Gailey, Harry. The Liberation of Guam, 21 July - 10 August 1944. Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1997. (Softcover reprint of 1988 edition.)

ISBN 0-89141-651-X
231 pages

Introduction; photos; maps; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

While British and American armies broke out of the Normandy beachhead, while Soviet armies rolled westward and reached the outskirts of Warsaw, while Allied forces completed the occupation of the northern coast of New Guinea and advanced to Florence in Italy, while Chinese forces captured Myitkyina in Burma, and while Allied heavy bombers attacked targets in Germany and Japan-- while all these unmistakable signs of defeat engulfed the Axis nations, the Japanese defenders of the island of Guam in the Marianas fought their own hopeless, bloody battle against American Marines and soldiers.

Like the other American outposts in the Pacific at the start of the war against Japan, Guam was unprepared and quickly fell, almost without a struggle, to the Japanese invaders in December 1941. Two and a half years later, however, the Americans were ready to return to their island possession. Although the invasion was originally scheduled to occur within days of the June 15th landings on neighboring Saipan, unexpectedly strong Japanese resistance there caused a delay of over a month, during which time the men of 3rd Marine Division and 1st Provisional Marine Brigade remained cooped up aboard their assault vessels while the Army's 77th Infantry Division was dispatched from Hawaii and further air and naval resources were gathered.

On 21 July -- the day after the assassination attempt against Adolf Hitler on the other side of the world -- following preliminary air and naval bombardment prolonged to more than a month, the Marines assaulted beaches on the west coast of Guam near Agana and Agat. Understrength (over 2200 Japanese reinforcements destined for Guam drowned when their transport was torpedoed by an American submarine, the Trout, in February 1944) and pummeled by unrelenting shelling ("In all, the Navy expended 836 rounds of sixteen-inch, 5,422 rounds of fourteen-inch, 3,862 rounds of eight-inch, 2,430 rounds of six-inch, and 16,214 rounds of five-inch shells"), the defenders nevertheless offered fierce resistance to the Marines as they came ashore.

The Japanese caused heavy Marine casualties, hemmed in the American beachhead, and forced the early and unceremonious commitment of the 77th Division (later referred to admiringly as the "77th Marines") from corps reserve. At this point it appeared the invaders would face a long and bloody campaign to root out the defenders machine gun nest by machine gun nest, mortar team by mortar team, and sniper by sniper.

General Takashina, commanding Japanese forces on Guam (although his superior, the commander of the Marianas, General Obata, had been stranded on the island while trying to return to Saipan after that island's invasion), chose not to remain on the defensive and take advantage of Guam's rough, overgrown terrain and make the invaders pay the maximum possible price for securing the island. Instead, he launched his battalions in a series of wild, uncoordinated banzai attacks against the expanding American positions. Battered and in some places overrun during frantic night fighting, the Marines suffered heavy casualties but still clung grimly to their positions. Almost 4000 Imperial troops were killed during suicidal attacks on the night of 25-26 July and from that point, with Japanese strength too depleted to make full use of the defensive terrain, the American victory was assured.

Over the course of the next two weeks, Marines and soldiers cut across to the east coast of the island then turned and swept methodically north, killing the tenacious but overwhelmed defenders and driving back the survivors.

   A further example of how unexpectedly dangerous was the methodical movement toward the town of Yigo was the presumably prosaic inspection of an area south of Ipapao by the 77th Division chief of staff, Col. Douglas McNair. Early in the afternoon of the 6th, he and his party in what was believed to be a safe area had just selected a site for the new divisional CP approximately 600 yards south of the village. By this time the trail in this vicinity was heavily traveled with infantrymen moving north. McNair's party noticed a hut approximately 200 yards off the trail and started to investigate. A sniper hidden in the building fired one round which struck McNair, killing him instantly. He was the highest ranking American officer lost during the campaign. Ironically his father, LtGen. Leslie McNair, commander of all American ground forces, had been killed in a freak bombing accident in Normandy only two weeks earlier.

Harry Gailey tells the story of Guam starting with a brief discussion of its history and acquisition by the United States and loss to Japan at the end of 1941. Chapters are devoted to the Japanese occupation and defensive measures and to the American planning and buildup for invasion. The concluding chapter covers the aftermath of battle: construction of American facilities and bases for the B-29 campaign against the home islands and stories of Japanese survivors who hid in the jungle for years (including Sergeant Shoichi Yokoi who remained in hiding until 1972).

By September 1945 over 1200 starving holdouts had surrendered and others died in the jungle or straggled into American hands in the years before Shoichi Yokoi. Thousands more threw away their lives in suicidal banzai attacks during the early days of the campaign while many of their comrades killed themselves outright rather than surrender as their positions were being overrun. Despite the clear indications that the war had turned against them, and that the island could not be defended, most of the Japanese on Guam refused to surrender, preferring to fight to the death.

   The story of one Japanese prisoner at the close of the fighting on Orote indicates clearly the Japanese soldier's devotion to orders from a superior. This prisoner was a "forlorn scrimp of a man dressed in tattered blouse and breeches much too large for him." But he seemed at ease and not unhappy at being taken. He had not attempted suicide nor asked for a weapon to commit hara-kiri. A Marine interpreter quizzed him and the following conversation ensued:
   "Why did you surrender?"
   "My commanding officer told us to fight to the last man."
   The Marine's eyebrows rose.
   "Well?"
   The Japanese soldier's eyebrows also rose -- in wounded innocence -- and he exclaimed:
   "I am the last man."

The battle itself is described for the most part from American sources, although the Japanese are not ignored. Much of the material here is contained in the official histories of the three American services-- New Guinea and the Marianas by Morison (from the Navy series), Campaign in the Marianas by Crowl (from the Army series), and Central Pacific Drive by Shaw, Nalty, and Turnbladh (from the Marine series). Air operations during the battle, which is the topic least covered elsewhere, is also the subject least elucidated here.

All in all, though, not a bad synthesis covering a very interesting campaign.

Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from Presidio Press.

Thanks to Presidio for providing this review copy.