Worn on Saipan, it had a gold “4” on a scarlet background, the official colors of the U.S. Marine Corps. This emblem was designed by SSgt John Fabion, a member of the division’s public affairs office before the Marshalls campaign. His commanding officer was astonished to find that, when the division attacked Roi islet in Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands (January 1944), the layout of the runways on the Japanese airstrip there were “an exact replica.”
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The Army 27th Infantry Division
This division, before the national emergency was declared in 1940, was a State of New York National Guard organization. It contained many famous old regiments, some dating from the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. In World War II, the division’s 165th Infantry had been the renowned old 69th New York Infantry, also known as the “Fighting 69th” and “Fighting Irish” of World War I fame. The first unit of this regiment was organized in 1775.
As the war in Europe grew in intensity, the Selective Service Act gave the President the power to federalize the National Guard. Thus, the 27th Division was activated by President Roosevelt on 25 September 1940. It was first sent to Fort McClellan, Alabama, for intensive training, and then, in December 1941, to California.
On 28 February 1942, the first elements of the division sailed from San Francisco and landed at the town of Hilo on the “Big Island” of Hawaii. During the next two months, the division units were scattered throughout the island for local defense and training. That was the start of the longest wartime overseas service of any National Guard division in the United States Army.
In the fall of 1942, the division was directed to assemble on the island of Oahu. MajGen Ralph C. Smith took over command at that time. Then in midsummer 1943, orders came to prepare the 165th Infantry Regiment, reinforced by a battalion of the 105th Infantry and an artillery battalion, for an assault to capture the coral atoll of Makin, in the Gilbert Islands chain. Following a four-day battle there, in November 1943, the division furnished a battalion of the 106th Infantry for the unopposed occupation of Majuro in the Marshall Islands in January 1944.
The final prelude to Saipan for units of the 27th came the next month. Two battalions of the 106th fought at Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshalls.
After the division’s struggle on Saipan, it went on to the battle for Okinawa in April 1945, and then to the occupation of Japan in September 1945.