The suicidal resistance of Japanese soldiers on the islands of the Pacific Ocean was becoming a major problem for the island hopping Americans. Saipan was a 72 square-mile-island in the Marianas. Its 25,000 civilians were predominantly Japanese. They were taught that suicide was a "shield for the Emperor" and the most honorable of deaths. The Japanese civilians had been taught by propaganda that they would be killed upon capture by the Americans. This propaganda painted a false picture of the American soldier. Howard Warmington gives his story of his experience there.
Mike DeCoste
I was stationed in the navy and along with having building skills, I was a skilled mechanic. After a brief stop at Anaweitok, I arrived at the island of Saipan. When we arrived in Saipan, there were still Japanese soldiers up in the hills. Having nothing but blankets (no tents) for protection, I grabbed a kitchen knife, for the Japanese soldiers were rumored to come down from the mountains in the middle of the night to steal things. Upon settling in we learned our mission, which was to build a Quonset hut hospital. One of the toughest things to do there was eat. I had to constantly brush flies off my food. The flies had been brought about due to the poorly dug mass graves. Many of our men were getting sick with dysentery due to the fly problem. One day I heard the sound of an unfamiliar plane and when I looked up I saw the rising sun on the plane's side. I was the first one to see it and so I notified everyone that a Zero was coming. The Japanese plane had beaten the radar by flying in real low. The Japanese plane got to the B-29 base before even being noticed. A few days earlier, me and a couple of other guys had dug an air raid shelter. It proved very useful as we might have died if we had not built it. Unlucky for us, the Japanese had been using it as a toilet and so when we jumped into it we were covered in dung. We had to bear the stench for the entire air raid. The next time I looked up I saw a Japanese plane explode in mid air. The plane burned up instantly and the engine and the pilot fell to the ground. For the next few weeks we had two or three air raids a night, and one night during an air raid I got up and ran the wrong way. After realizing it, I turned around and ran in the other direction. I found one of our shelters and got in. It was almost full so I had to get in on top, the most dangerous place to be. Upon looking up I saw a two engine Japanese Betty Bomber with only one engine. The pilot started firing away trying to kill as many people as possible before he died. He shot at our Quonset hut but noone was seriously injured. Next he began firing at a housing base for tanks. Many of the soldiers at the base never left their beds during the air raid, so when the plane shot at them, they were killed. As the plane tried to retreat, almost everyone of our B-29's zoned in on it and shot it out of the sky.
Howard Warmington
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