The Final Storm - Jeff Shaara [6]
While MacArthur’s forces press the fight through the Solomons, still close to New Guinea, Admiral Nimitz aims his spear on a more direct trajectory toward Japan. In November 1943, the next major assault in the chain occurs at an island atoll called Tarawa. Led by General Holland “Howlin’ Mad” Smith, two Marine divisions struggle mightily to erase the Japanese positions, which are assumed to have been badly chewed up by heavy naval gunfire. Instead the Marines wade ashore only to find themselves in one of the most costly fights of the Pacific campaign. One more experience awaits them as well. Facing certain defeat, enormous numbers of Japanese soldiers engage in banzai attacks, hordes of men throwing themselves en masse into the Marine positions. The cost in human life is staggering, and the Americans begin to realize that the Japanese are very different indeed. Young Marines embroiled in pitched battles suddenly confront the bizarre, screaming waves of enemy troops pouring into Marine positions with murderous intent yet also an astonishing eagerness to die. When faced with utter defeat, the Japanese choose suicide over surrender, seeking a kind of honor that few Americans can understand.
In the United States, the casualties absorbed on Tarawa are made public: more than a thousand Marines dead, with twice that many wounded. Whether or not the American public fully appreciates the kind of enemy they are fighting, they are rudely awakened to the kind of sacrifice the Marines are being asked to make.
In early 1944, the fights continue, with MacArthur jamming his troops through the Admiralty Islands close to New Guinea, while Nimitz’s carriers and warships support the Marines in the Marshall Islands, primarily on the atoll of Kwajalein. By February 1944, Nimitz pushes farther toward the next great chain of islands, the Carolines. There the Japanese maintain one of the most fortified bases in the entire Pacific, the island of Truk. Over time, superior American air and sea power obliterates the Japanese fleet in Truk Lagoon and destroys more than three hundred Japanese aircraft.
In June 1944, the greatest amphibious invasion of all time is coming to fruition a world away, on the beaches at Normandy. Though the American newspapers focus almost exclusively on what General Dwight Eisenhower’s forces must accomplish, Admiral Nimitz is engaging in a Pacific campaign that will rival Normandy in its significance. The last great chain of islands that secure the waters far from Japan are the Marianas, and while Eisenhower’s army and airborne troops slug their way through the French countryside, Nimitz launches assaults on the island of Saipan, a two-week campaign that claims 14,000 American casualties, two-thirds of them Marines. Less than two weeks after Saipan is secured, Nimitz orders the start of an assault on Guam, to recapture the American island lost so early in the war. At nearly the same time, the Marines and soldiers on Saipan press onward, a short few miles to the island of Tinian. While the fight for Tinian proves not nearly as costly as Saipan, Guam is another matter altogether, with a loss of 8,000 American casualties.
By September 1944, the Normandy campaign draws to a close, and Allied commanders are well aware that Germany’s defeat is only a matter of time. In the Pacific, both MacArthur and Nimitz are accomplishing victories as well, but for MacArthur the big plum still awaits: the Philippines. For Nimitz, the island hopping continues, the next target a fortified Japanese outpost in the Palau Islands, called Peleliu. Protected by underground fortifications, the Japanese have strengthened their position on Peleliu to one of invincibility. But the Americans proceed as they always have and bombard the island with enormous firepower. On September 15, expecting a stroll on the beach, Marines advance onto Peleliu only to learn that the Japanese are still waiting for them, protected from the navy’s shelling by a network of underground hiding places. The fight that follows lasts more