World War II History Six of Seven
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World War II History Six of Seven Marianas History Conference World War II History Table of Contents World War II History A Marine “by Inclination and by Training”: A Virginia Lawyer Goes to War ...........................................................................................................1 By Kathleen Broome Williams Beyond the Water’s Edge: Investigating Underwater Wrecks from the Battle of Saipan ......................................................................................13 By Jennifer McKinnon, PhD Constructing Rota’s World War II Landscape: The Chudang Palii Japanese Defensive Complex .................................................................29 By Edward Salo and Geoffrey Mohlman Archaeological Investigations of World War II Era Japanese Seaplane Base at Puntan Flores, Island of Saipan, CNMI .....................................63 By David G. DeFant Indigenous Memories of the Japanese Occupation and the War in Guam ......................................................................................................93 By Ryu Arai “The Scene of Liberation” ...................................................................101 By Michael Lujan Bevacqua Amelia Earhart in the Marianas: A Consideration of the Evidence ....123 By Thomas F. King Thomas A. Roberts and Joseph A. Cerniglia Soldiers and Civilians: US Servicemen and the Battle for Saipan, 1944 ..............................................................................................................193 By Matthew Hughes Nicer than Planned: WWII-Era Quarters of the 502nd Bomb Group on Guam ....................................................................................................201 By Michael J. Church and Matthew J. Edwards Historic Resources of the Carolinas Heights Region, Island of Tinian, Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas ..........................................207 By Patrick O’Day and Nicole Vernon A Marine “by Inclination and by Training”: A Virginia Lawyer Goes to War By Kathleen Broome Williams History Professor, Cogswell Polytechnical College, Sunnyvale, California [email protected] Abstract: My father, Roger G. B. Broome, died on 18 January 1945 when I was four months old. This paper examines how and why a colorblind, malaria-ridden, flat-footed young lawyer, and father of two, forced his way into combat in the South Pacific. It begins with his struggle for a commission in the US Marine Corps followed by his long campaign to leave staff jobs and get a fighting command. His stubborn determination and pursuit of glory ended on the bloody battlefields of Saipan where he earned two purple hearts, a Navy Cross, and a lingering death from wounds. This paper is based on my father’s official Marine Corps record, on his correspondence, on interviews with Marines, on published accounts and memoirs, on official histories of the Saipan campaign (where he is mentioned), and on documents from the National Archives and the USMC Military History Center. Introduction On 18 January 1945, my father, Major Roger G. B. Broome, USMCR, died in Bethesda Naval Hospital from the effects of wounds received on Saipan six months earlier. I, the “goodbye baby” he never got a chance to know, grew up to become a naval historian.1 But the ache left by the absence of a father, whose life ended just as mine began, never disappeared. And when, by an unexpected turn of fate, I met Marines who had served with my father, I focused the research skills I had honed studying naval technology to the search for my lost hero. Using the extensive collection of my father’s vivid, colorful, and articulate letters, the testimony of surviving Leathernecks who served with him, official records and other sources, I reconstructed the life of a University of Virginia Law School graduate who refused to let colorblindness stop him from obtaining a commission in the US Marine Corps. I was determined to understand why my father, who did not have to face combat, chose to do so anyway. In the course of this search I also had to come to terms with the brutality of the fighting in the Central Pacific. 1 The reference to “goodbye babies” comes from, among other sources, Robert C. Sickels, The 1940s (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004), 21. Marianas History Conference 2012 ・ 1 Military historians, many prone to celebrate the “Greatest Generation,” seldom examine the heartbreak that remains long after the guns fall silent. For years before the United States entered World War II my father had seen the conflict coming and was determined to get into the fight. From 1938 to 1941 he pleaded, politicked, and provoked his way to a medical waiver for his defective vision. Once commissioned, and on the outbreak of war, he spent five months in Brazil with the 17th Provisional Company – where he came down with recurring malaria.2 On his return to the States, my father’s superiors decided to tap into his education by sending him to staff school at Newport, Rhode Island.3 Upon completion of the course, and in spite of the medical problems that continued to punctuate his military career, he struggled to move out of the staff jobs he was assigned. His efforts to get into the fight – for which he was convinced he was best suited both “by inclination and by training” – continued, even after his son was born in April 1943. Fatherhood did not diminish his ardor to engage the enemy directly. 2 Gordon L. Rottman, U.S. Marine Corps World War II Order of Battle: Ground and Air Units in the Pacific War, 1939-1945 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002)189; Maj. General Commandant to CO, 17th Provisional Co., 15 Dec. 1941, file 17th Provisional Co., box 50, Record Group 127 (RG127), National Archives, College Park, MD. (NA2); Roger G. B. Broome, Chronological Record of Service, Official Military Personnel File, Headquarters Marine Corps: Official Miscellaneous Correspondence and Orders Jacket (hereafter RGBB/OMPF), National Personnel Records, National Archives and Records Administration, St. Louis, MO (henceforth NPR RGBB/OMPF, NPR. By the time the 17th Provisional Company left Brazil in Apr. 1942 the incidence of malaria in the company was almost one hundred percent. 3 Commanding General to Capt. RGBB, Orders, 29 July, 1943, Official Records 2, RGBB/OMPF, NPR; Fitness Report of 4 Aug. 1943, signed by Brig. Gen. J. L. Underhill, Fitness Reports, RGBB/ OMPF, NPR. From Newport, Broome was assigned as Assistant D-2 (intelligence) to the Headquarters Company, East Coast Echelon of the newly formed 4th Marine Division at Camp Lejeune. “I was promised that this D-2 job was temporary” he wrote his wife on 15 June, “and that I would get a line job with troops. Very few people are here yet and almost no troops. The Adjutant thinks it will be four or five months before we move out.” RGBB to JLB, 15 Jun. 1943. 2 ・ Marianas History Conference 2012 Marianas History Conference 2012 ・ 3 During the invasion of Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands in January 1944 my father served – reluctantly – as aide to General Harry Schmidt commanding the 4th Marine Division.4 But his fixation on the Marine Corps warrior ethos compelled him to risk his life by proving himself on the battlefield. After the Kwajalein campaign, with the 4th Division back on Maui on leave, my father’s persistent appeal for a combat command was finally successful. On 15 June 1944 he went ashore at the head of the Regimental Weapons Company, 24th Marines, on their next campaign, the invasion of Saipan in the Marianas.5 Saipan’s capture would provide America with submarine bases close to Japanese supply lines as well as providing a springboard for amphibious operations against the next objectives: Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Most importantly, possession of the airfields on Saipan, on neighboring Tinian, and on Guam, would put American bombers within striking distance of the Japanese Home Islands in preparation for their invasion. Tokyo was well aware of Saipan’s strategic importance and poured troops and resources into the island, fortifying and strengthening defensive positions. “Tomorrow morning we go in after our enemy,” my father had written the night before the attack. “It will be a heavy blow for him and will go a very long way 4 Chronological Record of Service, RGBB/OMPF, NPR; Fitness Reports, RGBB/OMPF, NPR. 5 For Saipan and other Pacific campaigns see, among others: Capt. John C. Chapin, Breaching the Marianas: The Battle for Saipan, Marines in World War II Commemorative Series (Washington, D.C.: Marine Corps Historical Center, 1994); Col. Joseph H. Alexander USMC, “Saipan’s Bloody Legacy,” Leatherneck (June 1994); Maj. Carl W. Hoffman, Saipan: The Beginning of the End (Historical Division Headquarters U.S. Marine Corps, 1950); Edwin Howard Simmons, The United States Marines: A History, 3rd ed. (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1998); J. Robert Moskin, The U. S. Marine Corps Story rev.ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1987); Robert Debs Heinl, Jr., Soldiers of the Sea: The United States Marine Corps, 1775-1960 (Annapolis, MD: United States Naval Institute, 1962); Allan R. Millett, Semper Fidelis: The History of the United States Marine Corps, revised and expanded ed. (New York: The Free Press, 1991); Albert A. Nofi, Marine Corps Book of Lists: A Definitive Compendium of Marine Corps Facts, Feats and Traditions (Conshohocken, PA: Combined Publishing, 1997); Jeter A. Isely and Philip A. Crowl, The U. S. Marines and Amphibious War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951); Col. Joseph H. Alexander, Utmost Savagery: The Three Days of Tarawa (Annapolis,