By 6 July the Japanese garrison of Saipan had been reduced to a few thousand men, many of them wounded, short of food and water, and crowded into the northern tip of the island with tens of thousands of civilians. Their commanders had no prospect of relief after the defeat at the Philippine Sea. Lieutenant General Saito decided on a final attack, a gyokusai, the “shattering of the jewel”, in which every remaining soldier would die fighting.

Saito's last order

Saito issued his order on 6 July from a cave near the village of Makunsha. It called on all remaining soldiers to attack and to die for the Emperor, taking seven enemy lives for each of their own. Saito himself, aged, ill and wounded, did not lead the attack; he took his own life in his cave, and Vice Admiral Nagumo, who had commanded the carriers at Pearl Harbor, also killed himself in those last days. Officers and men across the north of the island prepared for the attack through the night, many of them drinking sake and destroying papers and equipment.

The attack

At about 0445 on 7 July, the attackers came south along the narrow coastal plain near Tanapag, between the sea and the cliffs. Estimates of their numbers range from about 3,000 to more than 4,000, including sailors, walking wounded and some civilians, armed with rifles, grenades, swords and bamboo spears. They struck the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 105th Infantry, which were dug in on the plain with a gap between them.

The two battalions were overrun. Their men fought in small groups, falling back toward the village of Tanapag, while the attack swept past them and on into the rear, where it hit a battery of the 10th Marines’ artillery. The Marine gunners fired their howitzers at point-blank range, then destroyed them and fought as infantry. The fighting lasted for most of the day. By 1800 American soldiers and Marines had retaken all the ground lost. On the battlefield they counted 4,311 Japanese dead. The 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 105th had lost 406 killed and 512 wounded.

Three Medals of Honor

Lieutenant Colonel William J. O’Brien, commander of the 1st Battalion, 105th Infantry, was wounded early in the attack but kept fighting, firing pistols at the attackers and then manning a .50 caliber machine gun mounted on a jeep until he was killed. At least 30 Japanese dead were found around his position. Private Thomas A. Baker, of the same battalion, refused to be evacuated after being badly wounded, asked to be propped against a tree with a pistol, and was found dead with the empty pistol and eight dead Japanese around him. Both received the Medal of Honor posthumously.

Captain Benjamin L. Salomon, a dentist serving as the battalion’s surgeon, was running an aid station near the front when it was overrun. He killed attackers who entered the tent, ordered the wounded evacuated, and then took over a machine gun whose crew had been killed. He was found dead at the gun with about 98 Japanese bodies in front of it. His Medal of Honor was at first denied on the ground that as a medical officer he should not have used a machine gun; after a long campaign by his supporters it was finally presented by President George W. Bush in 2002.

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Civilians and the end on Saipan

The cliffs

After the attack the Marines and soldiers pushed north toward Marpi Point. Behind the last Japanese positions were thousands of civilians who had fled north with the army. Many had been told by Japanese propaganda that the Americans would torture and kill them. Some were prevented from surrendering by Japanese soldiers; some were killed by them. Many chose death. Families killed themselves with grenades, or walked into the sea, or jumped from the cliffs at the northern tip of the island, while American interpreters on loudspeakers and Japanese prisoners pleaded with them to come out.

Marines and sailors watched helplessly from the shore and from landing craft. The correspondent Robert Sherrod of Time described mothers throwing their children from the rocks before jumping themselves. The inland escarpment above Marpi Point became known as Suicide Cliff, and the seaside cliffs at the tip as Banzai Cliff. No exact count of the civilians who died in this way exists; it ran to hundreds and perhaps more than a thousand, out of a total of perhaps 22,000 civilians who died on Saipan from all causes during the battle.

Island secured

Admiral Turner declared Saipan secure at 1615 on 9 July 1944, after the 4th Marine Division reached Marpi Point. Mopping up continued for months. The Marine Corps’ figures put American losses on Saipan at 3,225 killed, 326 missing and 13,061 wounded. Japanese known dead numbered 23,811, not counting those sealed in caves, and only 736 prisoners were taken, 438 of them Korean laborers. The battle had cost more American lives than any Pacific campaign before it.

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The last days on Saipan

The fall of Tojo

The loss of Saipan stunned the Japanese leadership. It breached the absolute defense sphere and put Tokyo within range of the B-29. On 18 July 1944 Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, who had led Japan into the war, resigned with his cabinet. He was replaced by General Kuniaki Koiso. Some members of the court and the government began, cautiously, to think about how the war might be ended.

The last holdout

Not all the Japanese on Saipan died or surrendered in July. Captain Sakae Oba, an army officer, gathered a group of soldiers and civilians in the mountains and jungle of the north and kept up a guerrilla resistance for sixteen months, protecting the civilians with him. He surrendered with his men on 1 December 1945, more than three months after the end of the war, after receiving written orders from a former superior. His story was later told in a book and a 2011 Japanese film.

Sources and further reading

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