by
Fred McCaleb
I was on Saipan with the 428th Army Ordinance Tire Repair Company for a time during the last months of 1944 and in 1945 until WWII ended. The following are some of my recollections concerning the trip to Saipan, a description of the devastation seen on Saipan, etc.
We boarded the Dutch motorship SS Japara in Honolulus, Oahu, Hawaii for the trip to Saipan. It was a grey ship and took a left front position in a seven ship convoy. The convoy was escorted by three destroyer escorts that were running about twice the speed of the troopships. The escorts were checking for submarines to the right, left and in front of us as we proceeded. We were given practice abandon ship lessons ever so often. That way one would never know if a practice or the real thing. The convoy was halted at Eniwetock Atoll for about ten days until conditions got better in the waters toward Saipan. At Eniwetok we saw the remains of some Japanese ships that had been bombed and were still sticking partly out of the water. At Eniwetok most of us slept on the top deck on our blankets with life jackets as the pillow. Here the stars seemed to rock in unison with the rocking ship. One fellow on our ship got deathly sick while there and had to be taken away to a hospital. I hope he lived. The sun beamed down very hot in the daytime. Finally we left. Our ship had a short wave radio that was hooked to the loudspeaker system and that tuned to Tokyo Rose. She would play American swing music and tell the married soldiers that their wives were right now out with a 4F. That didn't bother me since I was unmarried at the time. But then she said that there was a 7 ship convoy proceeding toward Saipan that wouldn't make it. That sort of shook things up. The destroyer escorts increased their activity. We started changing direction every few minutes, and the ships in the convoy closed in next to each other when night came. We came through without any ship getting torpedoed and arrived safely in Saipan. We heard by the grapevine that the Japara was sunk on the next trip. Whether that was true I will never know.
On arriving on Saipan we were treated to a good meal by Japanese prisoners of war as KPs. I found one could speak English and that he was from Utah,U.S.A. Saipan had been almost totally wiped out. There were a few house foundations and a bronze statue to the man that had introduced sugar growing to Saipan. These were in what had been the city of Garapan. The statue had many bullet scars. In the city of Charan Kanoa there was left the twisted steel framework of a sugar refinery. Everything else was gone. The U.S. bombers and naval ships, the marines and infantry had done their job. An estimated 15,000 Japanese soldiers had been pushed to one end of the island where there was nothing left but a cliff and ended their life by jumping into the Pacific ocean. A few Japanese and natives had surrendered, and they were in a concentration camp surrounded by barb wire and with no bathing facilities.
After being on Saipan a week or two, I and three other members of the 428th company were sent to Guam to help the Navy Seabees set up a tire repair shop. The B-24 bombers were bombing Iwo Jima at that time. Our tent was at the end of a naval pursuit plane field. The planes came over about 20 feet above our tent while we were trying to sleep at night. While we were on Guam we saw the marines and infantry leave in troopships to take Iwo Jima. About two weeks later we saw a big white ship with a red cross on its side come back with the wounded and the dying. They were the lucky ones. The rest had been killed. We also had a bombing scare while on Guam. In the bombing scare we turned all lights out, shut down the shop, and waited for the Japanese to attack. It turned out to be one of our own bombers that had been to Iwo Jima and his IFF wasn't working. The airports were all shut down and he had to land on the beach. One Seabee operating a bulldozer was killed while we were on Guam. We got a weapons carrier and toured the island while there. Some of the places we went were dangerous spots. My best elementary school friend, Marvin Johnson, was killed while helping take Guam. on the airplane trip to Guam the plane was overloaded when it left Tinian and took a mile or two to get off the ground, and when about halfway over near the Japanese island of Rota one engine quit. The wing immediately slanted down and I thought to myself,"This is the last of me." Fortunately the pilot got the engine going again, and all was well.
On arriving back on Saipan to our tire repair company a month later, the landscape had completely changed. Where two cities had been were now row on row of warehouses. Super roads, filled with thousands of army vehicles, had been built. There were floating piers for ship landings built with 8 foot hollow cubes of steel. The B-29 field had been constructed in record time. A mountain had been removed, and the end of the runway was a 200 feet drop into the Pacific ocean. Our tire shop occupied four of the wirehouses. An underground telephone system had been installed. I was told the Japanese dead were pushed into the same ditch as the cables. The signs of the horrors of war were gone.
While on Saipan I visited the cliff on the Pacific ocean where thousands of Japanese soldiers had jumped into the water when our marines and infantry pushed them to that end of the island. I visited the marine, infantry, and Japanese cemeteries. There were ten or fifteen thousand dead soldiers in each. I was told there were only rounded markers in the Japanese cemetery. War had been devastating and without mercy for the participants. The Japanese, by bombimg Pear Harbor, had started something they couldn't handle. One of my tent mate's hobbies was he was going back into the forest and collecting gold teeth fillings from Japanese skeletons. He also supplied us with bananas. I didn't take up his gold teeth collecting hobby, but ate the bananas.
When the B-29 field was finished on Saipan, one hundred and fifty B-29's left for Japan about every third day. There was also a B-29 field on Tinian, and 150 planes left there at the same time interval. The trips were staggered so that Japan got an almost continual bombing. Before leaving each plane loaded up with seven tons of bombs and 5000 gallons of aviation gasoline. There was a fuel pipeline from the piers to the B-29 field. There was always an oil tanker ship parked at the pier. When it left, another took its place. Our shop was near the piers. Japanese prisoners driving military trucks loaded with bombs passed by every few minutes. They were being forced to help finish off their homeland.
On the side of the hill where we had our living quarters was an outdoor movie. Here I saw many of the Hollywood movies that were produced in that era. While on Guam I saw an outdoor movie about the Pacific war. The B-17s were returning from a raid in the movie and at the same time planes were returning from a raid on Iwo Jima. There were bombers on the screen and bombers overhead at the same time. I thought that was unusual. Several of the B-29 crew members came to the movie on Saipan where I attended. They used to tell us how much of Tokyo had been bombed and burned during the last raids. The B-29 crews lost hardly any of the planes in combat, but operational difficulties claimed about five percent. The trip to Japan was 18 hours long. It was boring, and fuel was very low when they arrived back. Every plane that didn't make it back was replaced by another one that flew in from Hawaii. The field always had its quota of planes. The navy had flying boats to pick up downed crews.
About the first of August 1945 a soldier from Tinian visited his friend in our company. Tinian was across the strait about 6 miles from where we were on Saipan. He said, "Boy, they have a big bomb over on Tinian they are going to drop on Japan." I thought it must be a TNT bomb about twenty feet long. About a week after his visit the first atomic bomb in history was dropped. Hiroshima, Japan was gone. About three days later another was dropped on Nagasaki and another city was gone. After that the Japanese started talking peace. The Emperor made a speech telling the troops to surrender. His speech was rebroadcast every day and night from the military radio station on Saipan. The war was over. Nearly everyone on the island celebrated by firing off what ammunition they had. I instantly realized the danger of all this. I put on my helmet and walked up and down the center aisle of the prefab barracks we had by this time. Three bullets fell through the roof of the barracks. I never knew if anyone got killed celebrating victory. Anyhow I had been shook up.
Before the atomic bomb was dropped, we had been given instructions on the upcoming invasion of Japan. Every technical man was going to have to go as a soldier. Winter clothing was discussed. There was an estimate that at least 600,000 soldiers would be killed. At least that many Japs would also be killed. Truman's decision to drop the bomb had saved more lives than than the many that were lost in the bombed out cities.
By my being on Saipan in August,1945 I had been near one of the big events of all time. I think Truman made the right decision. I reached home Christmas day 1945 after leaving Saipan one month earlier. It took 17 days on a troopship to reach the west coast, about 4 or 5 days to cross the southern U.S. and a few days in army centers. When we reached the west coast, one soldier that had been with MCArthur in retaking the Phillipines, put his hand up and said, "I have returned." What a joy to be a civilian. Quite a few thousand didn't come back. by Fred McCaleb
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