Guam, the largest island in the Marianas, had been an American possession since 1898, governed by the U.S. Navy. On 8 December 1941, the same day as the attack on Pearl Harbor across the date line, Japanese aircraft bombed the island. On 10 December Japanese troops landed, and after a brief fight around the plaza in Hagåtña (Agana) involving Marines, sailors and the Chamorro Insular Force Guard, the governor, Captain George McMillin, surrendered. The occupation lasted until 21 July 1944.

Omiya Jima

The Japanese renamed Guam Omiya Jima, “Great Shrine Island”, and replaced the dollar with the yen. About 6,000 Japanese troops occupied the island at first; from early 1942 it was run by a small naval garrison and a civil administration. The Chamorro people had to bow to Japanese officials and were slapped or beaten for failing to do so. Travel required passes, and a curfew was enforced. Cars, radios and cameras were confiscated. Schools reopened teaching Japanese, and English and the Chamorro language were banned in them.

As the war turned against Japan in 1944, the army took over and conditions grew far worse. Thousands of Chamorro men, women and children were forced to work on airfields, fortifications and farms that grew food for the soldiers. Most of the island’s food was taken, and people lived on subsistence rations. Schools and churches were closed. Chamorros suspected of helping the Americans were beaten, tortured and executed.

The man in hiding

When Guam surrendered, a handful of American sailors escaped into the jungle. All were eventually caught and killed except one, Radioman First Class George Tweed, who survived for two and a half years with the help of Chamorro families who fed and hid him at great risk. The Japanese tortured and killed people they suspected of knowing where he was. Among those executed in the last weeks of the occupation was Father Jesús Baza Dueñas, a Chamorro Catholic priest, who was arrested on 8 July 1944 and beheaded on 12 July with his nephew and two other men. On 10 July Tweed signaled an American destroyer from a cliff on the northwest coast and was taken off the island.

July 1944

The American bombardment of Guam began in mid-June and became continuous from 8 July, the longest preliminary bombardment of any Pacific island. As the invasion approached, the Japanese commander, Lieutenant General Takeshi Takashina, ordered the island’s civilians moved away from the coast. On 10 July about 18,000 people were marched into camps in the interior. The largest was at Manenggon, in a river valley in the southeast, where thousands lived in the open, in the rain, with little food or sanitation.

In the last days before the landing, Japanese soldiers carried out a series of massacres. At Tinta and Faha, near Malesso’ (Merizo) in the south, groups of men and women were herded into caves and killed with grenades and swords; some survived by feigning death, and on 20 July the men of Malesso’ rose and killed their guards. At Fena, and later in the north near Yigo and Chagui’an, more Chamorros were killed, many of them young men who had been used as laborers. Soldiers of the 77th Infantry Division reached Manenggon at the end of July.

W-Day

The landing, postponed from 18 June by the Battle of the Philippine Sea, took place on 21 July 1944. Major General Roy Geiger’s III Amphibious Corps landed at two places on the west coast. In the north, Major General Allen Turnage’s 3rd Marine Division came ashore at Asan, between two headlands, facing steep ridges and the Fonte Plateau. Five miles to the south, Brigadier General Lemuel Shepherd’s 1st Provisional Marine Brigade landed at Agat, and the Army’s 77th Infantry Division under Major General Andrew Bruce followed it ashore.

Underwater demolition teams had cleared obstacles from the reefs in the days before the landing, and the bombardment had destroyed many beach defenses. But Japanese guns in the ridges and on the headlands at Asan and Ga’an Point at Agat hit the amphibian tractors as they came in, and the first days ashore were costly. At Ga’an Point, a concrete blockhouse with a 75 mm gun, hidden in the headland, knocked out a number of tractors before it was taken.

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W-Day on Guam, 21 July 1944

Fonte and Orote

Takashina planned a general counterattack for the night of 25–26 July. On the Fonte Plateau above the Asan beachhead, waves of Japanese troops attacked the 3rd Marine Division’s lines, some reaching the division’s rear areas and hospitals before they were stopped. About 3,200 Japanese died in the attack. At the same time the naval troops trapped on the Orote Peninsula, under Captain Asaichi Tamai, attacked the Brigade across the mangrove swamps at its neck and were destroyed by artillery. Takashina himself was killed on 28 July; Lieutenant General Hideyoshi Obata, commander of the 31st Army, who had been on Guam since the invasion of Saipan, took over.

The Brigade cleared the Orote Peninsula, with its airfield and the old Marine barracks, by 29 July. That afternoon the American flag was raised over the ruins of the barracks. The two beachheads had joined, and the Americans held the whole of the island’s west-central coast and Apra Harbor.

The drive north

From 31 July the 3rd Marine Division and the 77th Infantry Division drove north across the island, with the Brigade following. Hagåtña was entered on 31 July. Chamorro civilians came out of the camps and the jungle to meet the advancing troops, many of them starving and sick. The Japanese fell back into the jungle and hills of the north. The 77th Division fought a two-day battle for the Mount Santa Rosa area near Yigo on 7 and 8 August. Guam was declared secure at 1131 on 10 August. Obata died at his command post at Mount Mataguac on 11 August.

The National Park Service gives American losses on Guam as 1,769 killed. Japanese losses were about 18,000 in the battle, and 23,303 Japanese died on the island between July and September; fewer than 1,500 surrendered. Japanese stragglers remained in the jungle for years. The last, Sergeant Shoichi Yokoi, was found near Talofofo in January 1972.

Liberation Day

Guam celebrates Liberation Day each year on 21 July with a parade and memorials. The occupation left deep scars: hundreds of Chamorros were killed, many more were beaten or raped, and families lost homes and land, including land later taken for American military bases. After decades of effort by Guam’s leaders, Congress passed the Guam World War II Loyalty Recognition Act in 2016, providing compensation for survivors and their families. In January 1945 Admiral Nimitz moved his forward headquarters to Guam, and the island became the main American base in the western Pacific, a role it still plays. The War in the Pacific National Historical Park preserves the invasion beaches at Asan and Agat and the Fonte, Ga’an Point and Mount Tenjo sites.

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Orote, Hagåtña and the people of Guam

Sources and further reading

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