This is a riff on an Alan Frasier article on Military.com
From Guadalcanal to Okinawa, the Marine Corps earned its reputation for tackling some of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific Theater. What few remember is that the US Army usually fought alongside the Marines through some of the fiercest battles in history. One Army regiment—the 147th Infantry—stood shoulder to shoulder with Marines in five of the toughest Pacific campaigns. Its soldiers fought in the same jungles, on the same beaches, and across the same patches of volcanic rock, yet their story remains unknown.
From the Buckeye Division to the Pacific Theater
When the Army reorganized its divisions from four regiments to three in 1942, the brass separated the 147th from its parent, the Ohio National Guard’s 37th Infantry Division. Rather than joining another Army division, as many other regiments did, the brass sent the 147th to the South Pacific as builders.
Arriving on Tongatapu in the Tonga archipelago on 10 May 1942, the 147th teamed with two Navy Seabee battalions to build air and naval facilities while preparing to defend against an expected Japanese invasion of the island. The regiment battled fleas, incessant heat, and dusty conditions before Admiral Halsey turned the security duties of the base over to New Zealand, and the 147th departed Tongatapu by 10 November, bound to the Solomons and Guadalcanal.
Guadalcanal
Two battalions of the 147th arrived on The ‘Canal in November; the third in early December. On 9 December 1942, the 23rd Infantry (Americal) Division relieved the exhausted 1st Marine Division on Guadaldanal. On 25 January 1943, Alexander Patch combined the 147th, the 182nd Infantry Regiment (from the Americal), and the 6th Marine Regiment (from the 2nd Marine Division) into the Composite Army-Marine (CAM) Division, a unique formation by WWII standards. Together with supporting assets from the Americal and 2nd Marine Divisions, the CAM drove the final push to eliminate Japanese resistance around the ridges of Mount Austen.
In early January 1943, elements of the 147th cut off the Japanese escape routes along a 20-mile front while the CAM pushed the defenders back towards the western side of the island. Along the coast, the CAM Division began its attack with a three-regiment front. Alternating the lead attack position, the three progressed from one to three miles a day through weak resistance. By 8 February, these units had reached Doma Cove, nine miles beyond the Poha River and the same distance short of Cape Esperance. Japanese resistance ended on 9 February.
Saipan and Tinian
After nearly a year of rebuilding on Guadalcanal, the 147th relieved the reconstituted 4th Marines on Emirau Island on 11 April 1944, helping the Seabees construct an airfield while performing garrison duties until they were relieved by the 369th Infantry in June when the 147th moved to Saipan in the Mariana Islands. Using satchel charges and flamethrowers—called “corkscrew and blowtorch” in the vernacular—the 147th spent weeks clearing caves, bunkers, and pillboxes hiding bypassed Japanese even after the Americans declared the island secure on 9 July 1944. The regiment dispatched their specialists to nearby Tinian, where they again used flamethrowers, satchel charges, and grenades to burn or blast the Japanese out of caves and tunnels after the Americans declared the island secure on 1 August 1944.
The Cave Men of Iwo Jima
After the Marine invasion of Iwo Jima in March 1945 captured the island’s airfields in the first week of the engagement, thousands of Japanese hid in the island’s underground tunnel complexes. The 147th, part of the V Amphibious Corps floating reserve, landed to root these holdouts out while the Marines finished securing the island. They became known as the Cave Men, equipped with grenades, bazookas, flamethrowers, bulldozers, Bangalore torpedoes (pole charges), and satchel charges. For three months, the 147th hunted down, dug out, burned out, and buried holdouts. Bulldozers and explosives trapped thousands of Japanese inside their tunnels forever. Of just under 3,000 men, the enemy killed fifteen of the 147th and wounded 144 while inflicting over 2,000 Japanese killed, captured, or (estimated) trapped—nearly 10 percent of the island’s Japanese garrison.
Okinawa
Fresh from Iwo, the 147th landed on Okinawa in April 1945. After the collapse of organized Japanese resistance, the regiment again turned to cave-clearing operations, losing dozens killed or wounded rooting out the last Japanese. Like on Iwo, the 147th often simply sealed the caves. With Okinawa secured in June, one battalion went back to Tinian to guard the components for the atomic bombs in July. At the end of the war, the regiment rotated back home with little fanfare in September 1945. Half the regiment’s men by then were strangers to their Cincinnati home armory.
A Forgotten Regiment with a Unique Distinction
The Marines received widespread public recognition for their costly assaults throughout the Pacific, but people often forget the Army in the Pacific, even though it sent the most men to that theater than to Europe, and conducted more amphibious assaults than the Marines.
Despite its record, the 147th Infantry Regiment, Ohio National Guard, rarely saw their names in the headlines, and it had no patch to earn recognition. Over the course of the war, the 147th cleared more caves and killed or captured more enemy troops than many Marine regiments. Its legacy is a reminder that the Army, too, paid heavily in the island war against Japan, and that victory in the Pacific was a joint effort.
The Roots of Samurai Rage and Fear: Japan’s Path to Armageddon
The Pacific battles, marked by savagery and blood on both sides, are not the subject of Roots, but the motivation for the Japanese starting the war is.
And Finally...
On 7 November:
1914: The siege of Tsingtao, the last German Pacific colony, ends on China’s Shantung Peninsula during WWI, when the German garrison surrendered the port they’d held since 1903. Japan had captured all but New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago, which Australia seized, by the end of September 1914.
1962: After losing the California governor’s race, Richard Nixon tells the press, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore” at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Beverly Hills, California. He had already lost the 1960 Presidential election to JFK, but in 1968, he defeated Hubert Humphrey for the presidency, and on this day in 1972, he would win reelection in the largest electoral landslide ever before he resigned in disgrace in 1974.
And today is LITTLE LEAGUE GIRLS DAY, commemorating the day in 1974 when girls were officially allowed on Little League teams, which had been the sole province of boys since the organization’s founding in 1939 (except for a single player in 1950). Little League Baseball, with over 180,000 teams and over 2.5 million players worldwide, is the largest organized youth sports organization in the world.