Tinian is flatter than Saipan, a plateau of cane fields about 12 miles long and five miles wide, with cliffs along most of its coast. Its best landing beaches lay near Tinian Town in the southwest, and the Japanese garrison under Colonel Kiyochi Ogata had fortified them heavily. The Americans landed instead on two tiny beaches in the northwest, so narrow that only a few amphibian tractors could land abreast. The gamble worked.

The plan

The choice of beaches was argued over. Admiral Harry Hill, commanding the naval attack force, and the Marine commanders, after reconnaissance by Marine and Navy underwater demolition teams on the nights of 10 and 11 July, concluded that White Beach 1 (about 60 yards wide) and White Beach 2 (about 150 yards) could take a landing if it was done fast and with complete surprise. Turner was skeptical but was persuaded. The 4th Marine Division would land first, with the 2nd Marine Division following, both under Major General Harry Schmidt, who had taken over the V Amphibious Corps from Holland Smith.

To keep the Japanese looking the wrong way, the 2nd Marine Division would make a feint landing off Tinian Town on the morning of J-Day, loading into landing craft and heading for the shore before turning back. The battleship Colorado and the destroyer Norman Scott, supporting the feint, were hit by Japanese coastal guns, with heavy loss of life.

From Saipan

Tinian was the only island in the Pacific campaign that could be bombarded by artillery from a neighboring island. The corps artillery on southern Saipan, massed along the shore, shelled Tinian for weeks before the landing. Naval bombardment began on 16 July with three battleships, five cruisers and sixteen destroyers. Army Air Forces P-47s from Isley Field on Saipan flew strike after strike, and in July they dropped the first napalm fire bombs used in the Pacific, improvised from drop tanks filled with thickened gasoline, to burn off cane fields and brush and expose Japanese positions.

J-Day

On the morning of 24 July the 24th and 25th Marines landed on the White Beaches from amphibian tractors launched from LSTs. Three battalions were ashore within about twenty minutes, and bulldozers, tanks and artillery followed. Japanese resistance at the beaches was light; the garrison’s main strength was positioned to meet a landing at Tinian Town. By nightfall more than 15,000 Marines were ashore in a beachhead about 4,000 yards wide and a mile deep.

Engineers built ramps over the coral ledges and brought in pontoon causeways, so that supplies could be landed across beaches that would have been useless by normal standards. The 2nd Marine Division came ashore on 24 and 25 July.

The counterattack

That night, as on Saipan, the Japanese counterattacked. Infantry, naval troops and tanks struck the beachhead in several places between about 0200 and dawn. The Marines, dug in with machine guns, 37 mm guns, artillery and naval star shells overhead, beat them off with heavy losses. More than 1,200 Japanese dead were counted in front of the Marine lines in the morning. The counterattack had spent much of Ogata’s strength.

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Tinian, July 1944

The drive south

From 26 July the two Marine divisions advanced south across the island’s open plateau, where tanks and artillery could be used to full effect. Ushi Point airfield was taken on 26 July, and Mount Lasso, the island’s high point, soon after. Tinian Town fell on 30 July. The last Japanese positions were on the cliffs and plateau at the southern end of the island, where Colonel Ogata died in the final fighting.

On 1 August Holland Smith declared Tinian secured. He called the operation “the perfect amphibious operation in the Pacific War”. American losses were 389 killed and 1,816 wounded. More than 5,000 Japanese bodies were counted and only 252 prisoners taken; American intelligence had estimated the garrison at 9,000, but later historians put it at about 6,200 men.

Civilians

In June 1944 about 15,700 civilians lived on Tinian, Japanese and Okinawan settlers with about 2,700 Koreans and a few Chamorros. By 10 August about 13,000 had been interned by the Americans. Up to 4,000 civilians died, by suicide, at the hands of Japanese soldiers, or in the fighting, many of them on the southern cliffs as on Saipan.

North Field

Even before the island was secured, Seabees began building one of the largest airfield complexes in the world. Fifteen thousand Navy construction troops turned Tinian into the busiest airfield of the war, with six runways for B-29s at North Field and West Field. In July 1945 the cruiser Indianapolis delivered components of the first atomic bomb to Tinian, and in the early hours of 6 August 1945 the B-29 Enola Gay of the 509th Composite Group took off from North Field for Hiroshima. Three days later Bockscar flew from the same field to Nagasaki. The story of those missions is told in Chapter 8 and in the Manhattan Project collection.

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More from Tinian

Sources and further reading

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