Every Move Seen (May, 1991)

This article is about the battle for Saipan.

The article starts by saying Saipan is part of the Mariana Islands, about 1,300 miles south of Tokyo.

In 1944, General Yoshitsugu Saito commanded 31,629 Japanese troops on the island. Their fortifications were not finished before the US attacked. Admiral Nagumo, commander of the attacking force on Pearl Harbor, was also part of the command structure on the island.

The civilians on Saipan had also been indoctrinated with the idea that the American soldiers were barbaric in their behavior, an assertion not helped by the fact that a ship of 1,700 civilians was torpedoed and sunk by the Americans.

The attacking US force was under the comand of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, and consisted of 535 ships with some 177,571 troops. Some of the ships that were due to attack Saipan were some of the same ones that had been sunk at Pearl Harbor.

The article talks about a broadcast by Tokyo Rose (actually, a group of various women all operating under the same name), saying the Japanese forces were ready for the American invasion.

The invasion did not get off to a good start, as the force was basically pinned down on the beaches under murderous Japanese fire. Later in the battle there was yet another banzai-type charge, resulting in some 700 of 1000 Japanese troops being killed.

An attack of 40 Japanese tanks ended with 28 of the tanks destroyed, and 300 of the Japanese soldiers killed.

By June 20 the southern third of the island was pretty much under control of the US. The Emperor of Japan made an announcement warning against loss of Saipan, and that if it was lost the US would use it as an air base to bomb Tokyo.

Things went very bad for the Japanese when US forces routed the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Philippine Sea, meaning some 20,000 Japanese soldiers were now trapped on Saipan with no relief coming.

The article talks about another charge on the night of June 26-27 in which the Japanese who were too ill or wounded to be part of the attack were told to kill themselves. This included giving hand grenades to Japanese patients in the hospital who were too hurt to move to another hospital.

Near the end of the fight both Saito and Nagumo choose suicide, ordering the remaining men to make another banzai charge. Some 3000 troops and civilians took part, attacking at dawn on July 7. The attack was strong enough to force Americans to fall back until they had enough forces to defeat the attackers.

To give an idea of the extent of the fanaticism, there were around 30,000 Japanese defenders, of which only around 1,000 survived.

This was also an instance in which civilian suicides took place. They apparently believed they would be tortured or worse by the Americans, and chose to kill themselves, leaping from a cliff or blowing themselves up with hand grenades. There's an extra small article within the larger one, dealing with the suicides of civilians.

There's an instance discussed in which one family decided against suicide, but were killed by a Japanese sniper. When he came out of his hiding place just about every Marine in the area opened up on him, and he was literally disintegrated from the effect.

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