Mid-Summer 2024 Musings

Riddleblog and Blessed Hope Podcast Updates:

  • Look for the return of the Blessed Hope Podcast season three on 1 Corinthians in mid-August. I’ve managed to research and write the script for chapters 7-10 and will start cranking out new episodes upon my return from vacation.

  • The Blessed Hope Podcast has made a successful “migration” from Google podcasts over to YouTube podcasts. If you enjoy the Blessed Hope pod, please consider liking and subscribing.

Thinking Out Loud:

  • What happened in Butler PA, sure gives new meaning to the phrase “dodged a bullet.” I am very thankful Trump’s life was spared. So far in my lifetime JFK was assassinated, so too were RFK and MLK, Gerald Ford survived two bungled assassination attempts, and Reagan was nearly killed. Assassinations create a generational national trauma, and I am so thankful that our nation is not facing such a thing now.

  • Joe, you stubborn old geezer, turn over the car keys already! (update: Biden must have read this and then decided to drop out)

  • The stray kitty who moved into my yard a dozen years ago pays no attention to various cats and critters who come into the yard and eat her food. But one cat—a new skinny all black cat—drives her crazy. She goes from full nap to absolute screeching fury whenever it gets near her food bowl. I wonder what that is all about. The mind of a cat . . . unfathomable.

  • A sure sign that ours is a fallen race is that you cannot buy an equal number of hot dogs (usually six) and buns (usually eight).

Recently Read:

James Hallas’s 2019 book, Saipan: The Battle that Doomed Japan is a well researched and thorough volume covering an important battle, conducted in the mid-Pacific from June 15 until July 9, 1944. The Battle of Saipan (which is often obscured by the shadow of D-Day) is one of the key battles of the War in the Pacific, yet few know anything about it. My recent post on The Other D-Day: Operation Forager prompted me to pick Hallas’s volume from my shelf of purchased but “not yet read” books and give it a go.

There were a number of significant “turning points” in the Pacific theater: Midway, the Guadalcanal campaign, the relentless march of American forces up through the Solomon Islands into the Marshalls and the Marianas (including Guam, Tinian, and Saipan). The Japanese saw the Marianas as the anchor of their inner defense ring. If they could hold on to them, perhaps the Americans would tire of the protracted bloody war and offer Japan some sort of peace agreement. But if the Marianas fell to the Americans, Japan would suffer a calamity unsurpassed in the war to date.

I’ll leave the details of the battle to Hallas to tell, but those considering tackling Hallas’s book, here is some of the ground he covers.

Students of the Pacific theater of World War Two know that casualty rate for Marines and soldiers who landed at Tarawa and at Peleliu was about 25%, so we tend to speak of them as very “costly battles” which modern historians often contend were unnecessary (especially in the case of Peleliu). The casualty rate on Saipan was about the same. On the 77,000 who landed on the island, about 3,250 Americans died, with an additional 13,100 wounded (which does not include naval casualties of about 200 more). Japanese losses were at least 30,000, with 10,000 additional civilian deaths. Hallas details the brutality of the battle in vivid and gory detail—throughout the book he describes the graphic nature of injuries and deaths among both American and Japanese combatants. I grant that it is important to understand the horrific nature of that sort of fighting, but I am not sure I needed to know in such graphic and repeated detail what swords, bullets, grenades, and artillery rounds can do to a human body.

Hallas describes the ferocity of the Japanese defense of the island, based upon the willingness of the Japanese soldier or sailor to die for the Emperor either at the hands of the “American devils,” or by suicide (usually by grenade). Hallas’s narrative is especially gripping when he describes the final Gyokusai (Banzai) charge of the island’s defenders on the night of July 7, when between 3-4 thousand of the remaining Japanese soldiers and sailors charged through weary and unprepared American defenders, accounting for a significant number of those Americans killed and wounded in the invasion. Low on weapons and ammunition, the Japanese used swords, spears, and hand grenades in their attack on American positions which continued without let-up or mercy until the attackers were killed or committed suicide. When the Gyokusai was over, so too was the battle for Saipan. But the scene of the dead of both armies left behind was grizzly.

Hallas mentions the Battle of the Philippine Sea and the “Great Marianas Turkey Shoot” tangentially, and only insofar as it relates to the invasion of Saipan. But given the massive loss of most of Japan’s remaining naval and army aircraft while attempting to come to the aid of Saipan’s defenders, in addition to a number of major naval units (including three aircraft carriers), it took time for the Japanese to fully realize the extent of their crushing defeat. The destruction of much of the remaining Japanese fleet and air power, coupled with the loss of the Marianas meant that for all intents and purposes, Japan was finished—”doomed” as the subtitle correctly indicates. Yet, as Hallas points out, the Japanese seemed completely incapable of accepting the obvious, and only deepened in their resolve to fight to the end. That was the worst possible take-away from the battle.

The loss of Saipan meant that the Japanese home islands were now in reach of the brand new American B-29 bombers and that destruction on a massive scale was about to fall upon Japan’s cities from the sky. Japan’s war minister (Hideki Tojo) resigned in disgrace when Saipan fell, while the Emperor now worried out loud about what was soon to come—the B-29 raids on Japan began in November of 1944. Chuichi Nagumo (who led the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the Japanese fleet at the Battle of Midway, had been relegated to a desk job on Saipan (after the disaster at Midway) committed suicide, along with the island’s commander, General Saito.

The difficulties, delays, the shortcomings with amphibious equipment, and the suicidal fanaticism of the Japanese defenders were not lost on American war planners. If the Japanese would fight like this to keep Saipan, what would it be like to invade Japan? It is ironic that both atomic bombs which fell on Japan came from B-29s which were based on Tinian Island, just five miles north of Saipan.

Hallas’s Saipan is all in all a good book. The gore is tedious (even if some of it is necessary). The book truly suffers from a lack of good maps (there is one on the inside fly of the cover, but that is it). Thankfully Google maps covers Saipan and you can consult your phone whenever you want to figure out where something is taking place.

This is a much overlooked battle and well-worthy of your consideration. Hallas is a good place to start.

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Previous Musings: June 2024 Musings

Video: Here’s some good ole “boogie band” toe-tapping fun. I saw Alvin Lee and Ten Years After several times in the early seventies—always a great live band and a favorite for me and my buddies. I did see him again in the early 2000s with his touring band—a great show, much like the one captured in the video.

MusingsKim RiddlebargerBible Theory Podcast, Invasion of Saipan June 1944, cats and dogs, Florida ManComment