Man I gotta tell ya. I have been watching documentaries on WWII, and war movies, and TV shows, (reading too, but don't think that counts) all my life. Seriously, ever since was a small boy I got an obsession about everything WWII that didn't exactly take over my life, but boy-o-boy it was always there no matter what I was doing or who I was with. It all started with me going around the neighborhood at first, asking all the men about their war experiences. Out of all these interviews (I was 7 and 8 years old) I was most struck by the two Marines who I'd talked to as they were the most honest and forthcoming, also, related in such a way as tho they respected my sincerity. Serving in the 1st and 2nd Marine Divisions they conveyed their personal accounts so clearly and enthusiastically, I can remember each one to them word for word to this day. So affected was I after talking to these guys, after that all I wanted to know about after that was everything USMC. Ok I'm coming to it, I'm getting there... So I watched slash saw every movie, documentary blah blah blah of WWII in the Pacific and beyond if it had to do with the Corp., always checking for accuracy. Have to tell you after 60 years this is the best, most accurate, most thorough telling of the battle of Saipan I've ever seen, bar none! I didn't believe it would be possible after all this time, but give yourself a slap on the back, you did it. Great job! Ooo-rah, or Semper fi, er, whatever... WTG
I did the same thing as a WWII obsessed kid. I always looked for men who had blue tattoos because back then mostly only marines and sailors who had tattoos. Sometimes they gave me a little souvenir, too.
My uncle was in the Seabees, and was involved in repairing the runway at Aslito field. He told me about the arrival of the P-61 Black Widows. They were brand new and highly classified, and he said that as soon as they taxied in and shut down they were surrounded by armed guards.
I knew a guy who fought there. The Japanese bombed them at night. They only had one man killed. The Japanese didn't put the fuses in the bombs. One guy had a bomb fall on him while in his hammock. We,2 vet's are a American treasure.
Imagine being a Japanese soldier on Tinian hearing and seeing signs of the barrle raging a few miles away, then it fading into the distance and finally stopping. Then realizing you're probably next.
@18:22 The crucial resistance of HQ company of the 105th - organized by Lt Luther "Luke" Hammond. The regimental S-2 of the 105th. An officer who was denied any awards for bravery on that fateful night by General Holland Smith because he had the guts to stand up to General Smith and correct the General's grossly inaccurate and insulting estimation of enemy forces which overran the 105th - see my earlier post for the exact exchange between the two.
Yet Japanese resistance continued for another year and a half after the island was declared secure. Great movie about this is Oba the last Japanese samurai
The general who said he was prepared for anything the Japanese could throw at them but left isolated units out on his perimeter should have been quickly demoted and kicked out of the service. They knew it was coming and he did not prepare his men right.
I visited Saipan in 1976. One of the most memorable places I visited was Suicide Cliff. I remember looking over the cliff to an 800 foot drop to the rocks below and thinking of the thousands of Japanese soldiers and civilians who leaped to their deaths where I was standing.
Thank you for your comment, and honestly, I think your comments add value to these videos. In the sources I used for this video, it's written that Lieutenant Colonel O'Brien was the commander of the 1st Battalion. In my opinion, Lieutenant Colonel is too high a rank for the battalion commander, so I guess you are right.
@@FromtheBattlefields a minor error. No worries. My uncle was the last person to see Lt Colonel O'Brien alive. I can remember my uncle retelling the story, tugged at his earlobe, pulled out a sliver of shrapnel, looked at it and said "look! Purple heart number 7!", Then flipped it off the porch we were on. I don't know what happened to them, but he still had his topo maps of Saipan and Okinawa in 1985.
I read a horrible story about Saipan. A Japanese girl about 10 was in charge of a group of kids whose parents had been killed. A Japanese soilder gave her a granade and told her to use it when the Americans rapped her. She hid out with the younger kids and saw African American Marines coming up the road. The kids were terrified but watched. The Marines where carring Japanese babies. Holding them and gently rocking them. Their parents had killed themselves but couldn't bring themselves to kill their children. She surrendered to the Marines and were taken to a hospital. There she saw U.S. troops running around trying to find milk and passing out candy bars to the kids. She also saw cobat troops openly cryijng because they couldn't save more.
Burma is on my to-do list. New Guinea and Solomon Islands campaigns will sooner or later arrive on my list, but these two campaigns are long-lasting, so I need to figure out how to cover them.
@@FromtheBattlefields Thanks for the reply! Lastly could I ask if you'd ever cover naval battles of the Pacific along side or after the land battles? There's many like the battle of Vella Lavella & cape Esperence that basically haven't been covered in the way you cover it on YT with mapped visuals and movements of units yet. Btw Appreciate your good work, the computer generated voice honestly doesn't affect it when its detailed good presentation so ignore the comment that moan about it.
@@scarletcrusade77 I had plans to do naval battles. However, when I saw how other YT creators work and how good and detailed their videos are, I somehow did not dare enter that field.
Alexander Peña, 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan and Tinian, He was WIA June 17th on Saipan and soon after was KIA July 30th 1944 on Tinian, the island was declared secured Aug 1st, he almost made it home, R.I.P Uncle Alex, The Greatest Generation of All Time, God Bless America.
It is definitely PPSH 41, but it's not a Soviet soldier. Probably this footage was recorded during the Korean War and edited into a video about the 27th Division.
@@FromtheBattlefields: in looking at again, you're right about it being an American GI. To me, at first glance his helmet also looked to be the type used by the Red Army.
Thanks for the factual account of what the 27th was up against without all of the Marine propaganda. The Army was up against the toughest terrain on Saipan, and General Holland Smith refused to land 27th division artillery units or provide adequate artillery support to the 27th. General Holland Smith hated the Army and the 27th in particular, because they used tactics and firepower as opposed to the USMC's typical frontal infantry assaults which caused higher casualties amongst the USMC. The afternoon of the 7th, after the remaining 2 combat effective officers (the other 2 surviving officers were severely wounded and evacuated) and 182 soldiers of the 105th had recaptured every inch of ground lost that morning General Smith is known to have said to one of the surviving officers "what kind of cowardly sons of bitches let an entire regiment get wiped out by 500 drunk Japs". To which that officer replied "Sir, you need to count the damned bodies because it was 5,000."
@@TheDustysix stupidity abounds. The 27th was thoroughly vindicated. Reading comprehension not your strong point is it? The 27th was as good as any other division in the Pacific, Marine or Army - the ONLY problem was one person - General Holland Smith. Give some evidence that the 27th "couldn't hack it on Okinawa". They captured as much ground as any other division.
Bulldust on cutting the causalities and suicides, You Tube is not requiring you to do this. Here is some original footage of Tarawa and Iwo Jima, it is not pixelated and cut. th-cam.com/video/MqPfQ8suI2Q/w-d-xo.html What you are proposing is YOUR sensitivities not You Tube censorship or requirements.
Dear TH-cam creators. STOP USING THE ROBOT VOICE! It makes what should otherwise be a well crafted and well documented video unwatchable. It’s just emotionless droning on in a flat dry tone, riddled with bad mispronunciations. If you’re going to put all this work in on a 3 part series on Saipan, at least pay an actual human being to read your script instead of the robot.
This is one of the better robot voices I have heard. Clear diction and easily understood. The robotiness is very limited. Better than a human being with an accent.
Isn't it interesting that any scenes of the casualties and the suicides on the northern cliffs are deleted or pixelated out because the tender sensibilities of the cross dressers and WOKIES cannot handle it, but when posting the most godless of language and killing of gangster scenes on the Hollywood films is perfectly acceptable. How much more hypocritical can the TH-caminskies get?
Like this piece of trash--the hypocrites on TH-caminskies will post this without worry of the censures police. th-cam.com/video/c8aUli7pFE4/w-d-xo.html
Sorry, but this is just a Fraud from Croatia, albeit with Drach's robo voice. Unsubbed. I recommend Jon Parshall, Vincent O'Hara, the late great James Hornfischer, Ian Toll and Armoured Carriers if you want the real deal?
"Led", not lead. One is a past tense verb, and the other is found on the periodic table. And no, the Army performed fine. They were just under the command of a clownish Marine General who thought that the Marines should be competing with the Army instead of working together and fighting the Japanese.
5 times Army generals in the Pacific theater in WW2 had to be relieved of command. You should read about Ralph Smiths' poor performance in the Maken islands.
@@raywhitehead730 And of those five, only General Harding displayed actual ineptitude. Unlike the Army, the Marine Corps is much more image-conscious. That's why Holland Smith was reassigned to an administrative role after he bungled the Saipan operation instead of being relieved, and why General Rupertus was quietly moved stateside instead of being relieved for bungling the Peleliu operation. In other words, the Marine Corps is more forgiving to senior officers when they screw up than the Army.
Man I gotta tell ya. I have been watching documentaries on WWII, and war movies, and TV shows, (reading too, but don't think that counts) all my life. Seriously, ever since was a small boy I got an obsession about everything WWII that didn't exactly take over my life, but boy-o-boy it was always there no matter what I was doing or who I was with. It all started with me going around the neighborhood at first, asking all the men about their war experiences. Out of all these interviews (I was 7 and 8 years old) I was most struck by the two Marines who I'd talked to as they were the most honest and forthcoming, also, related in such a way as tho they respected my sincerity. Serving in the 1st and 2nd Marine Divisions they conveyed their personal accounts so clearly and enthusiastically, I can remember each one to them word for word to this day. So affected was I after talking to these guys, after that all I wanted to know about after that was everything USMC. Ok I'm coming to it, I'm getting there... So I watched slash saw every movie, documentary blah blah blah of WWII in the Pacific and beyond if it had to do with the Corp., always checking for accuracy. Have to tell you after 60 years this is the best, most accurate, most thorough telling of the battle of Saipan I've ever seen, bar none! I didn't believe it would be possible after all this time, but give yourself a slap on the back, you did it. Great job! Ooo-rah, or Semper fi, er, whatever... WTG
I do not know what to say. You put a lot of effort into writing this comment, and I enjoyed reading it. Thank you very much!
I did the same thing as a WWII obsessed kid. I always looked for men who had blue tattoos because back then mostly only marines and sailors who had tattoos. Sometimes they gave me a little souvenir, too.
My uncle was in the Seabees, and was involved in repairing the runway at Aslito field. He told me about the arrival of the P-61 Black Widows.
They were brand new and highly classified, and he said that as soon as they taxied in and shut down they were surrounded by armed guards.
I knew a guy who fought there. The Japanese bombed them at night. They only had one man killed. The Japanese didn't put the fuses in the bombs. One guy had a bomb fall on him while in his hammock. We,2 vet's are a American treasure.
Imagine being a Japanese soldier on Tinian hearing and seeing signs of the barrle raging a few miles away, then it fading into the distance and finally stopping. Then realizing you're probably next.
@18:22 The crucial resistance of HQ company of the 105th - organized by Lt Luther "Luke" Hammond. The regimental S-2 of the 105th. An officer who was denied any awards for bravery on that fateful night by General Holland Smith because he had the guts to stand up to General Smith and correct the General's grossly inaccurate and insulting estimation of enemy forces which overran the 105th - see my earlier post for the exact exchange between the two.
Yet Japanese resistance continued for another year and a half after the island was declared secure. Great movie about this is Oba the last Japanese samurai
We were all over the island in the 90s... and Tinian. I temembered these battles regularly. Thete were tanks still hung up in the reef
Bless those young men.
9:32 Is it just me or does it look like he double loaded that mortar??
I spotted that as well, hopefully a mortarman will spot this and enlighten us.
No, the round cleared the tube with very little smoke which made it appear that it was still in the tube.
That was great, thank you
You're very welcome!
Fantastic job. Thank You!
Thank you too!
The general who said he was prepared for anything the Japanese could throw at them but left isolated units out on his perimeter should have been quickly demoted and kicked out of the service. They knew it was coming and he did not prepare his men right.
Thanks for posting. My family was running from cave to cave during the battles with kids in tow.
I visited Saipan in 1976. One of the most memorable places I visited was Suicide Cliff. I remember looking over the cliff to an 800 foot drop to the rocks below and thinking of the thousands of Japanese soldiers and civilians who leaped to their deaths where I was standing.
My great uncle was Wounded on Saipan he was in the army
We did the same. Those rocks below the cliffs in the water were terribly fearsome
@18:55 - Lt Colonel O'Brien was the Commanding Officer of the 105th infantry regiment, not a battalion.
Thank you for your comment, and honestly, I think your comments add value to these videos. In the sources I used for this video, it's written that Lieutenant Colonel O'Brien was the commander of the 1st Battalion. In my opinion, Lieutenant Colonel is too high a rank for the battalion commander, so I guess you are right.
@@FromtheBattlefields a minor error. No worries. My uncle was the last person to see Lt Colonel O'Brien alive. I can remember my uncle retelling the story, tugged at his earlobe, pulled out a sliver of shrapnel, looked at it and said "look! Purple heart number 7!", Then flipped it off the porch we were on. I don't know what happened to them, but he still had his topo maps of Saipan and Okinawa in 1985.
@@FromtheBattlefields Also, a good source if you are interested in learning more is the book "battling for Saipan" by Lt Colonel O'Brien's nephew.
You take me into the heart of the fighting, and tell me what life would be like as a marine. Terrible.
I read a horrible story about Saipan. A Japanese girl about 10 was in charge of a group of kids whose parents had been killed. A Japanese soilder gave her a granade and told her to use it when the Americans rapped her.
She hid out with the younger kids and saw African American Marines coming up the road. The kids were terrified but watched.
The Marines where carring Japanese babies. Holding them and gently rocking them. Their parents had killed themselves but couldn't bring themselves to kill their children.
She surrendered to the Marines and were taken to a hospital. There she saw U.S. troops running around trying to find milk and passing out candy bars to the kids.
She also saw cobat troops openly cryijng because they couldn't save more.
Will you be covering Solomon islands campaigns and PNG campaigns also? Burma ones would be cool to see too!
Burma is on my to-do list. New Guinea and Solomon Islands campaigns will sooner or later arrive on my list, but these two campaigns are long-lasting, so I need to figure out how to cover them.
@@FromtheBattlefields Thanks for the reply! Lastly could I ask if you'd ever cover naval battles of the Pacific along side or after the land battles? There's many like the battle of Vella Lavella & cape Esperence that basically haven't been covered in the way you cover it on YT with mapped visuals and movements of units yet.
Btw Appreciate your good work, the computer generated voice honestly doesn't affect it when its detailed good presentation so ignore the comment that moan about it.
@@scarletcrusade77 I had plans to do naval battles. However, when I saw how other YT creators work and how good and detailed their videos are, I somehow did not dare enter that field.
Great stuff super voice
Thanks!
at 3:22 machine gunner is wearing a Sailor hat.
Alexander Peña, 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan and Tinian, He was WIA June 17th on Saipan and soon after was KIA July 30th 1944 on Tinian, the island was declared secured Aug 1st, he almost made it home, R.I.P Uncle Alex, The Greatest Generation of All Time, God Bless America.
17:25 - what kind of weapon is this? Looks like a Soviet PPSh-41...
Did anyone else see what appeared to be a Russian soldier firing a PPSH at the 17:30 mark?
It is definitely PPSH 41, but it's not a Soviet soldier. Probably this footage was recorded during the Korean War and edited into a video about the 27th Division.
@@FromtheBattlefields: in looking at again, you're right about it being an American GI. To me, at first glance his helmet also looked to be the type used by the Red Army.
I used this footage in almost every video I made about Pacific War, and I managed to study it, always wondering when someone would notice it. 🙂
Hey I enjoy this channel. Don't listen to em. I prefer the voice.
Thanks!
I'd rather listen to this voice than a human. It doesn't change which is perfect for videos like this.
Please do the battle of Okinawa!
That topic is on my to-do list.
NTS 27th 13:59 1400.
Guy Gaboldon? Piece piper of Saipan?
Interpreters and Navajo code talkers somehow did not fit, as I'm trying to keep these videos as short as possible.
"shedule" 😀
Typical how our Marines and army fought amongst themselves besides the Japanese and the Army was mainly right
No mention of Chūichi Nagumo. I believe he died in a cave.
Thanks for the factual account of what the 27th was up against without all of the Marine propaganda. The Army was up against the toughest terrain on Saipan, and General Holland Smith refused to land 27th division artillery units or provide adequate artillery support to the 27th.
General Holland Smith hated the Army and the 27th in particular, because they used tactics and firepower as opposed to the USMC's typical frontal infantry assaults which caused higher casualties amongst the USMC. The afternoon of the 7th, after the remaining 2 combat effective officers (the other 2 surviving officers were severely wounded and evacuated) and 182 soldiers of the 105th had recaptured every inch of ground lost that morning General Smith is known to have said to one of the surviving officers "what kind of cowardly sons of bitches let an entire regiment get wiped out by 500 drunk Japs". To which that officer replied "Sir, you need to count the damned bodies because it was 5,000."
Thank you for your comment.
Howling mad the called him, thanks for the post!
BS. The 27th couldn't hack Okinawa either.
@@TheDustysix stupidity abounds. The 27th was thoroughly vindicated. Reading comprehension not your strong point is it? The 27th was as good as any other division in the Pacific, Marine or Army - the ONLY problem was one person - General Holland Smith. Give some evidence that the 27th "couldn't hack it on Okinawa". They captured as much ground as any other division.
Wrong
I’m not going to listen to a GD robot.
I had to stop at 1:04
You can tell when it's an A.I. voice because it mispronounces common words like " Iwo Jima." and others....
Why can’t Brits just ask the locals how to pronounce place names, rather than just guessing wrong?
Bulldust on cutting the causalities and suicides, You Tube is not requiring you to do this. Here is some original footage of Tarawa and Iwo Jima, it is not pixelated and cut. th-cam.com/video/MqPfQ8suI2Q/w-d-xo.html What you are proposing is YOUR sensitivities not You Tube censorship or requirements.
Well, maybe you're right.
Dear TH-cam creators. STOP USING THE ROBOT VOICE! It makes what should otherwise be a well crafted and well documented video unwatchable. It’s just emotionless droning on in a flat dry tone, riddled with bad mispronunciations. If you’re going to put all this work in on a 3 part series on Saipan, at least pay an actual human being to read your script instead of the robot.
Just play it at 1.25x speed. It sounds a lot better.
Try making a series of your own. Ill watch it.
Or maybe they could hire Dolly Parton and she could sing it to us ?
This is one of the better robot voices I have heard. Clear diction and easily understood. The robotiness is very limited. Better than a human being with an accent.
I actually like it.... I guess Jack Perkins was busy or wanted too much money..... R.I.P. Jack Perkins.
Isn't it interesting that any scenes of the casualties and the suicides on the northern cliffs are deleted or pixelated out because the tender sensibilities of the cross dressers and WOKIES cannot handle it, but when posting the most godless of language and killing of gangster scenes on the Hollywood films is perfectly acceptable. How much more hypocritical can the TH-caminskies get?
Like this piece of trash--the hypocrites on TH-caminskies will post this without worry of the censures police. th-cam.com/video/c8aUli7pFE4/w-d-xo.html
You are so right, it's tough on generals, sitting on their butts miles away from the action, while their troops are getting slaughtered.
Aight bet
You are correct. America has gone downhill and unfortunately it has not hit the bottom.
@@michaelangelo7511 More than that is the apostacy in the American church today. It is a tell tail of the real degradation.
Sorry, but this is just a Fraud from Croatia, albeit with Drach's robo voice. Unsubbed. I recommend Jon Parshall, Vincent O'Hara, the late great James Hornfischer, Ian Toll and Armoured Carriers if you want the real deal?
Poorly lead Army and poorly trained Army units
"Led", not lead. One is a past tense verb, and the other is found on the periodic table. And no, the Army performed fine. They were just under the command of a clownish Marine General who thought that the Marines should be competing with the Army instead of working together and fighting the Japanese.
The army units performed as lead. A dense metal, hard to move.
@@raywhitehead730 Well, that is certainly what the Japanese found out whenever they tried to push the Army back. Nice save.
5 times Army generals in the Pacific theater in WW2 had to be relieved of command. You should read about Ralph Smiths' poor performance in the Maken islands.
@@raywhitehead730 And of those five, only General Harding displayed actual ineptitude. Unlike the Army, the Marine Corps is much more image-conscious. That's why Holland Smith was reassigned to an administrative role after he bungled the Saipan operation instead of being relieved, and why General Rupertus was quietly moved stateside instead of being relieved for bungling the Peleliu operation.
In other words, the Marine Corps is more forgiving to senior officers when they screw up than the Army.