WORLD WAR 2 IN REVIEW: The Nightmare that was Peleliu

by Joseph E. Brown

At least it is cool here in the cave. Those American Marines must be frying in their landing barges,' thought Private Uichi Kido. 'They've reached the reef ... Oh God! There must be thousands of them ... Our guns aren't stopping them ... Oh! They got one ... That is good ... Our gunners are excellent marksmen. But there are too many of them ... They keep coming ... they keep coming ...

'Soon it will come ... the moment when we meet them face to face ... Oh! My stomach is tied in knots ... Some of the men are vomiting ... I wonder if the Americans are trembling as I am ...

'For three days they have pounded us with their biggest guns ... For three days their airplanes have dropped bombs and rockets on us ... They made a horrible noise ... But General Inouye says that the shelling and bombs have done little damage ... We are lucky to have these caves ... We are safe here ... But soon the Americans will be on us ... Can we resist them long enough to turn the tide of the war again? ...'

The 23-year-old Imperial Japanese Army private huddled and waited for the supreme moment when soldier met soldier in a duel of death. His cave was on the island of Peleliu in the South Pacific. And he was cool. But outside it was different...

D-Days never seem to happen in ideal weather. For the battle of Peleliu, it seemed that Admiral William "Bull" Halsey deliberately chose the hottest day of the Pacific war. It was 8:30 a.m., 15 September 1944. Sweating it out in a landing barge was like suffocating to death. Noxious carbon monoxide fumes-there was no breeze to blow them away-made the ride ashore even more miserable. Half the troops of the 1st, 5th and 7th Marines were sick before they sloshed through the surf at Orange and White Beaches.

What was it all for? As islands go, Peleliu hardly rates a listing on Pacific charts. It is a tiny, five-mile-long dab of sand and coral midway down the Palau archipelago in the Western Carolines. Its airfield was within striking range of the Philippines, but it was useless to Japan if supply lines of the Imperial Japanese Navy could be choked off by the American fleet. Was the invasion, then, worth the cost in dollars and lives?

Halsey said so. So did Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander of the Pacific Fleet. But General Douglas MacArthur, the supreme commander in the Pacific and therefore able to overrule both, insisted. MacArthur said Peleliu had to be taken. If the island remained in Japanese hands, they could still mount air strikes against the island-hopping campaign aimed at retaking the Philippines. And MacArthur, still rankled by his bitter defeat at Bataan and Corregidor two and a half years earlier, was determined to conquer the Philippines, as soon as possible, and at any cost.

Military historians still debate MacArthur's decision, yet the battle itself remains an almost anonymous footnote in most Pacific World War II histories. Overshadowed by major engagements such as Saipan, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, it has escaped commemoration in song or monument. In fact, most Americans have never heard of the place.

Yet the bloody fight for this forgotten island cost more than 7,000 American casualties, nearly as many as at Normandy's Omaha Beach in France, three months earlier. Japan's Peleliu casualties were even greater.

Peleliu was a classic example of American military overconfidence. Only a month before the landing, Marine Major General William H. Rupertus estimated that the island would be taken "in a few days." As it turned out, his troops were still flushing Japanese stragglers from Peleliu's intricate cave system the following December-more than two and one half months after the first waves hit Orange and White Beaches.

The decision to invade Peleliu was made at a high level strategy meeting at Pearl Harbor in midsummer 1944. The Pacific campaign was proceeding smoothly, but although the Japanese were on the run, their fanatical leaders were fighting on.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt sailed to Hawaii for the strategy conference aboard the cruiser Baltimore; MacArthur made the long trip from his New Guinea headquarters by air. With other top strategists they studied the remaining key Japanese Pacific bastions barring the way to Tokyo; they included Peleliu, neighboring Anguar, Morotai and Ulithi.

Meanwhile, on Peleliu, Japanese General Sadeo Inouye, sector commander, and Peleliu garrison commander, Hiyoshi Nakagawa, met to discuss contingencies in case the Americans invaded their islands. After a long talk they agreed that if an invasion was to come, the Americans would hit the island of Babelthaup, 30 miles north of Peleliu, a short distance from bustling Koror, the headquarters island of Japan's Nanyo Gunto.

Nanyo Gunto was Japan's "South Seas Bureau," the scattered clusters of islands of the Carolines, Marshalls and Marianas Japan had quietly snatched from administering Germany during World War I, thus placing her in a position to be awarded possession by the League of Nations after the war.

Although, prior to the war, Japan used every tactic possible to circumvent a League condition that these islands of Micronesia remain open to outsiders, a few Americans managed to get there. One of these Americans was travel writer Willard Price, who later wrote a book, Japan's Islands of Mystery, describing in detail how Tokyo's strategists were illegally fortifying her 3,000,000 square-mile Nanyo Gunto. Price almost didn't live to write his book. In it, he describes how he was almost drowned in Palau-"accidentally on purpose"-when he became too curious about what he believed were military fortifications being erected there.

Another American managed to visit Palau (which includes Peleliu) during the pre-war years. He was Marine Lieutenant Colonel Earl Hancock "Pete" Ellis. Disguised as a German trader, Ellis drifted among the islands and peoples of the Marshalls and Carolines during 1923, but evidently his disguise was penetrated by the administering Japanese.

Ellis wasn't as fortunate as Price. One day, the U.S. Navy was notified that Ellis had died of "unknown causes" in the Palau Islands. Investigation disclosed that he might have been poisoned by the Japanese military police; the truth remains a mystery to this day. A Navy chief pharmacists' mate, sent to Koror to bring Ellis's body back to Japan, returned drugged, and suffering from amnesia. He was later unable to provide details of the colonel's mysterious death.

Second-guessing the skimpy intelligence provided the Americans, Inouye and Nakagawa decided Babelthaup, 30 miles long and the largest island in Micronesia except for Guam, would be the likely invasion target.

"No other island in the Palaus would make sense to the Americans," the tough Inouye said. "Its size alone would make it an ideal staging area for the American drive across the Pacific."

Inouye and Nakagawa, of course, had no way of knowing about the simmering feud that had gone on between the American commanders. MacArthur won out, and by late July and early August wave after wave of bombers swept north from Allied bases in New Guinea to hit the jewel-like emerald islands of Palau.

After studying the pattern of the raids, the Japanese commanders called another hurried meeting. The air attacks, they agreed, had not been directed against the big island of Babelthaup, but against tiny Peleliu to the south. Once again, they shifted their defense strategy against the invasion they now felt would come soon.

Peleliu is about five miles long and barely a mile wide. It was a difficult island to defend, except for a rugged, mountainous ridge running north and south along its mid-section. The ridge was honeycombed with deep, protective caves, that would make ideal bunkers, Inouye thought, almost impervious to air attacks, and because most of them were situated on high ground. Japanese defenders would have a commanding view-and sweeping artillery control-of Peleliu's beaches.

An airfield lay south of the ridge. "That," Inouye decided again, "will undoubtedly be the Americans' major target. It will be defended at all costs."

Inouye outlined his defense plans to his subordinate commanders in mid-August 1944. "We will prepare a main line of resistance here," he said, running a finger along a map showing Peleliu's main ridge. "Between the ridge and the beaches we will maintain reserve units, ready to mount swift counterattacks when our artillery has weakened the invaders on the beaches."

He thought of Omaha Beach, where German defenders suffered such heavy losses on D-Day because they placed the bulk of their troops too close to the beach.

"The Americans will land," Inouye said. "Then we will push them right back into the sea."

The 12,000-man Peleliu garrison was to become guinea pigs in a new island defense strategy.

Inouye ordered the natural caves and bunkers deepened, widened, strengthened. New caves were blasted from the mountainous hump of Ngesebus, a smaller, half-moon shaped island to the north only 500 yards from Peleliu. Ngesebus had once been connected to its sister island by a causeway, but the intense July-August Allied bombings left the causeway in shreds.

The Japanese commander also ordered every available land mine strategically planted around Peleliu, particularly in a thick swath around the vital airfield. When the supply of land mines ran out the Japanese converted aerial bombs to finish the job.

On Ngesebus, Private Uichi Kido watched the preparations with considerable fear. 'From what I see,' he thought, 'this will be a very bloody battle. Must I blindly follow General Inouye's order not to surrender? Must I die for the Emperor?'

Relaxing under a palm tree, Kido let his thoughts drift back four months earlier to when he had felt the same kind of fear.

He was serving as a mess cook on an Imperial Navy transport ship them, a job he enjoyed because it kept him from the sweat, blood, mud, and biting insects many of his countrymen were enduring as the onrushing Americans pushed them off island after island.

One day, an American torpedo suddenly destroyed Uichi Kido's life of relative comfort. The transport was cruising 40 miles north of Babelthaup, outside the Palaus' barrier reef when the torpedo struck without warning.

Within minutes, Kido found himself thrashing about in the warm Pacific waters. He could swim; the thought of drowning was secondary in his mind at the moment. What worried him were the sharks, the great, man-killing white sharks of this part of the Pacific he had read and heard about so often.

None came. Kido thought the oil slick around the torpedoed transport kept the sharks away.

His blood went cold as the cries of wounded and drowning shipmates shattered the stillness of the Pacific.

Then something struck his shoulder, and for a fleeting instant the thought of sharks again raced through his mind. But the young private's luck was running well-it was a large wooden door from his ship.

Painfully, with his strength ebbing, Kido struggled to pull himself aboard the door, which he desperately hoped would not sink under his weight; it was difficult because the door kept sliding at its corners. But he managed. He uttered a silent prayer, then slipped into a fitful, exhausted sleep.

When he awoke, he felt much better. Some of his strength had returned, and because it was now night, it was much cooler. 'How long have I slept?' Kido wondered. Later, he reckoned that it had been 12 to 15 hours since the torpedo had blasted him into the sea. He strained his eyes at the blackened ocean around him, but there was nothing in sight.

Kido drifted most of the night, wide awake and shivering, squinting at the horizon for the sight of an island. At dawn, he realized that the sea had become calm, that no longer did the huge swells of an open sea buffet his frail "raft."

It was mid-morning when three unbelieving Palauan fishermen spotted the lone Japanese. Kido saw the fishermen, and beyond their boat he saw the dim outline of an island.

With renewed strength, Kido hand-paddled the raft towards the fishing boat. The Palauans just stared at first. The struggle to leave his ship had left Kido's uniform torn to shreds; there was nothing to identify him as a Japanese soldier. He spoke:

"Where am I?" he pleaded.

One of the Palauans turned and pointed to the island rising faintly behind him.

"Babelthaup," he replied in Japanese. "Come. We will take you there."

Later, well rested, dried off, full of food and hot tea at Babelthaup's Airai Garrison, Uichi Kido had this thought:

'If I have survived this, I can survive anything.'

But now that he was peering cautiously from the Ngesebus cave, Kido was no longer so certain. The horizon was blackened with the hulls of American warships; hordes of landing craft plowed in trim, disciplined furrows across the reef toward Orange and White Beaches.

'The entire American Navy must be here,' Kido thought.

It wasn't the entire Navy, but a good part of it. Acting on intelligence reports that underestimated the strength of the Japanese defense, American naval commanders sent one of the largest task force of the Pacific war into the Western Carolines campaign.

For the Peleliu battle, Admiral Nimitz had assembled 800 ships, nearly 20,000 aircraft, and 250,000 men, including 19,600 soldiers, 28,400 Marines, and 202,000 Navy men, most of them already hardened veterans of other Pacific island-hopping campaigns.

The "softening-up," which began three days before the 15 September landing came in three phases. First, minesweepers neutralized the network of deadly mines the Japanese had strung around the islands. Next, frogmen swam through the hostile waters to set charges on remaining underwater obstacles such as concrete and steel barge traps. And then naval guns bombarded the shore. The shelling was intense. In three days, American warships dumped more than 12,000,000 pounds of high explosives on Peleliu alone. Also shelled were neighboring Ngesebus and Angaur.

Under the command of Major General Rupertus, the American invasion force included the 1st, 5th and 7th Regiments of the First Marine Division, fresh from training in the Russell Islands. The Marines were to hit on Peleliu's west side, the 1st and 7th on the flanks and the 5th in the center. The beach was 4,000 to 5,000 yards long.

The Japanese defenders were "up" for the battle while Marine morale was in a slump even though the Americans outnumbered their enemy. Equipment was short, the weather tortuous, and most of them had heard the rumors about the invasion being entirely unnecessary.

The first Marine wave hit Orange Beach shortly before 9 a.m. General Inouye had prepared well; his line of mortars along the western slopes of the Amiangal Range, plastered the beach so heavily the Marines could barely move beyond the water's edge.

"It was murder," recalls John F. Balla, a Pfc. of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines. "The mortars had us zeroed in to the point we couldn't go either forward or backward. For 15 minutes, we were flat on the beach, looking for protection in the smallest depression."

Major Hunter Hurst, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, had a weird experience. He made it through the mortar barrage somehow, and found himself racing toward the airfield. Suddenly, he realized he had reached the objective alone, way ahead of his troops, and seeing the mass of enemy uniforms opposing him, retreated hastily to the sanctuary of the jungle.

From his cave, Uichi Kido could not see what was happening at the beach battle. But the sound of it nearly deafened him, and he could see the withering stream of artillery and mortar fire being thrown at the Marines from a particularly high hill known in Marine Corps annals as "Bloody Nose Ridge."

Rising about 1,000 yards north of the Peleliu airfield, Bloody Nose Ridge was to be taken after six days of fierce fighting.

As the first barges made it ashore at Orange Beach, Japanese artillery on the ridge opened up. The waves of Marines streaming ashore were battered around like ten pins. With the beach unsecured, naval support units could not send in the backup craft needed to support the Marines when they moved toward the airfield.

All was not going well offshore, either. Shortly after the initial landing, the invasion fleet was ordered closer to Peleliu so that the runs to Orange and White Beaches would be shorter, and less exposed. As the ships maneuvered, the transport Noa and the destroyer Fuller suddenly found themselves on a collision course. A lookout on the Noa reached for the ship's emergency whistle cord but in his excitement, missed. It probably didn't matter; by that time, the collision was unavoidable.

The ships came together with a crunch; the Noa sank in minutes, but the destroyer managed to limp away with heavy damage. Fortunately, all hands aboard the transport were rescued.

'We have prepared well,' Uichi Kido told himself, 'especially the camouflage. The gunfire seems to come out of barren soil, and the Americans seem confused.'

Under withering fire, the 5th and 7th Marines finally moved out slowly toward the airfield at Peleliu's southern tip. But as night fell on 15 September, the embattled 1st Marines still hadn't advanced beyond the thin beach now stained with blood and littered with dead. Historians recounting the battle estimate the 1st suffered 60% casualties the first day of the invasion. In all, 1,000 Marines were either killed or wounded in the first 24 hours of the bloody battle for tiny Peleliu.

On the second day the exhausted Marines fought the Japanese hand-to-hand as they struggled eastward across the beach and into the Japanese second defense line in the jungle; they were now joined by their commander, General Rupertus.

Rupertus walked with a limp (the result of an earlier training accident). He was stunned as he surveyed the scene of wreckage on the island. Along the 4,000-yard beach, the warm surf gently fell against the bodies of dead Marines; no one yet had time to recover them. Hardly a palm tree remained upright now; the savage four-day shell fire had stripped the island's perimeter foliage bare. Rupertus was told that the 5th and 7th Marines were nearing the airfield to the south and east, but the 1st was still in trouble. The general sadly noted that the Japanese defenses had been badly underestimated.

"The caves, sir...no amount of air intelligence could have told us what's up there," an ashen-faced aide said, pointing to the seemingly insurmountable Amiangel Range. "We've been catching bloody hell from artillery up there, especially from Bloody Nose Ridge."

Rupertus studied a map of the island, and pointed to the airfield on it. "We've got to take the airstrip at all costs, and soon," he ordered. "If anyone doesn't know the direction, tell him to follow the sun."

Gamely, against great odds Rupertus's First Division Marines "followed the sun" for two more days, plodding through vicious artillery and small arms fire as it inched nearer the objective. The combat became hand-to-hand, with the Marines using every available weapon: flame throwers, hand grenades, bazookas, rifles, knives, mortars, artillery, machine guns and, when all else failed, their bare hands.

The airfield was overrun on 17 September. Although the facilities surrounding were heavily damaged, the airstrip itself was intact, and within an hour the first Marine Corsair fighter plane rolled to a stop on its relatively smooth surface.

That was the turning point in the battle for Peleliu. With an operational airfield under their control, the Marines now had a solid toehold in the southern Palaus, and jubilation spread quickly through the tattered ranks of the landing force. At the same hour, Japanese morale plummeted. On Ngesebus, where Uichi Kido remained in his cave observation post, word of the airfield's loss cast a pall of doom where hope had been before. Kido's mind raced back four months earlier to the ordeal he had survived; 'Now,' he wondered, 'is it possible my luck will hold twice in my life, or am I finally doomed?'

With the Peleliu airfield in enemy hands, Kido reasoned, an attack on Ngesebus would surely follow. The 23-year-old private had reasoned well. Marine pilots took off from the just-taken airstrip loaded with bombs and rockets. The missions they flew were among the shortest of the Pacific war, barely 1,000 yards to Bloody Nose Ridge, where stubborn Japanese defenders still held out and another 8,000 yards or so to Ngesebus, where holed-up cave defenders such as Uichi Kido now raked the narrow channel with artillery and machine gun fire in support of the dwindling Peleliu garrison.

Kido shuddered as the first Corsair swept low over Bloody Nose Ridge and aimed at Ngesebus for the kill.

'The pilot,' Kido observed, 'hasn't even retracted his wheels!' It was a maneuver to be repeated dozens of times in the next few days. So short was the attack mission, Marine aviators did not even bother to pull up their landing gear as they left the Peleliu airfield, because a few minutes later, after dropping their ordnance on Bloody Nose Ridge and Ngesebus targets, they circled in for landing and reloading.

With the airfield now secure and Peleliu blanketed with protective close air support, Rupertus' troops turned their attention to the touchiest part of the Peleliu battle: the center of the island.

Earlier, it had been estimated that the entire island would be secured in perhaps a week or ten days. But strategists quickly revised that estimate as reports of the stiff resistance encountered by Marines in the island's cave system filtered back to command headquarters.

The Marines soon resorted to flame throwers to flush the Japanese from the caves, and inched their way at heavy cost up the slopes of Bloody Nose Ridge. The Japanese turned to a fanatical, suicidal resistance.

On the night of 23 September, the Japanese attempted a counterattack by sea. An estimated 14 large Imperial Army barges filled with gasoline, oil, ammunition and troops, slipped through the chain of Rock Islands scattered between Koror-Babelthaup and Peleliu under cover of darkness.

But the move was anticipated by Rear Admiral George H. Fort, commander of the Peleliu naval attack force, who ordered the destroyer Heywood L. Edwards and four landing craft to patrol the inshore area north of Peleliu.

"If you spot anything," Fort said, "shoot. We'll worry about identification later."

For hours, the radar scope aboard the Edwards showed only the stationary outlines of the tiny Rock Islands. Then, as Admiral Fort predicted, the line of enemy barges steamed into view.

The Edwards fired a barrage of star shells to illuminate the sky, then opened fire on the barges. Within minutes, 12 of the enemy craft were sunk; the remaining two fled back to Koror.

The loss of the seagoing counterattack force seemed to knock the little steam that was left out of the Japanese defense. Although pockets of defenders fought bitterly into December, the heaviest resistance actually ended on 27 September days after the landing-when the American flag was raised over First Marine Division headquarters.

Private Uichi Kido, shaken and disillusioned, had been captured on 25 September. Twice, his fantastic luck had held; of the 12,000-man Japanese defense garrison, only 301 surrendered. The rest were killed or wounded, or committed suicide.

True to his own orders to "fight at all costs," Colonel Nakagawa led isolated pockets of resistance, moving stealthily from cave to cave at night to rally his defenders, until the night of 24-25 November when even he decided all hope was gone. Then he committed suicide. Kido was released after the war.

Peleliu cost 7,794 American casualties, including 1,209 killed or missing. The high cost of taking the island and its neighbors of Ngesebus and Anguar (the latter, defended by 1,600 die-hard Japanese, fell shortly after invasion 23 October by the Army's "Wildcat" Division) has caused frequent debate through the years. In his book, The Two-Ocean War, noted military historian, Samuel Eliot Morrison, wrote: "It would seem that CinCPac here made one of his rare mistakes." CinCPac-Commander in Chief, Pacific-was Admiral Nimitz, but since General MacArthur figured so importantly in the decision to invade Peleliu the blame, if any is due, must be shared by the general of the Army, too.

Whether or not Peleliu was justified, the island today still bears scars of the war of almost a half century ago. Pre-World War II buildings stand as hollow shells, unrepaired since Marine and Japanese artillery ripped them apart in 1944. Jungle weeds have overtaken the airfield and only rarely does a visiting American stop by to see the U.S. military cemetery there.

Perhaps the most poignant reminder of the valiant Marine struggle there is a small memorial obelisk. Some years ago a Pacific typhoon knocked the memorial off its foundation. It fell onto the steamy soil of Peleliu, and no one has ever bothered to put it back.

"The Blockhouse" by Tom Lea. A flamethrower team of the 1st MarDiv on Peleliu. "There were dead Japs on the ground where they had been hit. We walked carefully up the side of this trail littered with Jap pushcarts, smashed ammunition boxes, rusty wire, old clothes, and tattered gear. Booby traps kept us from handling any of it. Looking up at the head of the trail I could see the big Jap blockhouse that commanded the height. The thing was now a great jagged lump of concrete, smoking, I saw our lead man meet a front line detail posted by the blockhouse while the other troops advanced down the hill with the three tanks and the flamethrowers. Isolated Jap snipers were at work on our slope, small groups of marines fanned out on both sides of the trail to clean them out, while we climbed toward the blockhouse." ... from Tom Lea's notes.

First prize at Peleliu Island was this heavily fortified airfield. Marines captured it during the second day’s fighting. This annotated photo shows important defensive positions.

"Hitting the Beach" — invasion of Peleliu. Painting by Tom Lea.

A rare image showing Black Marines mixing with their white counterparts, on the Peleliu front line in September 1944.

When the 1st Marine Division, on 15 September 1944, attacked the heavily defended island of Peleliu in the Palau group, the 16th Field Depot supported the assault troops. The field depot included two African-American units, the 11th Marine Depot Company and the 7th Marine Ammunition Company. The 11th Marine Depot Company responded beyond the call of duty and paid the price, 17 wounded, the highest casualty rate of any company of African-American Marines during the entire war. Major General William H. Rupertus, who commanded the 1st Marine Division, sent identical letters of commendation to the commanders of both companies, praising the black Marines for their "whole hearted cooperation and untiring efforts" which "demonstrated in every respect" that they "appreciate the privilege of wearing a Marine uniform and serving with Marines in combat."

Black combat support units also took part in the assault on Iwo Jima, where, as at Peleliu, their presence confounded the policy of segregation. Because of the random intermingling of white and black units, an African-American Marine, carrying a box of supplies, dived into a shell hole occupied by white Marines, one of whom gave him a cigarette before he scrambled out with his load and ran forward. Here, too, black stewards and members of the depot and ammunition companies came to the aid of the wounded. A white Marine, Robert F. Graf, who lay in a tent awaiting evacuation for further medical treatment, remembered that: "Two black Marines ... ever so gently … placed me on a stretcher and carried me outside to a waiting DUKW."

—Bernard C. Nalty, The Right to Fight: African-American Marines in World War II

"Going In, Peleliu" by Tom Lea. "For an hour we plowed toward the beach, the sun above us coming down through the overcast like a silver burning ball … Over the gunwale of the craft abreast of us I saw a Marine, his face painted for the jungle, his eyes set for the beach, his mouth set for murder, his big hands quiet now in the last moments before the tough tendons drew up to kill."

"The Price" by Tom Lea. Peleliu, 1944. "Lying in terror looking longingly up the slope to better cover, I saw a wounded man near me, staggering in the direction of the LVTs. His face was half-bloody pulp and the mangled shreds of what was left of an arm hung down like a stick, as he bent over in the stumbling, shock-crazy walk. The half of his face that was still human had the most terrifying look of abject patience I have ever seen. He fell behind me, in a red puddle on the white sand."

Tom Lea landed on the island of Peleliu with the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines. On the easel is "The Price", 1944.

"Night Counterattack" by Tom Lea. Peleliu, 1944. "I do not know what time it was when the counterattack came. I heard, in pauses between bursts of fire, the high-pitched; screaming yells of the Japs as they charged, somewhere out ahead. The firing would grow to crescendo, drowning out the yells, then the sound would fall dying like the recession of a wave. Looking up, I saw the earth, the splintered trees, the men on their bellies all edged against the sky by the light of the star shells like moonlight from a moon dying of jaundice. The phone rang. A battalion CO reported the Jap's infiltration and the beginning of the counter attack. He asked what reserves were available and was told there were none. Small arms fire ahead of us became a continuous rattle. Abruptly three star shells burst in the sky. As soon as they died floating down, others flared to take their place. Then the howitzers just behind us opened up, hurling their charges over our heads, shaking the ground with their blasts."

"2000 Yard Stare" by Tom Lea. " As we passed sick bay, still in the shell hole, it was crowded with wounded, and somehow hushed in the evening light. I noticed a tattered Marine standing quietly by a corpsman, staring stiffly at nothing. His mind had crumbled in battle, his jaw hung, and his eyes were like two black empty holes in his head. Down by the beach again, we walked silently as we passed the long line of dead Marines under the tarpaulins. He left the States 31 months ago. He was wounded in his first campaign. He has had tropical diseases. He half-sleeps at night and gouges Japs out of holes all day. Two-thirds of his company has been killed or wounded. He will return to attack this morning. How much can a human being endure?"

US Navy aerial photo showing the bombing of Peleliu airfield in late March 1944. At the bottom right of the image, above the handwritten word 'Peleliu' (see detail photo on next page), can be seen the canoe house and stone road associated with Ngesias village, with the older of two bai platforms visible at the head of the road. The settlement was destroyed during the September bombardment and land battle; this is believed to be its only contemporary depiction.

A line of landing craft spearheaded the 1st Marine Division’s assault of Peleliu Island.

The canoe house and stone road associated with Ngesias village, with the older of two bai platforms visible at the head of the road.

A wave of Alligator landing vehicles (LVT) head toward Peleliu in September 1944.

Marines hit the beach from their LVTs while under heavy fire from Japanese positions on Peleliu.

Marines use their .30-caliber Browning air-cooled machine guns to blunt Japanese banzai attacks on Peleliu.

Black Marines on Peleliu, 15 September 1944.

Several Marines take cover from the withering Japanese fire under a DUKW. An amphibious tractor burns on the beach in the background.

Three Native American code talker Marines who fought on Peleliu, here pictured on their way to Okinawa in late March 1945. From left to right, PFC Joe Hosteen Kelwood (Navajo), PFC Floyd Saupitty (Comanche), and PFC Alex Williams (Navajo).

Members of the survey team inside the enclosed space of the Last Command Post in Death Valley. The cave where the Japanese officers died is beneath the stone monoliths, behind UXO officer Steve Ballinger and archaeologist Neil Price.

Peleliu under fire, probably during the pre-invasion bombardment, circa 12-15 September 1944. Photographed from USS Honolulu (CL-48) plane. Photo looks North-East, with the airfield in the foreground and Umurbrogol ridge in the distance, partly shrouded in smoke.

A USS Mississippi (BB-41) casemate gun crew loading their 5/51 gun, during the bombardment of Peleliu, circa mid-September 1944. Note line of shell passers in the background, and the gun's breech in the lower right foreground.

Smoke and dust rises from the Peleliu shore, during the final stages of the pre-invasion bombardment, 15 September 1944. Photographed from an LCI gunboat, whose bow 40mm gun is visible in the foreground. Note waves breaking on the offshore reef.

USS Robinson (DD-562) fires 40mm guns to cover underwater demolition team men clearing beach obstacles in mid-September 1944, prior to landings by the First Marine Division.

USS Robinson (DD-562) slips along the beach at Peleliu on D-day, 15 September 1944. Her turrets trained landward, gun crews and lookouts eagerly scan the beach for a Japanese pillbox or gun position to blast at almost point-blank range.

Landing craft launch a rocket attack against the Peleliu beaches prior to landings by 1st Marine Division, 15 September 1944.

The first wave of Lets moves toward the invasion beaches, passing through the inshore bombardment line of LCI gunboats, 15 September 1944. Cruisers and battleships are bombarding from the distance. The landing area is almost totally hidden in dust and smoke. Photographed from a USS Honolulu (CL-48) plane.

A line of landing craft filled with U.S. Marines spearheaded the attack on Peleliu Island.

View taken on 19 September 1944, showing an OY-1 being manhandled on the flight deck of USS Petrof Bay (CVE-80), during the Peleliu Operation, codenamed Operation Stalemate II. Note motto on cowling: "It flies, don't it?"

Marines investigate a Japanese landing barge after attacking it with LVTs off Peleliu.

First Division Marines head for the beach, as their LVTs churn past the offshore line of LCI gunboats, 15 September 1944. Note gunner saluting from the LVT (2) in the foreground. Nearest LCIG is USS LCIG-452. An Idaho class battleship is bombarding in the left distance.

Two amphibious tanks race toward the shore during the beach assault.

A jeep tows an anti-tank gun carried ashore in a Coast Guard-manned landing barge. On the beach, tanks move forward in pursuit of the Japanese who have fallen back inland.

Marines engage Japanese defenders in intense fighting around the primary airfield on Peleliu Island.

A flag officer and his staff talk to shirtless Col. Lewis B. “Chesty” Puller during the Battle of Peleliu. Puller, a Marine, believed in leading by example and endured the same hardships as his men.

Using a flame throwing amphibious tractor, Marines shoot a tongue of fire at enemy strong points in a cave-infested hillside on Peleliu.

Marine riflemen and tanks in the Horseshoe Ridge area of Peleliu's Umurbrogol massif pass the only source of fresh water for the Japanese defenders, early October 1944.

The Battle of Peleliu, codenamed Operation Stalemate II. Men of the 5th Marine Regiment, US 1st Marine Division fighting their way up Beaches 'Orange' 1 and 2, Peleliu, Pacific. 15 Sep 1944.

Recovering the bodies of fellow Marines after the landings.

After the beachhead had been established on Peleliu, Marine infantrymen inch ahead on their bellies to support their tanks attacking Japanese strong points.

Marines used thousands of gallons of jellied gasoline (Napalm) to burn Japanese soldiers alive in bunkers and caves on Peleliu. Surrender was not an option for them.

During the fight for Peleliu, Marines would get their amphibious tractors into action against hardened positions whenever possible. This one assaults a Japanese pillbox with a flamethrower.

U.S. Marines taking cover behind a knocked out LVT (Landing Vehicle, Tracked) nicknamed “The Bloody Trail” during the first day of the Battle of Peleliu. Note the left-handed Marine firing his M1 rifle.

Picking their way through the rocky terrain on Peleliu, a column of Marines moves up to the front lines. This terrain was typical for the Leathernecks battling the Japanese forces.

A Japanese skull in a helmet warns Marines about snipers in the area.

Marine gives water to a wounded buddy, Peleliu, 14 September 1944.

The U.S. Navy Seabees (Construction Battalion) worked as stretcher bearers for the 7th Marines during combat on Peleliu.

Men of the 5th Marines attack across the open fire swept airfield on Peleliu on 16 September.

A Marine charges across the beach on Peleliu Island, Palau Islands, the "walkie-talkie" firmly strapped to his back.

Orange Beach 3 on Peleliu, D-day.

Marines firing an M1919 Browning .30-cal. machine gun during the fighting on the island of Peleliu. In the foreground another Marine with a BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle M1918).

Marine Pfc. Douglas Lightheart (right) cradles his .30 caliber (7.62×63mm) M1919 Browning machine gun in his lap, while he and Pfc. Gerald Thursby Sr. take a cigarette break, during mopping up operations on Peleliu on September 15, 1944.

Japanese POWs captured on Peleliu.

One of the main objectives in the Battle of Peleliu was the seizure of airfields for F4U fighters and other U.S. aircraft.

An F4U Corsair carrying a napalm canister for a close air-support mission taxis on the Peleliu airfield while fighting in the island's interior was still ongoing. Marine Corps aircraft began operating from the island's airfield on 24 September. A Curtiss R5C-1 transport plane is in the background.

A Marine Corps Chance Vought F4U-1 Corsair fighter attacks a Japanese bunker atop Umurbrogol on Peleliu with napalm bombs.

A U.S. Marine trains with a T-20 shoulder mortar. Roughly 100 of these weapons were issued to Marine units for the Peleliu invasion.

The T-20 Garret was a 60mm, shoulder-fired mortar. Spring-powered, the weapon is said to have broken Marine collarbones during normal use.

A damaged Japanese Type 95 Ha-Go tank. In island fighting, lightweight tanks offered advantages over heavy tanks more frequently seen in the European Theater.

A wounded Marine, who fell in the furious fighting of Peleliu, is carefully lifted aboard a transport after he had been evacuated from the bloody beaches in a landing barge.

Four Americans display a captured Japanese flag during Operation Stalemate II. The invasion began on September 15 and would run through November. This photo was taken on October 3rd.

Three Americans are given to the sea in funeral services aboard a Coast Guard-manned invasion transport. These heroes died in the fierce fighting for Peleliu Island.

View of Peleliu looking south on 29 June 1945, nine months after Operation Stalemate II. The former "White" and "Orange" landing beaches are on the shoreline at right.

"This Is Sad Sack Calling Charlie Blue" by Tom Lea. "We found the battalion commander [Lt Col Edward H. Hurst, CO, 3/7]. By him sat his radioman, trying to make contact with company commands. There was an infinitely tired and plaintive patience in the radioman's voice as he called code names, repeating time and time again, 'This is Sad Sack calling Charlie Blue. This is Sad Sack calling Charlie Blue.' "

"Artillery Support" by Tom Lea, Peleliu, 1944.

"Sundown At Peleliu" by Tom Lea. "The Padre read, 'I am the resurrection and the Light' The padre stood by with two canteens and a Bible, helping. He was deeply moved by the patient suffering and death. He looked very lonely, very close to God, as he bent over the shattered men so far from home. Corpsmen put a poncho, a shirt, a rag, anything handy, over the grey faces of the dead and carried them to a line on the beach to await the digging of graves." Peleliu was Lea's last wartime assignment. After taking his paintings to Life headquarters in New York, Tom heard what happened: The paintings were lined up so the managing editor Daniel Longwell could review them. Longwell entered, looked, and said: "Print every damn one of them in color, and I never want to see them again."