Guam 1941/1944: Loss and Reconquest (Campaign, 139)

Rating:
Summary: Good Data, No First-Person Accounts
Review: The Japanese capture of Guam in December 1941 and the US reconquest of the island are covered by Gordon L Rottman in Osprey's Campaign #139. Although operations on this island in the Second World War normally do not rate much attention, Rottman notes that this was an expensive invasion by 1944 standards.

The standard section on opposing forces, plans and commanders are good, if dry. While Rottman notes that operationally the idea of landing two US Marine forces separated by 7 miles was unprecedented, he fails to note that the three major US units landing (3rd Marine Division, 1st Provisional Brigade and US Army 77th Infantry Division) had only a 2.6-1 numerical advantage over the defenders - a bit slim for an opposed landing. The author provides five 2-D maps (strategic situation; Marianas islands; Japanese defenses on Guam; the fight for the beachheads; daily progress, 21 July - 10 August 1944), three 3-D "Bird's Eye View" maps (3rd Marine Division securing the beachhead; the capture of Orote Peninsula and the Japanese counterattack on 25-26 July 1944) and three color battle scenes Banzai attack on the 3rd Marine Division hospital; trail-breaking in northern Guam; feeding the "Long Toms"). The maps were better in this volume than his previous volume on Saipan, particularly in filling in the strategic picture. On the other hand, the author notes that for coastal defense the Japanese had nineteen 8-inch guns and eight 6-inch guns, but doesn't identify where they were located in proximity to the invasion beaches. The author's order of battle is excellent - always as Rottman specialty - as is the bibliography.

Rottman describes the hopelessness of the small US Navy-US Marine Corps garrison in December 1941, which was quickly overwhelmed by the Japanese. The quick loss of the island at the outset of the war - and the fact that US military planners assumed that the island was indefensible - raises two questions not addressed by Rottman. First, why did the US garrison not have a better self-destruct plan to quickly dispose of aviation fuel stocks and vehicles to prevent falling into Japanese hands? Second, given the facts that the Guamian population was friendly and the island was fairly large and littered with caves, why did the US military not consider guerrilla warfare on Guam? Rottman notes the successful evasion for more than two years by US Navy signalman George Tweed, but what if the US Marine company on Guam had prepared arms caches and hide locations in the remote areas of the island before the Japanese invasion. Apparently, Guam is a pretty good place to hide, since Rottman notes that about "7,500 Japanese were still at-large on the island when it was declared secure" and the last holdout didn't surrender until 1973. Rather than meekly surrendering and heading off to Manchurian prisons, a small force of Marines and Guamians probably could have been more useful as a stay-behind force to assist the eventual reconquest of the island.

The strength of this volume -as all of Rottman's volumes - lies in the detail on daily military operations, but the weaknesses are lack of humanity and failure to analyze available data. Rottman fails to provide any first-person accounts or to even mention any of the four US Marine Medal of Honor recipients in the campaign Skaggs, Mason, Wilson and Witek). Even George Tweed's miraculous survival and escape rates only two sentences. Rottman suggest that US Marine battalions were gutted by heavy losses on Guam, at one point claiming that "most Marine battalions lost over 300 killed each, some almost 500." Rottman's casualty table shows 1,457 US Marine fatalities on Guam, which divided by the 15 Marine infantry battalions in the operation, yields an average of only 97 deaths per battalion (and this ignores artillery, engineers and support troop losses). If we consider total casualties, then it is possible that the rifle battalions suffered 300-400 casualties each, but we need to be careful with these numbers. Stastically, someone like John Kerry counted as three "wounded" in Vietnam, even though he was never hospitalized; on Guam, I'm sure some Marines were wounded more than once. The other issue where Rottman shows failure to analyze is to ask why the US Army, which had 35% of the combat troops on Guam, suffered only 10% of the deaths? Obviously, the Marine casualties appear pretty excessive in comparison to the US Army methods.

I also find Rottman's description of the Japanese counterattack on 25-26 July 1944 troubling. Coming less than three weeks after the destructive Japanese Banzai attack on Saipan, one might think that the 3rd Marine Division would have been expecting something similar on Guam. Instead, the 3rd Marine Division had all nine of its infantry battalions on line with no appreciable reserve and no defenses in depth; all of which greatly facilitated the Japanese counterattack. As on Saipan, the Japanese penetrated the thinly spread Marine perimeter and drove deep into the rear areas, inflicting serious casualties. While it is true that the Japanese attacks in both cases cost them the bulk of their assault force, it seems that a certain amount of luck saved the Marines from total disaster. I suspect that the Marine commanders were under pressure to expand the beachhead as rapidly as possible and this meant taking risks, such as no reserve. However, this was fairly foolish and callous toward the lives of their own men. Had the Marines had a smaller perimeter with a reserve, the Japanese would have been just as destroyed but with lighter US losses. My suspicion is that Rottman accepts the 1944-US Marine style of operations as the "right way" and insinuates that the more careful US Army tactics were "wimpy."