Richard Harwood

“ The defenses of Tinian were dictated by the geography of the island. It is encircled by coral cliffs which rise from the coastline and are a part of the limestone plateau underlying the island. These cliffs range in height from 6 to 100 feet; breaks in the cliff line are rare and where they occur are narrow, leaving little beach space for an invasion force. Along the entire coastline of Tinian, only four beaches were worthy of the name. ”

“ But despite the odds against them—bereft of air or sea support and confronted by three heavily armed divisions only three miles away on Saipan—the fighting spirit of the Japanese forces had not been broken by 43 days of the heaviest bombardment, up to then, of the Pacific war. One of the men of the 50th Infantry Regiment wrote in his diary on 30 June: “We have spent twenty days under unceasing enemy bombardment and air raids but have suffered only minor losses. Everyone from the Commanding Officer to the lowest private is full of fighting spirit.” ”

“ South of Mount Lasso, nearly six miles from the White Beaches, was the Japanese Mobile Counterattack Force—a 900-man battalion of the 135th Infantry Regiment, equipped with new rifles and demolition charges. Its journey toward the northwestern beaches and the Marine lines was perilous. All movements in daylight were under air surveillance and vulnerable to American fire power. But the battalion set out under its commander—a Captain Izumi—and was hit on several occasions by unobserved artillery and naval gunfire. ”

“ Fully aware of the danger involved, he was moving forward while the remainder of the squad, armed with automatic rifles, closed together in the rear when an enemy grenade landed in the midst of the group. Quick to act, Private First Class Wilson cried a warning to the men and unhesitatingly threw himself on the grenade, heroically sacrificing his own life that the others might live and fulfill their mission. ”

“ The body count for the Japanese was 438. Despite drizzling rain, narrow beaches, and undiscovered mines, 15,600 troops were put ashore along with great quantities of materiel and equipment that included four battalions of artillery, two dozen half-tracks mounting 75mm guns, and 48 medium and 15 flame-throwing tanks which found the Tinian terrain hospitable for tank operations. The tanks had gotten into action early that morning, leading the 24th in tank-infantry attacks. They also had come to the aid of the 23d Marines as that regiment moved inland to take over the division’s right flank. ”

“ The 4th Division lined up in the western half of the island with the 23d Marines on the coast, the 24th in the center, and the 25th on the left flank. The 2d Division lined up with the 2d Marines on the east coast and the 6th Marines in the center, tied in to the 25th. The 8th Marines remained in the north to mop up.
Tramping the cane was a tiring work, especially when the direction of the advance did not parallel the rows of the fields. Each stalk was strong enough to trip a man careless about where he stepped. ”

“ He was a young major, serving as operations officer for an artillery regiment—the 14th Marines—during the Tinian campaign, and he recalled:
I remember going by a [Japanese] machine gun crew. They had been trying to get to a firing position and had been caught by the artillery barrage, apparently, and they were laid out just like a school solution, with each man carrying his particular portion of the gun crew’s equipment. ”

“ That was a common judgment after the Tinian battle had ended. But at the time, according to the 4th Division intelligence officer, Lieutenant Colonel Gooderham McCormick, a Marine Reserve officer who later became mayor of Philadelphia, things were not so clear: “We still believed [after the counterattack] the enemy capable of a harder fight ... and from day to day during our advance expected a bitter fight that never materialized.” ”

“ In World War II, Cates commanded the 1st Marines in the landing on Guadalcanal. After returning to the States, he was promoted to brigadier general. He went back to the Pacific war in mid-1944 to take command of the 4th Marine Division in time for the Tinian operation. He also led it in the Iwo Jima assault, and was decorated at the end of the fighting with his second Distinguished Service Medal. Part of the citation accompanying the medal reads: “Repeatedly disregarding his own personal safety. ”

“ Behind the beach, troops from Ogata’s 50th Regiment put up a vigorous defense with mortars, anti-tank and anti-boat guns, and other automatic weapons emplaced in pillboxes, caves, fortified ravines, and field entrenchments. Two 47mm guns in particular kept the Marines back on their heels. They finally bypassed these troublesome positions. Later waves took them out, leaving 50 dead Japanese in the gunpits. ”

“ Altogether about 600 Japanese were killed in their attack on the center.
On the left flank, 1st Battalion, 24th Marines, came under attack at 0200 from about 600 Special Naval Landing Force troops out of the barracks at the Ushi Point airfields. Company A, hit so hard it was reduced at one point to only 30 men with weapons, was forced to draw reinforcements from engineers, corpsmen, communicators, and members of the shore party. Illumination flares were fired over the battlefield, allowing the Marines to use 37mm cannister shells, machine gun fire, and mortars to good effect. ”

“ The task of seizing Tinian was assigned to the two Marine divisions on Saipan—the 2d and the 4th. The third division on the island—the Army’s 27th Infantry—would remain on Saipan in reserve. All three had been severely battered during the Saipan campaign, suffering more than 14,000 casualties, including nearly 3,200 dead.
For the 2d Marine Division, the Tinian battle would be the fourth time around in a span of little more than 18 months. The division left Guadalcanal in February 1943, having suffered 1,000 battle casualties. Another 12,500 men had diagnosed cases of malaria. ”

“ They were popular with Japanese civilians. The sand was white and the water was swimmable. They were known locally as the White Beaches and that is what they were called when they were chosen—to the great surprise of the Japanese—as the American invasion route.
This sector was defended very modestly by a single company of infantry, an antitank squad, and, about 500 yards northeast of the White Beaches, gun crews situated in emplacements containing one 37mm antitank gun, one 47mm antitank gun, and two 7.7mm machine guns. ”

“ He fled with his party from Tinian Town to a cave on Tinian’s east coast where they awaited their fate. A Japanese prisoner who described Kakuda’s escape efforts assumed he had committed suicide after the American landing, but this was never verified. Toward the end of the battle for Tinian, one of Kakuda’s orderlies led an American patrol to the cave. The patrol was fired upon and two Marines were wounded. A passing group of Marine pioneers sealed the cave with demolition charges but it is unknown whether Kakuda was inside. ”

“ At about 1630, the 4th Division commander, General Cates, ordered his forces to button up for the night. A nighttime counterattack was expected. Barbed wire, preloaded on amphibian vehicles (DUKWs) , was strung all along the division front. Ammunition was stacked at every weapons position. Machine guns were emplaced to permit interlocking fields of fire. Target areas were assigned to mortar crews. Artillery batteries in the rear were registered to hit probable enemy approach routes and to fire illuminating shells if a lighted battlefield was required. ”

“ The last enemy attack that night hit the right or southern flank of the Marines beginning at 0330 when six Japanese tanks (half of the Japanese tank force on Tinian) clattered up from the direction of Tinian Town to attack the 23d Marines position. They were met by fire from Marine artillery, anti-tank guns, bazookas, and small arms. Lieutenant Jim Lucas, a professional reporter who enlisted in the Marine Corps shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor and was commissioned in the field, was there:
The three lead tanks broke through our wall of fire. ”

“ The 8th Marines remained on Tinian for mopping-up purposes until October 25, when the 2d and 3d Battalions moved to Saipan, leaving an unhappy 1st Battalion behind until its relief at the end of the year.
The campaign for Tinian had cost the division 760 casualties, including 105 killed. These numbers did not include casualties suffered after the island was “secured” on 1 August.
Japanese military losses, based on bodies counted and buried, totaled 5,000. Other thousands are assumed to have been sealed up in caves and underground fortifications. ”

“ About 30 percent adult males, 20 percent adult females, and29 about 50 percent children. Many of them were in bad shape—hungry, wounded, ill and with few possessions beyond the clothes they were wearing.
It was estimated that about 4,000 civilians were killed in the bombardments of Tinian and in fighting on the island. On Saipan, Marines had been helpless to prevent mass suicides among the civilian population. They were more successful at Tinian. Unfortunate incidents occurred—civilians, for example, dying under Marine fire after wandering into the lines at night. ”

“ Chambers, commander of the 3d Battalion, 25th Marines, who was to earn a Medal of Honor in the Iwo Jima operation little more than six months later. The division’s infantry battalions had received only one replacement draft after the Saipan fighting. At full strength they averaged 880 men; at Tinian the average strength was down by more than 35 percent to 565.
For all these reasons—combat fatigue, heavy losses during previous weeks and months, and understrength units—the Marines on Tinian would play a cautious game. Admiral Turner had said he would give them two weeks to seize the island. ”

“ Marines climbed down the cargo nets. Within a half hour, 244 Navy and Army planes began strafing and bombing6 runs paying particular attention to Tinian Town. Shells and rockets from battleships, heavy and light cruisers, destroyers, and 30 gunboats saturated the beaches. The massed artillery battalions on southern Saipan thundered in with their 105s and 155s.
After a half-hour of this furious bombardment, the LCVPs (landing craft, vehicle and personnel) from Calvert began their run toward the beach at Tinian Town, receiving heavy artillery and mortar fire from the shore. ”

“ Infantry units of the 50th Regiment continued to attack in the zone of 2d Battalion, 23d Marines. They were repulsed and killed in great numbers, largely through the effective use of 37mm anti-tank guns using cannister shot. In “the last hopeless moments of the assault,” Hoffman wrote, “some of the wounded Japanese destroyed themselves by detonating a magnetic tank mine which produced a terrific blast.” ”

“ Izumi pushed on and got to his objective through skillful use of terrain for concealment. At 2230 he began probing the center of the Marine line where the 2d Battalion, 24th Marines under Garretson was tied in with the 3d Battalion under Chambers.
“While most of these Japanese crept along just forward of the lines,” Carl Hoffman wrote, “... a two-man reconnaissance detail climbed up on a battered building forward of the 24th Marines and audaciously (or stupidly) commenced jotting notes about, or drawing sketches of, the front lines. ”

“ A platoon from the 2d Marines pushes forward while an observation plane (OY) circles overhead. High ground in the distance is part of a long spine extending straight south from Mount Lasso, an objective to be taken.
Marine Corps Historical Collection
From the Japanese standpoint, the night’s work had been a disaster: 1,241 bodies left on the battlefield; several hundred more may have been carted away during the night. Fewer than 100 Marines were wounded or killed. “The loss of these [Japanese] troops,” the historian Frank Hough has written:
... broke the back of the defense of Tinian. ”