Breaching the Marianas: The Battle for Saipan. John C. Chapin
pinned down the right and left flanks. The two divisions were unable to make direct contact.
“D-Day at Saipan”
Watercolor by SSgt John Fabion in Marine Corps Art Collection
A first lieutenant in the 3d Battalion, 24th Marines, John C. Chapin, later remembered vividly the extraordinary scene on the beach when he came ashore on D-Day:
All around us was the chaotic debris of bitter combat: Jap and Marine bodies lying in mangled and grotesque positions; blasted and burnt-out pillboxes; the burning wrecks of LVTs that had been knocked out by Jap high velocity fire; the acrid smell of high explosives; the shattered trees; and the churned-up sand littered with discarded equipment.
When his company moved inland a short distance, it quickly experienced the frightening precision of the pre-registered Japanese artillery fire:
Suddenly, WHAM! A shell hit right on top of us! I was too surprised to think, but instinctively all of us hit the deck and began to spread out. Then the shells really began to pour down on us: ahead, behind, on both sides, and right in our midst. They would come rocketing down with a freight-train roar and then explode with a deafening cataclysm that is beyond description.
It finally dawned on me that the first shell bursts we’d heard had been ranging shots, and now that the Japs were “zeroed in” on us, we were caught in a full-fledged barrage. The fire was hitting us with pin-point accuracy, and it was not hard to see why—towering 1500 feet above us was Mt. Tapotchau, with Jap observation posts honeycombing its crest.
D-DAY AT SAIPAN
INITIAL LANDINGS AND NIGHT
DEFENSIVE POSITION
That night the lieutenant and his runner shared a shallow foxhole and split the watches between them. Death came close:
Slowly, very slowly, the hours of my watch passed, and at last I leaned over and shook my runner awake. “It’s time for your watch,” I whispered. “Look out for that place over there, maybe Japs in it. Keep awake.” With that I rolled over on the ground and was asleep in an instant.
Right away, it seemed, someone was shaking me and insisting, “Wake up!” I jerked bolt upright—in combat your reflexes act fast and you never go fully to sleep. A glance at my watch showed that it was almost dawn.
I turned to my runner who was lying against me, asleep. “Let’s go!” I said, “Pass the word to the squad leaders to get set.” He didn’t stir. I shook him. He still didn’t move. He was dead. With the callousness that war demands, I rolled him over, reached for his canteen, and poured the precious water into my own canteen. Then I left him lying there. …
Marines dig in on the beachhead, consolidating their positions, and at the same time preparing to move out on the attack inland.
Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 81917
All the assault regiments were taking casualties from the constant shelling that was zeroed in by spotters on the high ground inland. Supplies and reinforcing units piled up in confusion on the landing beaches. Snipers were everywhere. Supporting waves experienced the same deadly enemy fire on their way to the beach. Some LVTs lost their direction, some received direct hits, and others were flipped on their sides by waves or enemy fire spilling their equipment and personnel onto the reef. Casualties in both divisions mounted rapidly. Evacuating them to the ships was extremely dangerous and difficult. Medical aid stations set up ashore were under sporadic enemy fire.
Col James A. Donovan Collection
Members of the Japanese garrison on Saipan pose for a photograph during a more peaceful time before the Marine landing.
As the Marine artillery also landed in the late afternoon of D-Day and began firing in support of the infantry, it received deadly accurate counter-battery fire from the Japanese. The commander of the 4th Division, Major General Harry Schmidt, came ashore at 1930 and later recalled, “Needless to say, the command post during that time did not function very well. It was the hottest spot I was in during the war. …”
Major James A. Donovan, executive officer of the 1st Battalion, 6th Marines, endured a mortar barrage that had uncanny timing and precision:
We entered a little village called Charan-Kanoa. We paused there to get some water. We had been pinched out of our zone of action. We were washing up and resting when all of a sudden mortar shells started to fall on us. We didn’t know it at the time, but in a tall smokestack nearby was a Japanese forward observer. He was directing the fire, looking right down on us. It didn’t occur to us that somebody could be up in that smokestack after all the preparatory naval gunfire and everything that had been fired into the area, but he was up there all right. He really caused a great number of casualties in G Company.
He caught us without foxholes. We had that false sense of security from having been pinched out of the line. We thought we had a chance to relax. We didn’t. So all had to dig holes in a hurry, and it’s hard to dig a hole when you’re lying on your stomach digging with your chin, your elbows, your knees, and your toes. It is possible to dig a hole that way, I found, but we lost far more Marines than we should have before someone finally located that observer up in the smokestack. I don’t know how tall the smokestack was, but I would say probably the equivalent of two or three stories high. From up there he could see the entire picture, and he really gave it to us.
The night of D-Day saw continuous Japanese probing of the Marine positions, fire from by-passed enemy soldiers, and an enemy attack in the 4th Division zone screened by a front of civilians. The main counterattack, however, fell on the 6th Marines on the far left of the Marine lines. About 2,000 Japanese started moving south from Garapan, and by 2200 they were ready to attack. Led by tanks the charge was met by a wall of fire from .30-caliber machine guns, 37mm antitank guns, and M-1 rifles. It was too much and they fell back in disarray. In addition to 700 enemy dead, they left one tank. The body of the bugler who blew the charge was slumped over the open hatch. A bullet had gone straight up his bugle!
One of the crucial assets for the Marine defense that night (and on many subsequent nights) was the illumination provided by star shells fired from Navy ships. Japanese records recovered later from their Thirty-first Army message file revealed, “… as soon as the night attack units go forward, the enemy points out targets by using the large star shells which practically turn night into day. Thus the maneuvering of units is extremely difficult.”
As the weary Marines finally tried to get some sleep, all along their irregular line of foxholes, two things were very clear to them: they had forced a precarious beachhead in the teeth of bitter enemy fire, and a long, tough battle obviously lay ahead.
While the thoughts of the riflemen focused on survival and the immediate ground in front of them, the senior command echelons saw the initial success of the landings as a culmination of months of planning, training, and organization for a strategic strike on a crucial Japanese stronghold. The opportunity for this sprang from earlier Central Pacific victories.
The Marine conquest of Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands in November 1943, followed by the joint Marine-Army capture of Kwajalein and Eniwetok atolls in the Marshall Islands in January-February 1944, had broken the outer ring of Japanese defenses and set the stage for succeeding operations.
These earlier victories had moved up the entire American operational timetable for the Central Pacific by three valuable months. After discussions of various alternatives (such as an attack on the vast Japanese base at Truk), the Joint Chiefs of Staff had settled on the next objective: the Mariana Islands. There were to be three principal targets: Saipan, Tinian, and Guam. It was a daring decision, for