Saipan falls to Smith's Marines and infantry; Japan's inner defense ring is broken
By June 1944, the Marianas sat inside Japan's "Absolute National Defense Zone," the last shield protecting the home islands from long-range bombers. On June 15, the U.S. 2nd and 4th Marine Divisions, joined by the Army's 27th Infantry Division under Lieutenant General Holland Smith, waded ashore at Saipan against Lieutenant General Yoshitsugu Saitō's dug-in 43rd Division. Twenty-four days of fighting through caves, cane fields, and the slopes of Mount Tapotchau ended on July 9 with the island in American hands. The cost was staggering: roughly 30,000 Japanese dead against 3,100 American killed and 13,000 wounded.
Saipan's airfields put Tokyo within range of the B-29 for the first time, turning a Pacific island battle into the opening move of the strategic bombing campaign that would end the war. The battle also convinced American planners that Japan would fight to near-total annihilation rather than surrender, a lesson that shaped the casualty projections behind the decision to use the atomic bomb a year later.
QWhat did American soldiers call the tanks that burned out Japanese cave defenses?
Marines and soldiers converted M3 Stuart light tanks into flame-throwing vehicles they nicknamed "Satans." Saipan's volcanic terrain was riddled with limestone caves that riflemen alone could not clear, so these modified tanks pumped burning fuel directly into cave mouths and bunkers dug into the slopes of Mount Tapotchau. The nickname stuck for the rest of the Pacific campaign, and similar flame tanks became standard equipment for every major island assault that followed, from Peleliu to Okinawa.
QDid Hideki Tōjō try to take his own life after Japan's surrender?
Yes. When American forces came to arrest him in September 1945, Tōjō shot himself but survived. He was quoted afterward saying he was sorry it was taking him so long to die, that he still believed the war had been righteous, and that he awaited the judgment of history. American doctors saved him, and he stood trial before the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, where he was convicted and executed in 1948.
QHow many civilians lived on Saipan before the invasion, and what were they doing there?
Saipan held roughly 26,000 to 28,000 civilians, most of them tied to the island's sugar industry in towns like Garapan, Charan Kanoa, and Tanapag. They were not military personnel but ordinary residents of a Japanese-administered island who found themselves in the middle of one of the war's bloodiest battles. An estimated 8,000 to 10,000 of them died, and around 1,000 committed suicide in the final days, many jumping off cliffs near Marpi Point after Japanese propaganda convinced them that capture meant torture.
