Robert Leckie - Strong Men Armed

“The time has come,” Takashina told his commanders, “to solve the issue of the battle at a single stroke by an all-out counterattack.”

That was on July 24, the day when the time had come for Tinian, 130 miles to the north.

Short and sweet-this one will be short and sweet.

That was what the Marines of the Fourth Division thought as they stood on the rain-swept decks of the LST’s taking them to Tinian’s northwestern beaches. It was a dream as old as Tulagi, and even though the realities had been the extremes of the long black night of Guadalcanal or the scarlet short hell of Tarawa, Marines going into battle still looked about them eagerly for signs that this time it was true.

Off Tinian the morning of July 24 the fact that the fight would be short seemed guaranteed by the streamlined combat issue the men carried. Packs, bedding rolls and gas masks had been left on Saipan. Besides their weapons, the men had only a can of rations, a spoon, a pair of clean socks and a bottle of mosquito lotion—all stuffed in a pocket.

“Hell’s bellsl” a Marine swore. “It’s a silly picnic kit!”

That Tinian would also be sweet seemed to be indicated by that panoply of American might ringing the island with steel and booming guns. Battleships and cruisers, five escort carriers and three of the big ones, Army and Marine fighter squadrons, Army bombers already operating from Isely Field on Saipan, 156 big field pieces massed hub to hub and firing from southern Saipan-all this was arrayed against that lovely flat checkerboard of canebrakes and rice paddies that was northern Tinian. And America’s newest weapon was being tried out for the first time. Some planes were dropping napalm bombs, those tanks of jellied gasoline which the fliers accurately called “hell-jelly.” Gushing flame clouds were mushrooming everywhere beneath the smoke, setting the northern canebrakes afire and flushing out concealed Japanese, burning buildings in Tinian Town.

Unknown to these Marines exulting in their nation’s power there was another reason why Tinian might be short and sweet: the quarrel between Colonel Kiyochi Ogata, commander of the 50th Infantry Regiment, and Captain Goichi Oya, commander of the 56th Naval Guard Force. Between them they commanded slightly more than 9,000 soldiers and sailors, and between them there rankled that endless rivalry of the Anchor and the Star. Its bitterness was manifested by the diary entries of one of Ogata’s artillerymen, who wrote:

9 March—The Navy stays in barracks buildings and has liberty every night with liquor to drink and makes a great row. We, on the other hand, bivouac in the rain and never get out on pass. What a difference in discipline!

12 June—Our AA guns (Navy) spread black smoke where the enemy planes weren’t. Not one hit out of a thousand. The Naval Air Group has taken to its heels.

15 June—The Naval aviators are robbers…. When they ran off to the mountains, they stole Army provisions….

25 June—Sailors have stolen our provisions….

6 July—Did Vice Admiral Kakuda when he heard that the enemy had entered our area go to sleep with joy?

On the Navy side, Captain Oya never let his men know that with Vice Admiral Kakuda abstaining from everything but saki, command on Tinian had passed to Colonel Ogata. Captain Oya’s plans to defend Tinian Town were independent of those made by Colonel Ogata for the rest of the island. It was at Tinian Town that the southwestern beaches had been heavily fortified under Oya’s direction, and here, too, Oya had concentrated the bulk of the island’s coastal guns, which, being naval, belonged to him.

At about half-past seven in the morning of July 24, while the Fourth Marine Division sailed toward Tinian’s northwest beaches, Captain Oya ordered his six-inch guns to open up on the big American warships guarding the men of the Second Marine Division as they boarded landing craft and roared toward Tinian Town in a feigned invasion.

Oya’s gunners had a splendid target in old Colorado, only 3,200 yards offshore, and they hit the big battleship 22 times before she could get out of range. Colorado lost 43 men killed and 198 wounded—many of them Marines on duty at the antiaircraft guns. Six hits on the destroyer Norman Scott killed her skipper, Commander Seymour Owens, and 18 other sailors while wounding 47 more. But then the Japanese guns were spotted and knocked out by a rain of American salvos.

Still, Captain Oya was elated. He had stopped the Americans. He could see their landing boats veering, turning, churning back to their mother ships. The enemy Marines were re-boarding their transports. They were sailing north, with their warships.

It was then about nine o’clock, and it was then that Captain Oya received word that the Americans had landed up in the northwest and were pouring over narrow beaches there in incredible speed and volume. And all of Captain Oya’s guns were sited to fire to seaward. He was out of the fight. From now on, it was up to Colonel Ogata.

Colonel Ogata had also been hoodwinked by that feint off Tinian Town. By the time he had realized that the true landing was being made over those undefended northwest beaches, it was too late for him to move troops there.

Battalion after battalion of the Fourth Marine Division burst from the bellies of the LST’s and went racing shoreward. Full 533 amtracks-all the Fifth Corps could muster-brought them inland while the LCI rocket boats raced ahead and darkened the sky with showers of rockets. Even the 140-millimeter cannon which Colonel Ogata had set up in Faibus San Hilo to the right or south of the beachhead were knocked out by battleships which fired armor-piercers into the cliff face above them and tumbled both guns and emplacements into the sea.

Only land mines which the Japanese had concealed between high- and low-water marks survived to defend these narrow beaches against the attacking Americans. Three amtracks were demolished by these, and many others were forced to bring their boatloads around to the coral ledges. But the Marines jumped up on the ledges, and that marvelous swift surge swept inland.

At ten minutes to eight, the Marines landed. A half-hour later they had their beachheads. Before nine o’clock, there were reserve battalions speeding in from the sea. Then there were tanks punching inland, artillery was being brought in, and the assault troops were fanning out and sweeping aside the light resistance of Colonel Ogata’s startled defenders. Here was a pocket of 50 Japanese fighting out of crevices in the cliff ledges, there a pair of blockhouses the bombardment had missed—but they fell, and the beachheads were bought at a cost of 15 Marines killed and 225 wounded.

Throughout the afternoon, Colonel Ogata sought desperately to reinforce his surprised northern sector. He tried rushing up small party after small party from the south, but the American planes spotted and scattered them. Two of Ogata’s tanks were knocked out while moving up. Many of his soldiers who sought cover would not venture forth again until night. They had been pounded for months as had no troops of the Empire, and now they were terrified of the “hell-jelly” bombs filling the air with gouts of sticky flame.

By midafternoon the Marines had knifed inland to well over a mile. They could have gone farther, but General Cates was content with a defensible beachhead. At half-past four, still offshore in an LST, for he had no wish to add to the congestion of those narrow beaches, Cates ordered his regiments to halt, to tie in their flanks, to string barbed wire, to dig in. They nailed down a beachhead 2,900 yards wide and about 1,700 deep at its farthest penetration west. It rested on all the best terrain. Its flanks curved back to a sea filled with friendly ships. It had been seized at a cost of 77 Marines killed and 470 wounded. And it held 15,614 Marines.