In this article, historian Martin K.A. Morgan, covers the Battle of Peleliu, one of the most brutal battles of WWII. As he notes, “the place of blood and suffering stood in sharp contrast to every battle that came before it and, in many ways, introduced the U.S. to the confronting reality that achieving victory in the Pacific through ground combat operations was going to be costly and time consuming.”

The Battle of Peleliu

By Martin K.A. Morgan, Historian

Between mid-September and late-November 1944, the U.S. military fought a ferocious battle against the Imperial Japanese Army in Palau – an archipelago of 340 islands in the Western Carolines, 2,000 miles south of Tokyo.

In the aftermath of the First World War, the Japanese Empire assumed administrative control of these islands through the League of Nations South Pacific Mandate established by the Versailles Treaty. Through the 1920s and 1930s, they improved infrastructure in Palau, developed commerce and eventually even militarized the islands by building seaplane bases, a submarine base, and airfields. By 1944, those installations posed a threat to the planned U.S. landings on Mindanao in the Philippines scheduled for later that year, so a decision was made to preempt the threat. This would be done through amphibious landings against two Palauan islands: Anguar and Peleliu. The larger of the two, Peleliu, was home to an Imperial Army airfield equipped with aircraft revetments, taxiways, a large concrete headquarters building, and a pair of intersecting runways capable of accommodating twin-engine bombers. With Mindanao just 500 miles away to the west and Guam just 800 miles away to the northeast, long range aircraft from Peleliu’s airfield could reach both the Philippines and the Marianas.

In the end, U.S. leadership canceled the invasion of Mindanao but not the Palau operation, which kicked-off on September 15, 1944 when the 1st Marine Division stormed ashore on the western beaches of Peleliu. In the weeks that followed, the fighting reached an appalling intensity – one that foreshadowed battles yet to come.  It would eventually claim the lives of almost the entire Japanese island garrison of over 10,000 men in addition to 1,794 Americans. The fighting also left Peleliu strewn with the debris of war. Even today, despite an ongoing de-mining operation, live hand grenades, mortar rounds, artillery shells and small arms ammunition litter the jungle.

The Invasion Beaches of Peleliu

The standard tourist visit to Peleliu today begins where the battle began: on the invasion beaches of the island’s southwest coast where the 1st Marine Division began the battle on September 15^th by landing three regiments abreast. The 1st Marines came ashore on White Beach, a 650-yard concave strip of sand that represented the division’s far left flank. At the far northern end of the sector, a natural rock outcropping known as “the Point” juts out 15 yards from the shoreline and the Japanese concealed a series of concrete bunkers for machine guns and the 25mm Type 96 auto cannon there.

The orientation of these positions made it possible to direct flanking fire against anything or anyone approaching the beach, and they were backed-up by concealed mortar positions that provided additional supporting defensive firepower.

26-year-old Captain George P. Hunt (USMCR) commanding K Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment led the assault on “the Point” with three platoons – 235 men – and later described the Japanese positions he found there:

“Pillboxes, reinforced with steel and concrete, had been dug or blasted in the base of the perpendicular drop to the beach. Others, with coral and concrete piled six feet on top were constructed above, and spider holes were blasted around them for protecting infantry.”

Captain Hunt’s plan was to push inland and then take on the little fortress from the rear, but three days of preliminary naval bombardment had done nothing to the positions, and they unleashed a relentless volume of fire. Nevertheless, Hunt’s 1st and 3rd platoons conducted an assault during which one of his squad leaders, a 20-year-old Corporal named Henry W. Hahn, tossed a white phosphorus smoke grenade through the firing port of the northernmost casemate. Suffocating from the combination of heat and fumes, the Japanese soldiers inside attempted to escape but the white phosphorous had set them ablaze. Hunt later reported that, as they spilled out of the position on fire, the rifle cartridges in their clip pouches were cooking-off in a particularly gruesome scene. Although the way the jungle has reclaimed the Japanese bunkers is naturally beautiful, it is impossible to visit the site today without picturing that violent moment.

By 10:00am all of Hunt’s platoon leaders were casualties and his overall strength was 60% of what it had been when the landings began just after 8:30am. Soon thereafter, as his men languished in the 115°F equatorial heat, the Japanese counterattacked with supporting mortar fire in a move that severed K Company from the rest of the 3rd Battalion. Making matters even worse, Hunt’s men soon ran out of fresh water. Although they spent that first night on the island cut-off from the rest of the 1st Marine Regiment, the Brooklyn-class light cruiser USS Honolulu (CL-48) and three destroyers provided illumination to help them turn back Japanese infiltrators. Twice during the night and then again shortly after dawn on September 16^th, the Japanese launched bitter counterattacks against the K Company positions but Captain Hunt and his Marines held them off. Throughout this phase of the action, Corporal Hahn expertly directed the fire of his squad and his leadership was instrumental in repulsing the opposing force.

Once the sun was up, Captain Hunt counted the bodies of over 100 Japanese troops littering the area around “The Point.” In the afternoon Hunt’s Marines received resupply, but then the Japanese attacked again, and the fighting reached a climax during which Henry Hahn received a fragmentation wound. Despite the injury, he chose to lead his squad on a reconnaissance patrol that ultimately encountered a numerically superior Japanese force. Using just M1 rifles and hand grenades, Corporal Hahn and the patrol drove the enemy back and then returned to friendly lines. Only then did he agree to being evacuated as a combat casualty.

More fighting at “the Point” continued during the second night but by then, the 5th Marines had captured the airfield and begun the push toward Peleliu’s eastern shore. For more than 30 hours, K/3/1 had survived four major counterattacks despite being surrounded, low on supplies and out of water. It had suffered 32 killed and 125 wounded, leaving only Captain Hunt and 77 Marines still capable of fighting when it all came to an end.

The bodies of over 400 dead Japanese soldiers in the immediate area of the position provided a powerful indication of just how vicious an engagement it had been. Bravery, fighting spirit and the determined leadership of George Hunt, as well as Henry W. Hahn, had determined the outcome. Both men were ultimately recognized for their contributions when they were awarded the Navy Cross. You can tell just how fierce the battle at “the Point” was by the way that the debris of battle litters the area to this day and makes it impossible not to imagine what happened there in September 1944.

Battle Debris and LVTs

But “the Point” is not the only place where the debris of battle can still be found. At several locations on Peleliu, World War II military vehicles can be seen – including an M1 Medium Tractor (the military designation for the Allis-Chalmers HD-7W) at the base of Hill 100, a Japanese Type 95 Ha-Gō light tank on the airfield, and several examples of one of the most important vehicles of the Pacific war: the Amphibious Tractor or AmTrac. Because it was capable of transporting personnel from ships in deep water all the way to the beach and beyond, the AmTrac – also known as Landing Vehicle, Tracked or “LVT” – played an indispensable part in every amphibious landing in the PTO.

Examples of the standard configuration LVT can be found at several locations on the island today, but Peleliu also continues to be home to LVTs that were specially modified to provide supporting fire for the infantry during the first wave of an assault landing.  One version is the LVT(A)-1 which mounts a turret armed with a 37mm gun and the other version is the LVT(A)-4, an example of which is located near the end of one of the old runways, which mounts a turret armed with a 75mm howitzer. These LVTs provided critical infantry support during the first phase of the engagement.

The Umurbrogol Pocket

By the end of the first week of the battle of Peleliu, the 1st Marine Division had captured the entire southern end of the island. The fighting had been tough, and the casualties had been high – 70% in the 1st Marine Regiment – but everything was about to take a turn for the worse because the terrain over which U.S. forces would now have to maneuver was about to become much more complicated.

With the loss of the western beaches and the airfield, Japanese forces on Peleliu withdrew into defensive positions within the island’s central hill mass – a complex of jagged limestone ridges, knobs, gulches, sinkholes and caves known as the Umurbrogol. Within the setting of this broken, rubble-strewn terrain the Americans would have to fight the kind of attritional warfare that the 1st Marines could no longer endure. Having sustained massive combat casualties during the opening phase of the battle, the regiment had ceased to be an effective fighting force. If the fight was to continue, it would be necessary to bring-in reinforcements.

That was done on September 23^rd when the 321st Regimental Combat Team of the Army’s 81st Infantry Division landed on the island’s western coast. Fighting alongside the Marines, soldiers from the 321st pushed across a trail at the northern end of the Umurbrogol in a move that, by the afternoon of September 26^th, had isolated a force of approximately 2,000 Japanese defenders in a pocket that it would take five U.S. regiments almost two months to reduce. 900 yards long and 400 yards wide, the pocket consisted of “some of the most unpleasantly exotic terrain on the face of creation” as one veteran would later describe it.

The Umurbrogol Pocket’s coral formations were littered with jagged boulders and rubble that made it difficult to move, and its steep slopes meant that there was no place for the attacker to hide. By committing to a defensive fight-to-the-death in fixed positions in the hill mass, the Japanese abandoned all possibility of a maneuver battle on the island and, by extension, they had abandoned all possibility of repelling U.S. forces. After the fall of Saipan nearly three months earlier, Imperial armed forces realized that pointless “banzai” charges were unproductive and wasteful, and so they would not be used on Peleliu. Instead, the fighting there would take the character of an attritional slogging match intended to stretch the battle out and tie-up U.S. troops for the greatest length of time possible. Although other protracted defensive battles would follow on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, Peleliu would be the proving ground where the strategy would be tested for the first time, and this is why September eventually gave way to October with no end in sight.

For the troops engaged in ground combat operations, the adversities continued unabated because in southern Palau, even during Autumn months, the daily high temperature rises to a sweltering 115°F. By this point, it was two weeks since the initial landings and, despite the immense firepower brought to bear against the island, the struggle on it had produced 5,000 dead and wounded.

When the 7th Marines took over the mission to reduce the pocket on September 29^th, it began a two-week rotation during which the regiment would sustain 46% casualties. That high rate was produced mainly by a technique known as “corkscrew and blow torch” that employed the satchel charge and the flamethrower as the only means of marking progress. Even with artillery support, close air support, and the extensive use of flamethrower tanks, the slogging match continued to wound and kill at an astonishing rate. Because of this, Marines and soldiers began referring to the Umurbrogol as “Bloody Nose Ridge” in acknowledgement of the brutal fight that was unfolding within the cracks and fissures of the pocket’s coral badlands.

This phase of the battle produced one of Peleliu’s most striking landmarks: a knocked-out Sherman tank nicknamed Flyin Home. In September 1944 it belonged to A Company of the U.S. Army’s 710th Tank Battalion and it participated in the Battle of Anguar for a week before being transported to Peleliu to support the 1stMarine Division. On October 18^th, Flyin Home was directing fire at Japanese forces in cave positions in the vicinity of Hill 210 when it drove over an aerial bomb that had been buried to function as an improvised anti-tank mine. The explosion breeched the bottom of the Sherman and started a fire in the hull that killed T/4 Otto Hasselbarth, CPL Michael Valentino, PFC Georges Lopes, and PFC Howard Dahms. Today they are remembered by a memorial plaque sitting just a few feet from the wreckage. Two days after Flyin Home met its fate, the 81st Infantry Division relieved the 1st Marine Division completely and began mopping-up operations despite the fact that organized groups of Japanese soldiers would continue to resist for another five weeks.

Battle of Peleliu Jungle Trail

One of the highlights of a visit to the island is the Battle of Peleliu Jungle Trail. This prepared footpath leads visitors into the heart of the sharp precipices of the uplifted coral plateau where the Umurbrogol Pocket took its final form. The trail is strewn with U.S. and Japanese field gear: entrenching tools, mess kits, canteens and gas masks are almost everywhere you look.  Ominously, it is also strewn with unexploded mortar rounds, artillery shells and even the occasional hand grenade, which is unsurprising considering the unrelenting character of the fighting that took place there. It has been estimated that U.S. forces used over 118,000 hand grenades and over 150,000 mortar rounds during the battle. Even though de-mining and UXB/UXO clearing has been going on for quite some time on the island, the Jungle Trail is a place where you can still see “Explosive Remnants of War” as they are now called.

To anyone with even a remote interest in the Pacific War, hiking Peleliu’s Jungle Trail provides an experience like no other, because there just isn’t a battlefield anywhere else on earth quite like it. Guam, Saipan and Tinian are close, but they are places where the modern era feels quite a bit more present than it does on Peleliu. And even though it is now overgrown in a way that it was not during the battle, at every turn Peleliu reminds you how one of the most intense battles of the 20^th Century was fought on it – especially on the Jungle Trail in the Umurbrogol Pocket.

By the 8^th of November there were only 300 Japanese Imperial Army soldiers left in the pocket, but still they fought on. By the 24^th, the Americans had captured every enemy position but one – the island’s “Last Command Post.” Colonel Kunio Nakagawa, the 46-year old commanding officer of the Imperial Army’s 2nd Infantry Regiment, had led Japanese forces throughout the vicious engagement, but after 70 days of combat all that he had left was 120 men, more than half of which were so badly wounded that they could not fight. Colonel Nakagawa understood that defeat was inevitable and, rather than surrendering or allowing himself to be captured, he burned his regimental colors and then committed ritual suicide.

The Peleliu Jungle Trail ultimately leads you to the site of his “Last Command Post,” but you have to do a little climbing to reach it. While that place may feel more than a little haunted, for anyone interested in this chapter of World War II history there is no better place to contemplate the Battle of Peleliu – a battle that was supposed to last only three days. When the Army finally declared the island secure on November 27^th though, two months, one week and five days had passed. That two months, one week and five days had been characterized by battle fatigue, heat exhaustion, and disease, in addition to staggering combat casualties.

Peleliu was a place of blood and suffering that stood in sharp contrast to every battle that came before it and, in many ways, introduced the U.S. to the confronting reality that achieving victory in the Pacific through ground combat operations was going to be costly and time consuming.

U.S. Marines at the Battle of Peleliu