized resistance had ceased in the brigade zone. The 77th hit the coast, and left only one regiment in the area to clean up snipers while the rest of the division was sent to Barrigada. Only the 3rd Marine Division still faced a potential enemy along with five wandering Japanese tanks. Most of the Japanese tanks that remained were either out of gas or out of ammunition. When the 3rd jumped off on the morning of August 10, they immediately met up with two tanks. But the Marines, this time with their own armor, made short work of it and the regiment advanced quickly. By 10:30 a.m. they had found seven more medium tanks, all abandoned. General Geiger ordered the 77th and 3rd Divisions to form a line across the island from Fadian Point to the northwest of Tumon Bay and mop up the Japanese still remaining on the island. It was time, in accordance with Geiger’s directive, to “push all Japanese from Guam.” With the expected arrival of Admiral Chester W. Nimitz and Lieutenant General Alexander A. Vandegrift, the U.S.S. Indianapolis steamed into Apra Harbor with Admiral Raymond A. Spruance and Lieutenant General Holland M. Smith on board. As if the day were orchestrated for the brass, Major General Roy S. Geiger announced at 11:31 a.m. on August 10, 1944, that organized resistance on Guam had ended. Admiral Nimitz, commander in chief, Pacific Ocean Areas, and General Vandegrift, commandant of the Marine Corps, landed at Orote field at 4:35 that afternoon. The next day they inspected the front lines, visited installations under construction, and held top-level conferences concerning the future role the island would play in the advance on Tokyo. Total American casualties for the twenty days of fighting were 1,214 dead, 5,704 wounded, and 329 missing in action. Many of the missing were soldiers and Marines who went down with their landing craft on invasion day. Others had received direct hits from artillery fire, and were never identified. For the same period, 10,971 Japanese had been counted dead.

LAST DAYS OF JAPANESE OCCUPATION 8 August

Ritidian Point

MERGAGEN POINT PATI POINT

SAVANA GRANDE

7 August 6 August MT. MATAGUAC

5 August

Dededo

Yigo

ANAO POINT

MT. SANTA ROSA

TUMON BAY

Finegayan 3rd 1st 77th

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On August 9 General Geiger ordered the 77th and 3rd Divisions to form a line across the island from Fadian Point to an area northwest of Tumon Bay, and “push all Japanese from Guam.”

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Admiral Forrest Sherman, Admiral Raymond Spruance, Lieutenant General Holland M. Smith, USMC, General Alexander A. Vandegrift, USMC, Admiral Chester Nimitz and Major General Roy C. Geiger, USMC, gathered on Guam immediately after it was declared secured.

General Holland M. “Howlin Mad” Smith (second from left) arrives on Guam to inspect the Marine Corps’ work and discuss the upcoming advance on Japan.

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(Opposite, top) Father Redmond, chaplain for the 4th Marines, holds services for his men in a Marine bivouac area on the day before the drive on Orote Peninsula. (Opposite, bottom) Navy Chaplain George M. Kempker celebrates Sunday Mass on the beach in the shadow of a wrecked amphibious tractor which had struck a land mine several days before. The tractor had been used here for two days as a firstaid station. The Navy doctors and corpsmen dug in on the seaward side and used the tractor hulk for protection from Japanese fire. In the background are cargo vessels being unloaded on the reef. (Top) Chamorros attend Catholic Mass on the morning of July 28 near the 3rd Marine Division command post on Asan Beach. Chaplain A. F. Kamler celebrated the Mass, with Seaman First Class J. E. Cristobal of Guam serving as altar assistant. (Center and bottom) Shipboard services provide a moment of solace for the fighting men.

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As Marine Major General Henry L. Larsen, island commander, was having orders posted to begin the task of civilian relief, the Chamorros gathered to give thanks for their salvation. They had endured pestilence and natural disasters such as typhoons and earthquakes, but the Japanese occupation and the battle between the Japanese and the Americans was the toughest trial of their existence since the Spanish conquest.

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After sweeping to the north end of the island, the troops turned around and marched south, looking for the estimated 5.000 Japanese soldiers and civilians who were still unaccounted for.

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Officially, the Japanese claimed organized resistance until August 11, when the Mataguac command post fell and General Obata, 31st Army commander, with it. The previous day Obata, recognizing his inevitable defeat, had sent his final message to Imperial headquarters in Tokyo: I accepted the important post of the army commander and although I exerted all-out effort, the fortune of war has not been with me. The fighting has not been in our favor since the loss of Saipan. We are continuing a desperate battle on Guam, Officers and men have been lost, weapons have been destroyed, and ammunition has been expended. We have only our bare hands to fight with. The holding of Guam has become hopeless. I will engage the enemy in the last battle with the remaining strength at Mount Mataguac tomorrow, the 11th. My only fear is that report of death with honor (annihilation) at Guam might shock the Japanese people at home. Our souls will defend the island to the very end; we pray for the security of the Empire. I am overwhelmed with sorrow for the families of the many fallen officers and men, I request that measures be taken for government assistance to them. The remaining officers and men have high morale. Communications with the homeland have been disrupted today, the 10th, after 1200 hours, I pray for the prosperity of the Empire. After men from the 9th Marines had reported the underground headquarters to the commanders of the 77th Division, who were responsible for the area, a reconnaissance unit encountered numerous ambushes and called up reinforcements, The 1st Battalion of the 306th discovered a 100-by-40yard, brush-covered hollow that hid the command post. The attacking battalion lost eight dead and seventeen wounded before withdrawing for the night. The morning of August 11 brought a mortar barrage down on Obata’s command post, but the Japanese opened up with machine-gun and rifle fire from the caves, once again stopping the American soldiers. Later in the day, 400-pound blocks of TNT were placed in the opening of the caves, closing the labyrinth. Four days later the caves were reopened and over sixty bodies were found, including that of General Obata, who had committed hara-kiri. Although the Japanese now admitted that the island had fallen to the Americans, straggler-hunting would continue for another year. (In 1972, twenty-eight years after the recapture of Guam, yet another straggler would be found: Sergeant Shoichi Yokoi, who was discovered not far from his underground cave in the jungles of south-central Guam.) At high noon on August 15, 1944, Major General Henry L. Larsen was declared Island Commander Guam. “At this time,” said Larsen, “except for patrolling, the combat phase was completed; the huge task of relief and rehabilitation, construction and repair, and housing and feeding was ahead.” The United States Navy was once again in command of “Naval Station, Guam.”

On August 10, 1944, General Obata, 31st Army commander, radioed his apologies to Tokyo. “We have only our bare hands to fight with. . . . I will engage the enemy in the last battle with the remaining strength at Mount Mataguac tomorrow. . . . Our souls will defend the island to the very end; we pray for the security of the Empire.” His body was discovered in his underground cave headquarters several days later; he had committed hara-kiri.

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Seventeen-year-old Patricia Mesa sobs at the grave of her mother, Maria Mesa. Mrs. Mesa and forty-five other men and women of Merizo were killed for flaunting their loyalty to America during the Japanese occupation.

EPILOGUE O

More than 600 ships, 2,000 airplanes, and 300,000 men took part in Operation FORAGER. A total of 122,436 men participated in the assault landings on Guam, Tinian, and Saipan, of which a full fifth became casualties. In the fifty six days of combat on the three islands, 4,679 American men gave their lives. The attacking Marines expected losses of three Japanese to one American on the invasion beaches. In the end, for every American who died, ten Japanese lost their lives. Also significant was the surrender on Guam of 1,200 Japanese soldiers. This was the first sign of faltering Japanese Bushido in the war. The Japanese learned as much from the Marianas experience as did the Americans. Daily reports were sent to Tokyo as the battles raged on all three islands. The Japanese high command ordered other field commanders to prepare their defenses in depth. Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa would prove the Japanese ability to adapt. American casualties increased accordingly. Every Marine and soldier was fearful of the day that the combined American forces would have to land on the beaches of mainland Japan with its hordes of fanatical defenders. It was expected to cost over

peration FORAGER, the Marianas campaign, was a complete success. The occupation of Guam, Tinian, and Saipan gave America bases from which to launch its attack on Japan. Over 50,000 Japanese fighting men died in the defense of the Marianas. Thirty infantry battalions had been totally destroyed. But their death was nothing compared to the death the Japanese would suffer as a result of the air raids that would be launched from America’s new bases on Guam, Tinian, and Saipan. “Hell is on us,” declared the Japanese emperor’s chief naval adviser. By the end of the war, over 1,000 giant B-29s had carried fire and destruction to the Japanese homeland, climaxed by the August 1945 atomic attacks on the shipbuilding centers of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Thousands upon thousands of other Japanese troops were stranded for the duration of the war on islands and atolls that had been bypassed in the rapid American advance. Admiral Kichisaburo Nomura, ambassador to the United States at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, later said, “Everywhere, I think, you attacked before the defense was ready. You came far more quickly than we expected.” 171

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Chamorros, Japanese, and Americans alike died during the battle for the recapture of Guam. In the final tally of the campaign in the Marianas, ten Japanese lost their lives for every American who died. No one knows with certainty how many Chamorros died in this clash of titans.

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Some men came to rest in cemeteries on Guam, while others were buried at sea. Although it was a costly battle for the men of the III Amphibious Corps, the American recapture of Guam quickly brought the full meaning of war to the people of Japan.

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(Left) Standing above the Japanese defensive command post at Mataguac are the victorious American commanders, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz (at left) and Marine Major General Roy S. Geiger. (Bottom) Former Japanese Premier Hideki Tojo, imprisoned in Japan, awaits his trial for war crimes. Defeated in war, he attempted suicide with a pistol shot in the chest.

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On the northern tip of Guam, on land that had been Chamorro ranches and giant ifil tree forests, Navy Seabees built North Field. From here, new B-29 Superfortresses carried fire and destruction to the Japanese homeland. He survived and was hanged.

a million casualties. “Golden Gate in ‘48” was the Marines’ perspective of the magnitude of the world war. Speculation on an eventual confrontation with our questionable ally, Russia, was commonplace. Major O. R. Lodge, summing up the Marianas campaign in The Recapture of Guam, wrote: “To the average American participant in the Marianas campaign, the war was on a minute-to-minute basis. Big picture strategy had no place in his personal struggle to survive, and even today his picture of the operation is a compound of individual memories that probably missed this history and many others. Yet no matter how small a part an individual took in capturing these islands, he is justified in feeling he helped shorten the war. For it was from the Marianas that ships, planes, and men struck out to bring defeat to Japan.” As a fitting tribute to the ferocity of the Marines who fought in the Pacific war, there is a record of a Japanese

straggler who came out of an island jungle seven years after the war. He carefully peered around at his civilian captors and asked, “Where are the Marines?” The wide-eyed civilians watching the scraggly Japanese soldier said, “They have gone home. The war is over. Japan surrendered.” The Japanese soldier shook his head from side to side for a moment, looked up, and, with a noticeable trace of pride in his voice, said, “There is no shame in losing to such men.” The Chamorros of Guam justifiably take pride in their own valor during this grim period in their history. They endured two and a half years of harsh occupation, savoring the dream of their liberation, proudly bearing the scars of a war they had no part in creating; and then freely gave their lands and their wholehearted support for the American advance on Japan. Chamorro lands became American bases as the 3rd Marine Division received its replacements and began training 175

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Wreckage from the invasion battle litters the beaches of Asan (above) and Agat (below). In the upper photo, Chonito cliff and bloody Bundschu Ridge can be seen in the distance.

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(Top) These Japanese light tanks were abandoned along the Agat-Sumay road. (Center) One of the few Japanese “Vals” to fly over Guam was shot down by naval gunfire. (Bottom) Japanese trucks of all types litter the battle areas.

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(Opposite) Even before the Guam campaign was finished, the indefatigable Seabees had begun to reconstruct the roads of Agana. The main thoroughfare along the ocean is named Marine Drive. The road branching off at lower right is San Ignacio, and the church in the lower center of the photo, along Marine Drive, is Santa Cruz. At upper right are the ruins of the cathedral; just below it is the Plaza de Espana, where the Chamorros of the Guam Insular Force had fought the Japanese invasion troops two and a half years earlier. (Below) Armed against snipers, the Seabees quickly went to work constructing the roads and buildings that would carry and house the 200,000 American servicemen preparing for the invasion of Iwo Jima and the air attacks on Okinawa and mainland Japan.

for the next campaign, the invasion of Iwo Jima, and the Air Force, the Navy, and the indefatigable Seabees prepared Guam for its role as an American fortress. The island’s prewar population of only 22,000 had now swelled to 220,000. According to local engineers at the time, by the end of the war the military’s mechanized construction force had accomplished the equivalent of digging the Panama Canal and erecting Egypt’s Great Pyramid. The days of a sleepy tropical paradise were truly gone for the Chamorros. What had been a bumpy, oil-covered dirt road along the coastline, traveled only by a few vintage automobiles and buses, became an asphalt highway for thousands of jeeps and trucks carrying personnel, ammunition, and supplies from the Naval Station at Apra Harbor to the new Air Force base on the northern tip of the island. This road, now the island’s main thoroughfare, was named Marine Drive in honor of the Marines who had fought their way along this coastal pathway. (It would later be re-named Marine Corps Drive.)

As a result of this massive military buildup, the prewar population was significantly redistributed. The capital city of Agana, which had housed half of the island’s people, had been devastated. Of the 3,500 buildings that stood there before the invasion of Guam, only 350 ruins could be recognized after the liberation. The shipping and commercial transportation center at Sumay on Orote Peninsula was never repopulated; its residents were resettled in the nearby hillside town of Santa Rita, overlooking the ruins of their former village. With the military now occupying 50 percent of Guam’s land area, there was also a shift in the economic and political structure of the island. Certain families lost all control over their ancestral lands, while others were catapulted into financial security and political influence by their proximity to new villages and military installations. In spite of these developments, the Chamorro people remained steadfastly patriotic to America and thankful for the liberation of their island. It is a lasting tribute to the 179

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At a press conference held on August 11, 1944, Admiral Nimitz reads a letter of gratitude from the Chamorro people. Admiral Spruance, General Vandegrift, and others listen to the inspiring words of patriotism from people who – though they had been refused citizenship – yet maintained their “determined reliance upon our mother country’s power, sense of justice, and national brotherhood.”

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Chapels and churches all over the island were damaged during the battle for Guam. (Above) At San Antonio, two Chamorros hook up their carabao cart, a common prewar mode of transportation. (Right) Although bombs and bullets destroyed this church, the cross survived. (Opposite, top) The Sumay cemetery was heavily bombed because of its proximity to the Japanese naval installations. (Lower left)These cherubs and their cross survived to bless the tents rising in the background. (Lower right) Yet another church shows the damage of the recent battle.

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Chamorros of occupied Guam that during the extensive investigations conducted on Guam after the recapture of the island there was not one single conviction for collaboration with the enemy. Although the exact number of Chamorro deaths between December 10, 1941, and August 10, 1944, has never been ascertained, the Guam War Reparations Commission has determined that at least 684 Chamorros were executed during the occupation years. Their deaths and the subtle resistance of the survivors earned for all Guamanians the right to be Americans of the first order. And in spite of the suffering and death imposed on the people of Guam during those two and a half years, the valor and heroism of the American fighting men who came ashore on July 21, 1944, are remembered and celebrated annually in the island’s biggest festival: Liberation Day. 183

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When the battle for Guam was over, several new cemeteries were developed for the Americans who had died during the liberation of Guam. After the war, the bodies were exhumed and returned to the States to be re-interned.

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Many American flags such as this one were hidden by the Chamorros during the Japanese occupation of Guam. Shortly after the Japanese captured the island, the Chamorros were ordered to surrender all relics of the American prewar occupation. Those who were discovered hiding such things were often beheaded. Nevertheless, the Chamorros kept their mementos from Uncle Sam, confident that the Americans would return.

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Marking the first anniversary of Uncle Sam’s return to their island, the people of Guam gather at the Kiosko in the Plaza de Espana to celebrate Liberation Day.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Arnold, Henry H. Global Mission. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1949. Aurthur, Robert A , and Cohlmia, Kenneth. The Third Marine Division. Edited by Robert T. Vance. Washington, D.C.: Infantry Journal Press, 1948. Beardsley, Charles. Guam Past and Present. Rutland, Vermont, and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1964. Calvocoressi, Peter, and Wint, Guy. Total War. New York: Random House, 1972. Camba. Audrey B. “Merizo Massacre.”Pacific Profile, July 1965, p. 6. Carano, Paul, and Sanchez, Pedro C. A Complete History of Guam. Rutland , Vermont, and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1964. Carleton, Philip D. “The Guam Operation” Campaign for the Marianas. Washington, D.C.: Historical Division, U.S. Marine Corps, 1946. Costello, John. The Pacific War. New York: Quill, 1982. Gale, Roger W. The Americanization of Micronesia: A Study of the Consolidation of U.S. Rule in the Pacific. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1979. Guam: Operations of the 77th Division. American Forces in Action series. Washington, D.C.: Historical Division, War Department, 1946. Handleman, Howard. “Condemned, ‘Executed’ by Japanese Headsmen, Guamanian Boy, Girl Escape Guam Grave.” Reprinted in Pacific Profile, July 1964,p.17. Hoffman, Carl W. Saipan: The Beginning of the End. Historical Branch, G-3 Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1950. ___ . The Seizure of Tinian. Historical Branch, G-3 Division, Headquarters, U.S Marine Corps. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1951 Hough, Frank O. The Island War. Philadelphia and New York: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1947. lsely, J.A., and Crowl, P. A. The U.S. Marines and Amphibious War. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951. Jones, James. WWII. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1975. Josephy, Alvin M., Jr. The Long and the Short and the Tall: New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946. Life Goes to War. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1977. Life’s Picture History of World War II. New York: Time Inc., 1950. Limtiaco , Joaquin Aflague, and Lujan, Francisco G. “Last

Hours of Father Duenas.” Pacific Profile, July 1965, p.10. Lodge, O. R. The Recapture of Guam. Historical Branch, G-3 Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1954. Lujan, Francisco G “Inarajan Uprising.” Pacific Profile, July 1965, p. 9. Manchester, William. American Caesar. New York: Dell Publishing, 1978. Mayo, Don Sherwood. “Liberation of Guam.” Glimpses of Guam, 1969, p 2. Morison, Samuel Eliot. New Guinea and the Marianas: March 1944-August 1944. History of U.S. Naval Operations in World War II, vol. 8. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1975. Morris, Edmund. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. New York: Ballantine Books, 1980. Ours to Hold it High: The History of the 77th Infantry Division in World War II. Washington, D C.: Infantry Journal Press, 1947. Pratt, Fletcher. The Marines’ War. New York: William Sloane Associates, 1948. Price, Williard. “Guam Without Regrets." Pacific Profile, July 1964, p. 22. Quinene, Jesus Reyes. Diary, July 1944. Sanchez, Pedro C. Uncle Sam, Please Come Back to Guam. Tamuning, Guam: Pacific Island Publishing Co., 1979. Shaw, Henry I, Jr.: Nalty, Bernard C.; and Turnbladh, Edwin T. Central Pacific Drive. History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, vol. 3. Historical Branch, G-3 Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1966. Smith, Holland M., and Finch, Percy. Coral and Brass. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949. Smith, S.E., ed. The United States Marine Corps in World War II. New York: Random House, 1969. Steinberg, Rafael. Island Fighting. World War II series Alexandria, Virginia Time-Life Books, 1978. Toland, John. The Rising Sun. New York: Random House, 1970. Untalan, Luis. “The Long Trek Manengon.” Pacific Profile, July 1965, p.20. Winton, John, and Sidgwick and Jackson Ltd. War in the Pacific: Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay. New York: Mayflower Books, 1978. 189

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INDEX In addition to a reference in the text, page numbers are also shown for an illustration of the subject or a reference in a caption.

A Adelup Point, 14, 57, 67, 71, 75, 94 Agat beachhead, 14, 16, 19-21, 34, 7879, 82-83, 87, 91, 176 Aguigui, Ignacio B., 50 Aguigui, Jose T., 51 Ainsworth, W. L., Rear Admiral, USN, 16 Akashi, 27 Alto, Sergei, 21 Anderson, Frank, 46 Appalachian, 19 Apra Harbor, 8-9, 13-14, 21, 63, 93, 112,149 Armknecht, R. F., Commander, USN, 18 Arnold, Henry H., General, US Army Air Force, 11-12 Asan beachhead, 7, 14, 16, 20-22, 34, 63, 67-79, 87,104-7, 112, 176 Aslito Airfield, 13 Atate, 47-48, 50, 53 Avenger aircraft, 62-63

B Banzai, definition of, 104 Baza, Louisa, 46 Boehm, Harold C., Major, USMC, 105 Bordallo family, 132 Borja, Juan, 47-48 Bountiful, 84 Bruce, Andrew D., Major General, USA, 12, 144 Bryson, Richard C., First Lieutenant, USMC, 136 Bundschu, Geary R., Captain, USMC, 71, 75, 98 Bundschu Ridge, 71, 75, 93-96, 98-102, 108, 176 Bushido, 20, 157, 171 Butler, Ignacia Bordallo, 28

C Cabot, 73 Cabrera, Juan, 3 Calvo, Father Oscar Lujan, 29-30 Camacho, Jose, 3 Camacho, Roman, 9 Champaco, Jose N., 51 Champaco, Mariano N., 50 Champaco, N., 50

Charfauros, Bill L., 51 Charfauros, Manuel T., 45-47, 53 Chargualaf, Vicente C., 9 Chonito (also Chorito) Cliff, 71, 102, 176 Churchill, Winston, 6, 11-12 Concepcion, Joaquina, 46 Conolly, Richard L., Rear Admiral, USN, 13, 19-20, 22, 25, 55, 69, 83, 98 Craig, Edward A., Colonel, USMC, 157 Cristobal, J. E., 165 Cruz, Felipe Santiago, 45 Cruz, Jesus C., 51 Cruz, Jose C., 51 Cruz, Pedro, 9 Cruz, Tan Chong, 30 Cushman, Robert E., Lieutenant Colonel, USMC, 99-100,107

D Dauntless aircraft, 62-63 del Valle, Pedro A., Brigadier General, USMC, 18 Dietz, Sheldon, Lieutenant, USN, 152 Duenas, Eduardo, 31-33 Duenas, Father Jesus Baza, 29-33 Dulce Nombre de Maria Cathedral, 1, 135, 140 Duplantis, Wendell H., Colonel, USMC, 17, 105

E Eddy, Jack, Second Lieutenant, USMC, 100-103, 107 Elk’s Club, 140 Ellis, Earl H., Colonel, USMC, 7-8, 25 Evans, Robert, 8

F Fagan, Francis L., Captain, USA, 145 Faha, 46-50 Finegayan, 125, 144-47, 154-55 Fitch, Hugh S., Captain, USA, 121 Flores, Nieves, 18 Fonte Plateau, 21-22, 25, 28, 59, 75, 9394, 98-108 FORAGER (Marianas campaign), 13, 55, 171 Fortifications, Japanese, 22-25 Fredenberger, John A., Second Lieutenant, USMC, 101 Fromhold, Walfried H., Lieutenant Colonel, USMC, 83, 87 Fukahori, Monsignor, 30, 32

G Gaan Point, 79, 83, 91 Gallo, James A., Jr., Lieutenant, USMC, 75 Geiger, Roy S., Major General, USMC, 13, 59, 67, 87, 91, 93-94, 100, 111, 115,118,120-21, 125-26, 134, 14446,1 61,1 74 Governor’s Palace, 1, 9 GRANITE (central Pacific campaign), 1112 Great Britain, and naval treaty with Japan, 5-6 Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, 8 Guam Insular Force, 9-10 Guam Problem, 7

H Hall, Carvel, W., Colonel, USMC, 71, 75, 93, 95, 99 Hamilton, Ivan, Sergeant, USMC, 151 Heiberger, J., Staff Sergeant, USMC, 14041 Hill 40, 109-10 Hiroshima, 171 Horii, Tomitara, Major General, IJA, 9-10 Hough, Frank O., 18, 112-13, 120 Houser, Ralph L., Lieutenant Colonel, USMC, 75 Hoyler, Hamilton M., Major, USMC, 109

I Ijimi, 48-50 Inarajan, 32-33 Indianapolis, 161 Iwo Jima, 153, 171, 175

J Jalaguag airfield, 35 Japan, emperor of, 14 Japan, and naval treaty with Great Britain, 5-6 Japan, and occupation of Micronesia, 5-7, 10 Josephy, Alvin M., 126

K Kaikuntai , 28, 33, 38-39 Kaki, Murano, 16 Kamler, Chaplain A. F., 165 Kamminga, Catalina, 38

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Keibitai, 27, 31, 114 Kempeitai , 28, 33 Kempker, A. F., Chaplain George M., 165 Kiko, Tun, 30 King, Ernest J, Commander-in-Chief, US Fleet, 11-12 Kolata, Harry A., Staff Sergeant, 53 Komatsu, Father Petro, 30-31 Kurusu, Saburo, 10 Kwantung Army, 7, 14, 28

L Larsen, Henry L., Major General, USMC, 115, 167, 169 League of Nations, 5, 7 Leon Guerrero, Jose R., 51 Lewis, David H., Lieutenant, USMC, 105 Liberation Day, observance of, 183, 185 Limtiaco, Joaquin, 32-33 Lodge, O. R., Major, USMC, 175 Lucas, Ben, 148

M MacArthur, Douglas, General, USA, 1113 McDonald family, 132 McMillin, George J., Captain, USN, 9-10, 27 Mahan, Alfred T., Admiral, USN, 6-8 Manalisay, Isidro, 50 Manengon, 3, 34-38, 40-43, 47, 50, 126-27, 130 Marianas Turkey Shoot, 15-16, 20 Marine Barracks, 115, 118-119 Marine Drive, 179 Martin, Robert, 122, 134-35 Maruyama, Chusa, 104 Mason, Leonard F., Private First Class, USMC, 95, 98 Mataguac, 25, 157, 161, 169, 174 Meno, Vicente N., 51 Merizo massacre, 44-49, 52-53; victims of, 49 Mesa, Patricia, 171 Minseibu, 27, 31-34 Vice Admiral, Mitscher, Marc A., USN, 12, 59 Mount Alifan, 83, 108, 110, 127 Mount Barrigada, 125, 144-45 Mount Santa Rosa, 25, 125-26, 145-47, 154-55

N Nagasaki, 171 Nagumo, Chuichi, Vice Admiral, IJN, 15, 19 Nangauta, Jose, 47 Naputi , Juan, 47 Navajo Indians, 122-23 Naval Limitation and Non-Fortification Treaty, 6 New Mexico, 55 Nimitz, Chester W., Admiral, USN, 5, 1113, 15, 17, 19, 21, 27, 111,161,174, 180-81 Nimitz Hill, 21

Nomura, Kichisaburo, 10, 171

O Obata, Hideyoshi, Lieutenant General, IJA, 25, 28, 34, 125,147, 154, 157,161, 169 Okinawa, 171 Olano, Bishop, 30 Omiyajima, 27 Oribiletti, Bruno, Private First Class, USMC, 110 Orote Peninsula, 9, 14, 25, 27, 63, 79, 83, 87, 93-94, 108-20, 125

p Pangelinan, Juan U., 33 Pearl Harbor, 7, 9-10, 15, 19, 25, 118 Peleliu, 171 Pennsylvania, 83, 111 Perez, Beatrice Flores, 3 Perez, Joe, 150 Perez, Manuel Cruz, 128 Plan Orange, 6-7 Plaza de Espana, 9, 134-35, 185

Q Quinata, Mariano A., 51 Quinene, Jesus Reyes, diary of, 48-51, 53 Quinene, Mariano R., 51

R Raines, George P., 121 Raping of Chamorro girls, 39-44 Redmond, Father, 165 Reyes, Cerilo, 41-42 Reyes, Jose S., 46-48, 50 Ritidian Point, 157, 160-61 Rollie, Mrs., 38 Roosevelt, Franklin, 11-12 Rota, 14 Russo-Japanese War, 5, 7

Suenaga, Tsunetaro, Colonel, IJA, 83, 87, 108-9 Sumay, 115-17, 179, 182

T Taijeron, Pat, 47, 50-51 Tainatongo, Ignacio S.N., 51 Takashina, Takeshi, Lieutenant General, IJA, 20-22, 25, 28, 34, 41, 59, 67, 71, 75, 79, 83, 93-95, 98, 100-103, 107-8, 112,125 Takebena, Taicho, 40-43 Takeda, Hideyuki, Lieutenant Colonel, IJA, 22, 119 Tamai, Asaichi, Air Group Commander, IJN, 112, 114 Tanzola, Vincent J., Colonel, USA, 91 Terry, Sergeant, 138 Tinian, 14, 20,144, 171 Tinta, 44-50 Tiyan airfield, 28, 144 Tojo, Hideki, General, IJA, Minister of War, Prime Minister, 8-9, 19, 25, 174 Torre, Juan, 38 Torres, Geraldine, 36 Torres, Hannah Chance, 36 Torres, Mariquita Calvo, 36 Toyoda, Soemu, Admiral, IJN, 12-13 Treaty of Versailles, 5 Truk (Chuuk), 12 Turnage, Alan H., Major General, USMC, 79, 93-94, 115, 120, 146, 153-55 Turner, Richmond K., Vice Admiral, USN, 16-17 Tweed, George R., Radioman First Class, USN, 29-32 Tyquinco, Antonio, 47-48

U Underwater demolition teams, 20-21 Untalan, Luis P., 36

V

S Sablan, Reverend Joaquin Flores, 29 Sablan, Matilde Flores, 38 Sablan, Segundo, 38 St. Louis, 57 Saipan, 13-16, 19, 171 Sanchez, Pedro C., 35 San Nicolas, Jesus B., 51 San Nicolas, Juan C., 51 Schempfk, John, 150 Seabees, 98, 115, 118, 175, 179 Shapley, Alan, Lieutenant, Colonel, USMC, 87 Shepherd, Lemuel C., Jr., Brigadier General, USMC, 79, 83, 87, 110-11, 115, 118, 157 Siguenza, Joaquina, 3 Smith, Holland M., Lieutenant General, USMC, 17, 115, 161, 163 Solace, 123 Soriano, Ignacio N., 50 Soriano, Jose N., 50 Spruance. Raymond A., Admiral, USN, 11, 15-17, 115, 161, 180 STEVEDORE (Guam campaign), 13, 16, 25, 155

Vandegrift, Alexander A., Lieutenant General, USMC, 153, 161, 180

W Walker, Jimmy J., Private First Class, 53 War dogs, 113, 121-22, 149 War Reparations Commission, 183 Washington Conference for Arms Limitations, 6 Wasp, 59, 63 Widdecke , Charles F., Captain, USMC, 83 Williford, Sergeant, USMC, 137 Wilson, Louis H., Jr., Captain, USMC, 107 Wilson, Woodrow, 5 Witek, Frank P., Private First Class, 147 Withers, Hartnoll J., Lieutenant Colonel, USMC, 146-47

Y Yokoi, Shoichi, Sergeant, IJA, 169 Yorktown, 59, 63 Yukioka, Setsuo, Major, IJA, 105

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PICTURE CREDITS Sources: ARMY – National Archives, 8th St. and Constitution Ave, NW, Washington, D.C. 20408

NAVY – Naval Historical Center, Photographic Section, Washington Navy Yard, Washington, D C. 20374

MARC – Micronesian Area Research Center, University of Guam, UOG Station, Mangilao, Guam 96913

Nieves M. Flores Memorial Library – 254 Martyr St., Agana, Guam 96910

NA – National Archives, 8th St. and Constitution Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20408

USMC – Naval Historical Center, Photographic Section, Washington Navy Yard, Washington, D C. 20374

Jacket – I-NA, c-NA, r-USMC Maps-Ariel Dimalanta 3 – AA S – NA 6 – NA 7 – NA 8 – I-USMC, r-ARMY 9 – I-NA, r-NA 10 – t-Thomas D. McAvoy LPS, NA; b – BA 11 – t-AVY, b – A 12 – t l-NAVY, b l-A RM Y, r-NA 13 – I-USMC, r-NAVY 14 – USMC 15 – I-NAVY, r-NA 16 – NA 17 – I-NAVY, r-USMC 18 – 9-NA 20 – U5MC 21 – NAVY 22 – I-NA, r-NA 23 – t-NA, bl- NA, br-USMC 24 – t-N A, cl-NA, cr-USMC, br-NA

2 5 – I-NA, r-NA 27 – NA 28 – Ariel Dimalanta 29 – Nieves Flores Library 30 – NA 31 – Ariel Dimalanta 32 – NA 33 – MARC 34 – Jimmy Garrido/War in the Pacific National Historical Park 35 – Ariel Dimalanta 36 – NA 37 – Ariel Dimalanta 38 – NA 39-44 – Ariel Dimalanta 45 – NA 46-47 – Ariel Dimalanta 48 – Don A. Farrell 51 – NA 52 – t-N A, b-NA 53 – tl-NA, tr-NA, b- A 55 – NA 56 – t-NA

56 – 57–b-NA 57 – t-USM C 58-59 – t-U SMC, b-NA 60 – USMC 61 – NA 62 – tl-NAVY, t r-NA VY, b-NAVY 63 – USMC 64 – t-NA, b-NAVY 66 – t-NA, b-NA 68-69 – t-NA 68 – b-NA 69 – b-NA 70-71 – t-USMC 70 – b-NA 71 – b-USMC 72 – t-NA, b-NA 73 – t-NA, b-NA 74-75 – NA 76 – t l-USMC, bl-U SMC, r-George Strock LPS, NA 77 – t-USMC, b-NA 78 – t-USMC, b-NA 80-81 –NA

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82 – t-USMC, b-NA 83 – t-NA, b-NA 84 – t-NA 84-85 – b-NA 85 – t-NAVY 86-87 – NA 88 – l-USMC, c1-USMC, bl -NA 88 - 89–NA 90 – A 91 – r-USMC 93 – USMC 95 – ARMY 96 – t-USMC, c1 -USMC, cr-USMC, br-USMC 97 – tl-USMC, tr-USM C, b-USMC 98 – USMC 99 – NA 100 – USMC 101 – t-USMC, b-USMC 102-3 – NA 104 – t-NA, b-USMC 105 – NA 106 – tl-NA, bl-USMC 106-7 – c-NA 107 – r-USMC 108 – t-NA , b-USMC 110 – NA 111 – t-NA, b-NA 112 – t-USMC, b-USMC 113 – USMC 114 – NA 115 – NA 116 – NA

117 – USMC 118 – tl-USMC, bl-USMC, r-USMC 119 – I-USMC, r-NA 120 – tl-NA, tr-NA, b-NA 121 – t-NA, c-USMC, b-USMC 122 – t-NA, b-NA 123 – t-USMC, bl-NA, br-NA 125 – NA 127 – NA 128 – NA 129 – NA, b-NA 130 – t-U SMC, b-NA 131 – tl-NA, tr-USMC, b-NA 132 – t-Emilie Johnston, b-NA 133 – t-NA , c-NA, b-NA 134 – t-USMC, b-USMC 135 – USMC 136 – I-USMC 136-37 – t-USMC, b-USMC 137 – r-NA 138-39 – USMC 140 – t-USMC, c-NA, b-USMC 141 – t-USMC, b-USM C 142 – t-USMC, b-NA 143 – USMC 144 – I-ARMY 144-45 – c-USMC 145 – r-USMC 146 – t-USMC, b-USMC 147 – t-USMC, b-USMC 148 – t-NA, b-USMC 149 – t-NA, b-NA 150 – t-NA , c-USMC, b-NA

151 – tl-USMC, tr-USMC, b-NA 152 – t-U SMC, b-U SMC 153 – t-NA, b-NA 154 – NA 155 – USMC 157 – USMC 158 – tl-USMC, tr-NA, cr-NA, b-USMC 159 – t-USMC, b-USMC 160 – t-NA, b-NA 162 – t-NA, b-ARMY 163 – tl-USMC, tr-ARMY, b-NA 164 – t-NA, b-NA 165 – t-NA, c-NA, b-NA 166 – NA 167 – tl-NA, tr-NA, b-NA 168 – t-NA, bl-USMC, br-USMC 169 – NA 171 – NA 172 – tl-NA , tr-NA, b-NA 173 – t-NA, b-USMC 174 – t-NA, bl-ARMY, br-ARMY 175 – NA 176 – t-NA, b-NA 177 – t-NA, c-NA, b-NA 178 – NA 179 – NA 180 – NA 181 – NA 182 – t-NA, b-NA 183 – t-NA, bl-NA , br-NA 184 – NA 185 – NA

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Don and Carmen Farrell founded Micronesian Productions in 1981 with the publication of The Americanization of Guam: 1898 – 1918, the first volume in the Pictorial History of Guam series. This volume, Liberation – 1944, was published in 1984 in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Liberation of Guam. It recognizes not only the heroic efforts of the American fighting forces that recaptured the island, but also the sacrifices made by the Chamorros during this period in their island’s history. These two volumes were tied together with the publication of the tragic story of The Sacrifice of Guam: 1919 – 1943 in 1991. For the publication of this series, Mr. Farrell was awarded the Ancient Order of the Chamorri by Guam Governor Joseph F. Ada and a Resolution of Commendation from the 21st Guam Legislature. Mr. Farrell wrote the first History of the Northern Mariana Islands for the Public School System of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, which was published in 1991. For this, Mr. Farrell was awarded the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts by CNMI Governor Lorenzo I. Deleon Guerrero and a Resolution of Commendation from the 8th CNMI Senate. In 2011, Mr. Farrell created History of the Mariana Islands to Partition for the CNMI Public School System, for which he was awarded the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts by CNMI Governor Benigno Fitial. Don and Carmen have also published brief histories of Tinian, Saipan, Rota and Guam, which help promote the islands among visitors world-wide. The Farrells live in the village of Marpo Heights on Tinian, Mrs. Farrell’s native island, where they are compiling the history of Tinian’s role in World War II. 196

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