Night of the Banzai Charges: The Strange and Bloody Struggle for Saipan

Part Five

By William R. Trotter

This article is the fifth part of a serial feature on the battle for Saipan. The first, second, third, and fourth installments are still available via the Matrix Games website.

This particular edition of our Saipan feature is dedicated to Major General Hunter Hurst.

The Parade of the Third Ward Chowder Society

There is something definitely terrifying about the first night on a hostile beach. No matter what superiority you may have in men and material, on that first night you are the underdog and the enemy is in a position to kick your ass.

Officer of the 4th Marine Division, describing the night of June 15-16

For every Marine who lived through it, the first night on Saipan was… memorable. Except on the extreme flanks, where the defensive perimeter touched the surf line, the invasion forces had occupied less than half of the ground demarcated by the O-I Line. In one sense, the landings had gone well: 20,000 assault troops were ashore and thanks to the direct order of General Smith, both Marine divisions had all their organic artillery on hand. On the other side of the coin, the Americans had suffered 10 per cent casualties - about 2,000 killed and wounded, and the beachhead had been peppered all day long by steady, accurate Japanese mortar and artillery fire. Losses were especially severe among the Marine gun crews, all of whose batteries were emplaced in the open, protected by nothing more than hastily thrown-up ramparts of earth and sandbags.

Landing the divisional artillery into such a shallow perimeter was a risky and highly unorthodox tactic, but the events of this night were to vindicate "Howling Mad's" gamble, for without the sometimes point-blank fire of those 105s, it is entirely possible that Saito's counterattacks would have penetrated the Marine's defensive line and, at the very least, turned the landings into chaos.

Japanese actions on the night of June 15-16 ranged from highly professional (and dangerous) infiltration probes - mostly carried out by the 200-300 enemy soldiers lurking in the drainage swamps between Lake Susupe and the shoreline - i.e., the vulnerable and lightly manned seam between the 4th and 2nd Marine Divisions) to the grotesque, almost surreal mob scene enacted along the coastal road leading south from Garapan.

At about 1940, Marine scouts reported some sort of wild gathering taking place just south of Garapan, where an estimated 2,000 Japanese troops were indulging in what looked and sounded like an old-fashioned political rally. Officers stood on top of tanks, waving their swords and making bellicose speeches, gesturing wildly in the direction of the Marine lines. Rising Sun flags were waving, repeated cheers of "Banzai!" rent the night. The troops - infantry formations from Saito's reserves - responded with deafening cheers. An oceanic amount of saki was being consumed, too, for many of the soldiers who would soon hurl themselves at the Marines were reeling drunk when they died.

At around 2020, the whole motley force began to advance down the coastal road, singing, cheering, and in general (as one eye-witness reported) "advancing with as much stealth as the Third Ward Chowder Society on the way to its annual picnic". If the motive behind the speeches, saki, and patriotic harangues was to whip the attackers into a pitch of zeal, it certainly sounded as though the spectacle had been effective. But then, for reasons that must remain speculative - perhaps some of the soldiers were getting nervous as they drew within range of American weapons - the officers in charge of the parade decided to halt, at a distance from American lines variously estimated as 800 to 1000 yards, and give yet another series of pep talks. So there they stood, 2,000 heavily armed Japanese, quaffing more saki and listening to yet another patriotic harangue.

Only this time, they had made the mistake of halting inside a clearing, and several frontline Navy artillery spotters could see exactly where they were. There was no mistaking the range or map coordinates. Word was flashed to the nearest offshore fire support ship, the USS California, and the Japanese speeches were interrupted violently by the arrival, dead on target, of the first of several salvoes of 5-inch shells. Thirty-one rounds was all it took to vaporize this deranged attempted counterattack - in the morning, the Marines counted approximately 700 Japanese bodies strewn along and beside the Garapan road.

Although the Japanese in the swamps west of Lake Susupe didn't advertise their intentions, the Marines knew they were there and were fully alert to the likelihood of small, stealthy probing attacks. Flares from the offshore gun-line, pre-registered mortar stonks, and a few well-sited BARs and machine guns stopped these spasmodic, uncoordinated efforts cold. None was delivered in greater than squad strength, and the handful of Japanese who actually pierced the Marine outpost line did so by ones and twos and were killed before they could inflict significant casualties on the defenders.

A much more troubling attack was launched against the Marines' southern flank, where the 25th Regiment manned the line in front of the Yellow landing beaches. In this sector, the enemy employed a really ugly tactic, by herding at bayonet point a mass of hapless civilians - including many women and children - in what was intended to look like a mass surrender of native inhabitants. But since the civilians were preceded by an orthodox pre-attack bombardment by Japanese guns, the defenders smelled a rat from the moment the first Saipanese tottered into view, hands tremulously raised above their heads. As sickening as many gunners found it, there was nothing else to do but shorten the fuses on the stocks of 105 shells, hoping they would burst just behind the lines of civilian decoys. Whether this improvised humane gesture had any effect is not known - as soon as the first American shells burst in their vicinity, all the civilians made a desperate break for it, scattering in all directions despite the Japanese lunging after them with bayonets and firing wild shots at their backs. Now the Marine gunners could get down to business with clear consciences, and they devastated the close-packed Japanese infantry with wrathful satisfaction. Constant star shell illumination from a pair of offshore destroyers robbed the attackers of darkness, and a trio of Marine Shermans rumbled forward and sprayed them with their hull-mounted MGs, along with murderous blasts of canister from their main turret guns. It was a brief and very one-sided slaughter, although an exact count of Japanese losses was impossible to make when daylight came -the Japanese had adopted the new and disconcerting tactic of dragging their dead off the battlefield and burying them in secret.

Near dawn, at about 0520, the night's most serious counterattack materialized out of the gloomy woods southeast of Charan Konoa, where 200-300 Japanese executed a very smart assault aimed at driving a wedge between the 4th and 2nd Divisions. Again, the Navy turned night into flickering, sinister day with a steady rain of parachute flares, and the assault formation was chopped-apart very efficiently by the men of the 3rd Battalion, 23rd Regiment, greatly assisted by a battery of 105s firing over open sights.