Dye Dale, O`neill Robert. The road to victory: From Pearl Harbor to Okinawa

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foreword by CAPTAIN DALE DYE, USMC (RET.)

consultant editor PROFESSOR ROBERT O'NEILL

FROM PEARL HARBOR

TO OKINAWA

OSPREY

PUBLISHING

EDITOR

ROBERT O'NEILL

WITH A FOREWORD BY

DALE DYE

OSPREY

FROM PEARL HARBOR

TO OKINAWA

First published in Great Britain in

2011

by Osprey Publishing,

Midland House, West Way, Botley, Oxford, OX2 oPH, UK

44-02 23rd Street, Suite 219, Long Island City, NY 11101, USA

E-mail: info@ospreypublishing.com

Osprey Publishing is part of the Osprey Group

2011

Osprey Publishing Ltd.

Previously published as Campaign 18, Guadalcanal 1942, Joseph

Mueller, 1992; Campaign 62, Pearl Harbor 1941, Carl Smith, 1999;

Campaign 77, Tarawa 1943, Derrick Wright, 2000; Campaign 81, Iwo

Jima 1945, Derrick Wright, 2001; Campaign 96, Okinawa 1945,

Gordon Rottman, 2002; Campaign 110, Peleliu 1944, Jim Moran and

Gordon Rottman, 2002; Campaign 146, Marshall Islands 1944,

Gordon Rottman, 2004; Campaign 163, Leyte Gulf 1944, Bernard

Ireland, 2006; Campaign 214, Coral Sea 1942, Mark Stille, 2009;

Campaign 226, Midway 1942, Mark Stille, 2010.

111213 14 15 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Osprey Publishing is supporting the Woodland Trust, the UK's

leading woodland conservation charity, by funding the dedication

of trees.

www.ospreypublishing.com

Front Cover: USMC via Tom Laemlein

Back Cover: NARA

Title Page: USMC via Tom Laemlein

Contents Page: NARA

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British

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ISBN: 9781 84908 716 2

ePub EBOOK ISBN: 978

84908 887 9

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Page layout by Josh Beatman, Brainchild Studios

Index by Sandra Shotter

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Key to military symbols

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Army Group

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IXI

Infantry

Artillery

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Unit HQ

B B

Airborne

Unit HQ

Air defense

WrF"™

Air mobile Air transportable Amphibious

B O

Bridging

Headquarters

Maintenance

Medical

Missile

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Mountain

DEI

Nuclear, biological.

Ordnance

Parachute

Reconnaissance

Supply

chemical

Rocket artillery

Air defense artiller

Key to unit identification

Unit

identifier

unit

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with added

elements

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less elements

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

PEARL HARBOR by Carl Smith 15

CORAL SEA by Mark Stille 43

MID WAY by Mark Stille 65

GUADALCANAL by Joseph Mueller 91

TARAWA by Derrick Wright 117

MARSHALL ISLANDS by Gordon L. Rottman

PELELIU by Jim Moran and Gordon L. Rottman 167

LEYTE GULF by Bernard Ireland 191

I WO JIM A by Derrick Wright 217

O KIN AWA by Gordon L. Rottman 245

INDEX 268

N A HOT, MUGGY SUMMER

day I strolled through the

Punchbowl Cemetery on Oahu

looking for a little shade to help preserve the

creases melting out of my uniform. An old-

timer leaning

a cane spotted me and patted

a spot next to him on a marble bench.

was

in his seventh or eighth decade of hard living

and wearing an overseas cap that attested to

his service as a Marine in the Pacific during

World War II. "Hell of a thing," he said

sweeping an arthritic hand across the ranks of

sparkling headstones. "It was a dollar job on

a dime budget all

the

way

from

Pearl Harbor to

Okinawa. Everybody was worrying about

Hitler and the Nazis."

His complaint was overstated but entirely

understandable. In 1940 when American

leadership was contemplating involvement in

a world war for the second time in the 20th

century, there was a tacit agreement that the

initial effort would be against Axis powers in

Europe. As

most Americans at the time claimed

some ancestry or familial descent from

European nations, it was perhaps a natural

reaction among war planners. And then the

infamous lapanese attack on American forces

and facilities in Hawaii on December 7, 1941,

made a two-front war a reality. Pearl Harbor

threw the American planners into a frenzy of

shifting priorities. There were angry voices in

Congress and across the country calling for an

immediate counterstrike against the Japanese

Empire but the leadership fell back on the

default setting when the US declared war on

Germany three days later.

There

were practical

well

philosophical

reasons for this: America's striking power for

what would clearly

a naval campaign against

the Japanese in the Pacific had been badly

damaged at Pearl Harbor. It would take time,

money, and manpower

get those

forces

ready

to begin a long and bloody struggle across vast

expanses of ocean to stem the Japanese tide

of victories in the Pacific and save Allied

nations such as Australia and New Zealand

from conquest. In the meantime, embattled

American commanders such as General

Douglas MacArthur in the Philippines and

Admiral Chester

Nimitz

in Hawaii were

forced to

focus

on survival as opposed

counterattack.

The tide began to turn in 1942 with the

battle of the Coral Sea, the first naval

engagement between opposing aircraft carrier

task forces operating over the horizon from

each other, and with the

first

American ground

opposite

Blazing Japanese

installations send up

huge puffs of white

smoke as Roi Island,

the Japanese airbase

on Kwajalein Atoll in the

Marshall Islands, rocks

under the shattering

impact of American

bombs. Carrier-based

US planes raided the

island stronghold in

preparation for landings

by US Marine assault

troops in early 1944.

American forces

captured Kwajalein

during the continuing

offensive in the Central

Pacific. (Topfoto)

8 • THE ROAD TO VICTORY: From Pearl Harbor to Okinawa

OPPOSITE

Japanese Navy Type 99

carrier bombers ("Val")

prepare to take off

from an aircraft carrier

during the morning of

December 7,1941. The

ship in the background

is the carrier Soryu.

(US Navy)

offensive at Guadalcanal in the Solomon

Islands. Both battles were won on very tight

margins and quickly demonstrated to Allied

planners that war in the Pacific would be

a brutal island-hopping affair focused on

wrenching vital airfields from Japanese

control. To support and supply the soldiers,

sailors, and Marines fighting and dying on

battlefields with often unpronounceable

names, America and her Allies had to rely on a

logistical tail that stretched across thousands

of miles of ocean patrolled and controlled

early in the war by marauding Japanese air

and naval armadas.

Sailors aboard surface combatants and

submarines and operating off aircraft carriers

through the South and Central Pacific learned

hard and costly lessons when they came

up against a Japanese Navy schooled and

experienced in night-time engagements.

Infantry forces slugging it out with fanatical

defenders on Pacific flyspecks like Tarawa,

Saipan, and Peleliu mostly had to make do with

whatever was at hand. Resupply was a long way

off and requisitions often took months to fill.

It was brutal in the extreme; and different in

many respects from combat in the European

Theater of Operations. Marines and soldiers

in Pacific combat encountered an enemy

that fought with an obsessive, no-quarter

psychology that differed shockingly from

Western approaches to warfare.

They got it done minus much of the fanfare

and publicity that attended Allied advances

and victories in other theaters of World War II.

Among fighting men in the Pacific a sort of

perverse pride often developed as they read

newspaper clippings or heard radio broadcasts

celebrating Allied campaigns in Europe

following D-Day in 1944. Marines in the Pacific

claimed to be Uncle Sam's Misguided Children

(USMC) and American Army survivors of the

Japanese steamroller in the Philippines called

themselves the "Battling Bastards of Bataan,

no mama, no papa, no Uncle Sam." Of course,

none of them did what they did in the Pacific

for glory or acclaim. That was the farthest thing

from their minds as they battled through Leyte

Gulf, over the bloody black sands of Iwo Jima

and into the agonizing meat-grinder of combat

on Okinawa and right up to the end of the war.

They just wanted to get the job done, to

survive, to go home, and pick up where they

left off when war interrupted their lives. Those

of us who live free today have had 70 years to

contemplate their service and sacrifice and

we've not done enough to let the aging

survivors know how vital it was to our way of

life. Books like this one are dedicated to help

correct that. It's the least we can do.

Captain Dale Dye USMC (Ret)

May 2011