June 15, 1944: D-Day on Saipan

By CASSANDRA HAMMAN
Special to the Saipan Tribune

It was a hot night in the crimson waters of Saipan on June 14, 1944. Men of the G Company, 4th Marine Division decided go up onto the deck of their LST to cool off and search for some sort of relaxation. Carl W. Matthews, a tall 19-year-old Southern boy, had just come from the fierce battles in the Marshall Islands and was ready to kick back with his fellow crew.

“I had played fiddle in a little band up in Texas and I had found this sailor that played guitar. I tuned it up to his guitar and we started playing almost every night,” said Matthews. The two started off the evening with a little country Western and later a man asked, “Do you know any hymns?”

“So we started playin’ hymns,” Matthews said. “As quickly as we would finish one, somebody’d say, ‘Do you know What a Friend We Have in Jesus or do you know this or that.’”

The two musicians played and the soldiers sang along. One man came up to Mathews and said, “You know I feel like I’ve been to church.” This phrase resonated in Mathew’s mind “because so many of those guys that were up there that night, that was their last time to go to church.”

The next morning Matthews got up at 3am, ate steak and eggs and put on clean dungarees, clean underwear and clean socks. Placing a pack on his back, the lieutenant heading their team checked on each soldier to make sure every Marine had proper gear.

Once daylight peered over the horizon, the doors of the LST lowered into the warm Pacific water. Stepping into the clear blue, the company immediately ran to an area away from the shelling.

Within two hours, 8,000 Marines were lined up. The G Company, as the first wave platoon, landed just below Sugar Dock in Chalan Kanoa and instantly traveled off the beach.

As bullets from snipers rained down on them, Matthews and his comrades took shelter underneath the palm trees. Three artillery men ran toward the company but were hit directly. “They just disintegrated,” Matthews said.

That entire day the group only reached the edge of Chalan Kanoa—about 150 yards. When the sun started to set, the platoon raced to the edge of the parched Susupe swamp and was ordered to cross. They headed into the hills.

“That night we dug into the second hill and above there was a bomb crater. That’s where the lieutenant and I stayed,” he said. A journalist named Bob Cook from the Chicago Tribune joined the men that night. They all collapsed—exhausted by the daylong tension.

The next morning the G Company was ordered to form a line across the entire island. As they headed north toward DanDan, no shots were fired and surprisingly no enemies appeared through the deep murky jungle.

Their mission was to investigate a Japanese gun emplacement. “When we got there, it was a wooden dummy!” Matthews said. “It was huge—they had done a remarkable job of creating a 16 inch gun. They had camouflage depressed in an area in the lava rock.”

The company then moved toward the center of the island. “I called it the Devil’s Backbone because it was a long stream of mountains that went from the south all the way to the north,” he said. The men fought in the mountains until June 23rd.

“We met a Chamorro,” Matthews said. “We couldn’t understand what he was saying, but by the way he was pointing we could tell there was a cave by the side of this cliff.”

The lieutenant sent 10 of the men down, including Matthews, to follow the Chamorro. The local stood on the outside of the jagged rock and gradually made his way into the cave. Inside were 12-15 fearful Chamorros who didn’t want to leave the confines of their hiding place. Finally, they were convinced and the 10 soldiers guided the natives up the side of the cliff.

One woman who was holding a baby in each arm was unable to make the climb. Matthews offered to carry a baby, saying, “Let me have one.” “No, no!” she said, snatching her babies from his arms. After a while, she finally allowed Matthews to take one in his arm. Slinging his rifle over his left shoulder, he nestled the baby in his other arm and made his way up to the top of the cliff. Once they reached through the thick bushes and trees, a photographer took a snapshot of Matthews with the baby. “I’ve never seen the picture,” he said.

Over the next two days the Americans killed more than 4,000 Japanese. “It was a slaughter, so sad,” he said. The Japanese had hardly any rifles and their weapons mostly consisted of pointed bamboo spears and rocks. “They didn’t have anything. No ammo, no weapons and they were hungry,” he said. “But they had a lot of sake evidently.”

The surviving Japanese fled to the cliffs by the Last Command Post and some took their place just above this point. Matthews’ Company pulled out of the mountains and migrated toward the edge of these cliffs. They were ordered to travel downward and stopped 20 feet from the top of the ridge. After 30 minutes, Matthews peered through his binoculars. He spotted six Japanese officers near the command cave. They walked out of the trees. They were well dressed. They carried swords and wore new caps. “I knew they were not the common soldiers we’d been seeing,” Matthews said.

When the men of the G. Company stood up, a machine gun suddenly opened fire, instantly killing the lieutenant leading the company. Matthews dropped as well, but was unscathed.

One night Mathews didn’t think he would make it. Through the shower of bullets and bombs he couldn’t hear anything. His eardrum had blown out and he felt like a big firecracker had gone off. His memory faded and came back and faded again.

“I remember the rock wall, I remember the trees, I remember the field that was west to the rock wall, but I don’t remember getting off that cliff,” he said.

In the middle of chaos, James K. Oliver, a soldier from Knoxville, Tennessee, forced Matthews up a cliff. He got to the top and withdrew behind the stonewall. They regrouped. Matthews started walking back toward the cliff by himself. The lieutenant called him and he didn’t respond. Once they got him, he just sat and stared. He woke up eight days later in a hospital bed.

“As I stood on that beach yesterday morning I looked out at the sea and I thought about all the ships that were out there. How that must have looked to those people that were on the beach before we got here and I wondered what the Japanese boys thought about when they saw all that muscle out there. Battle ships and cruisers, destroyers, hundreds of LST’s. A lot of people died on that beach,” he said.

Matthews had his own private memorial this week. It was his first time back since 1944. “This is my 11th day and everyday has been filled with so much,” he said, tears creeping into his eyes. “People ask me if this brings back too many terrible memories, but the really gory things I kind of put into the back. I think it’s always better to remember the beautiful things. I choose to do that.”

Matthews now resides in Dallas, Texas and runs his own steel business called Steelhaus. He lives within walking distance of his grandchildren.

Last Tuesday’s parade was a hopeful and promising day for Matthews but he remembers not so much those who survived but also the thousands who died. “As I looked at those children, little girls waving their flags and waving at us like we are heroes, which we’re not. The heroes are the ones that didn’t come back…I thought that’s why we were here; to make this island what it is today. That’s why we fought.”