‘Annihilation Attack’ on Saipan

By Richard M. Ingleby

Captain Lawrence Rulison, the commander of K Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines, listened as his battalion commander, Lt. Col. Justice Chambers, briefed his company on the plan for what was ahead. It was June, 1944, and the 4th Marine Division was now sailing from Hawaii as part of the Northern Troops and Landing Force, one of two task force groups under the command of the V Amphibious Corps that was underway for Operation Forager—the seizure of the Pacific island of Saipan in the Marianas.

Alongside them was the 2nd Marine Division (now recovered from Tarawa), additional Army and Marine artillery battalions, the Army’s 27th Infantry Division, as well as a National Guard unit from New York designated as the overall operation’s reserve. Rulison’s “Kings of K” Company were part of more than 165,000 ground troops underway for the task, with D-Day set for June 15, 1944.

The overall goal of this operation was to seize Saipan, along with Tinian and Guam to its south, and build air bases for the Army Air Corps’ latest long-range bomber: the B-29 Superfortress. Once they had accomplished this critical mission, a strategic bombing offensive like the one over Europe would commence against Japan. It was hoped that the captured prizes could also serve as an advanced submarine base, allowing America’s undersea wolves to strengthen their stranglehold on Japan’s island homeland from the sea as well.

On June 11, Navy F6F Hellcats made surprise attacks on the airfields on Saipan and Tinian, destroying Japanese aircraft and providing the Americans with air superiority. Air attacks continued, joined on June 13 by a naval bombardment, but both proved ineffective against Japanese defenses.

At 8:40 a.m., June 15, elements of the 2nd Marine Division landed on Red and Green beaches, while the 4th Marine Division landed on Blue and Yellow beaches. The landings were made under intense artillery and mortar fire, resulting in more than 2,000 casualties. But by the end of the day, the Marines had established a bridgehead and unloaded artillery and tanks. That night the Japanese began a series of attacks, but were unable to push the Marines off the beach.

The following day the Marines were joined by the 27th Infantry Division, as the Marines began to expand their bridgehead. The three divisions continued to push the Japanese defenders, capturing Aslito airfield, and by June 19th had reduced the Japanese fighting force to half its original strength.

On June 19 the Japanese Combined Fleet had sortied out to take on the U.S. Navy and suffer one of the worst defeats in the history of naval warfare. Dubbed the “Great Marianas Turkey Shoot” by the Americans, the affair had been so one-sided in loss of ships and aircraft that the irreplaceable Japanese fleet had, in essence, ceased to exist. For their part, the Americans had only lost 123 planes, with two-thirds of those ditched after running out of fuel, and had only one ship seriously damaged. Not a single American vessel had been sunk. The Japanese could never hope to recover.

On July 6, 1944, three weeks after landing on Saipan (D+21), a heavy downpour drenched the exposed Americans across the island, masking any sounds nearby and screening all but the closest of movement from view. The landing and fighting across the rough terrain had been some of the worst yet experienced in the Pacific, but the three divisions still had roughly a third of the island left to secure.

By now, word of the Japanese Navy’s defeat had reached Saipan’s defenders, and they were just beginning to counter. Taking advantage of the heavy rain, the Japanese attacked at several points across the line. When the sky cleared, hundreds of Japanese dead lay out in the open, many of them armed only with crudely-made bamboo spears. Taking in the devastation, the Marines and Soldiers were unaware that this attack had only been a diversion.

The previous day, the 105th Infantry Regiment, part of the 27th Infantry Division now responsible for the western portion of the front line, had captured a prisoner. Like many Japanese captured during the war, he spoke freely to the American intelligence officers who interrogated him. The prisoner’s report of a large attack coming in the immediate days ahead was taken down, analyzed, and then disseminated out to the divisions.

Later that afternoon, Marine Lieutenant General Holland Smith had visited the 27th Infantry Division’s headquarters, relaying to Maj. Gen. George Griner that they expected the attack to head towards him down the Tanapag Plain along Saipan’s northwestern shore. They estimated it would occur either that night or the early next morning, on July 7. Such attacks were not at all out of the ordinary to the Soldiers or Marines by this point, and Griner replied that his troops were ready.

Not far away, another commander had also readied his troops. Trapped and cornered, with no hope of victory in the air or sea, Lieutenant General Yoshitsugu Saitō decided it was time to violently lash out rather than continue their slow death by attrition. After issuing his final orders, Saitō told his men that, “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 the Senjinkun [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 the living by the eternal principle.’

“Here I pray with you for the eternal life of the Emperor and the welfare of the country and I advance to see out the enemy. Follow me.”

Saitō then committed seppuku (ritualistic suicide by disembowelment) with his call to advance and deliver a final blow in defense of the emperor’s honor left to his subordinates to carry out. Hundreds of Japanese dutifully followed his orders and began emerging from caves and assembling around Makunsha village in the days since it had been distributed. It was some of these men who had attacked the American lines in the rain the previous night.

While most of the Americans assumed the intelligence reports were just yet one more of similar such reports, one small team attached to the 27th Infantry Division’s intelligence section knew what was coming was far more than the typical “banzai” attack. At the head of this section was 2nd Lt. Benjamin H. Hazard, an intelligence officer who had grown up in Massachusetts with friends of Japanese descent. He had developed an interest in their language and culture early on and it followed him to U.C.L.A., where he took local adult education classes in Japanese until the university began to offer its own courses.

After Pearl Harbor, two Army majors had come through campus looking for “Americans of non-Japanese ancestry,” recruiting intelligence officers for the war in the Pacific. Intrigued, Hazard volunteered, dropping out of school two weeks shy of graduation. On Saipan, Hazard led a small language detachment of seven Nisei Soldiers, and something about the recent intelligence reports coming in had caught his team’s attention.

A few days before, his section had interrogated a civilian working for the Japanese army that had just surrendered. Like the others, the man spoke freely, saying that the Japanese were preparing for an attack on July 7. But in this case, the prisoner had used a particular word to describe these plans, something missed by the traditional intelligence officers that immediately caught the attention of the Nisei—gyokusai.

Hazard understood that a gyokusai can only be ordered by Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo.

“This was not the same as a banzai attack,” Hazard recalled. “This is to attack until annihilation. That is, to keep fighting. [To] destroy as many as possible, and nobody is to survive. To die in honor. And literally, it means… ‘gyoku’ is ‘jade’ and ‘sai’ is ‘to smash—smash the jewel… [The] jewel being the army, and destroy it.”

The Nisei also noted that July 7 was the traditional Japanese festival of Tanabata, an adopted Chinese holiday that was celebrated in Japan for when “the spirits of the dead are supposed to return to Earth,” Hazard remembered, adding, “which is also a good time to die—you join your brothers.” Something the Americans had never seen before was coming, yet only this small handful of mostly Japanese Americans even realized it.

Another prisoner had been captured and was interrogated on July 6, who again eerily used that specific term, setting off further alarm bells among the Nisei. This prisoner also told them that it was to commence at around midnight. Alerted, Hazard frantically tried to convince his superiors of what was coming, “but they didn’t give it the same weight that… the Nisei felt. They [the Nisei] knew.” Realizing the gravity of the situation—one in which they were also trapped—this small group of disregarded Japanese American intelligence specialists were helpless to do anything about it.

The Nisei also knew that there was one word the Japanese never used to describe or order an attack: banzai. Aggressive Japanese human wave attacks were no different than what their grandfathers had done at Port Arthur decades before, but counter to beliefs that persist even today, such attacks were not specifically intended for every one of those involved to sacrifice their lives in its effort.

Not unlike the aggressive and daring Marine amphibious assaults in the recent years, with potential for death or injury high, where most were willing to lay down their lives if need be, death for a Marine was never mandated. Neither was it for the Japanese.

While daring, the Japanese did hope to survive and continue fighting after their attacks, with survivors often retreating to regroup when unsuccessful. Seemingly suicidal to those on the receiving end, the Americans assumed that it was—the exact effect the Japanese were hoping to achieve. And when every one of the Japanese attacks included the screaming of “banzai!” as they charged forward, the term quickly became associated in American lexicon with suicide attacks. The battle cry, Tennōheika banzai, translates as “Long live His Majesty the Emperor.”

This misunderstanding was to have dire consequences on Saipan, because Gyokusai, “is something different,” Hazard said. “This is not just yelling and screaming and coming in. This is—they know they’re going to die. They come in singing. You could hear them in the distance, singing.”

But with banzai now so engrained, and because “that word gyokusai had not entered the vocabulary at all,” Hazard’s superiors could not—or would not—comprehend the difference. They continued to brush off Hazard’s concerns, even as the singing of suicidal men could now even be heard outside.

Throughout the early morning hours, the Japanese probed the hastily set American lines, discovering a sizable gap between 1st Bn./105th IR and 3rd Bn./105th IR near the beach road. At around 0445 they struck there in force; many were again only armed with handmade spears, some with nothing at all. The Soldiers fired into these hordes as fast as they could, and bodies soon piled up so high in front of their positions that many had to move before they could continue firing. And they kept coming.

The commander of 2nd Bn./105th IR, Major Edward McCarthy, vividly remembered seeing the masses coming forward.

“It reminded me of one of those old cattle stampede scenes of the movies,” McCarthy recalled. “The camera is in a hole in the ground and you see the herd coming and then they leap up and over you and are gone. Only the Japs just kept coming and coming. I didn’t think they’d ever stop.”

McCarthy’s battalion was soon overrun and he ordered a withdrawal, but heavy enemy fire all around quickly disorganized the attempt, nearly turning it into a complete rout. To prevent that from happening, McCarthy moved into the open where he could be seen by his men and rallied them to him. Eventually they had enough to set up a hasty defense as wave after wave of Japanese attackers crashed against their new position throughout the early morning.

McCarthy knew many others from his battalion had been unable to see or get to him, left to fend for themselves most likely to their peril. There was nothing he could do about it. Before long, both his battalion and 1st Bn./105th IR nearby were completely overrun and cut off, the front line evaporating. The scattered few still alive were left in a desperate fight for their lives against a seemingly unending flood of crazed Japanese attackers.

One of McCarthy’s Soldiers caught in these initial waves was First Lieutenant Morris Seretan, the heavy weapons platoon leader of D Company (2nd Bn./105th IR). He remembered his machine guns had devastated the first wave of Japanese soldiers, but soon their numbers overwhelmed even the thousands of rounds per minute his guns were firing. He also remembered the battle as something like out of the old American West, where groups of survivors could only circle into small pockets and try to hold out against swirling hordes of furious attackers. “It was just chaos that is unable to describe,” he later recalled.

Close to his company command post, Seretan and the survivors near him tried to make their way towards it in hopes of finding others there. “As I was moving toward it,” he continued, “a grenade was hurled and shattered my left elbow.” Bleeding profusely, he had no choice but to keep going, but was soon hit again, this time in the groin from what was likely a bullet. This projectile was even more debilitating, penetrating through his hip and “leaving a gaping hole” in his buttocks on the other side.

Within seconds he was hit yet again, this time in his opposite leg, and he collapsed to the ground, unable to walk. Despite the pain of his injuries, he knew that to stay there in the open almost surely meant a Japanese bayonet, and he knew his only hope for survival was to hide. “I tried to push myself and crawl to get into something where I could get some cover,” he remembered.

Seretan began pulling himself along the ground with one arm toward a nearby disabled halftrack. Though it felt like an eternity, he managed to reach it, but had nothing left. “With my last bit of strength, I crawled underneath,” he recalled. He did not regain consciousness for almost an entire day. His wounds were so severe that any passing Japanese Soldier must have assumed him dead.

Another caught in the gyokusai was Sergeant Thomas Baker, a member of A Company, (1st Bn./105th IR). Severely wounded early on in the fighting, he refused evacuation, staying on the line until his ammunition was gone. He began using his rifle as a club, until it became so damaged from use that it could no longer even serve that purpose. Now fading from loss of blood, a friend began to pull Baker to safety, but his rescuer was himself wounded before the two had made it more than 50 yards. Another Soldier then attempted to come to their rescue, but knowing his condition, Baker waved him off, not wanting anyone else hurt on his account.

He instead asked to be leaned up against a nearby tree and given a pistol. This was done and he was handed a .45 with only a single magazine. His comrades then departed, looking back to see him calmly facing hundreds of oncoming Japanese.

Baker’s body was still propped up against that tree the next day with the pistol’s slide now locked back, empty. Immediately around him were eight Japanese bodies, one for each of his rounds. For this and two other actions earlier in the battle, Baker was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

Lieutenant Colonel William O’Brien, Baker’s battalion commander, had been nearby during the fighting and had refused to allow the men around him to retreat, even though most of his units had been overrun and were just fighting for survival in isolated pockets. Keeping the men nearby engaged, O’Brien personally walked up and down what remained of his lines, firing at the Japanese from a pistol in each hand. He was hit in the shoulder, but refused to be evacuated, continuing to fire his pistols while a medic bandaged up the wound. Then, running out of ammunition, he grabbed a rifle from one of the wounded nearby, then yelled to the others around him to form a new defensive line, concluding his orders with, “don’t give a damn inch.”

As they moved to set this up, O’Brien saw an abandoned jeep with a .50 caliber machine gun silent as a battle went on around it. A single round from the gun could easily tear through several men, and with the Japanese coming towards them in such densely-packed waves, the fire it could bring to bear was invaluable in such a moment. He ran over and jumped into the jeep’s rear area, stood behind the gun and began firing the weapon into the masses charging towards him.

“When last seen alive he was standing upright,” the citation for his Medal of Honor reads, “firing into the Japanese hordes that were then enveloping him.” Thanks to his leadership, 1st Bn./105th IR held. “Obie was one of the boys that day,” Sgt. John Breen remembered, “he died right on the frontline with us.”

Not far behind them was Captain Benjamin Salomon. Originally the 105th Infantry Regiment’s dentist, he had realized that there was far less demand for dental work in their present circumstances on Saipan, so he volunteered to serve as the battalion surgeon for 2nd Bn./105th IR after theirs had been wounded by a mortar round the week before.

In the early morning of July 7, Salomon was busy treating the dozens of wounded that were increasingly starting to arrive at his aid station. At one point he looked up to see a Japanese Soldier bayoneting one of the wounded that was lying on the ground just outside his tent. Salomon took up his rifle, shot the assailant, then set the gun down and resumed treating his patient.

Two more Japanese appeared at the entrance of the tent, but his medical staff were able to dispatch them without too much trouble. Moments later however, four more began crawling in under the tent’s canvas walls. Salomon ran over, kicked a knife away from one, grabbed a rifle and shot another, then rushed over and bayoneted a third. Turning to the fourth, he hit the assailant in the stomach with the butt of his rifle, then a wounded man nearby shot and killed the Japanese before the dentist-turned-rifleman could attempt another blow.

Clear now that the aid station was just seconds from being overrun, Salomon ordered the wounded to make their escape the best they could, then headed outside to try and buy them some time. He found a machine gun with four dead Soldiers around it and put it back into operation, sending streams of bullets tearing into the oncoming attackers. That was the last Salomon was seen alive, but his efforts ensured a good number of wounded and aid station personnel were able to escape.

When the aid station was cleared the next day, Salomon’s body—with 24 bullet holes in it—was found still at the machine gun. There were 98 dead Japanese soldiers strewn about in front of his position.

One large Japanese group had found a gap and advanced more than 1,000 yards before running into the artillerymen of 3rd Bn./10th Marines just to the southwest of the village of Tanapag. There they hit H Battery the hardest, forcing the Marine gunners to set timed fuzes so short that they burst almost as soon as they left their howitzers’ tubes, converting the cannons into large shotguns. Still the Japanese came on, forcing them to do the one act no artilleryman wants to even contemplate: abandoning their guns. One of these was 1st Lt. Arnold Hofstetter, who remembered having no choice but to do so, as the sound of gunfire got closer and closer. When it appeared their position would be attacked, Hofstetter said the gunners were told to shorten their fuzes to 4/10ths of a second.

As dawn approached, the battery held its fire until the group of soldiers approaching them could be positively identified. At 400 yards, it was determined that they were Japanese.

“After the howitzers started firing, it sounded to me like [howitzer] Numbers 3 and 4 were not firing enough, so I went to these pieces to get them firing more,” Hofstetter recalled. “I got them squared away and stayed with Number 4 until Japs broke through [a] wooded ravine to the left, and I heard that word had been passed to withdraw. The firing battery fired time fuze and percussion fuze so as to get a close ricochet. Some smoke shell was fired. Cannoneers were shot from their posts by machine guns and small arms… which interrupted the howitzer fire and finally made it impossible to service the piece. “

At about 0700, the surviving members of the battery fell back across a road and set up a perimeter defense in a Japanese machinery dump about 150 yards from the howitzers.

“We held out there with carbines, one BAR, one pistol, and eight captured Jap rifles. Japs got behind us and around us in considerable strength. They set up a strong point in woods to our rear,” Hofstetter said. “About 1500, an Army tank came in from the right and got to the strong point and Army troops relieved us. I estimate that 400-500 Japs attacked the position. They used machine guns, rifles, grenades, and tanks.”

Three Japanese tanks had appeared in the attack, one a Type 97 medium tank, another a light Type 95, and the last an odd Type 2 Ka-Mi, an amphibious tank developed by the Imperial Japanese Navy. Before the Marines had fallen back from their guns, the tanks made the error of bypassing the artillery positions, trying to keep driving further into the American rear. Despite being completely unprotected as bullets flew all around, the crew of one the howitzers bravely turned its gun completely around, depressed their tube to level, and sent a 105mm howitzer shell into the rear of the Type 97 from no more than 50 yards. The impact of the high-velocity shell and its explosion tore the tank into pieces, leaving it a burning wreck.

Even this failed to stop the onrushing Japanese, and the Marines were forced to abandon their guns, including the one that now had a direct tank kill to its credit. In their haste, the Marines failed to disable their guns as they should have. But bent on death, capture of the American guns was of little interest to the Japanese, who never bothered to use or destroy them. As a result, the Marine howitzers were quickly put back into action as soon as they were recaptured.

I Battery was hard hit as well, but slightly off to the side of the main Japanese avenue of attack, they were able to defend their positions until running out of ammunition. They then retreated further back to G Battery nearby, augmenting the defense there. Their battalion headquarters was not quite so fortunate. Located right behind H Battery, when the latter withdrew, the staff—all primarily logisticians and mechanics—took the brunt of the attack, mostly in hand-to-hand combat. Maj. William Crouch, the commander of 3rd Bn./10th Marines was killed in the ensuing struggle, along with 135 additional casualties suffered. Later they counted more than twice that number of Japanese dead around the command post area.

Not far away were the gun positions of 4th Bn./10th Marines. Similarly off to the side of the Japanese attack, they were able to hold without issue, killing roughly 85 attackers as they attempted to pass by. But Marine gunner Pfc. Harold Agerholm, a Tarawa veteran, knew that much of the other battalion had been overrun, and any survivors out there were now in desperate shape. He volunteered to go and help, leaving his relative safety and running out into the fray before him.

Finding an ambulance jeep, he drove it through where the Japanese had attacked to find and rescue any American he could. Despite the enemy still all around, for over three hours Agerholm made the trip back and forth through the Japanese to where 3rd Bn./10th Marines had been, driving as fast as he possibly could as bullets snapped all around him. Each time he did, he came across desperate and wounded men that had been left behind in the chaos, loading each of them up and driving them back to safety.

Agerholm’s luck could only hold out for so long, but he managed to safely evacuate 45 wounded men—all likely strangers, but all still fellow Marines—before he was killed. Agerholm, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, the third awarded for heroism above and beyond the call of duty during the gyokusai.

The surviving Japanese then reached the headquarters of the 105th Infantry Regiment, roughly another 500 yards further. Here the gyokusai finally ran out of steam, as the Army headquarters personnel defended their position fiercely from previously-taken Japanese positions. It took several hours of close fighting in the dark, often hand-to-hand, but eventually the few surviving Japanese withdrew. Two other smaller attacks occurred that morning, including one against the Soldiers occupying Harakiri Gulch nearby, but each of these were quickly dealt with.

As daybreak finally appeared, bringing with it an immense sense of relief, the two cut off Army battalions were exhausted, out of ammunition, and down to about a quarter of their strength. Many more were missing somewhere out in the plain. Realizing that the attack had carried long past them, these various pockets instinctively began to move back to find other American units, carrying and dragging wounded comrades that they refused to leave behind.

At the same time, many of the Japanese survivors were attempting to move back towards Makunsha, resulting in running surprise clashes between them throughout the morning, but eventually the surviving Soldiers were able to coalesce into one large group. Realizing there was no hope for escape in their condition, they set up a defense around Tanapag, fighting off additional attacks long into the afternoon.

Corporal Wilfred “Spike” Mailloux was a rifleman in B Company (1st Bn./105th IR) and was one of the fortunate ones to have survived until they withdrew to Tanapag. “I was scared as hell,” he recalled of the initial attacks, “when you hear that screaming—‘banzai!’—who wouldn’t be?” His company had fired their machine guns so frantically that before long all of their barrels had overheated. All of their rifle ammunition was exhausted soon after as well. After that he remembered, everything just “became a running street brawl.”

Eventually Mailloux made it back to the Tanapag perimeter and joined the growing mixed group. Put out onto the line, at one point a Japanese Soldier ambushed him, stabbing him in the thigh with his long bayonet. “I got hurt real bad,” he recalled of the encounter, but for some unknown reason the Japanese Soldier did not continue his assault and finish the helpless American off.

Mailloux then collapsed into a muddy ditch, where he soon passed out from loss of blood. Sometime later, Sgt. John Sidur, also of B Company, happened by and saw someone lying there in the mud. “I didn’t know who it was,” he remembered, “I just thought, boy, he looks familiar.” Eventually he recognized the face as someone from his hometown back in New York. Sidur quickly hauled Mailloux off to safety and medical aid. Living close to one another for the rest of their lives, Mailloux and Sidur remained lifelong friends to the very end.

Nearby was a 37 mm antitank gun, manned by Soldiers from 2nd Bn./105th IR. They had been firing canister shot repeatedly into the hordes of Japanese out ahead of them, tearing gaping holes into the onrushing throngs. Throughout the course of the day however, the gun’s crew had steadily been picked off, making its operation much more difficult. Yet each time it happened another man stepped in and took his place, keeping the gun in action. “As they were killed, they were rolled aside by others who continued to man the piece until they were killed and they were rolled aside,” Hazard remembered after walking by. He counted 11 American bodies next to the gun, but as he moved about 100 yards further, he spotted a dike piled full of Japanese bodies.

At around noon, an American artillery barrage mistook the remnants of the two Army battalions that were clinging on for survival around Tanapag. Friendly rounds now impacting around them, many of the already battered men could take no more and began running out into the water in hopes of escape. American destroyers thankfully sent boats in to pick them up before they drifted out to sea, the Sailors onboard learning firsthand the plight of the clearly shaken men.

At about the same time, two battalions from the 106th Infantry were ordered to counterattack into the area and rescue any they could while clearing out the Japanese that were still active in the area, but the going proved slower than had been hoped. Facing tough resistance, the 106th Infantry was only able to move far enough to relieve the gun positions of the still-beleaguered 10th Marines by day’s end, but could not make it all the way to the beleaguered men at Tanapag. Amtracs and DUKWs were then sent in to evacuate these survivors, finally getting them all out at around 2200.

Although unable to hold against such a massive attack, the two greatly outnumbered battalions had heroically continued to resist in their various pockets against thousands of Japanese that had surrounded them, exacting a heavy toll and leaving hundreds of their dead scattered across the Tanapag flood plain. By the time it was over, both the Army battalions had been completely decimated, suffering nearly 1,000 casualties between them, including just over 400 killed. As the day drew to a close, both effectively ceased to exist as a combat force.

The 27th Infantry Division’s artillery alone had fired 2,666 rounds in just the first hour, their crews desperately feeding their guns as fast as they could without pause in an attempt to save their comrades. The Marine artillery added hundreds more shells of their own, firing just as earnestly even while at times having to simultaneously defend themselves. Both guns and gunners had given all the strength they had, loading the 65-lb. or 96-lb. shells into cannon breaches unceasingly until things finally quieted down. In doing so, they had played a major role in stopping the gyokusai. Between their firing and the desperate, yet truly heroic defense of the Soldiers and Marines caught in its path, somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 Japanese dead were counted where their attack had occurred.

Japan’s final act to maintain Zettai Kokubōken, its Absolute National Defense Zone, had been horrific; carried only as far as it had by the weight of human numbers. Although only succeeding in a brief disruption to American operations, all at a massively disproportionate cost compared to the ultimately inconsequential losses suffered by the Americans that morning, the gyokusai of July 7 marked, in essence, the end for the battle for Saipan.

More importantly, it signified the end for the Japanese nation as a whole; for in their own words, it marked a major strategic reversal in the overall war. Really it marked the beginning of the end. In both the air and now on land, the jewel had indeed been smashed. And doing so had accomplished virtually nothing.

Starting out as normal that morning, word of what had happened only reached the Kings (3rd Bn./25th Marines) on the opposite side of the island at around 1400. When it did, the 25th Marine Regiment ordered all units to hold their present position, wanting to see if assistance was going to be needed for what was still an unclear and tenuous situation. Accordingly, the battalions straightened up their lines and organized for defense.

Meanwhile, Lt. Col. Justice Chambers was curiously summoned back to regiment. “Batch [Col. Merton Batchelder] said that division had called and wanted to know where the third battalion was,” Chambers remembered being told when he arrived. Even the division clearly knew who to call on when most needed.

The regimental commander had told his superiors that Chambers’ Raiders were then committed and were in pretty rough shape, so could not be used to assist. Still, they told him to have Chambers hop in a jeep and conduct a reconnaissance of the area, just in case. Doing as ordered, Chambers soon found himself on the opposite side of the island, driving along the coastal plain where the gyokusai recently occurred. As he did, he took in the gruesome sight all around him. “I never saw so many Jap bodies in one restricted area.”

An active duty artillery officer, Richard M. Ingleby, has served nearly 20 years in the U.S. Army, including three combat tours in Afghanistan. He is the author of the upcoming book, Giants Among Kings: The Untold Story of one of the Most Distinguished Marine Combat Units of World War II. Visit richingleby.com/giants-among-kings/ for more information.