Saipan wasn't a low-lying atoll like Tarawa or Kwajelein. It was a volcanic island like Oahu or Samoa, with tall mountains making progress difficult for aggressors.
And it was difficult, with both Americans and Japanese suffering appalling casualties, particularly the Japanese, who destroyed the remnants of their force in a final banzai charge, and for their commanding officer who committed ritual suicide.
Yet, unlike targets like Peleliu, it was an important location. From airfields on Saipan, American B-29s could reach the Japanese home islands. They did so, relentlessly.
In some ways the least expected and most disturbing feature of the battle was the suicide of so many civilians -- far more than the single woman we see in newsreels leaping feet first from a cliff. Thousands of civilians died by suicide. Mothers threw their babies from cliffs. The shore was littered with the dead.
Thank God we don't need to go through anything like that again, at least not for the moment.
And it was difficult, with both Americans and Japanese suffering appalling casualties, particularly the Japanese, who destroyed the remnants of their force in a final banzai charge, and for their commanding officer who committed ritual suicide.
Yet, unlike targets like Peleliu, it was an important location. From airfields on Saipan, American B-29s could reach the Japanese home islands. They did so, relentlessly.
In some ways the least expected and most disturbing feature of the battle was the suicide of so many civilians -- far more than the single woman we see in newsreels leaping feet first from a cliff. Thousands of civilians died by suicide. Mothers threw their babies from cliffs. The shore was littered with the dead.
Thank God we don't need to go through anything like that again, at least not for the moment.
