Last Charge

To the U.S. the cost of Saipan was high --2,359 killed, 1,213 missing, 11,481 wounded. But the military justification was high, too; in many ways, Saipan was the most important objective yet taken by U.S. troops in the drive across the Pacific. The Japs, who knew its value, gave it up hard. Their losses: 16,000 dead, 1,000 prisoners, countless others missing in the caves where they were buried by explosive and by bulldozers. In this dispatch from the battlefield, TIME Correspondent Robert Sherrod tells of the Japs' last stand:

From the hillside shortly after noon we could see our tanks edging forward through the canefields only 500 yards away. They were firing thousands of rounds from their machine guns, occasionally blasting away with their 753. This was the beginning of our two-day recovery from the enemy's last crazy counterattack.

Once again, as I had seen them do on Attu and Tarawa, these strange little men had swept forward in a last hopeless, noisy, assault. The pattern was the same, only this time it was bigger. More than 3,000 of these mad, unreasoning, half-human creatures joined in it--the count may go as high as 5,000 by the time we have counted all their rotting bodies.

For their last charge the Japs smashed into a spot in our front line about five o'clock in the morning. They picked a place along the beach a couple of miles north of Garapan and for a while they may have thought they were getting somewhere as they swept forward, firing and screaming, waving swords, brandishing bayonets on rifles or tied to sticks, and grabbing up carbines from fallen Americans.

In the Cannon's Mouth. Along a strip inland from the beach they drove some 1,500 yards into our positions before they were stopped. They got all the way into an artillery battalion which had moved twelve 105s into position the night, before. There they were stopped, and there the most forward of them died.

The artillerymen fired pointblank into the Japs with fuses set at four-tenths of a second. They bounced their high explosive shells 50 yards in front of their guns and into the maniacal ranks. They manned their few machine guns and fired until the guns stopped from overheating. They fired their carbines until the ammunition was exhausted.

The Japs poured toward them. The gunners picked up Jap rifles and ammunition and turned them into the enemy. When the order came for the artillery to withdraw they sent this answer back: "Sir, we would prefer to stay and fight it out."

They did.

Old Story. This afternoon I went down the hill into the cane fields after the tanks and infantry. Along the west side of a little toy railroad there were dead Japanese every few feet. Some of them were blasted beyond recognition. Under a little farmhouse there were six Jap soldiers, all with their right hands missing, their chests blasted. The old story -- suicide by hand grenade.

Beyond, in the open field, the bodies of some of the American gunners were being laid in rows beside the command tent. Farther on there were nine dead Japs in a ditch. One of them still clutched a stick with a bayonet tied to it. Nearby, beside a burning jeep, lay the body of a lieutenant. Corporal Anthony Kouma told us he had begged to be shot because he was so badly wounded. Kouma had said: "You'll be all right, sir," but the officer had died within a few minutes.

We passed the body of a dead American private and a few steps farther on Kouma stooped, looked at another body and cried: "My God, there's the major, the battalion commander. I thought he got out all right.

There's a man they'll never replace."

"Love, Mom." The major had died with his face to the enemy. Back of him about 20 yards lay his helmet and carbine.

Evidently he had dropped them and stumbled on after being hit. Beside his hand were two V-mail letters from home. Perhaps he had tried to read them once again before he died. One was signed, "Love, Mom.'' The other was signed with a girl's name and said, "You certainly are a sweet old thing."

In the wooded area just north of the field lay the results of the work of the artillerymen, and of the tankers and infantry who were now beginning to get back the lost ground. Not even on Tarawa were the Japs piled up so densely. In one area no more than a hundred yards square I counted more than 200 of them.

In a zigzag ditch about 25 feet long there were 56 Jap bodies. They were stacked four deep at some points. Many were laid open by the shell blasts and the blood of most of them had not yet started to congeal.

Among the dead there was a surprisingly high percentage of officers. At least 25 samurai swords were collected by souvenir-hunting troops who followed the tanks. Later we found one reason for this. Not all the Jap troops had shown the banzai spirit. Some of them still huddled in the fields and the ditches. One in four of them had committed suicide, but there was a cleanup job to do on the rest.

Simple Slaughter. Next morning our troops drove to the beach on the north of the Jap pocket and thus hemmed in the remnants of living and the windrows of dead in an area about a thousand yards along the beach and 500 yards inland. In the northern end of this pocket there was some fierce fighting that day before the enemy was beaten down. But from the lower end of the pocket, driving north, it was simple slaughter.

Three of our companies closed in, firing into the holes and ditches as they walked through the cane fields and woods. "All the fight's gone out of them," said Captain Thomas Wheeler of Kansas City as we walked behind his tanks. "Now it's just like killing rats."

The tank in front of us stopped beside a farmhouse crib where rice bags were piled high. A lanky fighting man--a lefthander--looked cautiously under the little house. He tossed a grenade, then pounced like a cat over the rice bags into the crib and fired a burst of four or five from his Browning. Another man followed him in and soon came out with an officer's sword.

I asked the southpaw why he didn't get the sword himself. He said: "I let my buddy have it. I can't carry any more.'' He pointed to his pack which he had laid on the ground. There were three samurai swords hung on it.

Inside the crib were two newly killed Japs. One's shirtfront was purplish with spreading stain. The other's face was crimson with his blood. These men had not been up to suicide. They had waited stolidly in their hole to be killed.

Our Flag. Now the cleanup is about finished. Wheeler's company alone killed 300 Japs today and lost only two men. That kind of performance was repeated by other outfits in the pocket where good fighting men had died to head off the charge that made no sense.

The battle of Saipan is over. Tomorrow our flag will go up.

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