Robert Leckie - Strong Men Armed

In the early morning of that date, tired old General Saito gathered his staff in his cave. He was a pathetic figure. His beard was long and matted. His clothing was stained. All of his strength had deserted him and to sustain him he had only the last resource of that deep Oriental despair which is the other side of the coin of pride.

“I am addressing the officers and men of the Imperial Army on Saipan,” he wrote in his final message.

For more than twenty days since the American Devils attacked, the officers, men and civilian employees of the Imperial Army and Navy on this island have fought well and bravely. Everywhere they have demonstrated the honor and glory of the Imperial Force. I expected that every man would do his duty.

Heaven has not given us an opportunity. We have not been able to utilize fully the terrain. We have fought in unison up to the present time but now we have no materials with which to fight and our artillery for attack has been completely destroyed. Our comrades have fallen one after another. Despite the bitterness of defeat, we pledge, “Seven lives to repay our country!”

The barbarous attack of the enemy is being continued. Even though the enemy has occupied only a corner of Saipan, we are dying without avail under the violent shelling and bombing. Whether we attack or whether we stay where we are, there is only death. However, in death there is life. We must utilize this opportunity to exalt true Japanese manhood. I will advance with those who remain to deliver still another blow to the American Devils, and leave my bones on Saipan as a bulwark of the Pacific.

As it says in Battle Ethics, I will never suffer the disgrace of being taken alive, and I will offer up the courage of my soul and calmly rejoice in living by the eternal principle.

Here I pray with you for the eternal life of the Emperor and the welfare of our country and I advance to seek out the enemy.

Follow me!

But if those valiant, suffering Japanese foot-soldiers had indeed followed General Saito there would have been no banzai.

For the aged commander of Saipan sat down to a farewell feast of canned crabmeat and saki. At ten o’clock he had finished. He arose and said:

“It makes no difference whether I die today or tomorrow, so I will die first. I will meet my staff at Yasakuni Shrine.”

He walked slowly to a flat rock. He cleaned it off and sat down. He faced the misty East and bowed gravely. He raised his glittering samurai saber in salute and cried, “Tenno Heika! Banzai!” He pressed the point of his blade into his breast and the moment he had drawn blood his adjutant shot him in the head.

In another cave on Saipan at about the same time, Nagumo of Pearl Harbor sent a bullet crashing into his brain by his own hand.

Tonight the Japanese would follow their leaders’ orders, without their leaders.

On that same July 6 Holland Smith visited 27th Infantry Division headquarters and warned Major General Griner that a banzai would probably come against his men that night or early the next morning.

Smith had long anticipated a strong enemy counterstroke south along the coastal flat on the island’s western shore. It was for this reason that he had kept his left or northern flank strong during seizure of the beachhead, and the fact that all the strong Japanese counterblows had been made there had confirmed his judgment. For this reason also he had ordered Major General Watson to keep the Second Marine Division’s west flank strong during the attack north.

But now the 27th Infantry Division had taken over the entire west or left flank, for on July 5, as his attack began moving on a front narrowing away to the northeast, Smith had reduced his commitment to two divisions. The Second Marine Division went into reserve, and the alignment became 27th on the left or west and Fourth Marine Division on the right or east. In the 27th’s sector was Tanapag Plain, about three miles northeast of Garapan.

It was because Tanapag Plain was a lowland made for counterattack, as well as because the hemmed-in enemy could be expected to make his unfailing reaction to such predicament, that Smith came to Griner to warn him of impending banzai. He also cautioned him to be sure his battalions were tied tightly to each other’s flanks.

But as night fell on July 6 the 105th Infantry Regiment which held the Tanapag Plain had not buttoned up its front. Its left-to-right alignment by battalions was 2nd, ist and 3rd —the last tying in with the 165th Infantry on high ground to the right or east of Tanapag Plain.

Between the 1st Battalion in the center and the 3rd on the right was a gap of 300 yards-and north of it the Japanese had begun to mass.

The Japanese were singing as they massed, singing Umi Yukaba— the martial air which had been broadcast throughout Japan the day Premier Tojo announced the attack on Pearl Harbor. That had been December 8, 1941, and this was the black early morning of July 7, 1944. The hero of Pearl Harbor was dead, Tojo’s own iron rule was beginning to crack, and yet, here were between 2,000 and 3,000 Japanese promising to die in sea and field and forming ranks to do it.

Down the coastal plain they swept. They rolled like a cattle stampede against the lines of the 2nd and ist Battalions, 105th, and they cut them off and overwhelmed them. They found the gap between the ist and 3rd Battalions, 105th, and thundered through it.

Army artillery pounded them, Marine guns bayed—but still they swept over those army battalions, for there were so many of them. They had come determined to die and they made the American soldiers fight for their lives. Some soldiers shot so many Japanese that bodies clogged their fields of fire and they had to move their guns. Others shot themselves out of ammunition and fought with their hands. The 105th’s left and center was cut up into pocket after pocket. Lieutenant Colonel William O’Brien of the First Battalion tried to rally his men and was killed firing a heavy machine gun from a jeep. Sergeant Tom Baker of the same outfit was wounded and refused to leave the lines when his unit withdrew. He asked to be propped up against a tree. He was. By morning he was dead, but there were eight lifeless Japanese around him, and he was awarded a Medal of Honor along with O’Brien. Throughout the morning the fighting swirled within and around the lines of these two battalions. Their remnants were forced to form a hasty perimeter on the water’s edge. They were driven into the sea, by their own artillery as much as by enemy fire, and had to be rescued by small boats. In all, the ist and 2nd Battalions, 105th, suffered a total of 668 casualties.

Meanwhile, the Japanese who had shot the gap during the night burst in a howling flood on the startled gunners of the Third Battalion, Tenth Marines. The gunners lowered their 105’s to point-blank range. They cut their fuses to 150 yards, to 100 yards. But still the enemy charged. The gunners disarmed their howitzers and fell back into a covered-wagon defense. They too fought on through the morning, helped by men from brother artillery battalions-Marines such as Pfc. Harold Agerholm, who singlehandedly evacuated 45 wounded men until he fell from the wound that would make his Medal of Honor posthumous-and then the turrets of the 106th Infantry’s counterattacking tanks came into view.

Then also on this morning of July 7 the Japanese hospitals disgorged and the banzai became a ghoul’s parade.

They came down the plain hobbling and limping, amputees, men on crutches, walking wounded supporting one another, men in bandages. Some had weapons, most brandished idiot sticks or swung bayonets, others were barehanded or carried grenades. Behind them some 300 of their comrades who had been unable to move had been put to death. And now these specters, these scarecrows, were coming down Tanapag Plain to die. They were requited.