Battle of Guam (1941)

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of Guam began at 04:44 on the 8th of December 1941, when Captain George McMillin received word of the attack on Pearl Harbor. He commanded an island of 23,394 people, defended by a force that had no artillery on land, no airfield, and no realistic hope of relief. The Washington Naval Conference of 1922 had locked Guam in a kind of strategic freeze, and nearly two decades of neglect had left its garrison armed with little more than rifles and a handful of machine guns. What followed over the next two days would be one of the quickest American defeats of the Pacific War. The questions worth asking are not only how Guam fell so fast, but why it was left so exposed in the first place, and what its defenders and the island's Chamorro population endured when the fighting was over.

• 2. An Island Frozen in Place

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  Spain sold the northern Mariana Islands to Germany in 1899, the year after the United States captured Guam during the Spanish-American War. That split in ownership would matter enormously four decades later. Japan seized the German-held Marianas in October 1914 during World War I and received a League of Nations mandate over them in December 1920. Japanese colonists moved in, and by the late 1930s settlers outnumbered the islands' native population.

  Guam, meanwhile, was bound by the terms of the 1922 Washington Naval Conference, which required both the United States and Japan to refrain from further fortifying their western Pacific possessions. Guam's coastal artillery battery, which had been installed back in 1909, was removed by 1930. The Marine seaplane unit that had been stationed on the island since 1921 departed the following year. When the U.S. Navy sought permission in 1938 to build new fortifications, the proposal was rejected.

  In 1935 Japan banned Westerners from entering its mandated Pacific islands, and in 1939 it established the 4th Fleet to defend the region. By 1941 the United States had formally assessed Guam with a "Category F" defense rating, which ruled out new construction and directed the garrison, if war came, to destroy facilities of military value and then withdraw. The island sat on the Pacific Cable Company's telegraph line linking the Philippines to the American West Coast, and it served Pan Am flying boats as a refueling stop. Those were its strategic roles. Defending it was not considered practical.

• 3. The Garrison Left Behind

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  Captain George McMillin held two titles at once: governor of Guam and commander of all naval forces on the island. The force under him amounted to 271 personnel and four nurses, constituting a subordinate unit of the Asiatic Fleet. Most of those personnel were unarmed.

  The Marine barracks at Sumay held 145 men organized into a single company. The Insular Force Guard, a local militia charged with protecting the naval base, numbered 246 men, most of whom had received little training. Between the Marines and the Guard, the defenders could field 170 M1903 Springfield rifles, 13 Lewis guns, and 15 Browning Automatic Rifles. There were no mortars and no artillery on the island; the only guns of any weight were mounted aboard the minesweeper Penguin.

  Guam's police force, the Guam Insular Patrol, added 80 men armed only with pistols. On the 17th of October, dependents of American military personnel were evacuated to the United States, followed by more than a thousand construction workers. By December, the garrison's guard ship had sailed to the Philippines so the crew could pick up supplies and buy Christmas presents, and it was directed to remain there. The 23rd of October brought a U.S. Navy General Board report to Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox recommending against reinforcing Guam, citing the difficulty of defending it and the need to send resources elsewhere. The island was on its own.

• 4. The Japanese Assault Force

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  Japanese aircraft flew photo reconnaissance sorties over Guam from March 1941 onward. Plans for the invasion were completed by September of that year, and the South Seas Detachment was chosen as the primary assault force. It drew from the 144th Infantry Regiment and other units detached from the 55th Division, totaling 4,886 men. After concentrating in Korea during November 1941, the detachment made a brief stop in Japan and then sailed for Chichi-jima in the Bonin Islands.

  Supplementing this ground force was the 370-man 5th Company of the 2nd Maizuru Special Naval Landing Force, based at Saipan. Nine transports would carry the assault troops, escorted by the minelayer Tsugaru and four destroyers. Four heavy cruisers of the 6th Cruiser Division stood ready to provide fire support if needed. Air cover came from the 18th Naval Air Corps at Saipan, equipped with floatplanes.

  On the evening of the 9th of December, a Japanese invasion fleet of four heavy cruisers, four destroyers, two gunboats, six submarine chasers, two minesweepers, two destroyer tenders, and ten named transports left Saipan bound for Guam. The source notes with some dry precision that a mistake in Japanese intelligence-gathering had caused them to overcommit resources and attack with disproportionate force. Under Major General Tomitaro Horii, the South Seas Detachment alone numbered roughly 5,500 men by the time it landed.

• 5. Two Days of Bombardment

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  At 08:27 on the 8th of December, Japanese land-based aircraft from Saipan struck the Marine barracks, the Piti Navy Yard, the Libugon radio station, the Standard Oil Company facility, and the Pan American Hotel. During the attack the USS Penguin was sunk, though not before shooting down at least one Japanese airplane. One officer was killed and several men wounded. The raids continued through the morning and afternoon before subsiding at 17:00.

  The following morning, at 08:30 on the 9th of December, Japanese air attacks resumed. No more than nine aircraft attacked at a time, but the targets expanded to include the Government House in Agana and several villages across the island. Guam's interior, with its rugged hills and heavy tropical forests, offered no shelter from the air. December falls in the island's dry season. The bombers had good visibility, and the defenders had nothing capable of reaching them.

• 6. The Landing and Surrender

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  About 400 troops of the 5th Defence Force from Saipan came ashore at Dungcas Beach, north of Agana, in the early morning of the 10th of December 1941. They moved quickly against the Insular Force Guard in Agana, defeated them, and pushed toward Piti, Sumay, and the Marine barracks.

  The principal engagement of the battle took place at Agana's Plaza de Espana at 04:45, when a small group of Marines and Insular Force guardsmen fought the attackers. At 05:45 the Marines surrendered on McMillin's orders. McMillin himself surrendered officially at 06:00. Skirmishes continued elsewhere on the island until word of the capitulation spread and the remaining defenders laid down their arms. YP-16 was scuttled by fire; YP-17 was captured by Japanese naval forces.

  At the same time, Major General Horii's South Seas Detachment made separate landings at Tumon Bay in the north, on the southwest coast near Merizo, and on the eastern shore at Talofofo Bay. U.S. Marine losses came to five killed and 13 wounded in the landing phase itself; counting the earlier aerial bombardment, the Marines suffered 13 dead and 37 wounded in total. Eight U.S. Navy personnel were killed. Four members of the Insular Force Guard died and 22 were wounded. Japanese losses were one naval soldier killed and six wounded. Private First Class John Kauffman was killed by the Japanese after the surrender.

• 7. Occupation and One Man's Survival

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  Thirteen American civilians were killed by the Japanese during the battle. Of six U.S. Navy seamen who evaded initial capture, five were eventually caught and beheaded. The sixth was Radioman First Class George Ray Tweed.

  Tweed's survival depended entirely on the loyalty of ordinary Chamorros, who moved him from village to village across Guam for two years and seven months. The Japanese understood that no unknown American could hide on a small island without local help. Chamorro suspects were questioned, tortured, and beheaded in retaliation. Families who sheltered Tweed risked their own lives. The occupation would last until the Second Battle of Guam in 1944, and the experiences of the Chamorro population during those years grew directly from their willingness to protect men like Tweed against a force that punished them for doing so.