Today on PELELIU - Battle of Peleliu

we are gathered here on the 75th anniversary of the landing on Peleliu by the 1st Marine Division which began what they were told would be a swift three or four day battle this estimate was one of the forced made in the Pacific War the battle ended up lasting 73 days and saw the first division suffer some of the most appalling casualty rates of world war ii chesty pullers 1st regiment suffered near 70% casualty rate in just the first 6 days and was finished as a fighting unit the fight to capture the Japanese positions in the infamous umer Braga mountain became notorious for being one of the most terrible operations of the entire war the division as a whole was severely debilitated losing over 1/3 of its men and was only able to fight again in the okinawa campaign in April 1945 elements of the US Army's wildcat division 81st division had to be called in to relieve the shot up units of the 1st division and themselves suffered over 3,000 casualties we're gathered here today in humble remembrance and acknowledgement of the vast suffering and sacrifices which took place on this Islands haunting battlefields we pay our respects to the countless sacrifices both known and unknown which current generations may be unaware of as we explore this islands battle sites we will carry a heavy load of memory with us and pay homage to the horrendous loss and magnificent bravery which took place here we also acknowledge the incredible fighting spirit of the Japanese who fought here and died here they too performed valiantly in a cause they believed in this defense of Peleliu assured in a whole new strategy of defense which would cost the Allied forces dearly in the months to come [Music] [Music] [Music] okay this is the promontory what you see right there that big knobby Rock that's it right there so this is what the beach looked like there we're going to be walking down right here okay that's one of the what one of these anti-tank guns could do to a landing craft you dare for this guy right here you can tell he's in psychic trauma for what's going on there and this guy's busy shooting returning fire at the enemy there that's a great shot and this is a very tragic shot you can see the promontory right there and this guy is writing out the information they need for this guy that's just being killed so they can I beam before they put him in the ground that's a crate ammunition I dug up on the beach out here a couple years ago so that's what's under the sand out here so we'll get out on the beach and head up towards the point so we're looking at the bunker on the point that took the lives of so many Marines and knocked out so many amphibious tractors on the morning of September 15th the weapon is actually still in there although it's buried under coral debris from a recent typhoon but this gun here was not touched by Korea invasion bombardment it was almost invisible as you can see because it was oblique from the frontal fire and the Japanese had coral piled up around it people don't really know how many LV T's it knocked out but it knocked out quite a few eventually there was a rifle grenade fighter and there bounced off the barrel of weapon and set off the munitions that were inside the bunker the Japanese were in there went pouring out the rear of the bunker on fire and the Marines that were over on the flanks there were able to kill them all so this was one of the most active and bloody sites on the whole invasion beach and if the Japanese had been successful in holding this position and counter-attacking down the beach this way they could have rolled up the whole invasion so looking at a very critical position here on the morning of the invasion you can actually see the treads of a Sherman tank that was knocked out right here in front of the bunker [Music] even today there's still remnants from the vicious fighting here here's a live m1 round right here that just found and this is the nose 20 millimeter cannon nose come off one so there's still plenty of reminders here on on the battle from the battle and I'm sure there's plenty more of this laying around if you sent some time out of your poking around seventy five years and stuff still laying all over the place out here [Music] [Music] [Music] this is one of the amphibious tractors that was knocked out on the day of the invasion made its way in off the beach and probably got hit by one of the 75 millimeter rounds from the point who knows how many Marines were killed in it but it's set here for 75 years and you can see the Australian hardwood tree that's growing up out of it you can see the engine block some of the runners and even the locking pins back there are still nice and shiny almost like the day it was was built they must be titanium or something but it's a reminder of the mayhem that took place here and also a reminder of how nature eventually reclaims all this battle debris out here unless it's preserved this is a Japanese Air Administration Building and this housed all the officers and all the administrative personnel that I ran all the complex activities on the airfield here and as you can see it was well built with aesthetics in mind and also strength and it was also used as a fortification when the Marines started to take the airfield the Japanese has calmed themselves in here and the Marines had quite a firefight driving them out of here and you can see the tremendous amount of damage it took from pre-invasion shelling and bombing and once we took the building we used it for command post headquarters all sorts of different functions if you go around and actually look at the architectural features you can tell the Japanese built this with aesthetics in mind and it also with longevity you know they planned on being here for you know who knows hundreds of years so they invested a lot of resources and constructing not only this building but the power station and buildings like this all over the Pacific so it's a it's a testament to the you know the Japanese vision for their domination of the Pacific and you know 75 years later it's still here and practically all the American structures that were built and long gone but the Japanese structures are here and they'll be here for a long time [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] this is an enormous aircraft graveyard all sorts of aircraft here that were lost in operational accidents Japanese planes that were bombed in the spring when Halsey came down through here made air strike so just about every type of aircraft that operated in this theater you'll see wreckage out here and this enormous pile that goes on and on and on and gives you an idea of the amount of aircraft that that ended up lost and in scrap heaps and accidents and so forth in the battles out here pretty astounding site okay our group is examining the wreckage of a a6m Japanese zero that was probably destroyed in the spring air raids that ravaged the airfield here and this was probably shoved off over here just to get it out of the way so we're looking at the wreck of a American Corsair fighter plane and you can see the engine block and the bhim propeller there some of the wreckage here that's been gathered up into a pile here is one of the 50 caliber machine guns with a 50 caliber round still in the firing chamber another tragic site that someone paid probably the ultimate price for [Music] the Marine Corps unfortunately lost track of this young man just as he had slipped away from his unit somehow he was lost track of in the records his commanding officer and other many served with thought he had been evacuated in fact that probably was not the case it was his own mother who had not heard from him in more than six months who began inquiring as to his whereabouts and because of her looking out for her son the Marine Corps realized that he was missing and she did not find out then until a full year later September of 1945 that he had been killed here on Peleliu so I feel very very honored and grateful that seventeen-year-old would come and and do the kind of things that that he did and so many others did here on Peleliu he died just a couple days before his 19th birthday so you know really made the ultimate sacrifice and I think it's really wonderful to be all of us today to remember what he and so many other young Americans were willing to sacrifice [Music] there's lots and lots of unexploded shells which the Navy marine artillery units fired up in here and they're all over the place out of there but of course during all the air strikes the Japanese desponding the caves these have been gathered up they were scattered all over the place here and of course they're the noses have been taken off and they've been diffused so gives you some idea what the Japanese we're using is uh they're a defensive weapons here [Music] check out all the caves up to your left as you go down through there some of them are blonde some em are still open [Music] [Applause] this one as interesting way enough a lot of lighting fixtures in here so it could be that they actually had a generator in their lights amazingly enough our rocky bottom that hasn't been stopped up by someone need your treasure but relic honors [Music] traditional naval rice bowls [Music] communication Stephanie we're in one of the caves here in the five brothers area and we're looking at lots and lots of field radio batteries communications equipment switchboards electrical components and you can see some of it that still exists here and over here the huge battery that would have operated some sort of high-powered communications equipment and this may well have been an area that Nakagawa would have operated from [Music] this sign has just been put up recently and it gives you an explanation describing what you're about to enter here this is what it looked like when the Marines came through here and actually took the cave you can see the barrels are filled with coral rubble to kind of protect the entrance there and it's can also see that probably took some shell fire and a lot of debris fell down in front of it but what you're gonna witness is some excellent Japanese engineering when you go in here it's sort of mind-boggling to see what they've done they tunnel it out into this elaborate cave complex here they call it the caisson cave because there are a lot of Japanese artillery caissons the old sort of wagon wheel type that you sent see in the 30s you know archival films there's a lot of debris on the floor when you're in there but so be very careful when you're crawling around you can see some of the 75 millimeter tank rounds from Sherman tanks that they fired through the entrance here it's really kind of a marvelous engineering feat to come out here and do this out in the middle of the Pacific here so it shows you you know the Japanese skill of civil engineering I'm not exactly sure who did it but it's quite a feat of Engineering so this is the famous thousand man cave on Peleliu and when I first heard about this I went now there's no cave it can hold a thousand men and then when I got here and went inside and started exploring the labyrinth of tunnels and passages I said you could probably hold him more than a thousand men we're at this entrance here they had entrances all down through here and also on the other side of the mountain and this house mostly naval personnel and of course these were impervious to any kind of shell fire just about everywhere the Japanese forces in the station they always made sure that the troops were supplied with copious quantities of sake and beer and this is testament to the right here along his passage here the naval personnel in the Army personnel did not get along well the Navy would not contribute any labor to be what the Army was doing down the uma broeckel so there was a bad situation with cooperation between the two forces hard into the sides here would have served as property officers rooms they probably would've had a curtain up over here maybe a desk or a bed and so this would have been quarters or maybe supply room of some sort so you'll see a lot of these along the way in here there were mining troops that brought down were brought down specially from Japan to help construct this and this was not so much a fighting position there was more of troop quarters to shelter him from any air attacks pre-invasion bombardment and so forth but it's a massive labyrinth of tunneling supposedly from what I've been told that was where the residue from amputations and so forth would be brushed off into right there and then they would clean it out but this was the hospital area here Danny that haven't been carried off by visitors and you can see the Japanese prayer stick here for posture all ative and this is one of the passages that's either blown shut or collapsed for the passage of time you see a Japanese flag right there probably from some relative so we'll this will be as far as we go it's kind of a the same thing on and on and on you guys all see the sniper round right through this guy's head sad story there what kind of helmet is that that's a GI omen whoever was wearing this is ki k old instantly and let's all take a moment of silence and just you know as our tribute our own way say a prayer whatever you want to do just uh you know when I hold this right here just the sweep of emotion that comes over me it's just I mean we're we've been walking and what those guys went through it's just to have a moment of silence all right American canteen for the water vintage 1944 I'm sure it's got lots of nutrients in it maybe some rests man people people were to pay the thousand dollars for a canteen of water on the first couple days of the invasion here so that would have been a valuable item George Jr he did some rough terrain where I climbing around in there [Music] this is a propeller probably from the Japanese a6m zero some of the aircraft debris from the aircraft that operated off of the satellite field over on negative US island in various places around the owl and you see scattered Japanese aircraft wreckage but they might have been in a maintenance shop being repaired or something why it's laying out here by itself and you can see 30 caliber machine guns these will probably have Japanese zeros and and also see 20 millimeter cannon so when you see a lot of settling tanks oxygen tanks there and believe it or not there are lots of these weapons buried in the ground here still is the barrel of a machine gun or a cannon right there and there's one actually that's a groaning to the bottom of the tree trunk out here so here's another king right here buried in the ground there's one that brought it to the base of this tree remarkable reminder of what time in nature can do Oh heavy that is not a rock we're trying to shrapnel problem from probably a battleship round saying where's this weight 20 to 25 pounds yeah you even seen that we bring to the end it doesn't look as heavy this yeah and you like to get it one piece of that so what you're seeing here is a Japanese fortified cave they would fill these barrels up full of coil rubble and sometimes they would stack them three four barrels thick so it would be impossible for an artillery shell to penetrate that so the cave is in the back of this formation of barrels here and it made a pretty formidable defensive area [Music] so what we're looking at here is an LV ta called the Lady Luck and it had a 75 millimeter short-barreled cannon on it and what it was doing here was challenging a Japanese coastal defense gun under 20 millimeter and it actually ran up onto the Japanese Gump it crushed the gun pit structure in and damaged the gun the Japanese crew was wiped out this is really an interesting sight because it's kind of a representative of the standoff between Japanese defensive weapons and our L V T's and how they were used for tanks [Music] some examples of what the Japanese artillery to do to these in M fibs and probably the crew here we're obviously probably killed so that kind of a tragic sight there but reminder of how thin-skinned these things were [Music] we're really on an island where Helen curd and I feel a real sense of almost overwhelming gratitude and humbleness and thankfulness and especially salute to all those guys that went through all that hell here I've been here with a lot of them and heard their stories and you know they echo in my mind all the time really you know they come back in different parts of my life and I'll remember what one guy said about this and that and it makes you really realize what's important in life what's really important you know those guys are out here someone Ben Ben farm boys in Kansas only a months before they'd never imagined the South Pacific knew nothing about it and all of a sudden they were here in the middle of hell and you can just imagine what it was like for them [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you 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Channel: UtahVOD

Views: 460,727

Rating: 4.8939419 out of 5

Keywords: PELELIU, Battle of Peleliu

Id: TqReJ_KGV48

Length: 28min 23sec (1703 seconds)

Published: Sun May 31 2020