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BATTLE FOR TINIAN |
GUS HUGHES
Tinian
The tired veterans of the Second Marine Division, having just finished the battle of Saipan, invaded Tinian, the sister island of Saipan, only two and a half miles away. The invasion took place on the evening of July 24, and the early morning hours of July 25, l944. Tinian's garrison was estimated at 8,000 fighting Japanese forces, most of whom were killed, 3,000 Korean laborers, and an undetermined number of Japanese civilians. In contrast to Saipan's mountainous terrain, Tinian island was generally flat, conducive to accommodating the finest airport in the Central Pacific area, which capture was necessary in order to strike the heart of the Japanese mainland. The capture of the airport also served as the take off point for the famous B-29 Super fort, "Enola Gay", which took off from Tinian in the early hours of August 6, l945 to drop history's first atomic bomb on Hiroshima and then was followed up with another B-29 which took off on August 8th to drop the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. The secrecy of this atomic bomb operation was so tight that no one except the upper brass new about it until after it happened.
The battle of Tinian ended officially in nine days, with more than 5,000 Japs destroyed, counted and buried; more than 9.000 civilians interned; and with 252 military prisoners. The Second Marine Division lost only l04 men killed - the same number lost by a single battalion on Saipan. It had 654 wounded, but only three missing.
A day or so after the battle ended, a civilian correspondent asked General Edson: "Which was the worst campaign, General?" Edson grinned and sucked on his cigarette. "They were all bad," he said. There are no easy campaigns. At Guadalcanal, it was the dirt and the strain, and having to lie there night after night in the lines and take it from the Japs. At Tarawa, for the first 30 hours the issue was very much in doubt. At Saipan it was the mortars, artillery and the mountainous terrain.
"The worst campaign," Red Mike said, "is the one in which you get hit For the l04 men of the Second Marine Division killed on Tinian, that "easy campaign" was, beyond argument, the worst.
[Up] [Guadalcanal] [Gus's Tarawa Story] [Tarawa] [Saipan] [Tinian] [Okinawa] [Japan]
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