Operation Iceberg the invasion and conquest of Okinawa in World War II

PRAISE FOR GERALD ASTOR AND OPERATION ICEBERG "EXCELLENT . . . A MOVING COLLECTION OF MEMOIRS . . . Astor, himself a WWII veteran, brings home all the terror, the horrors, and the ugliness of high-adrenaline combat." -- Kirkus Reviews " Operation Iceberg is Astor's fourth oral history on a World War II subject, and the experience shows. Here Astor takes a major campaign, does an effective job of sketching in its background and finds a set of witnesses representative of both sides and of all the facets of the fighting." -- The Washington Post Book World "It is all here, brutal and graphic, and the author tells it extremely well. It will be a classic and fills a long overdue need by telling of a time and place which Americans need to recall and honor." -- Chattanooga News Free-Press "ASTOR HAS DONE A MASTERFUL JOB of organizing the hundreds of letters, memoirs and first-person accounts into a gripping narrative. There probably will never be a book that does a better job of capturing the experience of the men who were there." -- The Flint Journal (Mich.) "Astor interviewed numerous veterans and compiled a masterful account of the battle as seen through the eyes of both American and Japanese survivors." -- Library Journal "[Astor's] collected recollections should garner the attention of the thousands of Americans who survived this battle. They will closely follow the memories of about eighty comrades. And despite the virtual annihilation of the Japanese garrison, Astor managed to track down two Japanese, a sailor on the ship Yamato and a soldier, who retell their battles. These constitute the core of Astor's narrative--most being published here for the first time--and reflect the savage crescendo of the war, symbolized by the kamikaze." -- Booklist " Operation Iceberg will help ensure that the last great battle in the Pacific Theater will not be forgotten. More important, readers of Gerald Astor's book will have a hard time forgetting the price paid for that island." -- The Wichita Eagle (Kan.) Also by Gerald Astor The Mighty Eighth: The Air War in Europe as Told by the Men Who Fought It A Blood-Dimmed Tide: The Battle of the Bulge by the Men Who Fought It Operation Iceberg The Invasion and Conquest of Okinawa in World War II Gerald Astor CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am indebted first and foremost to all of the individuals listed under Roll Call for their generosity in lending me their private papers, photographs and, most of all, sitting for interviews. Valuable assistance was rendered by the Archives Branch of the U.S. Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, under the direction of Dr. Richard J. Sommers and his associate, Dr. David Keough. The U.S. Naval Academy Alumni Association furnished me with names and addresses of several participants. The Naval Institute at Annapolis gave me access to its oral history collection, and through its magazine Proceedings I was able to find a number of individuals. Leatherneck Magazine printed my notice asking for Marine veterans to contact me. The Liberty Light publication of the 77th Infantry Division carried a notice of my interest. The Marine Corps Historical Center in Washington, D.C., and particularly Amy Cantin of the Personal Papers Division, was most helpful. The Naval Historical Center in Washington, D.C., also gave me valuable materials. Dr. Hisashi Takahashi helped me contact Japanese survivors. Accent on Language, in New York City, translated interviews and documents from the Japanese. Col. Tom Cross, USA ret. and Col. Walter Moore, USMC ret. located sources for me. George Nelson provided me with research that he had collected. Stub Haggas of USMC Fighter Squadron 542 supplied me with voluminous papers on that outfit's experiences. Gordon "Pete" Boyd, in addition to his own memoirs, armed me with a library of documents and books on destroyers at Okinawa. The 1st Marine Division Association, Maurice Reeves of the 7th Infantry Division Association, Stephen Behil of the 27th Division Association, Angelo Carbone of the 77th Division Association and Iden Johnson of the 96th Division Association all generously aided me with names and addresses. My friend Alan Shapiro acted as a sounding board for some of my thoughts and gave me materials relevant to the debate about the use of the atomic bombs. Finally, I appreciate the faith that Don Fine, my publisher, has shown over the years. PREFACE Social scientists, including historians, tend to dismiss anecdotal and personal accounts because by their very nature they may be nothing more than individual experiences rather than expressions of an overall truth. They have good reason to be wary. For years writers working the news and feature beats have sought to dramatize a point of view through what happened to a homemaker, businessman, lawyer, doctor or whomever they could tag as typical. Academicians drawing upon these sources must recognize the perils of deadlines, competitive journalism and books aimed to exploit the interest of the current moment. On the other hand, restricting the description of what those at orientation sessions for soldiers used to call "the big picture" also depends upon subjective decisions--which official papers, speeches and verified documents does one use? The authors of these have their own biases, agendas and limitations to what is available. In any case, absent for the most part is humanity, and when describing the life and death struggles of war, leaving out that element is just not acceptable. Who were these people who fought, bled and died on a far-off island unknown to most Americans even as it was invaded? What manner of person opposed them? From where did he rise and what fueled his willingness to do battle? How did men feel about themselves, their behavior and that of their comrades in arms? What were their perceptions of one another and of their enemies? What do they think the struggle meant? For these reasons I've based my four books, including Operation Iceberg, largely, but not exclusively, on what those who were there said, wrote and remembered. I don't for a moment claim that mine is the definitive work on an event; anyone who does strikes me as highly suspect. Nor do I claim that my sources are free of error, selfless or able to see beyond their own vantage points. But I have sought to work with a reasonably large number in order to avoid the curse of the tree being mistaken for the forest. That may result at times in a sense of repetition, but the fact that an experience was replicated many times over tends to lend authenticity to the experience. Some survivors have a near-incredible recall, perhaps bolstered by their transcription of their memories shortly after the events. Others are laconic or hazy on specifics. Some are eloquent; some are cliché-driven. A big cast, close to a hundred voices, does make it difficult to keep track of individuals. But that is the nature of modern warfare with great aggregations of combatants. Even so, no matter how many are included in an account, some units, some achievements must be omitted for lack of space. To those who may feel snubbed, my apologies but no slight was intended. The size of the Okinawa story and the number of people defy telling in a straight linear progression. There was a first day, April 1, 1945, but after that Operation Iceberg settled into the confusion of chaos, its beginning lost and its present in a bloody swirl. It is a tale better suited to the image of a mosaic. It is also a chronicle of the ghastly. A writer friend once questioned me about my use of detail in a book I wrote about the abominations committed by Dr. Josef Mengele. He suggested it might be better to refrain from the explicit and allow a reader's imagination to supply the stuff of horror. He has a point, but imagination can also be used to deny and stifle the unpleasant. I plead that only by spelling out what war does to minds and bodies can we hope to disabuse the armchair warriors and bellicose politicians of the "surgically clean" war they so fondly embrace as an instrument of policy. There have been times when we have found it necessary to take up arms, and perhaps occasions will rise again. But war is ugly, hideous, and those who resort to it should be aware of what they do even in the cause of virtue. I hope this book adds to that understanding. CHAPTER I OPERATION ICEBERG IT HAD BEEN A WINTER OF SOME DISCONTENT FOR THE UNITED States military leaders. The swift advance across France following the D-Day invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, had halted at the German border early in December. Then a last spasm blitz of the Third Reich's armies in the cold, snowy forest of the Ardennes had punched a deep salient into the American lines. Not until six weeks later could that bulge be erased at a cost of some 85,000 GIs. Still, spring brought better weather and the Nazi armies were in ever-quickening retreat. With the collapse of Germany, the Allied forces dealing with World War II's second priority, Japan, could look for an infusion of hundreds of thousands of fighting men with all the firepower they could muster. Winter had not been land in the Pacific either. The Marine assault on a seven-square-mile pile of volcanic ash and rock known as Iwo Jima felled almost 28,000 U.S. Marines before the flag run up on Mount Suribachi flew with impunity. But now there was a base to which long-range bombers could find refuge on their way back from pounding the ultimate target, the home islands of Imperial Japan. Costly as the tiny chunk of real estate had been for the U.S. Marines, the empire of Japan, that had once stretched to within a few hundred miles of Australia and penetrated deep into China and Southwest Asia, had now shrunk back to its original size. Within a few months of Pearl Harbor, all of the islands south of Japan down to the rim of Australia--from the Philippines to the Solomon Islands and portions of New Guinea--had fallen to the Imperial Army, backed by a puissant navy and effective air force. The troops of Nippon extended their grasp as far east as the Gilbert and Marshall Islands, threatening Midway, the last U.S. outpost before Hawaii. And even Alaska felt itself in jeopardy as the Japanese installed forces on two of the Aleutian Islands, Attu and Kiska. But in the years that followed, the Allies mounted a series of painstaking operations that slowly, and at a costly price to both sides, ousted the Japanese from their gains. The strategy, frequently described as "brilliant" by historians was in fact the only course open. Success required the shortest and best protected supply lines. Anyone studying a map could see no alternatives existed, although the tactics employed against each particular site sometimes generated controversy. The campaign had begun in 1942 as U.S. Marines and the Army units landed on Guadalcanal, part of the Solomon chain. Eventually they forced the Japanese to abandon their plans to seize that jungle-clad territory. From there the Americans pushed through the Gilberts, Marshalls, Marianas and ultimately retook the Philippines. A series of bruising slugfests at sea, most notably in the Midway and the Gulf of Leyte encounters, ravished the Imperial Navy. After the bloody struggle for Saipan and the equally savage win on Iwo, B-29 bombers now struck at the heart of Japan, with a strategy of destroying the ability to produce war materials and the will of the civilians and armed forces to continue the struggle. West of Iwo Jima and south of Japan a series of flyspecks appear on the map. These are the Ryukyu Islands, about 140 small patches, all that remain from some ancient mountains and volcanoes that thrust themselves through the East China Sea eons ago. Known as the "Loochoo" or "Lew Chew" in Chinese and Japanese dialects, they were in 1945 unremarkable, undeveloped, agrarian islands marked by steep rocky ridges, a northern wilderness and few roads. Unprepossessing as they may have been, one of the Ryukyus glittered like a pearl in the eyes of the American commanders. The Great Loochoo, Okinawa, by far the biggest of the Ryukyus, lay only 350 miles from Kyushu, southernmost home island, while Iwo was perhaps 1,200 miles away. During the winter and with the nearing of spring, the Japanese had shown no willingness to bow to unconditional surrender, the avowed policy of the West. Victory depended on an actual invasion of Japan. Okinawa was close enough and large enough to become the warehouse for the assault. Furthermore, the 485 square miles of Okinawa (about sixty miles long and from two to eighteen wide) contained sizable flat areas perfect for big air bases to pound the enemy defenses before and during an invasion. Protected anchorages in the Ryukyus would provide safe harbors for the fleet of ships required to maintain the invasion forces. Planners spoke of Okinawa as the equivalent of England for the Normandy invasion. The strategists briefly considered using the island of Formosa (Taiwan in today's lexicon) as the staging area for an assault upon Japan. But it was farther away from Japan than Okinawa. It also was heavily garrisoned and U.S. strategists estimated they would need nine combat divisions to overcome the defenders. That much manpower, with its ammunition and supplies, was not available. Okinawa, by an early estimate defended by fewer than 50,000, seemed more manageable. Planning for the assault on Okinawa started in the fall of 1944. The American Pacific Theater commanders, in consultation with the British, who would play a minor supporting role with naval forces, agreed to invade on April 1, 1945, under the code name, Operation Iceberg. Within six weeks of that date, Adolf Hitler would be dead in his bunker and those who assumed leadership in Germany would submit the Fatherland to the humiliation of unconditional surrender. Little more than four months later, after the devastating blows of the first two atomic bombs, Imperial Japan would accept the same terms in defeat. On the clock of human history, the time from that April first, and Easter Sunday, until the guns of the world temporarily fell silent is a matter of seconds. But for tens of thousands of young men--soldiers, marines, sailors, airmen--as well as civilians of all ages, it became their eternity. The decision makers dubbed April 1, 1945, "Love Day" as the opening salvo of Operation Iceberg. It was not only Easter Sunday but also April Fools' Day. The cruelest joke would be the ease with which it began. The code name of Iceberg is another irony, for the campaign resembled the topography of a seagoing glacial mass. While the visible Okinawan real estate seemed fairly benign, the island housed a deadly aspect hundreds of feet beneath its surface. The bitterest deception of that Easter Sunday, one which nominally celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ and all that is implied in the salvation of humankind, is that it began a descent into all of the horrors that war inflicts upon the living. For three and a half years World War II had now ravaged body and mind. Okinawa presented the end stages of this hideous disease. By the time of Okinawa, both sides, fed a steady diet of real and invented images of atrocities, armed with newer and ever more lethal weaponry, their normal human frailties exacerbated by miserable living conditions, calloused and angered by too much time spent on the front line edge of death and destruction, waged a war without mercy, leavened occasionally by flashes of valor and even nobility. Much of what would happen during Operation Iceberg presaged the kind of war that would be fought a generation later in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. The final terrible consequences of Okinawa might also include the dead and maimed from the nuclear explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The savagery of the fighting, the determined resistance of the defenders, undoubtedly helped tip the decision to use the ultimate weapons of mass destruction. CHAPTER II THE SITE AND THE SIGHTS THE TOTAL LAND SURFACE OF THE RYUKYUS AMOUNTS TO ONLY 1,850 square miles, less than the second smallest U.S. state, Delaware. Only thirty of the islands housed more than a handful of people. Okinawa as the main site for Operation Iceberg, "The Great Loochoo" in local parlance, covers a quarter of the entire land mass and lies in the middle of the chain. Its closest companions were a clump of much smaller islands known as the Kerama Retto and off its northwestern coast one of sufficient size for a large airfield, Ie Shima. As a battlefield and a base, Okinawa had its drawbacks. The subtropical climate generated heavy rainfalls, monsoon surges and ferocious typhoons that would lash the islands between May and November. In 1945 the road network was limited and not designed for motorized traffic. Downpours in the rainy season created near impassable quagmires. Heavily forested with bamboo, banyan, pandanus (a kind of pine), but not junglelike, the land supported pigs, goats, a small number of cattle and horses, a multitude of ravenous insects and a particularly venomous viper known as the habu. Orientation lectures to troops headed for Okinawa warned about the deadly consequences of the reptile's bite. The indigenous people resemble but do not duplicate the racial stock of the Japanese and the local culture is a mix that includes Chinese influence. Veneration of ancestors, a strong element in the people's religion, stimulated the construction of elaborate concrete burial tombs, which would figure strongly in the fortifications facing the invaders. The Great Loochoo itself stretched generally north and south for sixty miles, with a narrow girth that ranged from a mere two miles to a modest eighteen. With rough, mountainous terrain covering the northern two-thirds of Okinawa, three quarters of the prewar 435,000 people lived in the more gentle, hilly south. They cultivated almost every square foot of arable ground which lay between a series of steep ridges and deep ravines. The crops included sweet potatoes, bananas, beans, sugar cane and rice. Okinawa's major towns, Naha, Shuri, Itoman and Yonabaru, names that would become familiar to leathernecks and GIs, were in the south, along with the vital Yontan and Kadena airfields. Coral reefs fringed almost the entire island. Even at high tide the water was not deep enough for shallow draft, small craft to pass safely onto the shores. Cliffs that abutted the sea divided beaches into strips from 100 to 900 yards in length. These strands often measured only ten to forty-five yards wide at low tide. Two major airstrips at Yontan and Kadena sat on plains little more than a mile from the western beaches of southern Okinawa. In 1853, less than 100 years before the huge, 1,500-vessel invasion Love Day fleet would appear off the coast, Commo. Matthew Perry of the U.S. Navy sailed into the harbor of Okinawa's principal city, Naha. At that time, the people of Okinawa paid tribute to both the Chinese and Japanese in return for an uneasy independence. Perry then took his six gunboats to what is now Yokohama and convinced the emperor of Japan to sign a trade treaty. Exposed to Western influences, Japan changed rapidly, adopting among other things, a more vigorous imperial stance which led to the annexation of Okinawa in 1879. Considered a part of Japan, just as Alaska and the Hawaiian Islands are now integrated into the United States, Okinawa received an influx of administrators, officials, professionals, and, above all, military forces from the north. Fully vested citizens of the Imperial Empire, the Okinawans were regarded by those who came to govern, manage and defend the place as rustics and perhaps inferiors. However, the Japanese soldiers stationed on Okinawa never generated the hostility manifested by the peoples of the occupied territories like the Philippines, Solomon Islands or other lands conquered after Pearl Harbor. The native inhabitants may have resented the attitudes of those from Nippon but they considered the Allies their enemies and they were willing to fight for their homeland and Japan. To the 80,000 troops from various parts of Japan hunkering down to defend Okinawa were added 20,000 Okinawan conscripts. Their officers from the Japanese army had no complaints about their performance under fire. Tsuneo Shimura, a captain who had graduated in 1940 from the Imperial Military Academy, remarked, "We had about 100 Okinawans attached to the battalion [24th Division, 32nd Infantry Regiment]. Some were middle school and a few university graduates. They fought well. Their knowledge of the terrain was very useful, especially for night moves." The war had first come to Okinawa late in 1944. On October 10, 1944, raids from Task Force 58 of the U.S. Navy launched 1,400 sorties and 600 tons of bombs along with thousands of rockets pummeled military installations and Naha's port facilities. Incendiaries ignited uncontrollable fires in buildings constructed of wood and paper. Most of the city, home to 65,000 people, was destroyed almost overnight. About a thousand civilians perished, double the number of military personnel killed. In succeeding months, attacks continued although the pilots found a dearth of visible targets. Marauding U.S. submarines preyed on shipping in the East China Sea, sinking vessels that bore reinforcements and supplies or evacuated nonessential civilians. The import to both the Imperial Army command and the chiefs of the Japanese 32nd Army that garrisoned Okinawa was unmistakable. From Tokyo came the word to defend to the death. Order number 82 issued by 32nd Army headquarters declared, "The Empire is determined to fight a showdown battle with an all-out effort for the preservation of additional unity when the enemy advances to the Nansei Shoto [another name for the Ryukyus]. Should we be unable to defend the Nansei Shoto, the mainland and the southern frontier would become isolated . . . a life and death problem for our nation." Those on the island had known for years this would be their destiny and had spent years in preparation. The preinvasion American figures on Japanese strength on Okinawa and the surrounding islands considerably underestimated the number of troops. Interrogators collected scraps of information from documents and an occasional prisoner taken elsewhere but their knowledge of the Ryukyus was scant. A submarine dispatched from Pearl Harbor to photograph the beaches disappeared. The only real source of intelligence lay in aerial reconnaissance and early in the game the enemy had gone underground. To the prying eyes of the pilots and to the lenses of the cameras, Okinawa began to look as if it were devoid of humans. Photographs indicated defenses around Naha, behind the Hagushi beaches on the western coast about twenty miles from Naha and along a ridge known as the Shuri Line, which centered on an ancient walled city dominated by Shuri Castle and girdled the island. Subterranean defenses had been an increasingly prominent hallmark of Japanese strategy, as American GIs and leathernecks painfully learned during the island-to-island trek towards Okinawa. In places like Tarawa and Iwo Jima, the Nipponese had burrowed into nearly impregnable coral for their emplacements, rendering themselves all but invulnerable to the usually lethal barrages of heavy naval guns. Flame throwers and satchel charges, demanding close-in work by the attacking troops, became the only means to overcome the inhabitants and stifle their deadly fire. As the Americans improved their techniques, their adversaries honed countermeasures. Snipers with rifles and grenades picked off assault teams toting flame throwers and explosives. Anti-incendiary devices like wet mats or blankets smothered fires. Ventilation systems became well disguised and less susceptible to an attack. For close to two years, the local Okinawa commanders drove their men to dig, ever deeper. The overseers exhorted the men with the slogan, "Confidence in victory will be born in fortifications." The soldiers willingly embarked on construction of shelter that might preserve them from enemy bombardment. Furthermore, the approach offered a glimmer of hope for survival, if not victory. Okinawa was not a coral atoll but a veneer of that substance coated much of the land toward the south. Bulldozers were not available. The troops excavated by hand with picks and shovels, often wearing them down to stumps on the coral crust before reaching the dirt below. Then Capt. Koichi Itoh, who had survived a childhood case of tuberculosis and graduated from the Imperial Military Academy, says his men created 10,000 meters of caves using only hand tools. They worked every day including Sundays; the single holiday was New Year's Day. Tsuneo Shimura noted that officers labored as industriously at these tasks as enlisted men. "Some men refused to show up for roll call. They were not AWOL or deserters but working in the caves. Every moment they felt might make the difference between life and death. They dug with hand tools and by the light of lamps lit by pine resin." Shimura noted that the soldiers never forgot where they dug, and later, wounded men sought refuge where they knew they could find some protection. The Japanese also incorporated into their defensive emplacements the thick tombs of limestone blocks that the Okinawans had raised to honor their dead. The Japanese intelligence experts had their own blind spots. Someone in the strategy hierarchy counseled, "Take advantage of the American Army's respect for tombs." In a typical human error of projecting one's own beliefs upon others, the advisor saw the enemy as reverential towards ancestors. While Americans might extend piety towards their own departed, they hardly would sacrifice any advantage to honor that of their foes. That error aside, the result of this industry and ingenuity was a honeycomb of underground bunkers, some as many as five stories below ground. Many of these connected through a web of tunnels that produced as much as sixty miles of subterranean corridors. A single cave could house as many as 1,000 men. Trucks, even tanks, could be parked inside. Intersecting automatic weapons fire forged deadly mutual protection for entrances. Openings from inside the caves allowed positions to be shifted during artillery and air bombardments. Egress to the systems was artfully concealed. Spider holes--small, well-hidden pits--sited near entrances provided sentries clear, surprise fire lanes upon interlopers. The rooms of the underground hideaway for the 32nd Army headquarters resembled those of a barracks, with desks, chairs and electricity. Kitchens provided good, hot food from a bountiful supply of canned goods and staples. Beer and sake flowed freely. The almost all-male society was cheered by the presence of thirty women clerks from Japan and Okinawa. Ladders led from one level to another; communications traveled by an internal telephone system, although later the heavy shelling from the invaders destroyed the wiring, making messengers necessary. For some reason, the Imperial Japanese Army never developed an effective means of radio communications. Life below the earth was not without its unpleasant aspect. The temperature hovered around ninety degrees; the humidity approached 100 percent, making walls constantly damp and causing sacks of rice to ferment and turn sour. The climate induced bothersome skin rashes, and the presence of so many people with few opportunities to practice personal hygiene bred rank aromas. Concealment was critical, both to deceive the preinvasion sources of intelligence and to fool unwary soldiers once the shooting began. Kitchen smoke vents were carefully screened from observation. The watchwords of those in charge of defense were, "Camouflage is better than concrete." The U.S. forces focused on three other principal objectives in the Ryukyus: the Kerama Retto, the Keise Shima and Ie Shima. The first of these consisted of eight mounds of steep, rocky slopes that poked 400 to 600 feet out of the water. The largest added up to only a few square miles and provided sustenance for a handful of inhabitants. There were no roads on the Kerama Retto, merely trails for pack animals or humans. The Kerama Retto offered an irresistible asset. Lying only ten to fifteen miles from Okinawa, these otherwise unprepossessing clumps of hilly land nestled a spacious, well-protected deep anchorage within their waters. Obviously, no enemy troops capable of using small arms, not to mention even small artillery, could be allowed to occupy the surrounding bits and pieces of the Ryukyus. It apparently never occurred to the Japanese that the enemy would find the natural harbor within the Kerama Retto so attractive, for little effort had been made to install strong points capable of fending off attacks. Instead, they based only about 100 troops there, supplementing them with some 600 Korean laborers. But one additional and potentially dangerous element consisted of several squadrons of plywood motorboats fitted with depth charges. The sea raider squadron crews were trained to dump their 264-pound explosives as close to the vital areas of a ship as possible. Once the devices rolled off the racks at the back of the speedboat, the pilot had five seconds before they detonated. The thin-hulled, slow-moving and poorly built craft probably would not survive the blast but, strictly speaking, it was not considered suicidal in the same terms as a kamikaze pilot. Altogether there were 350 of these Q-boats concealed around the Kerama Retto. Machine guns, mortars, small arms and ammunition issued to the crews added a further ingredient for resistance to invaders. At least equally barren and inhospitable as the Kerama Retto, the four tiny coral islets of Keise Shima lay a mere eight miles from where the American forces expected to charge across the Okinawa beaches. Photo reconnaissance indicated defensive gun emplacements behind these areas. From Keise Shima, batteries of 155 mm guns could support the initial assault waves and hurl projectiles at would-be resisters. Conversely, if the defenders were permitted to stay on Keise Shima with heavy weaponry, they could slam both the U.S. fleet and those coming ashore. The island of Ie Shima, about ten square miles in size, stood less than four miles from the tip of an Okinawan peninsula about twenty miles north of where the initial attack on the Great Loochoo would occur. Flatter than most of its sister islands, Ie Shima boasted a large plateau over much of its interior. Aware of its topographical advantages in an area where flat ground was at a premium, the Japanese had begun construction of no less than three airfields on Ie Shima. Only at the southern end of Ie Shima was the level surface radically broken. Iegusugu Mountain, a 600-foot, sheer outcrop of rock, dubbed "the Pinnacle" by GIs, jutted above the rest of the oval-shaped plateau and the nascent airstrips like the control tower of an aircraft carrier stationed in the East China Sea. South of the Pinnacle, in the town of Ie, many of the 5,000 civilians who remained when the war reached the Ryukyus occupied 300 houses. Ie Shima, as one more objective in the overall scheme for the conquest of the Ryukyus, also drew the attention of aerial reconnaissance. Just as on Okinawa, the soldiers of Japan, aided by a labor battalion conscripted from Okinawa and the local people, frantically dug in. The eyes in the sky could not discern the maze of pillboxes carved out of homes and tombs, the inevitable caves, three stories high in some cases, hacked into ridges and slopes and tied in by a network of passageways, nor could they pick out the machine gun and mortar positions veiled from view with shrubbery. CHAPTER III PLANS AND PLAYERS LT. GEN. MITSURA USHIJIMA COMMANDED THE 32ND ARMY with the roughly 100,000 troops assigned to defend the Ryukyus. Ushijima, according to members of his staff, was a calm, highly capable leader who enjoyed the confidence of his subordinates. His style was to consult with his staff and accept their recommendations. His chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Isamu Cho, differed sharply in personality. As a young officer, Cho belonged to the extreme right-wing Cherry Society and participated in several failed military coups during the 1930s. His behavior led to his assignment to Manchuria, where he impressed the troops with his physical courage. When liquored up, Cho occasionally performed a dance that featured his samurai sword. "[He] was an impetuous and experienced man. His being impetuous and brave was well known among those in the army," said Col. Hiromichi Yahara, the senior staff officer in charge of operations. "Cho believed in the active strategy but not passive strategy." Yahara was still another type of officer. Studious, aloof, "sour" to one observer, he preserved his distance from the troops. To Yahara, who had spent ten months at Fort Moultrie, South Carolina, attached to the 8th Infantry during the 1920s, and who bore a reputation as a brilliant, yet conservative and calculating tactician, fell the assignment for drawing up the scheme to thwart the enemy. The colonel based his plans on the experiences of the Imperial Army in preceding months and upon his best guesses about the Allied moves in the near future. The Japanese strategists now accepted that efforts to prevent the enemy from establishing beachheads were futile. Defenses organized around the shorelines only allowed the opposing navies to bring their huge seaborne guns to bear. Yahara was well aware that on Saipan, where the defenders sought to push the invaders off the beaches with close-in artillery, the American naval and air forces wiped out their big guns. Although bunker emplacements had been constructed overlooking the coastal areas, Yahara, to the dismay of some junior officers like Captain Itoh, abandoned any idea of using them. He argued, "If the U.S. forces should land on Kadena [the airfield near the southwest coast of Okinawa], we'll pursue a strategic drawnout war on the battlefield east-west of Minami-Uebaru [a town along the Shuri Line]. If successful, we'll be able to hold the U.S. force on Okinawa and to give it as much damage as possible, and thus be able to hold Okinawa as long as possible. This will later enable us to take advantage over the U.S. force in combat on the mainland of Japan." It was a purely defensive posture, a war of attrition predicated on the ability of his country to strike at the American ships obligated to stand by in support of the ground forces. It assumed an imminent invasion of mainland Japan. The 32nd Army included the 62nd Division veterans of combat in China. The 24th Division and the 44th Independent Mixed Brigade were both untested in battle. But all of these men from the Imperial Japanese Army had trained hard. In addition to the 67,000 to 70,000 soldiers from the IJA, General Ushijima also drew on some 9,000 members of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Originally dispatched to Okinawa to build and maintain a series of torpedo boat stations, they had completed their labors and the staff of the 32nd Army transformed most of them into ground troops. From the local population, 39,000 able-bodied men were conscripted. Of these, 24,000 put on uniforms to become mostly rear-echelon service troops. The remainder, in mufti, worked as labor battalions. An additional 1,500 youths entered the Iron and Blood volunteer units to fight on the front lines. Fortunately for the coming invasion force, the Imperial High Command in the late fall of 1944 withdrew the 9th Division in anticipation of reinforcing the beleagured forces in the Philippines. Suggestions that another organization be dispatched in place of the 9th were eventually rejected; it was decided to keep the proposed unit at home to defend the Japanese islands. While the Japanese Nambu rifle was markedly inferior to the American M-1, the machine guns of the Nipponese were good weapons. A nasty item known as a knee mortar hurled a 50 mm grenade, and the huge spigot mortar lobbed a monster 320 mm shell (the largest American mortars only fired an 81 mm projectile) which created an enormous explosion when it struck. The trajectory of the knee mortar made it an invaluable component for the Japanese tactic of reverse slope defenses--the arc of the grenades cleared the crest and then wrought havoc on those attempting to scale or hold the forward slope. The spigot's 650-pound load could travel three quarters of a mile but its size prevented the use of sufficient metal to provide devastating fragmentation. Sorely lacking in the Japanese ordnance was the equivalent of the U.S. bazooka. Although the Germans willingly supplied the plans for their panzerfaust, which was more effective than the American version, the Japanese did not bother to manufacture them. They relied on satchel charges carried by individuals and a 47 mm cannon whose high muzzle velocity enabled its projectile to pierce the armorplate of U.S. tanks. Because of defeats in the Philippines and other islands and with the closure of shipping to those points, Okinawa became a dropping off site for weapons and ammunition. As a consequence, the defenders possessed ample ammunition and firepower, including far more artillery than ordinarily alloted to units. American intelligence badly undercounted the number of heavy guns. The only shortages lay in tanks and eventually in artillery shells. One severe weakness lay in the Imperial Army's combat theory. At the start of Japan's Greater East Asia War in 1937 and in the first years of World War II, the strategy of infiltration, swift, bold maneuvers and aggressive attacks served well against the lightly armed Chinese and the weakly protected colonial garrisons. However, once the U.S. recovered from the Pearl Harbor attack, it brought to bear tremendous firepower on land, sea and air, and the Japanese never could match it, except to some degree at sea. Furthermore, the style that worked well on the great land mass of China, Burma, and what was then French Indo-China hardly suited the compact islands which isolated garrisons had to defend. And this would hold for Okinawa, even though it was one of the larger islands. While the propaganda fountains in Tokyo continued to spout optimism, and even with the spectacular achievements through the use of kamikazes, the troops on Okinawa could hardly have failed to realize that the approach of the war to the islands of Japan signaled defeats. Koichi Itoh today claims, "I did not ever suppose, after the start of the war, that we could win it. But after the loss of Saipan I reconciled myself to losing the war." But however they felt about the future, the soldiers had been inoculated with the vaccine of duty to the emperor. An imperial rescript, issued by the emperor Meiji to soldiers and sailors in 1883, continued to serve as a Bible for Japanese soldiers. Such rescripts were supposed to be the subject of daily study by officers, and military units heard them read several times a year. Every man was expected to devote ten minutes each morning to meditation on the virtues expounded in an imperial rescript. The code of the warrior, bushido, like that of its feudal, samurai predecessor, lists in order of merit: loyalty, obedience, valor, faithfulness, righteousness and simplicity. The soldier was repeatedly instructed to remember that "duty is weightier than a mountain. While death is like a feather . . . When a tiger dies, he leaves behind his skin. When a man dies, he leaves behind his name." The imperial rescript had also cautioned, "To be incited by mere impetuousity to violent action cannot be called true valor. If you affect valor and act with violence, the world will in the end detest you and look upon you as wild beasts." Enough men in the Japanese forces forgot this admonition to create a hatred which would cost dearly. In Japanese army barracks they chanted, "Whether I float as a corpse in the waters or sink beneath the grasses of the mountainside, I willingly die for the emperor." Literature named the cherry as first among the flowers, as is the warrior first among men. It concluded, "The life of the warrior is like the life of the cherry blossom but three days old." Documents later found on Okinawa indicated the indoctrination drumfire on the virtue of a sacrifice fitted neatly with fatalistic religious beliefs. "To have faith in ultimate victory, each of us must kill ten of the enemy. They who perform the highly commendable duties of combat soldiers will become heroes. Each of you must dash forward and accomplish his mission in an aggressive spirit and entrust your life to heaven. Your fate was determined when you were born and becuse you are powerless to do anything about it, dash forward, killing ten. You will be honored for your boldness and bravery. You must prepare yourself for the sake of the emperor." The slogan of the time was, "One plane for one battleship; one boat for one ship; one man for one tank or ten enemy dead." The Japanese leaders made a special appeal to the native boetai who were also called upon for the supreme sacrifice in battle. An epistle specifically for newly inducted Okinawan conscripts declared, "You are within your native land. Each and every one of you serves as a representative of the land. Each of you must shoulder his share of the burden. You are a direct part of the army, assuming a part of its load, charged with a grave responsibility of the empire." The directive concluded, "You must strengthen your belief in the inevitability of victory." And on Love Day, the 32nd Army issued a proclamation to the civilians, already told that the Americans were barbaric and would rape, torture and murder any noncombatants. "The hated Americans are finally going to land on Okinawa. People of Okinawa, let us vow under the emperor to die protecting our country. All people of Okinawa annihilate the ugly Americans." To be sure, some of the Japanese soldiers on Okinawa may have been less enthusiastic over the demands of bushido. Most of those in the Ryukyus understood that defeat now lapped at the shores of Japan proper. But although morale was surely influenced by the course of the war, training, tradition and the incessant exhortation from Tokyo steered the overwhelming majority toward fealty to actions in accord with bushido. While U.S. civilian leaders stressed patriotism, glory, courage and even sacrifice, no military commander, with the possible exception of a few like the flamboyant general George S. Patton, Jr., declaimed these kinds of abstractions or spiritual values to the troops. American soldiers openly scoffed at any bombastic urgings. The idea of self-sacrifice for the nation was unacceptable (although in actuality some did give up their lives for the sake of others), and even Patton said, "The idea is to make the other guy die for his country." Americans, aware the tide of the war now strongly ran in their favor, carried on at Okinawa because they accepted that the voyage home required passage through Japan. The division of responsibility among U.S. commanders in the Pacific theater of operations charged Gen. Douglas MacArthur with booting the Japanese out of the Philippine Islands. He naturally relished the opportunity for revenge upon those who had forced him into ignominious retreat early in 1942. Acutely aware of image both for its effect on the enemy as well as individual glory, MacArthur had made good on his boast, "I shall return." And because he and many of the GIs he led had chafed at what they considered the overemphasis upon the achievements of the Marine Corps, to the detriment of the Army, he excluded the leathernecks from the ground forces he brought to the beaches of the Philippines. The hostility towards Marines by many GIs, from the lowliest private up to a five-star general, and the disdain of much of the Marine Corps for the Army arose from more than the proper apportionment of glory. There were fundamental differences in the missions of the two services and these influenced the ways in which they went about their business. The Marines generally accepted themselves partners with the outfit that put them ashore and kept them supplied, the Navy. It was clear to the leathernecks that the longer it took to crush enemy resistance, the more vulnerable their associates to naval, air and even shore-based bombardment. Speed of conquest became something of an imperative in order to allow the ships the freedom of movement, the ability to protect themselves. As a consequence, Marine operations stressed quick progress, forging ahead even if that meant leaving behind isolated pockets of Japanese troops to be mopped up later. Haste, which often meant moving out in the face of heavy fire from well-entrenched positions, led to a quick pile-up of dead and wounded. From boot camp on, Marines were imbued with a "see-the-hill; take-the-hill attitude." Certainly not everyone bought the ideal, but even those who rejected the absolute imperative accepted the need to press on quickly. The style of the Army was usually more deliberate. Infantry school tactics taught officers to wait for support from artillery and tanks. Commanders sought to risk as few men as possible unless the situation favored them. In Europe, Gen. George S. Patton, Jr., had wielded his Third Army along the same principles as the Marines, with armor racing forward, bypassing German strongpoints and leaving these for infantrymen following his advance. But in the Pacific, while armor supported the infantry, the terrain and the absence of good roads eliminated opportunities for sprints led by tanks. Marine strategists argued that their method incurred no higher total casualties over the long run than the more cautious operations of the Army which exposed soldiers to shot and shell for a greater period of time and kept the Navy subject to harm's way longer. The virtues of the two theories can still be debated, but on Okinawa, as in several other instances, when Army and Marine units tried to work with one another, the differences sometimes led to serious problems. While MacArthur busied himself with the Leyte Gulf and Luzon in the Philippines, Adm. Chester Nimitz, as commander in chief, Pacific Ocean area (CINCPOA in navalese), drew the responsibility for the Ryukyus. Until the troops--four Army divisions and two from the Marines--actually splashed ashore, the bulk of the operations would be directed by Navy brass, specifically under the control of one of the Navy's most prominent swashbucklers, Adm. Richmond Kelly Turner. Samuel Eliot Morison, a Harvard professor commissioned by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to produce a history of naval operations with on-site reporting, described Turner in terms of Irish legends. "Turner's long upper lip, bushy black eyebrows and gray hair, steel-gray eyes shooting furious glances when anything went wrong, might have been those of a Celtic chieftain." Justly recognized for adroit maneuvers during a number of Pacific encounters, he was, however, known to have a fondness for alcohol and rarely accepted the judgments of others. After the landings, all soldiers would answer to the Army's Lt. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner, a stolid, skilled veteran who had graduated from West Point thirty-seven years before and was decorated for "exceptionally distinguished and meritorious service" in leading the campaign that rousted the Japanese from their toeholds in the Aleutian Islands. He was respected by his troops, not considered arrogant by any means but a man fully aware of his exalted status. Operation Iceberg was a vast undertaking that coordinated a wide range of forces. Air Corps bombers based in China and the Mariana Islands dropped loads on Formosa, Kyushu and Okinawa during the month that preceded the landings. Nine separate seaborne task forces, including one from the British, were marshalled. Some with aircraft carriers steamed north to cut off any effort by the Japanese to reinforce or supply the defenders. They hunted submarines that might interfere with the mission, and planes prowled the skies to ward off aerial attacks against Iceberg. The ground-troop manpower chosen for the Ryukyu conquest added up to the 7th, 27th, 77th and 96th Infantry Divisions of the Army and the 1st and 6th Marine Divisions. Every outfit had seen considerable combat as a unit, although the ranks for Okinawa would contain a good number of untested replacements. Except for the 27th, which had been hurt badly in the fight for Saipan, all of the army divisions were classified as "reinforced" with extra combat engineer battalions, armor and artillery. Instead of the usual slightly fewer than 15,000 soldiers, these enlarged organizations would come to the Ryukyus with nearly 22,000 apiece, although there were shortages of the basic elements in an infantry division, riflemen. The 27th, which was supposed to serve in reserve, was seriously understrength in this category although it listed 16,000 as its complement. The two Marine divisions numbered 24,000 apiece. The first objective in the Ryukyus was the Kerama Retto. The idea for grabbing these small patches originated with Adm. Richmond K. Turner. He delegated the job of getting the troops ashore to Rear Adm. Ingolf N. Kiland. Admiral Turner's proposal that the Navy seize the Kerama Retto, about a week ahead of the main attack on Okinawa, drew opposition from almost all of his colleagues. They pointed to the threat of land-based air attacks, since between Okinawa and Ie Shima, as many as five airfields within fifty miles of Kerama Retto could dispatch planes to hammer the ships and troops engaged in occupying the islands. Some predicted that the losses to the fleet could endanger the entire Okinawa operation since the ships might well be driven far out to sea. But the Iwo Jima operation [February 10 to March 10, 1945], convinced Turner he needed sheltered anchorage for Iceberg to succeed. He disregarded the naysayers and ordered Kiland to proceed. Turner's plan plotted an island-by-island operation employing a relatively small force. Kiland persuaded his superior that a simultaneous landing on five of the six largest islands on Love Day minus six, would eliminate the enemy more quickly and prevent survival of fanatical bands that could interfere with the use of the harbor. Kiland and his staff, sailed aboard the U.S.S. Mount McKinley, an Amphibious Force Command Ship (AGC-7). With his task force stocked and resupplied at Ulithi Atoll, Kiland moved to Leyte, from where his attack was planned and it would be launched. For the Kerama Retto operations, only a group of inexperienced landing craft crews was available. In the early light of dawn, amid the rocky shoals and reefs off the coasts, failure to hit the right beach on the right island could be disastrous. Fortunately, Hinunangan Bay on Leyte and the Cabugan Islands offered reasonable facsimiles. Three days of practice runs and an illustrated guidebook on the target beaches, produced by Lt. Comdr. Ellery Sedgwick, Kiland's intelligence officer, provided the seamen with sufficient information for them to accomplish their missions. The Tenth Army nominated the 77th Infantry Division under Maj. Gen. Andrew Bruce to deal with the scattering of enemy in residence. Elements of the 77th Division, with the Statue of Liberty the central ornament of its shoulder patch, had joined the American Expeditionary Force in France during World War I to participate in the bitter fighting of the Argonne Forest. In March 1942, after more than twenty years on the shelf, the 77th was reborn at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. South Carolina native Frank Barron was present at the inception as a member of the officer cadre expected to mold 15,000 recruits into a combat-effective infantry division. A 1913 Charleston baby, Barron started out life comfortably. "My father was a bookkeeper or accountant and we enjoyed an upper middle-class standard until the Depression of 1929 when my father lost his savings and, almost, our house. "One cold winter night during the Depression, my father arrived home in company with a neighboring gentleman. They had both been out all day trying to find a job, any kind of honest work, but to no avail. When they came in, my father told my mother they were going down to the basement to divide the coal and asked her to divide everything in the pantry into halves. Half of everything we had in the way of food and fuel went to the neighbors that night." Barron grew up with parents whom he says lived the life their Christian religion taught. "We believed in church participation, community service, very strict honesty and integrity, and close family relationships." An avid high school athlete, Barron played on the Clemson freshman team his first year of college. He describes himself, however, as a "sorry student." Nevertheless, he graduated from Clemson, where he studied textile engineering, in 1936. He also held a reserve commission. "I was quite concerned about world affairs prior to Pearl Harbor, but I did not think that the U.S. would go to war. The rape of China by the Japanese infuriated me. I was upset about Mussolini's exploitation of Ethiopia and ashamed of the cowardly sellout of Czechoslovakia by Great Britain and the U.S. "To me, and the people I knew, the Japanese were a treacherous, brutal, unoriginal and vulgar people; about as abominable as supposedly civilized people could be. Later, by their treatment of American prisoners, they proved me to be correct. I had friends who died as Jap prisoners--from mistreatment and starvation. I and my men believed as Bull [Adm. William] Halsey said, the only good Jap was a dead one." Called to duty in January 1942, Barron reported to Fort Jackson on March 3, the activation date for the 77th. "We started with a cadre of officers and noncoms and received thousands of raw recruits from induction centers. A large number of our men were from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. After a few months training, we sent out cadre to form another division. We then received a number of Southern boys." The draft number for Henry Lopez, born in St. Louis in 1914, but then a resident of New York City, brought him to Fort Jackson just as the 77th's 307th Infantry Regiment began to form. A high school dropout who went to work "to supplement the family's meager income," Lopez had never thought about world affairs or politics. "It was the happy, happy time of my life and I was dumbfounded by the news of Pearl Harbor. The sneak attack by the Japanese changed my attitude towards them to one of hatred." Ernest Schlichter, another 1914 baby, could have obtained a deferment because of his work with the optical manufacturer Bausch and Lomb in Rochester. "I quit my job with several of my fellow workers to join the army and do our part of the fighting. We thought if we volunteered, we would have to stay for a full enlistment, whereas if we took early induction, we would be out at the end of the war, earlier. At Fort Jackson they gave us old World War I equipment, helmets, leg wrappings and Enfield rifles. They even put saltpeter in our coffee and soup [a potion to kill sexual drive, according to a constant rumor among World War II soldiers]." Ed Fitzgerald, a twenty-two-year-old newspaperman in the New York City suburb of Yonkers, appeared to be making some progress in his chosen vocation. "I had a girl and I paid attention to the news in Europe mainly in terms of what was going to happen to me. I was hostile to the whole idea of Hitler, and what he was doing to the Jews. But I didn't have any personal sense of those who would become our enemies. "I was having a beer early at a ginmill in Yonkers and eating when the radio started to make announcements. The bartender yelled out, 'All you military people are supposed to return.' That was probably as close an awareness as I had of what was about to happen. To us the war was Hitler, and the Japs were those funny little people." But recognizing the inevitable, Fitgerald decided to see if he couldn't have some choice in his future. He enlisted and in March 1942 reported to Camp Upton, New York. "They satisfied themselves that my heart was beating, made sure my genitals were intact, and halfheartedly asked me to testify that all of my sexual desires were directed towards women." Offered a chance to apply for the Army Air Corps flight training, Fitzgerald passed the written exam but failed the physical because of his slight stature. After another abortive attempt to obtain a special assignment through a blowhard acquaintance, Fitzgerald resigned himself to accepting the disposition of the Army. He too surfaced at Fort Jackson. There were, of course, men from other areas of the country who joined the 77th. Dick Forse, a twenty-one-year-old Ohio State student heard about the Pearl Harbor bombing when the Jack Benny show was interrupted on the night of December 7 for an announcement. "I was astounded. I thought the Japanese were insane to attack us." Out of patriotism, he felt obligated to enlist as soon as possible. Another original with the 77th was Virginian private Desmond Doss, assigned to Company C as a rifleman. Three weeks after he arrived, Doss, a Seventh-Day Adventist received a transfer to a medical battalion because he refused to bear a rifle, saying it conflicted with his religious beliefs. Iowa farmboy Leonard Schweitzer, drafted upon graduation from high school, says he thought, "The Japanese were a lower class, less educated. The men in my unit [Company K, 306th Regiment] did not respect them." Schweitzer was made a rifleman and after a year received a stripe as a private first class. As Schlichter indicated, basic training had begun with World War I vintage, bolt action British Lee Enfield and American Springfield 1903 rifles. But within weeks, the fledgling infantrymen received the M-1, Garand, a semiautomatic weapon bearing an eight-round .30 caliber clip; the leg wrappings were replaced with leggings and the old-style soup-plate helmet was discarded in favor of the new model. By design or by happenstance, the average age of the GI in the 77th was more advanced than in other units. Frank Barron, for example, was approaching thirty when called up. One of the youngest in the outfit, however, was a lieutenant with an extended military heritage. Buckner M. Creel III was born in an Army hospital at Fort H. G. Wright, Fishers Island, New York, in 1923. "My father, a regular Army captain of cavalry, was the instructor with the Connecticut National Guard and stationed in Hartford. My maternal grandfather, Maj. Gen. George Hamilton Cameron, USMA, 1883, a replacement with the 7th Cavalry after the massacre and who took the 4th Infantry Division into combat in World War I, was retired and his summer home was on Fishers Island. "My father had been commissioned from Officers Training School in World War I, served in France with the field artillery. My maternal great-grandfather, USMA, 1851, fought in the Civil War." Indeed Creel could trace forefathers back to the French and Indian wars before the American Revolution. Learning came easy to Creel and he admits not extending himself. "Born into a horse cavalry family, my earliest days, up to the time I enlisted in the army, were spent on horseback. I also swam, boxed, fenced and played various team sports. I spent several years of my youth on a ranch in Colorado and the nearest friends were miles away. I spent a lot of time with horses, dogs and guns. This was during the Depression; we learned to make do with what we had and keep it in working order. It was great training for the Army's property accountability and maintenance. "Because of the family's involvement in the military and my father, grandfather and two uncles had served in France during World War I, we were familiar but not entranced with world affairs. My grandfather Cameron spent a great deal of his time writing letters to the editors of the New York Times, so he 'instructed us' on the proper positions. Naturally, he disliked Mr. Roosevelt. Granddad was an extremely brilliant individual who had taught at West Point, the War College and the Cavalry School. He was a very knowledgeable student of military history and was impressed with the buildup of the German war machine. My father had been in the occupation of Germany after World War I. He had a great respect for their industry and tenacity. The Japanese, on the other hand, got short shrift until Pearl Harbor and then the 'Yellow Peril' kicked in. We all laughed at the Italians and did not take them seriously. "I had completed high school and was in a postgraduate situation at Staunton Military Academy. I had been first alternate for appointment to the USMA in 1941 and had a good chance of being admitted in 1942. As an alternative I was scheduled to attend Virginia Polytechnic Institute but when the war came, I enlisted in March 1942." Like Ed Fitzgerald, Creel believed enlistment conferred upon him the right to choose the kind of Army service he wanted. "I requested cavalry, in the family tradition and because of my background, and I listed it for choices one, two and three. I assume some clerk looked at this and said, 'We have a smartass here' because I was assigned to the coast artillery, which was doubly insulting because our family always looked down on that branch as the 'Concrete Artillery.'" Less than three months later, Creel qualified for OCS and managed to transfer to the infantry school at Fort Benning, Georgia. Upon graduation and with a commission as a second lieutenant, he reported to an infantry replacement center. Still shy of his nineteenth birthday, he faced a platoon of newly drafted men, ranging from twenty-seven to thirty-five years old. "My first morning I was greeted by a remark from the rear rank, 'And a little child shall lead them.' I agreed that was correct and I then led them on a ten-mile speed hike. After that I broke the rifle stocks of two '03 Springfields while demonstrating the vertical and horizontal butt strokes on the bayonet assault course. I had no more trouble and heard no more remarks." In December 1943, Creel received assignment to G Company of the 306th Regiment in the 77th Division. His post was as executive officer but the company commander preferred to concentrate on the administrative duties himself and allowed Creel to take the outfit into the field and run the training. "I gained invaluable experience in commanding, maneuvering and handling the troops. I also got to know the individual members of the company, their strengths and weaknesses. As a result, when we went into combat, I knew the company very well, both its capabilities and its limitations." Creel believes he learned what those soldiers closest to him would be able to handle in battle, but no amount of training prepares a man for the violent bloodletting of war. For the 77th the baptism of fire would begin at Guam. William Siegel, who would be at Guam with the division, came to the 77th by a somewhat circuitous route. Born in 1920, with a father who operated an auto body shop, Siegel attended Temple University, where he majored in accounting. "I was aware of world affairs. My friends and I, as young people, considered the Japanese a military air threat, not someone we'd have to fight on the ground." The draft seized Siegel just before his final semester. Perhaps because of the auto body background, he was shipped to Fort Knox, Kentucky, to become a tanker. After an appointment to OCS, Siegel was assigned to the 706th Tank Battalion, which was designated as the armor for the 77th. The manufacturers of raw civilian material into an effective fighting organization coped with glitches along the production line. Like so many of the outfits hastily mustered in the months after the U.S. entered the war, the 77th as a citizen-soldier organization had only a handful of professionals at the top, and not necessarily the cream. "In my opinion," says Barron, "the general who commanded the division from June 1, 1942, to the end of May 1943, was either spineless or stupid." The problem at the top, however, was solved with the installation of Gen. Andrew Bruce as division CO. Bruce's commission in 1916 had come through a program at Texas A & M. His subsequent efforts in France earned him a Distinguished Service Cross. Bruce was an odd mixture of attitudes--the aggressive commander, solicitous at least for those whom he knew, unswerving in his dedication to the destruction of the enemy but so prissy that he objected to the language in the mildly risqué play The Voice of the Turtle. Joseph Budge, who served as a sergeant under Bruce, described him as "a good man for the job. He was hard-driving and ambitious, maybe egotistical, but he was responsible for the creation of a very good division. The lads mostly agreed about Bruce. I did ask an oldtimer his opinion and got the reply, 'The only good words the son of a bitch ever said were "Indiantown Gap."'" He was referring to the transfer of the division for rest and leave in the East, where most of the men came from, after the Arizona desert. While engaged in training on the East Coast, a shakeout occurred, part of which Barron says he helped engineer. "The colonel who had commanded the 305th Infantry [Barron's regiment] almost from activation was a man devoid of personality with no talent for leadership. He was undoubtedly a man of strong character, probably knew every regulation by heart, a learned West Pointer, but unable to attract loyalty or instill inspiration and enthusiasm. He was succeeded by an alcoholic, political hangover from the National Guard. What held the outfit together was a great bunch of company officers, but we needed more than this." According to Barron, some relief came in the form of Lt. Col. Arthur Tanzola to take over the 305th. But he and two other company commanders from the 1st Battalion, Captains Arthur Curtin and Hugh A. Plowden, feared for their lives if Lieutenant Colonel M----, their battalion commander, continued in his post. "He was National Guard, a coroner in private life and a disaster in military life. He wanted everybody to like him but he was two-faced and unreliable. We couldn't go over his head to Colonel Tanzola, as he had only recently joined us and knew nothing about us." Over a bottle of brandy in their quarters, Barron, Curtin and Plowden agreed that, during the coming full-scale combat-team landing maneuvers scheduled in the Chesapeake Bay area, they would do everything Colonel M----said to do, exactly as he ordered it. "Afterwards, we thought we would talk to Lt. Col. Gordon Kimbrell, a battalion CO in the 306th who had commanded us briefly and whom we thought had a good opinion of us. "Once we were ashore, I, as reserve company commander, joined the battalion CO at his observation post. It was easy to find him, as I knew he would follow a road to keep from getting lost. Enroute, my runner, Pvt. Lewis Nesko, and I passed the battalion wire team looking for M----. At the observation post, M----, his intelligence officer and an umpire were standing around with a radio that wouldn't work. Here was a battalion commander with no communications to anyone and no knowledge about the attack. I could have said, 'Nesko, go bring the wire team here' and we'd have had communications in five minutes. Instead, I let him sweat and he got clobbered for it. Other similar things happened. "On the various umpire reports, Companies A, B and C (mine), all looked good but the battalion caught hell. M--------went over things with Curtin, Plowden and me, individually, trying to get alibis but without success. "The three of us then went to see Colonel Kimbrell. He received us graciously and we proceeded to tell him why it would be tragic for our battalion in the 305th to go overseas, into battle under M--------. He interrupted us to say, 'Don't you know you could be court-martialed for this?' We assured him we were aware of this and would prefer a court-martial to going into battle with M--------. "A West Pointer, a great athlete and graduate of British commando training who participated upon raids on Germans, Kimbrell picked up his British trench knife, smiled and said, 'If you ever tell anyone that you talked to me about this, I'll cut your throat. Get out of here--I do talk to the general occasionally.'" Two days later, M--------announced to his junior officers that, as a result of an old football injury to his knee, he would be entering the post hospital and did not expect to return to the regiment. "Every officer and every enlisted man rejoiced. Our new battalion commander was Lt. Col. James E. Landrum, a West Pointer, a man of integrity, a great soldier and commander. Another West Pointer, Lt. Col. Edward Chalgren, Jr., also a splendid person and an oustanding leader, took over the 3rd Battalion." General Bruce improved the 77th's morale and discipline with the creation of the "Bull Dog School," under the direction of Colonel Kimbrell. All officers underwent the course, which included the most realistic conditions possible, lavish use of live ammunition and explosives, practice in small-unit tactics, hand-to-hand exercises and a battery of activities designed to harden bodies and bolster confidence. Under Bruce, beer appeared in the post exchanges, a swimming pool opened, the division newspaper reappeared and movies became more frequent. According to Barron, the amenities did not distract from intensive training in every possible phase of combat. He believes no outfit ever had more complete or throrough preparation for what it was now about to face. CHAPTER IV TRIALS BY FIRE ALONG WITH ALL OF ITS OTHER SCHOOLING, THE 77TH HAD practiced in amphibious landings at various locales in the United States. Combat for the troops of the Liberty Division would begin with that aspect, the invasion of the island of Guam on July 21, 1944. The 305th Regiment went in behind the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade near Agat. One disquieting rumor said the defenders had the option to use poison gas if they felt it necessary. "We went ashore in the late afternoon," says Frank Barron, CO of C Company. "Half of my company followed me inland but the beachmaster stopped the others and they remained on the beach. We tied in with A Company and I recall discussing the situation with Arthur Curtin. He remarked that we were standing atop a Jap pillbox or gun position and said, 'Glad there are no Japs in it now.' But there were and they came out shooting and throwing grenades during the night. There were Japs behind us and others trying to slip into our area all night. One group charged our command post and another blew up a Marine tank about 200 yards behind us, so there was Marine gunfire coming into our area from our rear as well as Jap fire from all directions--quite a lot of confusion that first night. "The next morning we dropped our gas masks. Our battalion attacked with A Company leading, followed by us. When A stopped moving, I went up to find out why and was told that Curtin and a few men had moved out to destroy a Jap position. I heard a loud explosion and a sort of greenish-yellow cloud with an irritating odor started drifting towards us. Several men started to retreat and I yelled, 'Get down and put on your gas masks.' Someone hollered, 'Captain, we ain't got any gas masks.' Then I remembered and yelled, 'Stay where you are, anyway!' "A few minutes later the cloud dissipated. Curtin had blown up a large quantity of Japanese explosives and the picric acid they used had caused the 'gas' cloud. "That night, our second in combat, we were better organized and better dug in. Despite this, our troops threw dozens if not hundreds of grenades, but there were few, if any, Jap bodies to show for it. Colonel Landrum passed the word that if this ever happened again, we would take up all ammo at dark and leave nothing but bayonets for protection at night. It never happened again!" Several days later, as the U.S. forces were rapidly advancing with the hope of securing strategic positions before the enemy could regroup, Barron and his troops spearheaded the advance. A machine gun bullet ripped into the C Company commander's upper left thigh. He left Guam for three months of hospitalization and recuperation in the Russell Islands. Dick Forse, who'd attended radio school, was attached to Cannon Company and part of a crew on an M-8, an armored, self-propelled 75 mm that the men called a tank, even though its protection was limited to high steel sides. "I felt apprehension going into combat but was super alert. My insides jumped at fire in our direction or any sustained fire. Sometimes I started to sweat. I had a small feeling of security surrounded by the steel side of an M-8. I hoped the Japanese didn't have anything larger than machine guns. "That first afternoon, the platoon sergeant and I were digging our slit trench. It was halfway completed when two artillery shells, incoming, exploded about seventy-five yards away. Both of us dove to the ground. The platoon sergeant was closer to the slit trench, so he jumped in there. I was headed there also but there wasn't room for both of us, so I just hit the ground where I was. My cartridge belt twisted when I hit the ground and my canteen was in the front. I landed so hard, the canteen knocked the breath out of me. As I tried to recover, the platoon sergeant was yelling, 'Oh, God, oh, God!' We remained prone and when there were no more shells, we got up to finish the trench. "A few minutes later, two more shells exploded. I thought they were close and we both hit the ground in the same places. This time I was the one yelling, 'Oh, God, oh, God!' The sergeant looked at me with eyes big as cups. He thought I'd been hit. When it quieted down and the trench was completed, we went back to the company. We'd been digging sort of an outpost and when we returned, we found the lieutenant had changed his mind. The slit trench wasn't even used. "We were usually up soon after daybreak. I was seldom the first out because, if there were snipers, I wanted them to use up their ammo at someone else. It seems hardhearted now, but that was how I felt then. "After breakfast rations we'd start the M-8 and work, usually in support of the 1st Battalion of the 305th. Most days were spent attacking, which meant walking towards the Japanese positions. It meant going forward, sometimes in a skirmish line, sometimes in columns, depending upon the terrain. "When they hit resistance, we were committed, depending on whether we were close by if they needed the tanks. Usually we fired machine guns unless the resistance was tough. Then if we had a good field of fire, we'd use the 75. After that spot was cleared, we'd continue on the attack. "In the late afternoon, we would eat when we could. When we stopped for the day, we'd all dig in as part of the battalion defensive perimeter. Our driver slept under the tank with one other man from Cannon Company. The other three of the crew either slept in the tank or pulled guard, one hour on, two off. If the situation was considered dangerous at night, the driver stayed in the tank with guards on either side of the turret. There was seldom any combat at night. "We acted like a tank infantry team. One infantry spotter on each side of the M-8 as it moved forward. The squad followed and surrounded us at times. They used us as an outpost, ahead of the line at night. We had a machine gun or a BAR [Browning Automatic Rifle] section with us, plus three of four riflemen dug in nearby. Our artillery fire was very good and fierce, although sometimes the impact was too close for comfort. "Air support looked and sounded very good. Generally, it consisted of bombing and strafing Japanese positions several times by eight or more planes. Mostly it was naval aircraft used to break up Jap resistance. We seldom had naval gunfire after the first day of combat. On Guam we were never under attack by Japanese planes." The former sportswriter, Ed Fitzgerald, wore the six stripes of a first sergeant in Service Company, 307th Infantry Regiment. He achieved this status he says, "because I could write and I could type." From the beginning his superiors had discerned Fitzgerald's ability to organize and administer, and from the moment he joined the 307th, he had been a staff person. "I got to be a marksman on the range," says Fitzgerald, "but I never had to clean my rifle. It was always turned over to our armorer artificer, who would take it apart and clean it." But on July 21, 1944, a nervous Fitzgerald joined the other GIs in "endless, queasy hours circling offshore before we were sent in. When they finally told us to move up topside, we watched the shelling and the bombing in awe. They told us there were four battleships and three heavy cruisers out there where we couldn't see them, relentlessly firing broadsides of shells ranging from five to sixteen inches. We could see a long line of slender, graceful, quick turning destroyers patrolling a steady beat to protect the big ships and turning spitefully every once in a while to fire their own guns at the island. Agat Bay and Agat Village stood in plain view. Clouds of black smoke and leaping sheets of red flame showed the ferocity of the attack. 'There won't be anything left alive on that island by the time you guys get there,' said a sailor standing near me. That's what he thought. It was our first lesson in the exaggerated confidence the Navy had in the effectiveness of offshore shelling. What we found out was that when it started, the Japanese went into their elaborate caves, and when it stopped, they came out and started shooting. They fired their rifles and lobbed their mortars down on us from high ground and even opened up with artillery pieces that they had made room for in the same caves they hid in. "But before we learned this hard lesson, we had to go over what is generally considered the greatest barrier reef in the Pacific. Our landing craft couldn't go over it, so we had to walk over it. We lost a lot of men before we ever got close enough for the Japanese to shoot at us. Everybody was carrying a helluva lot of weight. It was a helluva long distance from the boats to the beach. Some of the men were too seasick to keep themselves upright, some of them stepped into holes in the reef and just disappeared from sight. "The first worry we had, in the boats and after we got out of them, was that our own planes would aim short and hit us. They were coming in right over our heads. But when we saw the first guys go down in the water without a sound, and we reached for them and they weren't there, we realized that our biggest worry was just making it to the beach without drowning." Following orders, Fitzgerald and his associates settled in about 500 feet beyond the beach line. They dug in for the night. "I learned another lesson that first night," says Fitzgerald. "Some people could stay in their holes, but some of us had to move around the company area and deliver messages and the orders that the colonel gave the captain to give the lieutenants and me. That's what Charlie Bauer's two silver bars and the bars our lieutenants, Morris Shulman, Rickey Del Mar and Tex Wood, wore, and my six stripes were for. I 'volunteered' a lot of people to do things during the war. I made up my mind that was what I was there for. I thought we in Service Company were lucky we weren't in a rifle outfit like Company C, so we'd better take care of those people in C Company. "Guam was our high school. Everything before that was kindergarten or grammar school, or if you want to give weight to things like the obstacle course and the infiltration course and amphibious training, junior high school. On Guam we learned the big thing wasn't getting mail or something hot to eat, but staying alive. "Charlie Bauer and I stood on a hill above Agat on the second day ashore, talking to a warrant officer, Warren Pepple, when the first Japanese planes hit us. They were the first we'd ever seen and suddenly they were right over our heads. Machine gun bullets came first and then shells, digging deep, angry holes in the dirt around us. We threw ourselves down. Pepple got hit in his behind by a shell burst. "'Don't worry,' I told him. 'You're only bleeding on the side of your ass.' Charlie called for an aid man while I gave Pepple a drink of water and rubbed some of it on his sweaty face. 'He needs help,' Charlie said to the medic. 'No, he doesn't,' the medic said after a minute of working on him. 'He's dead.'" "Our regiment [the 306th]," recalls Buckner Creel, the youthful platoon leader, "landed on the second day on Guam. Our first night on Mount Alifan was a disaster. Much panic and indiscriminate firing of individual weapons. No enemy could be seen, just shadows and strange noises in the jungle. In our own company headquarters, Pvt. John Loughead was killed by his own foxhole mate when Loughead stuck his head up and was silhouetted above the foxhole. This was quite a personal loss to me. In the States, Loughead had been a trifler and was always in trouble. But during training in Hawaii he had developed into a good soldier. He and I, being the same size and build, had joined up to pass the Expert Infantryman's Test. Although there was the officer-enlisted man relationship, we had developed a closeness and he was slated to become my radio operator. "I believe training took over and allowed me to cope with my normal fear as I reacted automatically to situations. In addition, I had added responsibilities. I was not only exec for the company but also had taken command of the 1st platoon. One cannot show trepidation and lead troops in combat. The soldiers will willingly follow an assured, confident leader, so any fear had to be 'cooped' up. "In our first action, my carbine had jammed. I got rid of it and started to carry an M-1. The additional firepower gave me more confidence when actively leading the platoon on our many combat patrols. And my leading gave the troops more confidence in my ability to lead, react and get the tasks done most expeditiously. "In my first two contacts with the Japanese on Guam, I found that I did react immediately and with the proper action. First, while on patrol we located a group of enemy soldiers in a defilade position. I responded with a hand grenade. It had the desired effect, killing five of them with no losses to us. "On the second occasion, I rounded a bend in a jungle trail. I came face to face, at a distance of perhaps ten to fifteen paces, with an enemy soldier. We both dropped to our knees and fired. Apparently, I was the more accurate, since I am still here and he isn't. Both times instinctive reactions took over and governed the situation. One doesn't have time to think out a solution in such cases." Three days after the first Marines went ashore at Guam, Henry Lopez, now a sergeant with the rifle company that Ed Fitzgerald mentioned (Company C), was well beyond his thirtieth birthday when he and his colleagues landed. Bearing gas masks, light combat packs, Bangalore torpedoes, satchel charges, pole charges and five-gallon cans of flame-thrower fuel, they waded through water three to five feet deep onto the black sand beach. "Huge craters, partly filled with water; debris; uprooted, riddled and shredded coconut trees; some destroyed landing craft, and abandoned marine equipment strewn about the area testified to the intensity of the invasion. The indescribable stench of death contaminated the air, stinging and offending the nostrils." Company C hiked a mile and a half to spend its first night on the island. "Out of sheer curiosity," says Lopez, "men left their holes to see what a dead Jap looked like. In a large shell crater three corpses lay sprawled upwards, their bloated, blackened bodies blown up like gruesome balloons. Hundreds of small, slimy white maggots squirmed on top of one another and ate their way in and out of this stinking, rotten mess. This disgusting sight, as well as the stench, made many men sick and caused them to throw up their recently eaten rations." The outfit pressed on, engaging in desultory small skirmishes with the enemy. "I am not ashamed to say that when I first came under fire, I was scared to death. The only way I could cope with the fear was to think of the platoon, keep busy and not let anyone know my feelings." Lopez and his company were pushing north after the Americans had broken out from the vicinity of the beaches. "We moved in a skirmish line with visual contact on one side with a Marine unit, and on our other side was another company from the battalion. Entering very dense woods with heavy undergrowth, the skirmish line became a single-file column and we lost all contact with those both on our left and right sides. We found ourselves past our objective. There was some firing from our left flank and rear. "Suddenly, we heard a voice demanding, 'Who the hell is firing at us!' I replied, 'Not us.' The voice then asked, 'Who the hell are you?' 'Americans, who the hell are you?' "Without answering my question, he said, 'If you are Americans, throw up your helmet or come towards me.' I threw up my helmet so he could see it. Whereupon, we were greeted with a heavy volume of fire. I didn't have to think twice. We also opened fire and at the same time took off in the opposite direction. We didn't locate the rest of the platoon or the company that day but did come under mortar fire. We ended up with K Company of the Marines just before dusk and dug in with them. There was Jap equipment in the area where we had been and I believe that the man was a Jap who spoke perfect English and pretended to be a Marine. "We had been told that the Japs would not surrender, which very few did, and to kill them before they killed you; that they would rather die than surrender, so long as they could take you along with them. During our jungle-training course in Hawaii, a large sign read, IF THEY DON'T STINK, STICK THEM. The civilians we encountered on Guam were treated with kindness and respect, along with medical care and food." For some members of the 77th, the initial experience of Guam gave them a false sense of the war. Lou De Matteis, a twenty-five-year-old from the Bronx, another original with the division, was with the 304th Artillery Battalion. "When we got off the LCIs at Guam, we started to walk up a hill. We saw a couple of Japs in the distance but we strolled along like we were walking down Broadway. If this is combat, I said to myself, I can't believe it. We just weren't streetwise. But a day or so later we encountered fire and then the overpowering, nauseating stench of dead bodies, all Japanese." Richard E. Spencer, a thirty-one-year-old OCS graduate, drafted even before Pearl Harbor, had originally come to the 77th as a platoon leader but his ability with paper work and organization brought a shift to liaison officer for the 307th Regiment. After coming ashore on the fourth day, Spencer learned he should find a foxhole at division headquarters. "The chief of staff, Col. Douglas McNair, found me a hole and a piece of tin to put over it. After dark we were shelled and one man was hit. Colonel McNair was walking around, calming everyone down, like a protective father. My admiration for him was reinforced by later contacts. "Just after the regiment took Mount Barrigada, Colonel McNair and I hiked across country to visit the 307th. He was unusual because he carried typical officer's equipment--a map case, musette bag, etc. To avoid becoming targets for snipers, most of us tried to look from a distance as much like GIs as possible. "We spent most of the day finding the regiment and arrived too late for dinner. The colonel invited me to his tent to join him in a small meal prepared by his orderly. It was a small matter that showed his consideration for others. "I learned to hate the flies. With all the unburied dead Japanese around, these pests were thick. It was difficult to eat from your mess kit without swallowing one. This resulted in almost universal dysentery. Luckily, sulpha pills were effective against this ailment." Like Spencer, Henry Lopez was pained by the scourge of mosquitoes and flies. "They tormented the men, and dengue fever, with symptoms resembling the flu, spread rapidly throughout the company. Hungry flies resisted all swatting during the daytime, while thirsty mosquitoes that nourished on Scat, the insect repellent found in the jungle kit, and which everyone poured on all exposed parts of the body, dominated the night. They were so vicious that they even bit right through fatigue jackets and pants. Ernest Schlichter who passed up a deferment because of a job in a war industry, landed on Guam as a member of a Signal Company in the 77th two days after the initial landings. He slept near the beach that first night, discovering several unexploded sixteen-inch shells, one of which he thought was only a buried stone under his blanket. "The meager rations we carrried ran out and when we inquired for more, were told there were none. We found that the Navy considered the attack on Guam was an Army operation and the Army considered it a naval operation and neither ordered supplies for the 77th Division. Major McKithen, our Signal Company commander, traded jeeps and generators for Navy emergency supplies of rations. One meal had to do us all day. "It was the rainy season, making it hard for vehicles, and by this time nearly all our jeeps were traded for food from the Navy. We had to carry all our equipment and walking was hard, as much of Guam was hilly, torn up, and the red clay turned into slippery mud. "McKithen gave orders to shoot to kill anyone that came in after dark because everyone was ordered to stay on or behind the perimeter at night. McKithen didn't realize that many of our men who were assigned to set up radio, telephone and message centers to and from the regiments would travel back at night, especially from in front of our lines. This was the shortest, quickest and easiest way to our camp during the day but dangerous, especially at night. "A boy from the message center came in with a report one night. Some of our men saw him and couldn't recognize him in the dark and thought he was a Jap. They had been ordered to shoot to kill anyone coming at night and they riddled him with bullets. "The next night, Major McKithen went to a meeting that lasted longer than expected. The major came back and must have remembered the orders he gave to shoot to kill anyone outside our perimeter at night. He kept hollering, "This is Major McKithen,' and if I remember right, 'Let me in.' My new slit-trench companion this night had been a close friend of the boy killed the previous evening. When he saw and heard the major, he started crying and cursing. He kept on saying, 'He killed my buddy, kill the bastard!' He raised his M-1. I tried to calm him, shake him to his senses, prevent him from raising his gun but he got away. The major was now within fifty feet and silhouetted in the clearing. I knew he couldn't miss. He was about to pull the trigger when I hit the rifle out of his hands and sent it flying. "He sat down and cried and said I was sticking up for the SOB. I told him I couldn't blame him for the way he felt but I was trying to keep him from being court-martialed, maybe shot, for killing an officer. I said I wouldn't report him if he wouldn't try it again. He was worn out by then and the next morning promised he wouldn't after I explained the reason for the orders and the circumstances by which his buddy had been killed." From the start of the war in the Pacific, the Japanese had owned the night. Trained to infiltrate after dark, small numbers of soldiers would sift through positions to catch the Americans off guard in foxholes. After a long day trying to advance against Japanese defenses, hunkered down in holes often muddy or even half full of water, the GIs and leathernecks, their reflexes slowed, their vision restricted and sometimes dozing when they should have been on guard, were the targets of stealthy assassins who wielded knives and bayonets to maintain silence. As the men of the 77th, like Ernie Schlichter, learned, the only defense lay in a policy of shoot to kill for anything that moved after the sun went down. When the 706th Tank Battalion trundled ashore on Guam, William Siegel, as a staff officer for the unit, acted as liaison from the division advance command post. "It was there that I attended all of General Bruce's briefings with his staff and the regimental COs. Also, I was able to observe the few Japanese prisoners that arrived. When captured, they were very polite, docile and humble, as a rule. We in our unit never considered the Japanese as demons, but rather as sly and treacherous. Furthermore, our instructions were that if we captured any of the enemy, we, as officers, would be held responsible for their well-being, as provided by the Geneva Convention." Like all Army divisions, the 77th had attached to it special units. Among these was the 292nd Joint Assault Signal Company, 504 officers and men with the mission to furnish communications among troops on the beach, their naval and air support. Alanson Sturgis, Jr. served as a captain with the outfit. Son of a New York architect, Sturgis graduated from Harvard in 1941 with a reserve commission in the field artillery. "I thought it would be useful to know what it was like to serve as an enlisted man, and so I had joined the Massachussetts National Gaurd and went on 1st Army maneuvers in 1940. There I saw the results of a less than barebones military budget. The infantrymen did not have blanks for their rifles. They ran around yelling 'bang!' Our antitank guns were gas pipes mounted on bicycle wheels. Any bombing was done, not with shells, but bags of flour to mark the explosions." By the time the 77th reached Guam, however, Sturgis and his 292nd JASCO group were fully operational. "On Guam, I was normally with a rifle company at their observation post. We used naval gunfire, mainly for illumination at night. Through the use of star shells it was continuous, because the Japs were the only people who moved at night." On August 6, after most of Guam had been secured, Dick Spencer's benefactor, Col. Douglas McNair, incautiously entered what was supposed to be a deserted hut. Japanese stragglers, hiding there, shot and killed him. For the division chief, General Bruce, it was a severe blow. He had served under Leslie McNair, Douglas's father, and to his sorrow had heard that the elder McNair had been killed by friendly fire in Europe two weeks before. Now Bruce mourned the death of the son. With the last of the Japanese subdued, the 77th remained on Guam in a garrison status, recovering from the first exposure to battle and training for what lay ahead. Recalls Siegel, "Living conditions were terrible. Rain and mud were serious hardships for men and equipment. Our unit was overcome at one point by dengue fever. The only way we could dispense any nourishment for the sick was to acquire food and juices through midnight raids on the supply dumps along the beaches. When we bivouacked at Orote, our pup tents were still in the mud. Our camp adjoined a Seabee unit which was housed and fed in comparative luxury. Our rations were meager--all canned or dried. Our best Sunday dinner was fried Spam and powdered potatoes." In November, three months after the first men of the division hit the beaches, the troops boarded ships seemingly bound for New Caledonia and a period of rehabilitation and rest. But while at sea, orders from MacArthur abruptly reversed their course. The 77th now was to join an amphibious operation on Leyte, the southernmost island of the Philippines. Buckner Creel observes that the experience on Guam was invaluable for the new ordeal by fire. "Since our unit was not involved in heavy action on Guam, we were 'blooded' gently. As a result, we had a chance in a combat situation to learn our trade and practice it so that we were a much more efficient, confident and cohesive unit when we landed on Leyte. We now knew how to live and survive in a combat situation. And had conquered our initial fear of the Japanese soldier, who had been touted as the master of the jungle and warfare in general. We had discovered that they were just as disturbed in a combat zone as we were, and, additionally, our equipment was far superior to theirs. Our confidence grew." The 77th's participation at Leyte involved a masterstroke, a surprise landing at Ormoc Beach behind the Japanese lines. Although U.S. forces were battering the enemy from three sides on Leyte, the defenders continued to hold out, sustained by fresh troops and supplies funneled through Ormoc. Says Ed Fitzgerald, with Service Company of the 307th, "They had been pouring reinforcements ashore there, more than 100,000 landed [in spite of repeated attacks from the air and the loss of thousands of men aboard transports that were sunk] and were moving rapidly to back up the reduced armies facing the Americans pushing inland from the east. MacArthur decided to hit them from behind. "The end run was mounted so quickly we didn't even take all of our people with us. We took only those who were essential. We left personnel people, mail people and all kinds of support people behind. Those of us who went got on a shiny new LST. Eating in the mess hall was like eating in Horn & Hardart's [a now-extinct chain of cafeteria and vending-machine restaurants]. One day, the captain, who was a young lieutenant who looked barely twenty-one, dropped the ramp and let us jump off and swim in the beautiful blue water, and after that we thought he was great. "He was no Mister Roberts, though," Fitzgerald said. "When we got to the beach at Ormoc, the morning of December 7 and he shoved that ramp onto the shore and let us off, a flight of Japanese airplanes raced in like a swarm of angry bees trying to get even with us for poking a stick in their nest. We were just beginning to lug off our ammunition and food when he began to back off the beach. "'Where the hell are you going?' a bunch of us screamed at him. "'Listen, you dumb bastards,' he yelled back, opening up the water between us and our stuff and leaving us standing up to our asses in the water, 'don't you know these fucking things cost five million bucks?'" Watching the goings-on from the air were Piper Cubs, observation planes for the 77th Division artillery. With the men pouring ashore, General Bruce sent a message by Cub to Gen. John Hodge, XXIV Corps commander, "The 77th has landed; 7 Come 11." He meant that, with his forces in place, the 7th Infantry Division could head up the coast from the south while the 11th Airborne could proceed down the valley north of Ormoc City. Fitzgerald and his comrades dug in only fifty or sixty yards from the beach for the night when an astonishing confrontation occurred. "We were wriggling uneasily in our slit trenches, trying to duck the maddeningly random mortar fire coming from just a few hundred yards ahead of us, when suddenly a Japanese version of an LST plowed up on the beach behind us and dropped its ramp just about where Captain Courageous had abandoned us." Apparently, the Japanese had not realized that the Americans now occupied that stretch of shore. "Don't let them get ashore," Fitzgerald heard Capt. Charlie Bauer holler. "This was the most aggressively 'military' I'd ever seen my gentle Philadelphia friend. 'Get them on the ramp! Watch the side of the ship! Get them if they jump!'" In the space of a single hour, 749 of the 750 Japanese soldiers were dead. The single survivor was found a week later, curled up in the crow's nest of the shambles that remained of the transport. John Kriegsman, a former Peoria, Illinois, youth, whose thirty-five-dollar-a-semester tuition fee was covered by his Reserve Officers' Training Corps pay while at the University of Illinois, flew Piper Cub observation planes for the 77th's artillery. "Flying in the South Pacific had lots of advantages over the European theater with the Germans and their .88 gun. Intelligence told us the Japanese would not fire on the little planes with the big wings for fear of retaliation. If we did receive fire, we could fly out over the ocean for protection. But as a result of stories about the treatment of pilots when forced down in enemy territory, we did not wear parachutes. We preferred death to capture. "During these first days on Leyte, the Cub surveillance was constant. Initially, beaches were used as airstrips. As the infantry occupied an area, the flat fields and roadways were established as landing strips. The Cubs were constantly in the air, directing artillery fire, dropping rifle grenades to flush Japs out of buildings, hauling white stove gasoline to infantry units mired in mud, hauling out the wounded and dead, delivering blood plasma and even mail." In the succeeding days, the Japanese air arm continued to hit the beach area. Dick Forse jumped into watery slit trenches in what had been a rice paddy. A bulldozer had just tugged his M-8 out of the muck when "eight to ten Val dive bombers attacked the beach. I fired the .50 caliber machine gun at three or four of them as they pulled out and climbed to the clouds. I tried to arch the fire above the planes and with a good lead on each one but I don't think I hit any. Just then four P-38s from the 5th Air Force zoomed up and shot down three or four. "We were attacked by two dive bombers the next day. All but the M-8s had moved out when the Japs came. They didn't dive on us but flew towards us. Both M-8s fired at the planes until they each released two bombs. I felt I was really accurate, it was like a hose and I was sure the plane I was firing on had to run into the rounds. We didn't shoot either down, but I think we must have hit them because they dropped their bombs too early, and they exploded in a field about 100 yards away." Henry Lopez with Company C was among those initially concerned with the enemy aircraft but little opposition from enemy ground troops greeted the Americans and they quickly penetrated inland. The convoy that had carried them and which was vital for supply and evacuation of wounded remained under prolonged attack, losing two ships and three more being severely damaged. While the Liberty Division soldiers initially had surprised the enemy, the opposition soon stiffened. Company C led the attack that took the village of Ipil and the pace of advance began to be measured in yards. Says Lopez, "Dark, moonless and starless nights were occasionally filled with imagined terrors. Darkness and fear, more often than not, played weird tricks on the eyes. The shape of a bush, a log, or a waving palm frond would at times resemble a watching, waiting, or a slinking Jap; even the pattern of moonlight with its soft shadows was confusing. For this very reason the men had been taught during jungle training that to better distinguish an object at night, it was best not to look at it squarely but to view it from the corner of the eye instead. With the coming of each night, with its many hidden terrors, the men silently prayed for clear skies and a moonlit night filled with bright stars. "While on Leyte, a patrol from my company was sent out to try and locate and contact a unit from the 306th to tell them our 1st Battalion was advancing north on Highway 2 to the road junction, the prime target. The squad had advanced some distance when they were fired on by a patrol from the 306th which did not know who they were. Three were wounded, including Sgt. Alfred Junkin. "Less seriously injured than the others, Junkin decided to return to 1st Battalion HQ and have litter bearers help evacuate the wounded. When Junkin returned with the aidmen, they found no one there. As a result, I was sent with others to locate the 306th and find out if their men had picked up our wounded. "During this mission we came under mortar fire from the Japanese on a high ridge. One soldier came to me and said, 'Sergeant, let's go back and report we were not able to find the 306th.' I replied, 'If you want to go back, go ahead.' I knew he couldn't go alone without having to explain what happened. When we got to Okinawa, I would have another incident with this same soldier." Lou De Matteis with the 304th Artillery Battalion was at sea when the Japanese aircraft hit the flotilla. "We could see two or three ships smoking; they were on fire all night, like beacons. One plane roared overhead, low enough so we could see the scarf on the neck of the pilot. His wingtip hit the top of our mast and then hit a destroyer. It split in two and within ninety seconds sailors were in the burning water, helmets bobbing there like coconuts." For the men of the 77th this was their first sight of the kamikaze, a tactic adopted during the battle at sea off Leyte and Samar, another Philippine island. "It was getting dark when we finally started in," says De Matteis. "Nobody seemed to know where we'd land. We headed for a bright light on shore. When we got close, a machine gun from a Japanese emplacement opened up. We backed off and then moved to an area marked with flashlights. We were told to unload. The Navy wanted no part of it; they left us with our LCIs barely loaded. We were completely surrounded on the Yamashita Line. There was no sleep at night with action going on all around us. "A couple of days later we were guarding the trail leading inland, and a couple of sailors came ashore. They were looking for souvenirs and started to go up the trail. I warned them there were still some enemy around. They insisted nobody was there and went off, like they, too, were heading down Broadway. A couple of hours later, they brought both of them in, dead. The sailors were always hungry for souvenirs. If you picked up a Nambu pistol from a pile of weapons collected after an action, you could sell it for maybe fifty bucks. But if you were a good story teller, and you described to a sailor how you took this bloody pistol off a Jap officer after a hand-to-hand fight, you could get as much as $500 for it." Excerpted from Operation Iceberg: The Invasion and Conquest of Okinawa in World War II by Gerald Astor All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.