The Battle of Peleliu
Due to the generosity of donors, the United States Military Academy Department of Law offers cadets the opportunity to learn about war crimes by traveling to historical crime scenes via summer Academic Individual Advanced Developments (AIADs). The Far East War Crimes AIAD travels to the Indo-Pacific region and, in 2024, will travel to Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines. This AIAD exposes to cadets how law, when confronted with war, has too often failed to avert horrific conduct. Cadets will be confronted with narratives of war crimes that, at best, reflect differences from the American perspective and, at worst, reflect outright revisionist history. This AIAD also carries renewed relevance due to the Department of Defense’s focus on large-scale combat operations (LSCO), and the increasing prospect of such operations in the Indo-Pacific.
This post examines the high-intensity conflict of the Battle of Peleliu, which has been described as the forgotten corner of hell. The Battle of Peleliu ran from September 15 to November 27, 1944, had the highest United States Armed Forces casualty rate of any amphibious assault in the Pacific operations of World War II, and, tragically, did not produce significant strategic military advantage. Before examining lessons learned, this post delves into atrocities committed by both sides.
The Battle of Peleliu
The Battle of Peleliu, replete with war crimes on both sides, demonstrates war at its worst, and reminds us how difficult, ugly, and dehumanizing war can be. It also serves as a cautionary tale of an unnecessary battle, worsened by commander hubris and unwillingness to alter plans and tactics in the face of an enemy’s unanticipated actions.
Strategically, the United States fought the Battle of Peleliu in preparation to retake the Philippines. One of the Palau Islands, Peleliu is a small, lobster claw-shaped island just 600 miles east of the Philippines. Following the December 7, 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor, Japan attacked the U.S.-administered Philippines. General Douglas MacArthur, then-commander of the United States Army Forces in the Far East, fled Corregidor Island with his family to Australia in March 1942. General MacArthur famously declared “I came through and I shall return,” but the United States ultimately surrendered the Philippines on May 6, 1942. That surrender led to the 66-mile Bataan Death March of 76,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war and thousands of deaths. The 2024 Far East War Crimes AIAD will retrace a portion of the Bataan Death March and visit Corregidor Island.
In Pearl Harbor, General MacArthur convinced President Franklin Roosevelt and Admiral Chester Nimitz of the military necessity to return to the Philippines to ensure America’s prestige would not be diminished among its allies in the Far East (p. 8). Military leaders believed capturing the six-mile long, two-mile wide Peleliu and its airstrip would establish a strong right flank for General MacArthur’s return. However, two days before the planned assault, after airstrikes revealed the Philippines were not as heavily defended as previously thought, Admiral William “Bull” Halsey, Commander of Western Pacific Task Force, urgently requested Admiral Nimitz to abandon the plan to commit ground troops to Peleliu. Admiral Nimitz, however, claimed it was too late to call off the invasion (p. 8-9). The Philippines was indeed lightly defended. Taking Peleliu was of dubious necessity, and garrisoned Japanese forces could have been left to “wither on the vine” as had American-bombed Japanese naval bases in the Caroline and Solomon Islands (p. 7-9). The Battle of Peleliu is not an example of the Rendulic Rule absolving Admiral Nimitz of second-guessing. Rather, Admiral Nimitz, via Admiral Halsey, knew that the invasion was not necessary for the primary objective of retaking the Philippines.
Despite its size, Peleliu garrisoned 10,500 Japanese soldiers (p. 17). The Japanese objective was to make retaking Peleliu, part of Japan’s “Absolute National Defense Zone,” as costly as possible to the United States while “bleeding the Americans white” (p. 21-22). Japan hoped the United States would then pursue a negotiated peace. While Japan ultimately failed to achieve its latter goal, it succeeded in the former, due to changed tactics, poor American intelligence, and hubris.
28,000 American Marines and U.S. Army infantry fought in Peleliu, including 17,000 from the 1st Marine Division commanded by Major General William Rupertus, with the remainder largely from the Army’s 81st Infantry Division. Maj Gen Rupertus infamously declared, “[i]t will be a short operation, a hard-fought ‘quickie’ that will last four days, five at the most, and may result in a considerable number of casualties” (p. 22). In reality, the battle took seventy-four days, nearly fifteen times his maximum estimate (p. 88).
The pre-invasion naval bombardment, initially scheduled to last four days including D-Day, ended a day early on 14 September 1944, as Rear Admiral Jesse Oldendorf aborted the bombardment, stating he had “run out of targets” and sent most Navy support ships on to the Philippines (p. 29). Due to poor intelligence, the United States believed the Umurbrogol Mountains in the center of the six-mile-long island were low rolling hills, rather than rugged raised coral and limestone, in which the Japanese had blasted and honeycombed hundreds of pillboxes and interconnected bunkers with interlocking fields of fire and mutual support (p. 49). These defenses largely survived the pre-invasion bombardment and contributed to the over 1,000 American casualties on D-Day alone.
Because the battle was supposed to be a “quickie,” troops were sent with inadequate water supplies, the drums of which previously stored gasoline and were inadequately cleaned, to a humid island near the equator where daytime temperatures exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit (p. 59-60). Altered Japanese tactics additionally surprised the United States. Peleliu was the first battle where the Japanese did not conduct effective “banzai” charges, but rather engaged in small scale counter-attacks over a protracted period, in a defensive war of attrition (p. 9).
Ultimately, General MacArthur triumphantly returned to the Philippines on October 20, 1944, while the Battle of Peleliu would continue to rage for another 38 days. At the battle’s conclusion on November 27, 1944, approximately 10,900 Japanese were dead, but at great cost to the United States. The 1st Marine Division was decimated, suffering a loss of 1,300 dead, 5,450 wounded, and 36 missing. The Army’s 81st Infantry Division suffered 208 dead and 1,393 wounded (p. 89). The greater than 40% American casualty rate was the highest of any amphibious assault in the Pacific operations of the Second World War.
Relevant Law of Armed Conflict
While the Battle of Peleliu predated the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War from 27 July 1929 applied. Both the United States and Japan had signed the treaty, but only the United States ratified it. While Japan failed to ratify the 1929 Convention, it indicated in 1942 that it would follow the Convention’s rules as well as those encompassed in the 1907 Hague Conventions. Article 16 of Hague Convention (X) required each party to take all possible measures to protect the dead against pillage or ill-treatment, which failed to deter either side in Peleliu, as discussed below.
Unsurprisingly, an Imperial Japan that was willing to bomb Pearl Harbor in violation of Hague Convention (III) relative to the Opening of Hostilities was willing to commit additional war crimes against Americans, despite assurances given to the contrary. Article I of Convention (III) states “[t]he contracting Powers recognize that hostilities between themselves must not commence without previous and explicit warning, in the form either of a declaration of war, giving reasons, or of an ultimatum with conditional declaration of war.” Japan gave no such warning, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt described the bombing of Pearl Harbor as an “unprovoked and dastardly attack.”
War Crimes
On Peleliu, both Japanese and American forces committed war crimes. In one example, Marines discovered three Japanese-mutilated Marine corpses. Two Marines had their penises cut off and stuffed in their mouths, one of which also had been decapitated with his hands severed and placed on his chest. And a third Marine had been butchered like a carcass torn by predatory animals (p. 160). Three additional Marines were found tied to trees, having been used as bayonet practice with 50 stabs in each corpse, and their testicles cut out. Additionally, the Japanese took no prisoners on Peleliu, while the Americans ultimately took 202 prisoners, only nineteen of whom were Japanese, with others being Korean and Okinawan laborers (p. 89).
After witnessing such despoiled bodies, young Marines replied in kind. Marines also despoiled bodies on Peleliu, which included field-stripping packs and uniforms for souvenirs and prying out gold teeth (p. 161). One Marine even attempted to pry out gold crowns with his Ka-Bar combat knife from a thrashing and gurgling hors de combat Japanese soldier, which led another Marine to commit a “mercy killing” of the Japanese soldier, allowing the gold plundering to resume (p. 129-131). Rather than gold teeth, another Marine planned to keep a Japanese hand, severed with his Ka-Bar combat knife, which he intended to dry and keep as a more interesting souvenir until he was pressured to throw it away (p. 166-67). This young Marine was not a war criminal archetype. Rather, once described as mild-mannered, he became a desensitized “twentieth-century savage.” Another Marine collected approximately fifty Japanese skulls, taking only those with stainless steel teeth so they shined, and artistically placed them around his foxhole. “We were around the bend,” he admitted decades later. Another Marine, after receiving permission from his Sergeant, gave a grenade to a hors de combat Japanese soldier who wanted to kill himself after being incapacitated in a failed grenade attack.
While not always war crimes, other dehumanizing, depraved, and criminal behavior was common on Peleliu. When a patrol unit dug in during a rainy night, a Marine mentally “cracked” and repeatedly screamed. After a punch to the face and a subsequent morphine injection failed to quiet him, an entrenching shovel was used to silence and kill him, lest he reveal the unit’s position (p. 104-111). The physical and mental stress of continuous, ever-present danger and violent combat replete with friends injured, suffering, and dying, and coupled with dehydration and sleep deprivation, was more than many young men could endure.
Lessons Learned
The 2024 Far East War Crimes AIAD will challenge today’s cadets and tomorrow’s commissioned officers to critically examine the military necessity and the great human cost of future wars. The Battle of Peleliu was of dubious military necessity and won at a horrifically high human cost. For future LSCOs, the military necessity of the mission that sends American forces into combat must be clear. Admiral Nimitz reasonably knew two days prior to D-Day that the invasion of Peleliu was not necessary for the primary objective of retaking the Philippines, but he chose not to abort. It is never too late to call off an invasion. Understandably, a Peleliu veteran believed that war is “severe, unrelenting inhuman emotional and physical stress . . . [and] a brutish, inglorious, and a terrible waste” (p. 171, 344). While the Pacific operations of the Second World War were necessary, it is difficult to argue that the Battle of Peleliu was anything but a terrible waste.
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Major Joshua Dimkoff serves as an Assistant Professor and Executive Officer in the Department of Law, where he teaches military justice, as well as military and constitutional law.
Photo credit: U.S. Army Center for Military History and National Archives