Mayhem at Midnight: The Forgotten Banzai Attack on Guam

Throughout the Pacific War, the Japanese, once they had their backs up against the wall and knew they were going to lose in a battle, would conduct a massive Banzai charge, similar to the full frontal charges seen during the Civil War. (The name of the attacks is based on the Japanese word Banzai, which means “Ten thousand years for Japan.” It was the battle cry screamed at the launch of an attack.) Not unlike the Rebel yell, these attacks were hair-raising for the Marines and GIs who fought them off, but the Japanese tactic was not very effective in killing their enemy. However, these charges were a dramatic display that even in the face of defeat, the Japanese soldier would never surrender and would rather die in a futile attack than surrender to his enemy.

One of the biggest Banzai attacks of WWII happened on a battlefield few Americans know about, Guam. It occurred in the middle of the summer of 1944, and the Marines who triumphed over the incredible chaos called it the most intense fighting they experienced against the Imperial Japanese forces on that island. Below is a short version of what happened.

Four days after 30,000 Leathernecks invaded Guam on 21 July 1944, the Marines had almost reached the highest ridgeline one mile away from their landing beaches where the bulk of the Japanese forces were dug in. As any military strategist will tell you, a force who holds the high ground, holds the advantage. The Marines knew they needed to dislodge the Japanese from their positions.

On 25 July, the Marines entrenched themselves on the heights above the beach and as the day ended, kept their eyes open and minds sharp. Many dangers came as the sun set because the Japanese proved adroit and active night fighters. Their usual modus operandi was to use the cover of darkness to sneak up and infiltrate the American lines and kill Marines sleeping in their foxholes, but that night they only conducted reconnaissance probes to maintain the element surprise for the upcoming counterattack.

Meanwhile, the Marines continued to probe for enemy weaknesses in the front, doing their best to deploy their armor: Sherman tanks. Right up until the day before the Japanese attack, the Leathernecks had used tanks that navigated the difficult terrain in order to blast enemy positions. Until they seized the high ground, they could not use tanks with freedom of movement. Before evening fell on the 25th, most tanks had pulled back into defensive positions.

 During the night on the ridgeline under pelting rain, the Marines experienced a Banzai counterattack against the northern beachhead at Asan Beach. It had been expertly prepared. The 3rd MarDiv reported “the probing attacks, at first, were so small and unrelated that it was not realized that this was the prelude to the enemy’s supreme attempt to drive our forces into the sea.”

Before the Banzai, the Japanese assigned to the attack had gotten drunk on sake (Japanese rice wine). “The attitude of the enemy…had indicated many of them were drunk—insanely so. A number of canteens containing liquor were found on the enemy dead, and empty sake bottles were strewn in front of the regiment’s lines.” Japanese on Guam often fought in a drunken state since the island housed the alcohol depot for Imperial Pacific Forces.

What may have started as another evening in the trenches around midnight shifted to heavy mortar fire onto the Marines' left flank of Fonte Ridge accompanied by a massive Banzai. After stealthily probing the American lines for weaknesses, the Japanese massed their forces, whipped their troops to an emotional frenzy, and conducted one of the largest charges of the Pacific War. More than 8,000 Japanese emerged from their positions and attacked the Marines in massive waves of crazed, drunken, screaming and fanatic warriors. The initial assault was just one of many, and the attacks would worsen throughout the night. The offensive was Guam garrison commander Lieutenant General Takeshi Takashina’s audacious move to push the Marines back into the ocean.

After the initial hit, the Japanese tried to capitalize upon the advantage of the surprise and at several points they actually pushed through Marine lines. The American lines had suffered several openings and small bands of enemy soldiers crept down the Asan River Valley into the 21st Regiment’s area, moving toward the 3rd MarDiv artillery’s Command Post. Several hundred reached the rice paddies and fought hand-to-hand with Marines. One section received seven attacks during that night in the Japanese effort to break through the lines. Since flares failed to illuminate the infiltrating Japanese, ships broke protocol and shone their searchlights over the battle lines.           

The Japanese attacked with an initial wave of at least 4,100 men on the 9,000-yard front on the heights above Asan Beach. Due to the massing of forces and the obvious direction of their attack, the Marines killed more of the Japanese than the Japanese did Americans. Marines quickly learned this night attack was indeed “more than a mere reconnaissance in force.” Reinforcements rapidly plugged the holes in the broken lines.

Around 2330, the 1st Battalion, 21st Marines’ CP at the bottom of Fonte Ridge heard a cacophony of machine-gun fire and explosive bursts coming from atop the cliff. Reports poured over the airways, many of them mixed and confused. One forward observer stumbled down the cliff to the CP declaring the enemy had attacked in force and “all hell had broken loose.” The neighboring 3rd Battalion reported, “After probing in the dark, Nips launched a terrific attack in force.” Men started to fall everywhere. The 21st regimental journal noted the Japanese started breaking through the Marine’s first line of defense by 0100.

Guns were blazing everywhere. Japanese were heard giving orders or shrieking in pain, as Marines yelled to plug holes, hollered for Corpsmen and bellowed their outrage. One Marine observed: “No one can image how the noise of battle creates the most bizarre combination of sounds that no one has ever heard other human beings make.”

 “Banzai! Where are you? Over here! Corpsman, I’m hit! Kaboom! To your right, watch out! Rat-a-tat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat. Banzai! Ping. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Help me! Holy Fuck! Fuck you! Ching. Ching. Ching. Stupid Nip! Brrrrrrrrrrr. Banzai! San Nen Kire (Cut a thousand men!), Vompp. You Marine Die!” One could say these men “heard all things in heaven and in the earth…[and] heard many things in hell,” to quote Edgar Allen Poe. Artillery rounds rained overhead sent by the batteries behind Marine lines on the ridge trying to stop the Banzai. Simultaneously, Japanese mortars cascaded onto the Marines’ CPs and the front lines. In addition to all the sounds, the smell of cordite, sweat, decay and smoke permeated the air while the taste of adrenaline seeped into the mouth making tongues and lips dry.

Just before dawn at 0400, the Banzai pushed through the Marines’ rear echelons—it was nothing like what the Marines had already seen. One Leatherneck, Charles Meacham, described the enemy crowd charging them illuminated by flares as resembling “brown maggots wriggling through the grass.” In some places, the Japanese infiltrated so quickly the fighting descended to hand-to-hand combat. Allen Shively, after almost being stabbed to death and shot with a pistol by an opposing officer, threw the man down and beat him to death. With this human wave, the lines got mixed and bodies bounced into one another.

The Japanese had one goal. “It was apparent that [the Japanese] objective was to reach the beach in the rear in order to destroy our artillery and the supply dumps” reported one Marine Corps officer who was in the fight. The enemy streamed through the gaps in the Marine lines, following a draw to the cliff. Tanks parked in the rear killed many with their machineguns as the enemy reached and overran them. The enemy’s rush upon the tanks resembled a horde of ants. Savagely they swarmed over the vehicles, disregarding the machinegun fire, and frantically pounded, kicked and beat against the turrets in an attempt to get around them and continue their wild rush down the draw to the rear areas of field hospitals, supply depots and staging areas. Most even forgot to use the demolition charges attached to their belts. One Japanese tripped as he ran, igniting his mine and blowing his body into a thousand pieces. An officer, crazed as he was, slashed at the tank with his sword breaking it and dying under a hail of bullets. There was so much chaos the lines between defending Marines and attacking Japanese became blended and tangled, looking like two snakes wrestling each other.

The Japanese wave made it to the beach and bypassed the 1st Battalion’s CP at the cliff’s base. They continued their advance, but the Marines rallied, counterattacked, killed many and drove others back. The 21st regiment reported elements of the 9th Marines “arrived in the nick of time” and were driving the “Japs away from the Command Post toward rear of right flank around 0600. Many Japanese, seeing that their attack had lost momentum and “that they were cut off,” blew “themselves up with grenades.” They would never surrender. “The… path of the breakthrough in the section could be traced the next day by the litter of dead Japs down the draw along their line of advance,” noted a 3rd MarDiv history after the war.  

One Japanese column attacked the CP of 3rd Battalion, 21st Marines. Cooks, bakers, clerks and mess attendants grabbed their rifles and repelled the attackers. Another group tried to blow up the artillery, but were caught by daylight in front of the division field hospital. “In addition to the corpsmen, ambulatory cases turned out in underwear and pajamas to fight with any weapon they could get hold of; bed patients fired right from their cots in the tents...” noted historian Samuel Eliot Morison. Japanese lost most of their officers in the first assault and could not move up reinforcements because they had none. They reached the artillery positions and supply dumps below Banzai Ridge, but it was a Pyrrhic victory—their advance lost momentum and the Marines killed almost all of them. After a full night and tough morning of hard fighting, the Marines retook their positions and the 1st Battalion, 21st Marines noted that by 0630 the enemy charge had been broken.

After the attack waned, the Marines claimed victory, having all but annihilated the attacking Japanese, though it had taken hours of fighting. USMC Lt. Col. Robert E. Cushman Jr. (later, the 25th Commandant of the Marine Corps and Navy Cross Recipient for actions on Guam), commented, “In the large picture, the defeat of the large counterattack on the 26th by many battalions of the 3rd Division who fought valiantly through the bloody night finished the Jap on Guam.”

It is unknown how many of the enemy participated in the attack above Asan Beach, but it probably numbered over 5,000. According to accounts: “The wild screams of the charging Japs gave the impression of a wild Banzai, but it was far from that type of unorganized suicidal charge. This was a part of an assault in force, planned with care…to drive the Marines from their beachhead.”

While this attack occurred on the ridges, another Banzai hit the Marines from the southern Orote Peninsula. This wave of around 3,500 Japanese was also defeated, but only after hours of intense fighting. By noon on 26 July, the Marines had repelled the Banzais leaving the Japanese unable to attack, and what was left of their units pulled back.

The defeat of the Banzai attack on Guam sounded the death knell for the Japanese garrison on Guam. The island would rapidly fall into Marine Corps hands—and become one of the stepping stones toward ending the war in the Pacific.

For more about the War of the Pacific, see my book “Flamethrower”: https://www.amazon.com/Flamethrower-Recipient-Williams-Controversial-Holocaust/dp/1734534109/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=