Battle for Guam (1941)

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Battle for Guam
Part of: Pacific War
Map of the Japanese landings on Guam
Map of the Japanese landings on Guam
date 8-10 December 1941
place Guam
output Japanese victory
consequences Guam remains occupied by Japanese troops until 1944
Parties to the conflict

Japanese EmpireJapanese Empire Japanese Empire

United States 48United States United States

Commander

Horii Tomitarō

George McMillin

Troop strength
Land:
5,900 Army soldiers and Marines
Sea:
4 heavy cruisers
4 destroyers
2 gunboats
6 anti -submarines
2 anti-mine vehicles
2 supply ships
Air:
unknown number of aircraft 		Land:
547 Marines and Seamen
Sea:
1 anti-mine vehicle
2 patrol boats
1 cargo ship
losses

1 dead
6 wounded
1 aircraft

17 dead
35 wounded
406 prisoners
1 anti-mine vehicle and 1 patrol vehicle sunk
1 cargo ship damaged
1 patrol boat captured

Japanese offensives 1941–1942

The Battle of Guam was a landing operation of the Japanese troops on that of the US defended Units island Guam during the Pacific War in World War II . The battle took place on December 8, 1941, a few hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor , and cost Japanese troops only one dead and several wounded. The American troops, on the other hand, lost 17 men and several ships, and the entire island crew of around 600 men became prisoners of war .

prehistory

Chamorro natives on the Japanese-occupied island of Saipan

The two originally German Mariana Islands Tinian and Saipan were conquered by Japanese soldiers as early as 1914 during the First World War . The Japanese units stationed there were combined in the "South Sea Defense Group" in 1918, and from 1935 foreigners were refused immigration and tourism permits; Japanese settlers from Hokkaidō colonized the two islands from the early 1930s, and in 1938 there were more Japanese immigrants than Chamorro natives on Tinian and Saipan . A Japanese militia was set up alongside the professional troops, and Korean forced laborers turned the islands' runways into major air force bases. A small spin-off from the United Fleet became the 4th Fleet in 1939 and took over the naval defense in the Mariana Islands .

The neighboring island of Guam, however, had been in American hands since 1898. During the colonial war against Spain , American units occupied the island, and in the subsequent peace treaty, Guam was ceded by Spain to the United States. 1,899 military engineers built a workshop near the village of Piti, and two years later built the US Marines a barracks near Sumay. In 1905, coaling works and storage facilities were built, and in 1909 a battery of 15 cm guns was brought from the Philippines to Guam. In the course of the 1930s, the central port of the island's capital Agaña was expanded, with ship workshops and a small dry dock ; some ships of the US Navy were stationed in the port, and were thus able to control the sea route north and south of the island. A naval captain , the highest ranking officer on the island, was the military commander of all units and at the same time also officially governor of the island, although the administration of the individual districts was left to a civilian government.

Japanese preparations

The Japanese Empire had already targeted Guam militarily as part of the preparatory projects for the invasion of Southeast Asia and had been preparing an attack against the island since 1940. Troops were concentrated on the two neighboring islands, and naval aviators flew reconnaissance flights against Guam from March . When the diplomatic situation between the United States and the Japanese Empire escalated even further and the danger of an open war was now officially accepted by both sides, the 4th Fleet provided the South Seas Force , which was made up of the 144th Regiment of the Imperial Japanese Army , various smaller units of the Navy and a company of paratroopers insisted on. Parallel to this invasion force, a company of the Maizuru Landing Forces ( Kaigun Tokubetsu Rikusentai ), an elite unit of the Navy, was on readiness on Saipan and trained for a landing. A support fleet with the 6th Cruiser Division was also concentrated near Saipan.

American preparations

Due to the island's low strategic importance, it should only be defended by a few units. Small attempts were also made to strengthen the small Guam garrison before the war. The island's defense was rated F : in the event of an attack, all useful facilities should be blown up, the troops had to offer as much resistance as possible and then surrender. There were no evacuation, relief or reinforcement plans. Nevertheless, the governor of the island decided to create the first defensive positions; in April the first of these systems were built inland; two Navy artillery batteries defended the port of Agaña, and another two the northern headland.

Between October 17 and 23, around 1,000 civilian construction workers and several hundred employees of Pan American Airways and the military administration were evacuated by a small destroyer flotilla . In November, all men of the American colony capable of fighting were combined to form the Guam Insular Force Guard (GIFG). In addition to the Insular Guard , two companies of the Marines were stationed on the island, but both of them were below target , some unorganized units and the artillerymen of the Navy and about forty volunteers, mostly engineers or untrained pioneers. 80 Chamorros of the Guam Insular Patrol , a volunteer unit that served as police, were stationed on the island, but did not take part in the battle and handed their weapons over to the Japanese.

In total there were 547 men on Guam. The Insular Guard and Marines were armed with the aging model Springfield M1903 , 13 Lewis, and 15 Brownings , while the sailors of the anchored ships had only Enfields M1917s and revolvers.

In the port of the capital, two were patrol boats of the type PT , one minelayer, the USS Penguin , and an immobile oil tanker , the USS Robert L. Barnes . The coast guard boat USS Goldstar was in Manila at the time of the attack to bring Christmas presents to the marines stationed there .

battle

Japanese drawing of the landing of the Imperial Marines on Guam

At 4.45 a.m. on December 8, 1941, the American governor of the island, Vice Admiral George McMillin, learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor ; a few hours later, at 8:27 a.m., the first Japanese airmen from Saipan attacked the American military installations on Guam. The Marines barracks, the docks in Piti, a radio station in Libugon, and two Standard Oil Company oil tanks were hit; the Pan American Bureau was also attacked by Jabos and almost completely destroyed. Two Aichi D3A sank the USS Penguin in an air strike , killing an American officer and wounding another 22 sailors. The next day, the governor's residence in Agaña and various smaller targets, such as parked civil and military vehicles , were also bombed.

At 7:00 p.m. on December 9th, the Japanese invasion fleet left the waters around Saipan: it consisted of four heavy cruisers, four destroyers, two gunboats , six submarines and two minesweepers and brought about 5,900 soldiers from various regiments with them. On the morning of December 10th, about 400 Japanese marines were disembarked in Dungcas, north of the island's capital. These troops were immediately involved in firefights with men from the Insular Guard , with the Insular Guard having to back off after a few minutes of fighting. The Japanese units captured the barracks near Sumay and advanced via Piti to Agaña: in the Plaza de España they got into combat with American marines, men from the Insular Guard and some volunteers, but were able to quickly surround them. A few minutes after the fighting began in the city, all the Allied soldiers in Agaña had surrendered.

McMillin ordered the destruction of the most important documents, then he barricaded himself with his staff in the entrance hall of his palace. Half a company of Marines advanced to defend the residence, but McMillin saw that further fighting would have been pointless and went into captivity at 6:00 a.m. A few minutes later he signed the unconditional surrender of the island and its defenders.

The American marines fought a few final skirmishes with the troops of the Japanese reserve, which landed at 5:00 a.m. in various places on the coast, but soon every unit on the island laid down its arms or was surrounded and disarmed by imperial troops. Only the naval officer George R. Tweed was able to escape and remained hidden in a cave until the American reconquest of the island in 1944.

losses

Japanese propaganda poster depicting the main prisoners of war of the Guam garrison. Governor McMillin can be seen in the upper left.

The American troops on the island lost a total of 17 deaths: the Marines lost five men, the sailors four, and the Insular Guard six of their volunteers. The other dead belonged to the army unit in Agaña and the governor's naval guard. Several American soldiers were wounded in the brief capture of the island and housed in the city's military hospital , but after the surrender of Japanese units they were moved to a stable near the coast; the field hospital in Agaña was declared the new Japanese headquarters on Guam on the same day. The Allied prisoners of war, around 500, were concentrated in the prison camp, which had been filled by Japanese citizens of Guam before the American surrender, and from there they were brought to the naval barracks near Sumay.

The Japanese guards murdered the Private First Class Kaufmann with bayonet stabs during the prisoner transport because he was ill with beriberi and could not move fast enough. The prisoners of war were transferred to the neighboring islands of Saipan and Tinian in January 1942, and from there they were shipped to Sumatra and Luzon . Many of them, interned in the Cabanatuan concentration camp, were only liberated in 1945 by an American attack on the camp.

The American counterattack did not take place until some time after the island had been conquered : in August 1942 the Japanese troops were decisively defeated at Guadalcanal , and in 1943 New Guinea was almost completely retaken. In January 1944, Operation Forager , the reconquest of Guam and the neutralization of the Japanese bases and airfields on Saipan and Tinian, was decided. In June 1944, Saipan was attacked, and a few weeks later, Guam was recaptured by American units after heavy fighting in the Second Battle of Guam .

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