The Suicide Cliffs: Cpl Roy Roush Part II

Ken Harbaugh:

I’m Ken Harbaugh, host of Warriors In Their Own Words. In partnership with the Honor Project, we’ve brought this podcast back at a time when our nation needs these stories more than ever.

Warriors in Their Own Words is our attempt to present an unvarnished, unsanitized truth of what we have asked of those who defend this nation. Thank you for listening, and by doing so, honoring those who have served.

Today, we’ll hear from Corporal Roy Roush. Roush served in the Marine Corps during World War II, and fought throughout the Pacific Theater.

In this interview, Roush describes his experiences during the Battle of Saipan & the Battle of Tinian.

Cpl Roy Roush:

Saipan is where I was involved in most of the combat that I experienced of the four campaigns that I was in. So, happened that our company, was selected to land at the extreme left flank of the entire operation. And our platoon, the third platoon, was at the extreme left end of our company area. And our little squad was picked to be at the left side of that. So, when we went ashore, we were literally about on the end, last amphibian tractor going ashore. And if you look at some of the aerial views of us going in, you'll see this role of amphibian tractors, and our group is in the very, very, maybe last or next to the end, amphibian tractor going in.

Well, we were supposed to land at the extreme left end of Red Beach One, but when the amphibian tractors set up a line to go in, they spread apart. And consequently, we were landed several hundred yards to the left of where the end of Red Beach One was, which put us directly onto a beach that was still under fire by our naval forces, including the battleship California. They were still shelling this beach and a number of their rounds went off in the middle of our company and we suffered some casualties. One of my very good friends from Enid, Oklahoma, by the way, was hit by a large piece of shrapnel from the California.

Well, they lifted the fire. They realized their mistake, and they lifted the fire shortly after we landed. But instead of moving back to the right where we were supposed to, we stayed put, which meant that we were closer to Garapan, which is the capital city, which is to our left, than we should have been. We were only maybe a quarter of a mile or so. Garapan was a very large city, probably 20,000 people or so. It was more or less a modern city, completely different than Guadalcanal or Tarawa.

Saipan had been part of the Japanese Empire since about 1914, and they considered Saipan at about the same basis that we considered Hawaii. It's literally part of their homeland. It was very well defended. They had a very, very large military contingency there. And as soon as we landed, we encountered heavy reinforcements of Japanese coming out from Garapan by the truckloads and unloading in front of our company lines. It was a lot of very heavy combat all during the first day.

We faced incoming fire from as soon as we got within about a mile or, well, even further out than that. They had a lot of large artillery pieces camouflaged into the hills and into the site of Mount Tapochau. These were very well camouflaged and heavily fortified that our Navy and our aircraft, could not locate. And they continued firing on us all through the first day of the reinforcements that were coming in also. And then of course when we got closer, there was a lot of machine-gun fire and mortar fire. And even though it was a lot easier than Tarawa, there were still quite a few of our landing craft that were knocked out.

T he amphibian tank that brought us in went back to pick up some men from the second wave, and it got hit and destroyed its second attempt to come in, because the driver's body washed ashore right at our location the next day and I recognized him. As a matter of fact it was his head.

It was a very, very disorganized day with a lot of close combat. As a matter of fact in trying to recall what happened on that first day, shortly thereafter, it seemed like at least half the day was missing. I remember a few hours in the morning, but it was like that day had no afternoon, like the whole day was compressed into just a few hours.

During the night we fought off a lot of infiltrators and several good-sized Banzai attacks. Since these failed, they decided that they would attack us the next day with a very sizable Banzai charge, which they did. We could hear them unloading during the night in front of us. We could hear their mess gear, we could hear the motors from the trucks, they were having a last dinner. We could hear bowels flanking. We knew that when daylight happened they would come at us.

Just about daylight most of the men, including myself, had suffered from extensive battle fatigue because we had been awake for over 48 hours under intense excitement, and we were just about wiped out. I knew that we had to have some reinforcements, and I discussed this with my Sergeant, Sergeant Johnson, and he said, "We don't have any reinforcements." I said, "Well, they'll be charging us any minute. We can't hold them off." He says, "I know it." I said, "Well, what about tanks?" He says, "We don't have tanks." I says, "Yes, we do. I just saw them unloading down the beach just before dark last night." And he says, "Well, then go get them."

I gave my Browning automatic rifle to my assistant and took his M1 and I started running down the beach area to where these tanks were, a quarter of a mile away. Well, I had gone perhaps 100 feet when the silence was broken by a bugle blowing charge. This is the bugle that's written up in some of the official reports. They said that the Japanese bugler stood up in front of our lines and blew charge, and it was followed by a typical parade ground charge. Well, as I was running down the beach and I heard this bugle I thought I'd been shot and I thought it was St. Peter blowing his trumpet for me. And I turned around and looked, and here was a Japanese bugler standing out in front of their lines, plainly exposed and blowing charge. It sounded something like this... Something like that. He played charge through completely once and nobody moved. Marines stuck their heads up out of their foxholes and looked around like, what's going on? He started to play charge again. On about the first note he got shot by a marine and here they came at us and the battle was on.

Well, I speeded up my attempt to get the tanks up there. I was back up with four tanks in about 15 minutes. When our tanks got there, and I was in the first tank, by the way. But I jumped out just before they got to where my foxhole had been, and the Japanese turned their attack onto the tanks and the battle lasted for close to an hour before all the Japanese were annihilated. That was the only thing that saved the Japanese from penetrating our lines at the beech road at the extreme left flank. And if they'd have done that, they could have penetrated behind the lines for the entire operation. The men onto our right would've had Japanese in front of them and Japanese behind us.

There was a body count taken after that battle and there was 1,600 Japanese just in front of our company lines alone. Now, they were attacking onto our right as well so there was well over 2,000 Japanese in this attack.

From the location where we landed, we stayed there for about four days waiting for the rest of the forces to our right to come inland and to take the southern part of the island and then start sweeping toward the north. Well, after about four or five days when they got closer to our position then we moved out and joined them. From our location we did move forward toward Garapan a quarter of a mile to secure the beach area there because the Japanese had brought in a lot of artillery and tanks and so forth that was harassing us, so we had to secure the Red Beach area.

And then we moved back to the area where we had originally landed, and then we started up Mount Tapochau and helped secure that.

It was uphill, very steep. Some places it was impossible to climb up and you would have to avoid some of the terrain. You'd have to go around it. And of course, the terrain that you avoided and went around there was usually Japanese hidden in there. And as on Tarawa and other locations, including Guadalcanal, there was always a few Japanese behind us who had hidden as we went past them and then they came out and sniped at us from the rear. There was always Japanese behind us regardless of where we went.

The brush was very thick, very strong, stout. It would tear your clothes, it would cut your skin. You would have to avoid it. It was just very steep terrain with very thick undergrowth. There was no jungles like we had on Guadalcanal, but it was tropical growth but not the tall monstrous trees that we had on Guadalcanal.

The whole island had been a coral reef at one time, and then it also had volcanic activity on it. I don't know how the island was formed, but we had to contend with both of those, like I say, with large formations of coral inland as well as volcanic outcroppings. And it was full of caves, full of natural caves. And the Japanese, in the many years they'd been there, were able to enhance these natural caves and often connected them so that they could go in one cave and come out another cave half a mile away.

It was almost like Tarawa. These guys would take refuge in these caves and they were so large that throwing a satchel charge into the front might not affect the ones in the back at all. And of course we never knew how big or how small some of these caves were. It was very dangerous to go into them. We would throw some satchel charges into them initially and then wait to see if anybody came out. There was never enough time to begin with to make sure that we secured the area 100% as we went through, so therefore there was always survivors in the back of these caves that would come out.

And as a lot of you know the story of Captain Oba, O-B-A, who reorganized a group of Japanese soldiers and civilians. And he had up to 500 men or more at one time, and they organized attacks onto our positions, supply locations and so forth. After the war was over, matter of fact after Saipan was secured and we went on to Tinian, came back to Saipan, we had to reorganize and sweep through Saipan one more time from one end to the other, looking for these Japanese holdouts. Even that did not kill all of them. Some of them still survived. And Captain OBA did not surrender until well after the war was over, and he still had something like 75 of his band left and he made a formal surrender. That's how tenacious these people were.

Flame-throwers were only effective to a certain extent, and that by that I mean it was only effective in the frontal areas of these caves and bunkers. Anybody more than, say, 100 feet or so back into these bunkers and caves would survive. It would only eliminate those near the entrance. But if you're in the range of a flamethrower, there's no escape from it.

Every day from the time that we moved away from the beach area, each day was about the same, and where we would encounter Japanese positions, machine gun nests, sniper positions and so forth which would have to be dealt with. Like I say, every day was about the same until near the end. And we got down near the north end of the island, near Marpi Point where the suicide cliffs were, we began to find civilians hiding in the caves. This is the first time that we had encountered Japanese civilians or the native civilians. There was a native population on the Marianas called Chamorrons. They were something like the Filipinos. They had their own language and they'd been there for 1,000 years or more. As a matter of fact, they had quite a culture at one time. But they had pretty much integrated with the Japanese people and civilians, and they were as much afraid of us as the Japanese civilians.

The Japanese had spread a big lie on Saipan about the American Marines, especially the Marines because we did have an Army division there also. But they had told their forces, their military and their civilians, that the Marines were barbaric. That any of them that we captured, we would torture and kill, maybe eat their babies. As a consequence, all the civilians were terrified of the thought of being captured by our forces, particularly the Marines. And when we began to encounter them hidden in some of these caves, it was something. It's ingrained in my memory. I will never forget the fear, genuine fear that you see on these people's faces, civilians. Fathers, mothers, mothers with babies who just knew that the end was near and that a horrible end was going to be near. They were so afraid they were shaking. They were so afraid that sometimes they couldn't understand when we would say to them, in Japanese, to come out and don't be afraid. It's just like they were expecting a bayonet through them or something like that.

I remember the first time we encountered them, there were about eight or nine civilians in a very small cave. And the women and the babies were in the back and the men were in the front. These were all civilians. And we were surprised to see civilians instead of soldiers that we had encountered. We finally coaxed the men out and they were bowing and scraping and lying on the ground shaking with fright. And we were trying to tell them, "Don't to be afraid." And the only thing that seemed to get to them was some acts of kindness, offering them some food, offering them some water. They were dirty, they were hungry, they were thirsty. And by saying, "Come on, get up," and then we would offer them some water, and they were sure it was poisoned or something.

But it was the kids that we made the first inroads with. The kids didn't quite understand. And when we would start giving the kids candy you could see the transformation of the group. Hey, they're giving the kids candy. What's going on? Is it poison? And then pretty soon we would take one of the kids and give the kids some attention and making friends with them, shaking hands with them. When the transformation started taking place, I'll never forget it, in about a minute it began to soak in that they had been told a lie. We were not going to torture them. We were offering them kindness instead. And when this transformation took place, it was one of the most amazing things I ever witnessed. They were overjoyed, they would laugh, they would talk to each other.

A matter of fact, it was near the end of the day and we were going to dig in for the night. And I was starting to dig a foxhole with this one location. The man, the head of the family, came over and he took my shovel and he starts digging, start trying to dig the foxhole for me. When we called for some Japanese interpreters to come up to take them to the rear, they didn't want to leave us. Because they were afraid what might happen to them if they left us. They literally had to drag them off.

But that was just sort of typical of some of the encounters that were repeated for the few days remaining. The sad thing was, as we got closer to the suicide cliffs at the end of the island, we saw people literally jumping to their deaths. Mothers holding their babies and jumping off. Some families holding hands and jumping off together.

After the battle was over and after we came back from Tinian some months later, as I said, we were looking for Captain Oba and some of his survivors. We swept the area below the suicide cliffs. In some places, some of the large trees, I'm talking about trees that were this big around at the base, had some of the large limbs broken from the rain of bodies that came down from three or 400 feet above. Probably 1000 or more jumped off of that cliff.

And when we went back to, as I say, to secure the area, looking for the Japanese holdouts, some of their bodies were still in these trees. Skeletons, the remains. And it was a fairly narrow ledge near the base of the suicide cliffs. And it was like something out of a horror movie, walking underneath these skeletons. In some cases caught in the forks of the trees, arms on one side, legs on the other side. And there was a little wind, and they sort of dangled like this. Pretty spooky. But we did not find any holdouts.

Tinian has been described by some of the historians as the most perfectly executed amphibious landing in our history. It was different in one respect in that it was from one island to a neighboring island. And that's probably one of the main reasons.

One reason that they said it was perfectly executed was because we were able to go across a three and a half or four mile channel, from Saipan to Tinian, in amphibious tanks. We did not have to be unloaded from LSTs at a distance out.

Also, our Navy performed a very well-executed fake landing off a Tinian town, which was some distance from White Beach One where we actually went in. White Beach One was a small sandy beach, not even 100 yards wide. Maybe 60, 75 yards wide. Which was located fairly close to the neighboring island of Saipan. And this is where our landing took place. While our fake landing is going on some miles away. It went on for a considerable length of time before the actual landing, which drew a lot of their attacking forces to Tinian town. And while they're expecting us to come ashore there, which would have been a logical place, we sneaked in the back door, so to speak. And it was virtually unopposed. And we not only made the beachhead, but the amphibious tanks took us well inland. As a matter of fact, they took us inland, when we landed in the second wave, we went inland a good half a mile before we jumped out of the amphibian tanks. So compared to Tarawa,it was a picnic as far as the beachhead landing was concerned. But we still had a lot of stiff opposition on Tinian. It was no picnic after we got ashore.

Tinian was a smaller island. It was not as heavily defended. For one thing, it was mostly flat. So they didn't have the high elevations on Tinian like they had on Saipan. In other words, there were no Mount Tapachos or other hilly areas where they could put their large guns to fire down on us. It was pretty much flat until we got down to the far end. At the time, we got down to the far end where there were some cliffs and ridges, there weren't too much Japanese defenders left.

But Tinian had a lot of cane fields. Being flat, it was largely agriculture. So that offered a different type of resistance. They could move through the cane fields with tanks and troops, and encounters all of a sudden just face to face. And also, they could infiltrate through these cane fields at night very effectively. So when morning come, we could find Japanese within a stone's throw of us where they had not been there the night before.

It was very difficult from the standpoint in that you never knew where the Japanese might be. Because it was pretty much consistent as far as in these large cane fields, cane stalks all over the place. And the Japanese could be here or they could be there or anywhere. They could choose their spot. And we never knew where they were until we encountered them face to face.

This is a Browning Automatic Rifle. This was my favorite weapon. One like this was issued to me right out of boot camp in about August of 1942. It's a full automatic weapon, 450 rounds per minute rate of fire. However, it did have a selector on it so that you could fire a single shot if you wanted to. It fired from an open bolt position. It had bi-pods on the front and had a butt rest here in the back, and a shoulder rest here.

However, as soon as we got on Guadalcanal, we realized that since this weapon had been designed during World War I as a trench warfare weapon, we didn't need these bi-pods on front. So these were removed, dumped over the sides of our Higgins boat or whatever. Unscrewed the butt rest, and threw that away so that it also lightened the weapon. And also the few guys that did not take their bi-pods off soon found out that it was very difficult moving through the jungle with this. And so these were discarded. I don't know of anybody on Guadalcanal or any place else after about their second day in combat, discarded the bi-pods.

This was an awesome weapon. I carried this weapon basically through four campaigns. I think the Japanese feared this weapon more than anything else, even more so than our machine guns. Why? Because our machine guns were stationary. They could usually figure out about where the machine guns would be. They would be in a prominent location up front or maybe in the rear behind sandbags. And they were easy to spot. But a BAR-man could be anywhere where the riflemen were. They could be here one minute and over here another minute. And they always tried to draw the fire with a Browning Automatic Rifleman first.

Now, I don't know about the Germans, but they probably had a very high respect for this weapon also. After Tarawa, the Marine Corps decided that since this weapon was so effective, that from Saipan and Tinian on, they gave every fourth man one of these weapons. And that was one reason that we succeeded as well as we did on Saipan and Tinian, as well as Iwo Jima. And some of the later campaigns we were in.

I got into a few firefights with this, and I'm awful glad I had it. One time on Saipan I had to fight my way out of an ambush, whereby myself and another BAR man was advancing across an open area in front of a farmhouse. And he was slightly to my right, a little ahead of me. And we were ambushed by a Japanese officer and some men in a small chicken coop. We could not see them, but they could see us from the inside looking out through the cane stalks. They opened fire on us and killed the BAR man next to me. But it did a much better job than an M1 rifle. I might not have survived if hadn't had this. Because actually they were in two locations. They were in a chicken coop ahead of us, and they were hiding in a pit, a camouflaged pit behind me. And so it was crossfire from both areas. So thank God I had this.

Ken Harbaugh:

That was Corporal Roy Roush. Next time on Warriors In Their Own Words, we’ll hear Roush describe the Battle of Saipan, the Battle of Tinian, and the Suicide Cliffs.

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