Lost Evidence: Peleiu (You Tube)
There are five clips involved in this topic.
D-day for the island.
10,500 Japanese are on the island. The assault force is 17,000 men which is below what it should be. I think the proper ration should be something like 3:1. The guy in command expected it to be a three-day cakewalk.
Halsey said to forget about the assault, but Nimitz said to go ahead with it.
The Japanese leveled a deadly fire on the Marines landing on the beach.
The Japanese leader decided to have only some resistance on the beach, but to have prepared defensive lines back from the beach, a technique used quite often afterwards.
7
An artist that landed with the Marines later did this painting of someone he actually saw.
The Japanese launch a counter-attack.
The Japanese used a bunch of tanks but, fortunately, the U.S. tanks had landed and between them and bazookas the Japanese tank attack was stopped cold. The Marines suffered over 1000 causalities on the first day alone.
The Japanese have dug into the slopes of the various mountain sections, again something which was repeated over and over.
Various mistakes the U.S. made was the man leading the attack not accepting help from the Army, which had a lot of men available, the guy leading the attack telling the men to keep pushing forward when that approach was just not working, and somebody supplying the men with water that had been put into drums that had not been cleaned of the oil that had been in them previously.
It takes four days to take half of the island.
Another painting the artist later did. Later a higher-up overrules the attack leader and orders the Army troops brought in.
The Marines fought for 36 days before they were finally totally replaced by the Army.
It took 74 days to finally take over the island completely. 1500 U.S. troops died, and more than 6000 were wounded. The 10,500 men Japanese garrison was basically totally annihilated.
Main Index
Japan main page
Japanese-American Internment Camps index page
Japan and World War II index page
|