Pacific Theater · Saipan · Chapter 4 of 9 · 19 June–6 July 1944
Tapotchau, Death Valley and "Smith versus Smith"
After the beaches came the mountain. Three divisions turned north across Saipan into a maze of ridges, caves and ravines. The Marines took Mount Tapotchau; the Army’s 27th Division stalled in a valley the soldiers called Death Valley, and its general was relieved in the most bitter command dispute of the Pacific war.
By 19 June the Americans held the southern third of Saipan. Ahead of them the island narrowed and rose into a rugged spine of limestone ridges dominated by Mount Tapotchau. Saito pulled his surviving forces back to a line across the island just south of the mountain and ordered them to hold it. For the next two and a half weeks the fighting was slow, close and costly, measured in ridges and cave mouths rather than miles.
Key facts
Clearing the south
While the battle at sea was fought, the 4th Marine Division and the 27th Infantry Division cleared the south of the island. The 4th Division swung around the shore of Magicienne Bay. The 27th Division took over the southeast, where a pocket of Japanese troops held out on Nafutan Point. The fighting there dragged on for more than a week, partly because the 2nd Battalion of the 105th Infantry, left to finish the job with too few men, faced rugged ground and an enemy who had nowhere to go.
On the night of 26–27 June several hundred Japanese from Nafutan broke out through the American lines, overran a battery and reached Aslito airfield, where they destroyed an aircraft before being wiped out near Hill 500 by Marines of the 25th Marines. The incident added to Holland Smith’s low opinion of the 27th Division.
The turn north
On 22 June Holland Smith sent three divisions north abreast. The 2nd Marine Division held the left, along the west coast toward Garapan and the slopes of Tapotchau. The 4th Marine Division held the right, on the Kagman Peninsula and the east coast. The 27th Infantry Division was moved into the centre on 23 June, between them, facing a long valley that ran north along the eastern foot of Tapotchau.
The terrain made coordination hard. The Marine divisions on the flanks advanced along the high ground and the coasts; the 27th Division in the centre had to attack up the valley floor under fire from cliffs on the left and a ridge on the right. When it fell behind, a dangerous bulge opened in the line, and the Marine divisions on either side had their inner flanks exposed.
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Saipan and Tinian, June–August 1944
Death Valley
The 27th Division’s attack on the morning of 23 June went badly from the start. The regiments were late reaching the line of departure. Japanese machine guns and mortars in caves along the cliffs of Tapotchau on the left and on the hills to the right, which the soldiers named Purple Heart Ridge, swept the open valley. Tanks that tried to advance were knocked out. By nightfall the division had made almost no progress.
The fighting in what the soldiers called Death Valley went on for a week. Infantry battalions attacked again and again into the valley and up the ridges, taking heavy casualties for small gains. Only at the end of June, after the Marines had taken the heights on both flanks and the Army had worked its way along Purple Heart Ridge and through Hell’s Pocket at the south end of the valley, was the area cleared.
Smith versus Smith
Holland Smith had little confidence in the 27th Division, a former New York National Guard formation. He blamed it for slow progress at Makin in November 1943 and now on Saipan. On 24 June, with the approval of Turner and Spruance, he relieved its commander, Major General Ralph C. Smith, and replaced him temporarily with Major General Sanderford Jarman; Major General George Griner took command a few days later.
The relief of an Army division commander by a Marine general caused an uproar. An Army board of inquiry under Lieutenant General Simon Buckner concluded that Holland Smith had been within his authority but had acted without full knowledge of the conditions the division faced. The dispute spread to the press, with Time and Life taking the Marine side and the Hearst newspapers the Army’s, and it soured relations between the services for the rest of the war. Historians have since judged that both the division and its critics had a case: the 27th Division made real mistakes, but it was also given the hardest ground on the island and too little time to prepare.
Mount Tapotchau
On the left, the 2nd Marine Division fought its way up the western and southern approaches to Mount Tapotchau, the 1,554-foot peak that dominated the island. The 8th Marines advanced through dense brush and up sheer slopes, with the Japanese defending every ridge. On 25 June Marines of the 8th Marines and an attached battalion of the 29th Marines reached the summit, and from it the Marines could look down on the whole of northern Saipan. The Japanese line across the middle of the island was broken.
Gallery · 6 photographs · select to enlarge
The fight for the interior
Garapan
Along the west coast, the 2nd and 6th Marines pushed north into Garapan, Saipan’s main town, which had been reduced to rubble by bombardment. The town was cleared in early July, and the Marines went on to take the seaplane base and harbor at Tanapag. Saito’s headquarters moved north from cave to cave as the line contracted. By 6 July the Japanese held only the northern tip of the island.
Caves and civilians
Saipan’s limestone was honeycombed with caves, and the Japanese used them for gun positions, command posts, hospitals and shelters. Marines and soldiers cleared them with flamethrowers, demolition charges and grenades, often after calls to surrender had been refused. Many caves also held civilians: Japanese, Okinawan, Korean and Chamorro families who had fled the fighting. Interpreters and Japanese-speaking servicemen tried to persuade them to come out.
Private First Class Guy Gabaldon, a Marine from Los Angeles who had learned Japanese from a Japanese American family, went out alone on many occasions and talked soldiers and civilians into surrendering. He was credited with bringing in more than a thousand people and received the Navy Cross. Thousands of civilians were collected in an internment camp at Susupe, near the landing beaches, where they were given food and medical care. Many others, frightened by Japanese propaganda about American treatment of prisoners, would not come out. Their fate in the last days of the battle is told in Chapter 5.
Gallery · 5 photographs · select to enlarge
Garapan and the drive north
Sources and further reading
- Philip A. Crowl, Campaign in the Marianas, U.S. Army in World War II (HyperWar edition) — the U.S. Army official history
- Capt. John C. Chapin, Breaching the Marianas: The Battle for Saipan, Marines in World War II Commemorative Series — casualty totals and the last day
- Naval History and Heritage Command, H-Gram 032: Operation Forager and the Battle of the Philippine Sea — forces, losses and the carrier battle
- National WWII Museum, "Banzai Attack: Saipan"
- History.com, "Battle of Saipan"
- Pacific Historic Parks: American Memorial Park
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