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INSIGHT

The Battle for Peleliu

Aired November 30, 2004 - 23:00:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JONATHAN MANN, CNN HOST (voice-over): A forgotten place to die. Decades have passed. There have been other wars and the big fighting today is in Iraq, not Asia, but thousands of men perished in the fighting at Peleliu.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's very seldom mentioned, and if you mention it to somebody, they say they don't know where you're talking about.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MANN: Hello and welcome.

It's normal to notice the things in today's news and lose track of other things over time. History isn't always relevant, and even when it is, it isn't always remembered.

The battle for Peleliu is so widely forgotten that the gap in our memory may be the most moving aspect of it. It cost 12,000 American and Japanese soldiers their lives in the closing months of World War II and now some people wonder if there was any point. There may be a lesson for the rest of us in that.

On our program today, Peleliu.

Here's CNN's Mike Chinoy.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MIKE CHINOY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A tropical paradise, but 60 years ago it was hell on earth. Peleliu, historians say, was the single most savage battle of the entire Pacific War. Some U.S. Marine units took 70 percent casualties, virtually the entire Japanese garrison wiped out.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I came in right about right up there, where that limb is hanging off.

CHINOY: 60 years later, these men were among a handful of veterans who returned to the beaches where they landed. They're old and gray now, but the memories are still fresh, for some the wounds still raw, and time for closure running out.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Finally one day I pulled out my driver's license and looked at my date of birth. If you're going, guy, you'd better go.

CHINOY: In 1944, American commanders viewed Peleliu as a key Japanese base, its capture essential for a future assault on Japan itself.

Today historians still debate rather then landing was necessary, whether U.S. forces could have simply skirted the island.

Unidentified male: Some guys come for closure over their buddies. I hoped to get a little closure about it should have been called off and we shouldn't have done it.

CHINOY: But no one disputes the cost in blood.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Japanese were waiting for us with the machine guns and all I saw was a big crater and I dove right in that crater. And in about maybe four or five hours that's when I got hit.

CHINOY: Peleliu is just a speck of coral, six miles long, two miles wide, but 11,000 Japanese were waiting for the Americans, hiding in a network of hundreds of caves carved out of the limestone ridges just off the beach.

(on-camera): Hunkered down in these caves the Japanese inflicted horrendous casualties on the Americans. Today you can still see the debris of that hellish time; canteen, bowl, an ammo clip, rusted hand grenade -- that's still live by the way.

The Japanese were under orders to fight until the last man and to take as many Americans with them as possible.

(voice-over): Men like Joe Clapper (ph) and Gene Goodwin (ph) saw their comrades fall all around them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We lost probably half or more of our platoon between the beach and here and that's mainly whey I came.

CHINOY: Jim Pilkington (ph) is a military historian and a specialist on Peleliu.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Japanese changed their tactics completely on Peleliu. They fought like we had never fought them before. They were going to fight to the last man.

A sense of loss echoing through the decades for both sides. Nearly 11,000 Japanese died in the battle, just 200 survived.

CHINOY: This suicidal resolve, Pilkington (ph) argues, contributed to the U.S. decision to drop the atomic bomb in 1945.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It would have been horrific, the bloodletting that would have gone on in Japan on the main islands if we had had to land there.

CHINOY (on camera): And that led to the decision to use the bomb.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And that led to the decision to use the bomb.

CHINOY (voice-over): Inside a now-silent cave stretching for hundreds of meters, Red Womack (ph) remembers.

In 1944, he was a flame-thrower, his weapon used with deadly effect on Japanese troops who refused to surrender.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What they'd do (UNINTELLIGIBLE) their clothes or (UNINTELLIGIBLE) burn all the oxygen out of the air and (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

CHINOY: In a year when the world has commemorated D-Day, Red Womack (ph) is not alone in feeling that the war in the Pacific and the sacrifices of those who fought here has been forgotten.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, it's very seldom mentioned, and if you mention it to somebody they say they don't know what you're talking about.

CHINOY: For many Japanese, though, the battle has not been forgotten. By a hill where some of the fiercest fighting took place is a Japanese shrine dwarfing the one nearby that honors American marines, and it was here that we met the granddaughter of General Tojo, the man who ordered the attack on Pearl Harbor and who was executed by the United States as a war criminal after Japan's defeat.

Uki Tojo's (ph) mission: bring the remains of fallen Japanese soldiers home.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): There are still 7,000 bodies on this island. There are still 300 or 400 caves that are unopened. The Japanese government has stopped collecting remains, so I am here as a private citizen. I want to collect the bones.

CHINOY: But in much of Asia, Japan's behavior in World War II is still a sensitive issue. Digging up old bones means stirring up old emotions, especially because Uki Tojo (ph) has also campaigned to refurbish her grandfather's negative image.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): Grandfather said the war was to protect his country. It wasn't against international law. He was forced to start it, but he and his government get all of the blame.

CHINOY: Nick Russo's (ph) father was wounded and decorated for heroism at Peleliu. Sentiments like that upset him.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: School programs and teaching programs in Japan make hardly any reference at all to World War II. It's a little troubling how it's kind of being brushed off to the side and ignored. It's concerning to me.

CHINOY: And Jim Pilkington (ph) worries that memories of American heroism are being overshadowed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It troubles me in the sense that they are trying to buy back the honor that they feel they have lost, and the loss of faith that they have suffered through, and the way they do that is to build monuments bigger than the ones we build.

CHINOY: But Kiacazu Tzuchita (ph) isn't interested in a monument. After the fighting ended, he hid in the jungle for two years before he was coaxed into surrendering.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We didn't know the war was over. We thought Japanese troops would come back. We lived in caves. We had a stockpile of canned food. We slept during the day and moved around at night.

CHINOY: Like his former enemies, Tzuchita (ph) is looking for closure.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To say that I hate him, I don't. I mean, I figured that he was there to fight too because he was put there to fight us. And I was the same way with him.

CHINOY: United by the nightmare they shared, these aging veterans come together for the ceremony of commemoration and reconciliation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I am overwhelmed. I fought against these men. I never thought I would meet them. It's a miracle.

CHINOY: Ghost stretching back more than half a century finally laid to rest.

Mike Chinoy, CNN, Peleliu.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MANN: We take a break now. When we come back, a son retraces his father's footsteps at Peleliu.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MANN: From battleground to tourist Mecca, Peleliu is now known as one of the premier diving spots in the world. One of a string of tiny islands that make up the Palau Archipelago, coral reefs teeming with fish ring the remote and pristine island.

Welcome back.

Veterans and their children also make the pilgrimage to Peleliu, as we saw in Mike Chinoy's report. They come to walk the beaches, trek through the jungle and poke through the caves where so many American and Japanese forces lost their lives 60 years ago.

Joining us to talk about his own journey is Patrick Finelli, a history professor at the University of South Florida, whose father fought at Peleliu.

Thanks so much for being with us.

When you think back to that time, six decades ago, what most stands out in your mind?

PATRICK Finelli, PROFESSOR: I think the idea that this was an impenetrable fortress, that so many men died landing on the beaches. 1,300 were killed before they even reach the (UNINTELLIGIBLE), the mountain range known as Blood Nose Ridge.

I had heard about Peleliu from childhood, when my schoolmates would ask me what did you father do in the war and I said he was in the Pacific, they said, oh, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Guadalcanal? And I would say Peleliu, and they'd look at me as if I said Mars.

It seems that recently there's been renewed interest in Peleliu for the lessons learned and also the overarching question that you asked in the beginning of the program: was it necessary. But I was drawn to it as the son of a World War II Marine Corps combat veteran. I wanted to walk where he walked, to see what he saw, and to experience for myself what he felt and thought on that coral rock.

MANN: What was it like to be there?

FINELLI: It was a very profound and moving experience, especially on White Beach 1, which is hard coral all the way to the reinforced pill boxes or gun emplacements.

I went in the pill box and I took a photo which showed the field of fire, the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) fire that the Marines would face. But in particular, I wanted to climb into the (UNINTELLIGIBLE), to climb into those hills in Five Sisters and see the caves where my father did demolition duty to clear out the caves.

There are 500 caves in these mountains. They weren't reduced by naval bombardment, nor were they reduced by napalm. They had to be cleaned out one cave at a time.

MANN: What did your father tell you about the fighting?

FINELLI: My father could tell me a lot about the topography, about his deployments, the ships he was on and swimming with the UDTs and beach reconnaissance, but it's very difficult -- I tried to interview him, to get him to talk about the actual combat. And I think this is true with many veterans.

Closure is difficult. The common retort is "you had to be there to truly understand," and that's why I had to go to Peleliu for myself, so I could feel what it was like, and it is truly one of the least disturbed battlefields in the world.

MANN: Let me ask you more about that, because the terrain is I guess impressive is the least I could say. The terrain was a big part of the terrible experience of the men who tried to take that island. What was it like when you were there? How hot was it, for example?

FINELLI: When I went, in the spring, it wasn't as hot as it was when the Marines landed on September 15, 1944. It was 115 degree equatorial heat.

However, the terrain is treacherous. It's treacherous today. I climbed Pope Hill or Pope Ridge -- Everett Pope was awarded the medal of honor for defending that ridge. And even with lightweight hiking gear and a trekking staff, it still was a tough climb. I cannot imagine having snipers shooting at you, mortar rounds dropping everywhere and climbing that steep, slippery limestone cliff.

Even now, if you're walking, you'll feel metal under your trekking staff, and you'll think, oh, my goodness -- I saw live pineapple and rifle type grenades, and then you're relieved it's only a mortar stand.

Taking a picture, you may try to get into position and then you look over your shoulder and there's an 80 foot drop into a cave.

MANN: And you actually went diving there. A lot of people go diving looking for fish, but I'm curious, was there much evidence of the battle underwater?

FINELLI: Yes, actually in Palau there is quite a significant amount of war debris, but more impressive I think was what I saw on the ships in Truck Lagoon (ph). The Navy during Operation Hailstone put 60 ships to the bottom, and these ships were actually headed for Palau, because Palau was there Pacific headquarters.

So you'll see tanks, Japanese zeros, torpedoes, hemispherical beach- type mines. As a matter of fact, I have a picture of a tank on the San Francisco (UNINTELLIGIBLE), the same type of tank that tried to defend the airfield in a futile counterattack.

MANN: Just one last question. Why do you think the battle has been so widely forgotten?

FINELLI: Well, first of all, MacArthur had already landed in the Philippines by the time the battle was won. The Marines were told it was going to be a three-day walkover, rough but quick.

It certainly wasn't. They were there for five weeks, then relieved by the Army when they just were decimated. And Peleliu, I think to answer the question was Peleliu necessary, that was a large bomber strip, and we were able to use that to protect the Marines as they went to Okinawa and Iwo Jima on the way towards Japan, which was made unnecessary when the bomb was dropped.

MANN: Patrick Finelli, the book is "Worlds Away: Following My Father's World War II Footsteps." Thanks so much for talking with us.

FINELLI: You're welcome. Thank you.

MANN: We take another break. When we come back, more on the military debate over whether Peleliu was really needed.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MANN: The U.S. military wanted to use Peleliu to protect General Douglas MacArthur's invasion force heading to the Philippines. It didn't know how well the Japanese were prepared and it didn't expect much of a battle. As it turned out, Peleliu was a terrible fight and MacArthur was in the Philippines before Peleliu was even over.

Welcome back.

The U.S. military was wrong about the size of the Japanese contingent on Peleliu. It was wrong about the geography of the island. Ultimately, as we have heard, and this point bears repeating, it was wrong about how useful the island would turnout to be.

Joining us now to talk about that and the lessons it offers today is Ed Gilbert, author of "Marine Tank Battles in the Pacific."

Thanks so much for being with us.

We just heard Patrick Finelli saying that, well, there were some important reasons that Peleliu was a good and important place for the United States to control. Ultimately, is the jury still out or has it become clear that Peleliu wasn't needed after all?

ED GILBERT, AUTHOR: Well, the jury is always going to be out, because 60 years after the fact it's always pretty easy to second guess, but in retrospect, given the situation, it was probably more of a problem of miscommunication than anything else.

MANN: Miscommunications?

GILBERT: Yes. Bill Halsey had actually raided the Caroline, Palau and Eastern Philippine Islands --

MANN: OK. I'm going to jump in. He's Admiral Halsey, commander of the Third Fleet. Go ahead.

GILBERT: That's correct.

He had staged a carrier raid and met significantly less resistance than they had anticipated. He communicated with Admiral Nimitz, who was in charge of all the naval forces in the Pacific, the Pacific operating area, and reported that he thought that the operation against the Palau Islands could be cancelled.

Now, there were two landings. One on Peleliu and one on an island called Angor (ph) by the 81st Infantry Division of the U.S. Army.

Halsey thought that these operations could be cancelled because they were, as you noted, to protect the back of General MacArthur, as it were.

In reality, what happened is the Japanese, of course, had fewer troops there but -- excuse me. Nimitz tried to communicate this information to MacArthur, who at that time was under a radio blackout.

OK. Nimitz, in turn, thought that basically he could not take the responsibility for canceling this operation since it was in support of MacArthur's major operation in the Philippines, so it was a kind of missed opportunity of communication.

MANN: You're saying that this battle happened, 12,000 men were killed, essentially because of a phone call that couldn't get through?

GILBERT: Well, the situation is a little more complex than that, as is usually the case, but basically, you know, that's the situation.

Nimitz thought that he could not communicate -- you know, he could not cancel that, and he could not communicate directly with MacArthur.

MANN: That is stunning, but there are so many stunning things about this battle. So many extraordinary acts of heroism and so many mistakes built into it. They were wrong about the opposition they would face from the Japanese. They were wrong about the topography of the island, which turned out to be extremely difficult.

Why were those kinds of mistakes made?

GILBERT: A lot of it was just the technology of the era. I'm a geologist by training. I have a doctoral degree in geology, but at that time, for instance, aerial reconnaissance was still more or less in its infancy, particularly the interpretation of vertical aerial photography.

The (UNINTELLIGIBLE), which was the major hill mass there on the island, is a mass of (UNINTELLIGIBLE), which means it's basically porous limestone, the origin of all of the caves that we're talking about. OK. Basically, the vegetation that was growing over that, the mass of trees, essentially smoothed it out so that basically when you looked at this in a aerial photograph, what you saw was a relatively smooth topography and it was interpreted as a series of rolling hills.

When the troops actually got into this situation and found, you know, these hills denuded by naval shellfire and things like this, basically only then did they actually discover what the true nature of the terrain was. You have blind valleys where creeks simply flow down a short valley and instead of opening into a larger valley, the creek just disappears down a hole, what's called a blind valley.

There are chimneys 80 feet deep, the size of an 8 or 9 story building, and the Japanese could position heavy mortars in these things and fire out of them like a gigantic foxhole.

So a lot of it was simply the technology of the era.

Like I said, 60 years later, it's pretty easy to second guess these people.

MANN: Well, let me ask you 60 years later if mistakes like this or if questionable calls like these are rare, unheard of? Does Peleliu standout in military history? Or is this the way wars are really fought?

GILBERT: Well, basically the philosophy of a lot of military people, a lot of historians, are that wars are won by the side that makes the fewest mistakes.

You know, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) always talked about the friction of war, all the mistakes that can happen and how no plan ever survives contact with the enemy. You have to continue to be flexible, to adjust your positions.

You know, so basically, the situation is you have to be flexible enough to adapt, but you're always going to make the mistakes. It's how you recover from them that separates the good from the bad.

MANN: And I suppose how you acknowledge them. Has the U.S. military ever owned up to all of the lives that were lost perhaps for no reason?

GILBERT: There's always going to be a controversy about that, and particularly, you know, when we're in a situation, actually within a shooting war, like we are in Iraq. But yes, the military generally acknowledges its mistakes because otherwise you can't learn from them.

MANN: You bring up Iraq, I was going to do the same. Questions are being raised there about the intelligence that was available, whether as in Peleliu there were enough people brought to the crucial moments of the battle. Do you think the comparison is apt?

GILBERT: Well, there are probably some comparisons, but I would not want to stretch the comparisons too far. But I think that the points that need to be made, that come out of Peleliu, is first, you have to determine what your goals are, is that battle worth fighting; second, know the fact that you're sending these people in to have terrible experiences, not only the ones who are killed and physically maimed, but the 40 percent or so who will come back with posttraumatic stress disorder. And then decide whether or not that particular struggle is worth it.

And that, frankly, in most cases is not for people like me to decide.

MANN: Ed Gilbert, author of "Marine Tank Battles in the Pacific," thanks so much for this.

That's INSIGHT for this day. I'm Jonathan Mann. The news continues.

END

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