The tranquility of early dawn on June 15, 1944, was interrupted by the sounds of powerful naval guns and the roar of amtraks churning the water. The invasion of Saipan had begun.
Two days earlier a U.S. Navy bombardment fleet consisting of 10 battleships, 11 cruisers, 15 aircraft carriers, and 26 destroyers had begun bombing and shelling this island night and day. Saipan, a small island in the Marianas group, seemingly had few defenders. It was predicted to be a three-day battle with minimal casualties. So how did this conflict turn into the bloodiest battle in the Pacific War to date? And why did the American invaders suffer more than 16,000 dead and wounded against their tenacious Japanese enemy?
By the summer of 1944, the war was not going well for Japan. The Japanese Empire was a remnant of its former glory. Its Pacific possessions were lost to the aggressive U.S. island hopping strategy. Its forces in China were mired in prolonged fighting with Communist forces and the National Chinese Kuomintang. Its armies in Burma were being pushed back by the advancing British and Indian troops. Even its home islands of Honshu and Kyushu were subjected to frequent American bombing raids that killed of thousands of civilians in a single attack.
The situation was desperate, and the Japanese general staff knew that they could not win the war; the issue was accepting the terms of defeat. The Allies made their goal very clear in the Potsdam Declaration: “unconditional surrender.” The terms of this pronouncement were unpopular with Japanese military and civilian officials, who attempted to find some way of mitigating the onerous provisions, especially those concerning the future of the monarchy, Allied occupation, disarmament, and war crimes trials. They thought that if they ferociously defended the home islands, the United States would suffer such huge casualties that the American will to continue fighting would diminish and a negotiated peace could be attained. This strategy guided the actions of Lt. Gen. Saito Yoshitsugu in formulating his defense of Saipan.
