BATTLE NARRATIVE
Fish In A Barrel. Saipan: 3 July 1944
Dawn was beginning to creep into the sky when an explosion and screams split the air.
Corpsmen and stretcher bearers descended on the command post of BLT 1-24. Tendrils of smoke curled into the air and a plume of dust gradually settled on five men writhing on the ground. Blood seeped from their arms, backs, and legs; ears rang, and heads swam from the concussive blast. The corpsmen quickly pulled out sulfa powder, applied bandages, and handed out little bottles of LeJon brandy as they triaged their patients. Captain Gene G. Mundy, the operations officer, was soon up and about; his shrapnel wounds were superficial. Captain George D. Webster, the intelligence officer, was more badly wounded and marked for evacuation. So were Sergeant Major William J. Dolly, the battalion’s senior NCO; driver Cpl. Willie H. Turner, Jr., and messenger PFC Jack Stein.
It was painfully obvious that the casualties were caused by friendly fire.[1] An 81mm mortar shell – seven pounds of metal and high explosive – from a battery somewhere in the rear fell short of its target and hit the CP. Unfortunately, this accident set the tone for the rest of the day.
PFC Robert E. Tierney and PFC Herbert Mauritz passed a torturous night listening to a little child crying somewhere near their foxhole, forbidden by officers from venturing out to investigate. As the sky lightened, orders came down the line to find the child on the double. “We found a small girl about five or six years old,” Tierney recalled. “She was booby-trapped. If we would have tried to get her in the dark, chances are that she – and we – would have been blown up.”[2] They gingerly freed the terrified little girl from her predicament and carried her back to the company lines.
The average American Marine or soldier on Saipan often expressed a mixture of unbridled anger, contemptuous disgust, or seething hatred towards the Japanese – and, by extension, anyone of Asian extraction they encountered. There was a sliding scale of sympathy that varied for each individual and each encounter. Generally, civilians were treated better than military; women were treated better than men; Chamorros were treated better than Japanese or Koreans. Children, however, touched a broader soft spot. Marines frequently went to great risks to rescue, comfort, or befriend kids along their way. Often food was their common ground. “It was heartening to see all our Marines sharing water and rations with the Japanese children,” remarked Corporal Oscar T. Hanson of Able Company.
Photographer W. Eugene Smith, who joined BLT 1-24 for a day of combat later in July, witnessed an ambush that killed one Marine and “infuriated his buddies” into blasting the offending house with grenades, automatic weapons, and a tank. “The Marines found their temper close to the breaking point,” he noted, “but within twenty feet of this scene I saw a Marine giving candy to several women and children prisoners.”[4]
Even the most hardened combat veterans felt ill at the thought of visiting violence upon children. While no accounts of deliberate mistreatment of civilians by BLT 1-24 are known to exist, PFC John C. Pope told of one heartbreaking accident that occurred when a group of civilians tried to approach the lines at night. A sharp-eyed Marine spotted moving bushes – people creeping across a field holding branches for cover – and Pope’s machine gun opened fire. “It was a few minutes before we realized no one was charging with bayonets or screaming ‘banzai,'” he recalled. “We wondered what was going on. A few seconds later, we found out.”
It is impossible to describe how we felt as we picked those little guys up and tried to help them. Over and over again, you could hear sobbing Marines say, “Why didn’t they let us know who they were?” A lot of bitter tears were shed that morning. We tried to console each other, saying we didn’t know, and asking each other why didn’t they call out? Every medical corpsman in the area gathered in that field that morning. They cried also. No one at this point of our career could say we were trigger-happy. I would not say so at that time, but I was secretly glad I was not on the gun that night.[6]
PFC Dwyer Duncan of HQ Company was haunted by a similar incident. Six years after the battle, while studying at Iowa State College, he described the incident in a piece for the campus literary magazine Sketch.
Two hours ago, this man and woman were alive and afraid. They might have left their family in that scattering of bushes when they came toward what must have been their house. Maybe they were hunting food or some possessions they had left behind. They didn't want to surrender, or they wouldn't have held parts of bushes in front of them while they approached the house. Moving bushes would make anybody shoot before he said anything. Anyhow, they could have surrendered in daylight.
I saw shadows and bushes moving in the early hours before dawn, so I shot at both of them. They dropped but I kept shooting because they were moving. One of them made a noise of futility and I shot at the sound. I quit shooting because I couldn't stop it in the darkness.
For two hours I sat and waited for more to come out of the bushes. The increasing grayness made it easier for me to watch with certainty. Finally, the men on each side of me and behind me began to stir and rise from their foxholes, so I began to relax my straining to see.
Ed and I walked out to the fallen figures and Ed began stripping the pockets of the man. Both of them were breathing like children after hopeless sobbing, but they were too far gone to know or say anything. Brave Major Friche [sic] came trotting over to us then, and ordered me to finish them off when he saw the setup. I shot them again, but something crawled inside me while these people twitched and became bodies. I'm going to live with this inside me, and that damned major won't even think of it again.[7]
“On Radar Hill."
Orders to resume the advance through the hills and ridges reached Lt. Col. Austin R. Brunelli at 0830; 4th Marine Division headquarters set 1100 as “King Hour” in order to give some assault units time to move into better positions. Brunelli had combat patrols out along his planned line of advance. Hemmed in on both flanks by the 165th Infantry and the 25th Marines, BLT 1-24 had little room to maneuver around strong points or rough terrain in their path. They were aimed straight at Radar Hill and its cluster of buildings and installations. The equipment on the hill no longer served any useful purpose – a conspicuous target, it had been shelled and bombed repeatedly – but it was still a formidable defensive position. An Able Company patrol reached the southern radar station by 1000, and found only a handful of defenders willing to put up a fight. PFC Tommy Lynchard described the action:
The main assault began as planned at 1100, although somewhat inauspiciously. At King Hour on the dot, short rounds from Army artillery dropped on BLT 1-24’s front line. Throughout the day, repeated complaints of friendly fire were relayed back to battalion headquarters:
1100: Army artillery falling short in companies’ front lines.
1140: “B” Co requests all artillery on radar be secured.
1215: Artillery is falling in “A” Co.
1345: Artillery from rear on our troops on ridge.[11]
Brunelli’s three companies moved out abreast, with Charlie Company on the left, Able in the center, and Baker to the right. Persistent American artillery fire neutralized the hilltop fort that proved so troublesome the previous evening, and “it was overrun without loss” in a matter of minutes.[12] However, the terrain was so rough that the companies lost contact, and Captain Milton Cokin‘s Baker Company seized the crest of Radar Hill without any flank support. A cache of ammunition, anti-aircraft guns, and several field pieces were quickly destroyed with demolition charges.
Meanwhile, Captain Irving Schechter‘s Able Company cleared out a weather station and radio tower guarded by a Japanese field piece and a handful of communications troops belonging to the 55th Naval Guard Force. As they mopped up the area, Bob Tierney and PFC James A. Stokes cautiously explored the abandoned-looking radio station. Hearing movement in the basement, the two Marines ran back outside. Stokes called out “Surrender!” in passable Japanese, but got only silence in return. As Tierney covered the windows with his BAR, Stokes began building a demolition charge. “The C-2 and TNT came in packages about the size of one-pound butter cartons,” explained Tierney. “[Jim] took two of the C-2 blocks and one TNT, which made the shape of an L. He then added a hand grenade to make a square pack, and wrapped it with electrician’s tape. I shot out the basement window, and Jim threw the ‘package’ through the opening.”
At once, the bomb came sailing back out. Tierney froze. “There was a 7-second delay fuse on the grenade!” Stokes snatched the hissing package out of the air and hurled it back into the basement, where it detonated with a shattering roar. The two Marines sidled inside to collect souvenirs and military papers for the intelligence officers.[13] Tommy Lynchard poked his head in, too. “Five Japs and a machine gun in one room,” he recalled. “A demo charge killed them. Their bodies looked like Jell-O.”[14]
One of the defenders was an Imperial Japanese Navy radio operator named Wada Shozo. A graduate of training in Yokosuka (home of the elite 1st Yokosuka Special Naval Landing Forces) Wada was sent to Saipan so quickly that he had no time to inform friends and family of his departure, and censorship restrictions prevented him from divulging his location. He kept a stack of letters and postcards from home, and in his spare moments penned a few of his own to send once the Americans were defeated. Among his prized possessions were photographs of his family, which he kept pristine through the long losing battle.
Wada Shozo never saw his family again. On 3 July 1944, he became one of the “Jap soldiers who of their own free will chose to die.”[15] His letters, postcards, and photographs were carefully collected by seventeen-year-old Marine PFC Bernard Elissagaray. Elissagaray carried his treasured souvenirs through the rest of the battle, a series of hospitals, and eventually home to California, adding them to his meticulous scrapbook collection.
Wada Shozo's letters and a Japanese soldier's family photos, taken by Bernard Elissagaray near Radar Hill. Author's collection.
In the early afternoon, an observation plane buzzed over the hills and returned a worrisome report: “a couple hundred Japs in front of ‘B’ Co.” This unfortunate group, “pocketed in a ravine bed and practically defenseless,” was an ideal target for an air strike. Captain Cokin’s men hurriedly deployed their frontline panels – bright orange markers calling the pilots’ attention to friendly forces, clearly visible to pilots and denoting friendly lines – and reported the coordinates to mortar and artillery units in the rear. Between 1323 and 1532, a succession of air strikes and artillery barrages ripped into the ravine, chasing the enemy from one target square to the next in a display succinctly noted as “very effective.” There were so many targets that the battalion’s War Diary simply noted “Planes are bombing and strafing… and will continue to do so until they are all out of ammo.” Seven dazed survivors were captured by Baker Company and taken back to the command post.[16] “It was like shooting fish in a barrel,” crowed 1Lt. Frederic A. Stott. “Air strikes, artillery, mortars, and small arms were employed with success and satisfaction. It is highly satisfying to pour out destructive fires with effect and without retaliation.”[17]
By 1630, BLT 1-24 was comfortably ensconced atop Radar Hill, “not to be engaged except on Division order.”[18] It had been a busy and successful day, although many in the battalion had newfound and very pointed opinions about American artillery.
[1] “0410 Mortar shell fell short and landed in CP.” “Action Report: First Battalion, 24th Marines Record of Events, 15 June – 9 July 1944″ (24 August 1944),. Hereafter BLT 1-24 Report.
[2] Robert E. Tierney, “My Marine Corps Experience,” unpublished memoir dated 10 January 2013.
[3] Oscar T. Hanson, A Survivor, Not A Hero: World War II “The Hell Of War,” (Madison, GA: Oscar Hanson, 2003), 30-31.
[4] W. Eugene Smith, field notes, “Saipan Invasion: Final Days of Attack, July 6, 7, 8, 1944.” Collection of the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona.
[5] Pope described this experience (which took place on D+1) in great detail.
[6] John Pope, Angel On My Shoulder (John Pope Kindle Edition, 2013-11-30). Pope does not provide a date for this event; most memoirs become hazy with regards to time following a week of combat as events tended to blur together. The battalion’s official records offer no guidance – which, given the traumatic and tragic nature of this event, is hardly surprising.
[7] Dwyer Duncan, “I Have Just Killed,” ed. Janet Dunlevy, Sketch Vol 17, No. 1, (May, 1950). Available online.
[8] Northern Troops Landing Force Mailbrief 00152-3, 3 July 1944. “2,893 Japanese, 887 Koreans, 1,031 Chamorros, 606 Carolinians.”
[9] Carl W. Hoffman, Saipan: The Beginning of the End (Washington: Historical Division, US Marine Corps, 1950), 203. Radar Hill was named by the Marines; on maps, it appears as “Hill 221.”
[10] Tommy Lynchard, unpublished personal papers. Author’s collection.
[11] BLT 1-24 Report.
[12] Frederic A. Stott, “Saipan Under Fire” (Andover: Frederic Stott, 1945), 14.
[13] Tierney, “My Marine Corps Experience.” In his recollection, Tierney places this account as happening on 7 July 1944. However, James Stokes is listed as being wounded and evacuated on 3 July 1944, and there are no reports of BLT 1-24 being near a similar Japanese installation after this date.
[14] Lynchard papers.
[15] Bernard C. Elissagaray, unpublished personal papers. Author’s collection.
[16] BLT 1-24 Report.
[17] Stott, 14.
[18] Clifton B. Cates, “Fourth Marine Division Operations Report, Saipan, 15 June to 9 July 1944,” (18 September 1944), 31.
Battalion Daily Report
Casualties, Evacuations, Joinings & Transfers
KIA/DOW
WIA & EVAC*
SICK
JOINED
TRANSFERRED
STRENGTH
Out of an original landing strength of 888 officers and men.
* Does not include minor wounds not requiring evacuation from the line.
| Name | Company | Rank | Role | Change | Cause | Disposition |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dolly, William Joseph | Headquarters | Sergeant Major | Sergeant Major | Wounded In Action (Friendly Fire) | Shrapnel, back & sides | Evacuated to USS Solace |
| Evans, Paul Wood | Charlie | PFC | Ammo Carrier | Wounded In Action | Blast concussion | Evacuated, destination unknown |
| Geesaman, Merle Leon | Able | PFC | Machine Gunner | Wounded In Action | Unknown (slight) | Evacuated, destination unknown |
| Mervosh, Mike Dush | Charlie | Sergeant | MG Squad Leader | Sick | Unknown | Evacuated, destination unknown |
| Mundy, Gene Gordon | Headquarters | Captain | Bn-3 | Wounded In Action (Friendly Fire) | Shrapnel wounds | Not evacuated |
| Pounders, Robert Floyd Jr. | Baker | PFC | BARman | Wounded In Action | Unknown (slight) | Evacuated, destination unknown |
| Puliafico, Aniello Anthony | Baker | Sergeant | Basic | Returned To Duty | From hospital | To Baker Company |
| Ross, Harold J. | Headquarters | Corporal | Mortar Squad Leader | Sick | Unknown | Evacuated, destination unknown |
| Stein, Jack | Headquarters | PFC | Messenger | Wounded In Action (Friendly Fire) | Shrapnel, right shoulder | Evacuated, destination unknown |
| Stokes, James Alfred | Able | PFC | BARman | Wounded In Action | Gunshot, buttocks | Evacuated, destination unknown |
| Swartz, Norris Gene | Headquarters | PhM3c | Corpsman | Sick | Unknown | Evacuated, destination unknown |
| Turner, Willie Hardie Jr. | Headquarters | Corporal | Driver | Wounded In Action (Friendly Fire) | Shrapnel, right arm | Evacuated to USS Solace |
| Twernbold, Robert Gottleib | Charlie | PFC | Rifleman | Wounded In Action | Shrapnel, left knee | Evacuated, destination unknown |
| Webster, George Davis | Headquarters | Captain | Bn-2 | Wounded In Action (Friendly Fire) | Shrapnel wounds | Evacuated, destination unknown |