Medal of Honor Recipients
Private First Class Robert Lee Wilson’s Medal of Honor citation reads as follows: “For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving with the Second Battalion, Sixth Marines, Second Marine Division, during action against enemy Japanese forces at Tinian Island, Marianas Group, on 4 August 1944. As one of a group of Marines advancing through heavy underbrush to neutralize isolated points of resistance, Private First Class Wilson daringly preceded his companions toward a pile of rocks where Japanese troops were supposed to be hiding. Fully aware of the danger involved, he was moving forward while the remainder of the squad, armed with automatic rifles, closed together in the rear when an enemy grenade landed in the midst of the group. Quick to act, Private First Class Wilson cried a warning to the men and unhesitatingly threw himself on the grenade, heroically sacrificing his own life that the others might live and fulfill their mission. His exceptional valor, his courageous loyalty and unwavering devotion to duty in the face of grave peril reflect the highest credit upon Private First Class Wilson and the United States Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.”
Private Joseph W. Ozbourn’s Medal of Honor citation reads as follows: “For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as a Browning Automatic Rifleman serving with the First Battalion, Twenty-third Marines, Fourth Marine Division, during the battle for enemy Japanese-held Tinian Island, Marianas Islands, 30 July 1944. As a member of a platoon assigned the mission of clearing the remaining Japanese troops from dugouts and pillboxes along a tree line, Private Ozbourn, flanked by two men on either side, was moving forward to throw an armed hand grenade into a dugout when a terrific blast from the entrance severely wounded the four men and himself. Unable to throw the grenade into the dugout and with no place to hurl it without endangering the other men, Private Ozbourn unhesitatingly grasped it close to his body and fell upon it, sacrificing his own life to absorb the full impact of the explosion, but saving his comrades. His great personal valor and unwavering loyalty reflect the highest credit upon Private Ozbourn and the United States Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.”
Aftermath
By 14 August the entire 4th Division had embarked on the long trip to its base camp on Maui. It had suffered in this brief operation more than 1,100 casualties, including 212 killed. Its next assignment would be Iwo Jima.
Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 87678
In an impromptu command post set up behind his 8th Marines, Col Clarence R. Wallace checks the progress of his frontline troops on a situation map. The overhead poncho provides some protection from Tinian’s constant rains.
The 2d Division remained in the Marianas, setting up a base camp on Saipan where the 2d and 6th regiments took up residence in mid-August. The 8th Marines remained on Tinian for mopping-up purposes until October 25, when the 2d and 3d Battalions moved to Saipan, leaving an unhappy 1st Battalion behind until its relief at the end of the year.
The campaign for Tinian had cost the division 760 casualties, including 105 killed. These numbers did not include casualties suffered after the island was “secured” on 1 August.
Japanese military losses, based on bodies counted and buried, totaled 5,000. Other thousands are assumed to have been sealed up in caves and underground fortifications. The number of prisoners taken was 250 by some counts and 400 by others.
It was not long after the initial landing that Marines encountered the civilian population of Tinian. Here Marines bathe a tiny Tinian girl after she and her family had been removed from a hillside dugout. Following the scrubbing, new clothes were found for the children and the entire family was taken to a place of safety in the rear.
Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 90441
The capture of the Marianas gave the Army Air Corps the B-29 bases it needed for the bombing of Japan. They were located 1,200 nautical miles from the home islands of Japan, a distance ideal for the B-29 with its range of 2,800 miles. Tinian became the home for two wings of the Twentieth Air Force. Three months after the conquest of Tinian, B-29s were hitting the Japanese mainland. Over the next year, according to numbers supplied by the Air Force to historian Carl Hoffman, the B-29s flew 29,000 missions out of the Marianas, dropped 157,000 tons of explosives which, by Japanese estimates killed 260,000 people, left 9,200,000 homeless, and demolished or burned 2,210,000 homes.
Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 419222
Former Marine Corps Combat Correspondent SSgt Federico Claveria looks at photograph of himself giving an interned Tinian child candy 25 years earlier. Claveria participated in the initial landings on Roi-Namur and Saipan also.
Top commanders gather for the flagraising on 3 August 1944 at the conclusion of Tinian operations. From left are RAdm Harry W. Hill; MajGen Harry Schmidt; Adm Raymond L. Spruance; LtGen Holland M. Smith; VAdm Richmond Kelly Turner; MajGen Thomas A. Watson; and MajGen Clifton B. Cates.
Marine Corps Historical Collection
Tinian’s place in the history of warfare was insured by the flight of Enola Gay on 6 August 1945. It dropped a nuclear weapon on Hiroshima. Two days later a second nuclear weapon was dropped on Nagasaki. The next day, the Japanese government surrendered.
Marine Corps Combat Art Collection
“Japanese Backyard in Tinian Town,” by Gail Zumwalt
In his official history of the 2d Marine Division, Richard W. Johnston records the reaction when news of the surrender reached the division at its base on Saipan:
They looked at Tinian’s clean and rocky coast, at the coral boulders where they had gone ashore, and they thought of the forbidding coasts of Japan—the coasts that awaited them in the fall. “That Tinian was a pretty good investment, I guess,” one Marine finally said.
The anecdote may be apocryphal. The sentiment is historically true.
The hand salute in its various forms is rendered by those present as the colors are raised over Tinian on 1 August. At the extreme right is VAdm Richmond K. Turner; commander, Expeditionary/Northern Attack Force for the Tinian landings.
Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 152064
Sources
In addition to the official Marine Corps histories of the Tinian campaign, Lt John C. Chapin, The Fourth Marine Division in World War II (Washington, August, 1945); John Costello, The Pacific War (New York, 1981); John Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York, 1986); Maj Carl W. Hoffman, Saipan: The Beginning of the End (Washington, 1950); Maj Carl W. Hoffman, The Seizure of Tinian (Washington, 1951); Frank Olney Hough, The Island War: The U.S. Marine Corps in the Pacific (Philadelphia, 1947); Jeter A. Isely and Philip A. Crowl, The U.S. Marine Corps and Amphibious War (Princeton, 1951); Richard W. Johnston, Follow Me! The Story of the Second Marine Division in World War II (New York, 1948); Allen R. Millett, Semper Fidelis: The History of the United States Marine Corps (New York, 1991); J. Robert Moskin, The U.S. Marine Corps Story (Boston, 1992); Carl W. Proehl (ed.), The Fourth Marine Division in World War II (Nashville, 1988); Henry I. Shaw, Jr., Bernard C. Nalty, Edwin T. Turnbladh, Central Pacific Drive: History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, vol III (Washington, 1966); Ronald H. Spector, Eagle Against the Sun (New York, 1985).
The transcripts of the following retired Marines interviewed for the Marine Corps Oral History Program reside in the Oral History Collection, Marine Corps Historical Center, Washington Navy Yard, Washington, D.C. Their roles at Tinian are as indicated: BGen William W. Buchanan, assistant naval gunfire officer, 4th Marine Division; Gen Clifton B. Cates, commanding general, 4th Marine Division; LtCol Justice M. Chambers, commanding officer, 3d Battalion, 25th Marines; MajGen Carl W. Hoffman, commanding officer, Company G, 2d Battalion, 8th Marines; Gen Robert E. Hogaboom, G-3, Northern Troops Landing Force; MajGen Louis R. Jones, commanding officer, 23d Marines; BGen Frederick J. Karch, S-3, 14th Marines; MajGen Wood B. Kyle, commanding officer, 1st Battalion, 2d Marines; MajGen William W. Rogers, chief of staff, 4th Marine Division; LtGen James L. Underhill, island commander, Tinian.
About the Author
Richard Harwood, a journalist and news executive, retired as deputy managing editor of The Washington Post in 1988. He now writes an editorial column for The Post which is distributed nationally by the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service. He served in the U.S. Marines from 1942 until 1946, and spent 30 months in the Pacific. As a radio operator in the V Amphibious Corps he participated in four operations, including Tinian.
Errata
In A Different War: Marines in Europe and North Africa, page 32 reports Adm Hewitt visited the cruiser “Helena (CL-50)” in spring 1946. This cruiser was sunk in 1943. The ship the admiral boarded was its successor, the heavy cruiser Helena (CA-75). On page 27 of Liberation: Marines in the Recapture of Guam, the 77th Infantry Division patrolled hills to the east, rather than to the west. The date of the action which merited a Medal of Honor for PFC Harold G. Epperson is 25 June 1944, not July, as stated on page 30 of Breaching the Marianas: The Battle for Saipan.
THIS PAMPHLET HISTORY, one in a series devoted to U.S. Marines in the World War II era, is published for the education and training of Marines by the History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, Washington. D.C., as a part of the U.S. Department of Defense observance of the 50th anniversary of victory in that war.
Editorial costs of preparing this pamphlet have been defrayed in part by a bequest from the estate of Emilie H. Watts, in memory of her late husband, Thomas M. Watts, who served as a Marine and was the recipient of a Purple Heart.
WORLD WAR II COMMEMORATIVE SERIES
DIRECTOR OF MARINE CORPS HISTORY AND MUSEUMS
Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons, USMC (Ret)
GENERAL EDITOR,
WORLD WAR II COMMEMORATIVE SERIES
Benis M. Frank
CARTOGRAPHIC CONSULTANT
George C. MacGillivray
EDITING AND DESIGN SECTION, HISTORY AND MUSEUMS DIVISION
Robert E. Struder, Senior Editor; W. Stephen Hill, Visual Information
Specialist; Catherine A. Kerns, Composition Services Technician
Marine Corps Historical Center
Building 58, Washington Navy Yard
Washington, D.C. 20374-5040
1994
PCN 190 003127 00
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors and unbalanced quotation marks have been corrected.
To make this eBook easier to read, particularly on handheld devices, some images have been made relatively larger than in the original pamphlet, and centered, rather than offset to one side or the other; and some were placed a little earlier or later than in the original. Sidebars in the original have been repositioned between chapters and identified as “[Sidebar (page nn):”, where the page reference is to the original location in the source book. In the Plain Text version, the matching closing right bracket follows the last line of the Sidebar’s text and is on a separate line to make it more noticeable. In the HTML versions, that bracket follows the colon, and each Sidebar is displayed within a box.
Original text uses “Kiyochi Ogata” and “Kiyoshi Ogata” to refer to the same person.
Sidebar “[Tinian Defense Forces]” (originally on page [9]): “Laslo Point” is shown as as “Lalo Point” on the maps in this book.
Page [27], illustration caption: “the rocky slopes” was misprinted as “rockly”; “operation” was misprinted as “operating”; “pock-mocking” was printed that way and has not been changed.