>> oliver: tonight on war stories, it was supposed to be tonight on "war stories," it was supposed to be a quick operation. >> we were pretty much expected to go ashore, get some exercise, get back on the ship. >> but in peleliu it all went to hell. >> the campaign was nothing but a continuous blood bath. >> i lost six or seven of my officers. >> they were hidden. they were in little spider holes. >> as soon as i turned around, a bayonet hit me here in the chest. >> what really happened on the bloody beaches of peleliu. that's next on "war stories." this is the national d-day

museum in new orleans where we're surrounded by the weapons of world war ii. good evening, i'm oliver north. welcome to "war stories." on 15 september 1944, 6,000 men of the 1st marine division landed under fire on a tiny, hot trunk of coral called peleliu. a mere six miles long and two miles wide. the japanese dwindeefenders on peleliu had nearly four years to port fi their positions and dig caves deep into the coral, committed to hold every inch of the island. nearly two months after the landing, almost 9,000 americans and 10,000 japanese were dead, wounded or missing. and some wondered why we ever invaded peleliu in the first place. this is the story of the courageous marines who stormed peleliu to fight one of the bloodiest battles of world war ii. ♪ on july 19, 1944, president

franklin delano roosevelt was nominated for an unprecedented fourth term. >> this convention for the office of the president of these united states. franklin delano roosevelt. >> after nearly three years at war, the president was still america's favorite candidate. he was succeeding politically and in his role as commander in chief of america's armed forces. a mighty american military was pushing hard on two fronts -- europe and the pacific. in europe, the president's joint chiefs of staff agreed on a strategy to defeat adolf hitler's nazi regime. but this was not the case in the pacific. there was still a sharp split in strategy between fdr's two principle commanders, general douglas macarthur and chester minitz. >> they couldn't stand each other. macarthur was set to go back to the philippines and he dearly wanted the philippines back. >> jim is a former marine

sergeant, an historian who has been to peleliu nine times. >> nimitz didn't to want go to pill pe philippines. he wanted to go to the coast of china. >> 2 1/2 years into the war, there was still a fight over strategy. this troubled the president so much, he decided to arrange a meeting with his pacific commanders in 1944. >> the pearl harbor war conferences are to be held. they review a crack army unit. >> this would be the only time during the war that these three leaders would meet. >> this meeting that was held in hawaii with the president, with nimitz and macarthur was to decide, where do we go next? what now? both nimitz and macarthur presented their ideas.

both sound, strategic ideas. >> admiral nimitz was at guadalcanal and mariana. macarthur surrendered in the philippines. >> macarthur presented more of an emotional argument. >>ize hiz emotional persuasion was enough, and nimtiz offered protection from the north with navy and marine. >> nimitz did command all the marine forces in the pacific. macarthur had the soldiers, the arm army. >> why peleliu? there's a dozen other places you could have gone. why peleliu? >> peleliu was 600 miles north of new guinea, which was where macarthur's forces were moving along the north coast. and it was judged to be necessary to take it, to protect that flank. >> from tulsa, oklahoma, gordon

gayle was a 27-year-old marine in 1st marine division. >> nimitz then told the 1st marine division to get ready to go to peleliu. >> when they started forming the marine corporation for world war ii, nobody had ever commanded a division of marines in the field before. the 1st marine division had fought in what we called the banana wars. they became known as the old breed. >> when i joined the marine corps, it was the size of the new york city police force. >> another member of the old breed was 25-year-old everett pope, born in the tiny town of milton, massachusetts. >> when did you first decide you wanted to be a marine? >> that's easy. i was a senior at bodien college in maine and it was 1941, and it was obvious something was going to happen. and this guy came around the campus, wearing this blue jacket, light blue pants with a stripe down the side and i said,

have i to have one of those. >> had anybody said anything at school about the likelihood of -- >> not to my knowledge, ollie. not to my knowledge. >> after graduating with honors, ray davis joined the marine corps in 1938. he had no idea he would go on to such a long and distinguished military career. as it was with so many, things changed the day pearl harbor was attacked. "war stories" spoke to him shortly before his death. >> i was in a tend. i ahead the announcement the japanese bombed pearl harbor. >> nearly two years before roosevelt met with macarthur and nimitz, marines landed on guadalcanal, starting an island-hopping campaign across the pacific. guadalcanal was the first offensive of the war and for most boys, their first taste of battle. >> do you feel, thinking back on it, you were ready to land on guadalcanal? >> not tarlly ready. but you do what you have to do

when you do it. we were ready to do that. we were prepared to make a landing and hold territory. >> we were told there were very few combat troops in guadalcanal. >> the major actions on guadalcanal, are they a learning experience for these young marines in terms of how they expect the japanese to fight? >> oh, i think so. we prepared for them to defend at the beach. they surprised us by not defending. the more they learned, the more confident we became. >> the 1st marine division cut their teeth in the bloody campaign at guadalcanal and thought they knew how to fight the japanese enemy, but by the time the marines hit peleliu, the japanese completely changed their tactics. >> well, the marines really thought that the japanese would use the same tactics they had used before, and that was when the marines landed and they would take the beach area and then the japanese would have one of their infamous banzai attacks to try to throw the marines back

in the water. >> the decision was made at the highest level in japan, if we're going to change our tactics, we're going to dig in, hang tough, extract maximum price. so, that's what they began at peleliu. >> the marines hit the beach in am tracks like this and enemy slogan was we'll never cease-fire to allow enemies crease to be. e to e to be, that's next

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>> oliver: well, the top brass fought over strategy how to conquer the japanese empire, over strategy and how to conquer the japanese empire, the 1st marine division was sent for training and for r&r. >> i wanted to be a marine. i wanted to do something. >> the old breed also picked up fresh face like 18-year-old fred fox from texas. >> i was a young man.

they had all been to guadalcanal and new britain. >> they put me in the 52nd replacement battalion. they sent me to the garden paradise. >> another 18-year-old was john hayes from kansas city, month. he was a navy corp man serving in b company, the 1st marine regiment. >> why marines? >> i had taken rotc in high school and i certainly knew i didn't want the infantry. >> and you end up with the marines. had you ever seen a ship before? >> i'd never seen a ship before. >> these new replacements joined other battle-tested marines to bring the division back up to fighting strength of some 19,000 officers and men. but this hastily chosen island was no resort. >> some also who was assigned to find a place for the 1st division base picked pavuvu out from the air. >> he grew up in columbus, now

part of the 17th regiment and 1st marine division, he knew he was no longer living in the comforts of home. >> we were moved there in the very early stages of its conversion from a -- strictly a coconut grove to the base. we went to the beautiful coconut island of pavuvu, where rats were a foot long, land crabs, you name it. >> growing up in dallas, texas, 24-year-old martin clayton was a private first class with 5th marine regiment when he arrived on that hellish island. >> it was a horrible situation. and from the general on down will tell you, it was not conducive for training. >> i did take the troops out for a lot of marches. and i did put them through one night of crawling under barbed wire with machine gun overhead so they knew what that sounded

like. the training there was not good at all. >> but there was one highlight for the boys in pavuvu -- >> i just want to you see what you're fighting for, that's all. >> hollywood legend bob hope was on a uso tour in the south pacific bases and heard that the 1st division would soon be leaving for battle. >> he said, yes, i'd be happy to come over and perform for a bunch of fighting men. >> do you remember bob hope coming in? >> yes, i do. he came onto pavuvu. we had a great open place down there, the wharf, and got about 20,000 people. >> was it a good show? >> oh, of course it was. girl, girls and everything. >> it's now 1944. some of those veterans have been gone since '41. what does that mean for them to have bob hope stop by? >> oh, it meant everything in the world. >> in early september 1944, the men of the 1st marine division were finally leaving their temporary home. >> the general consensus was that anyplace would be an improvement over pavuvu.

>> their destination, peleliu, 2,000 miles from tokyo in the palau island chain. it's just six miles long and two miles wide. japan had acquired it from germany after world war i as part of a league of nations mandate. initially even the japanese saw peleliu has nothing but useless swamps, jujs and sharp coral ridges. but that soon changed. >> a crisis in japanese/american relations. american gun boat bombed. >> the japanese sabre rattled at u.s. when they sunk it off the coast. fdr quickly threatened japan with a trade embargo. >> that's when they started fortifying the islands. >> by 1939 some 3,000 japanese military and 500 korean slave laborerer had turned the moonscape of peleliu into a fortress. they dug into the coral to build

an airfield and nearly caves and tunnels. this shows the spot of a fortified cave or tunnel. these defenses were occupied by a garrison of 10,000 japanese soldiers commanded by this man, colonel kunio nakagawa. >> in charge of 10,000 japanese soldiers. quite a command. >> yes, it was. they thought the world of him. he was good. >> invasion of peleliu was part of what was dubbed "operation stalemate" for the taking of the palau islands. >> overall command was general major roy geiger. he was not a mud marine, not a ground pounder. he was an aviator. he ran the air force on guadalcanal, and did such a great job. >> under general gearing leading the first marine division was 55-year-old william h. rupertus,

known to be complex, moody and sometimes unapproachable. >> he was a troubled -- psychologically troubled man. he did not have the support of many of the officers that worked for him in the 1st marine division. >> some felt rupertus hadn't recovered from the tragic loss of his wife and two children who died 15 years earlier from scarlet fever while living in china. >> he should not have been in charge. he should not have been in command of that division. >> four days before the marines made the trip to peleliu, general rupertus boldly predicted the invasion would be tough but quick, taking only two to three days. >> describe how the mission was briefed to you as battalion commander. >> we were pretty much expected to go ashore, secure the airfield, upgrade it, get some exercise, get back on the ship. >> i was a pac at the time. we don't get much information except we did know that the japs

had been there quite a while. it would be fast and furious, as general rupertus said. and, of course, that got us to worrying. that's okay about the fast, but what about this furious business? >> the navy blasted peleliu for three days with air and naval gunfire but it wasn't enough to destroy the japanese defenses. find out why when "war stories" returns. liberty mutual stood with me when this guy got a flat tire in the middle of the night, so he got home safe. yeah, my dad says our insurance doesn't have that.

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across all your locations. fast connections everywhere. that's how you outmaneuver. >> oliver: dawn, 12 september, 1944 dawn 12 september 1944, d minus 30 days, beginning the preinvasion bombardment of peleliu. navy helicats and bombers

dropped 500-pounds bombs and plastering the tiny island with machine gun. >> the bombardment, shelling and all this, it was just phenomenal. >> go out and look and you could see a flash. those were big flashes. >> you wondered how the japanese could live under such bombardment. >> the rain of thunder lasted three days, leading the commander of the bombardment force, jesse ohlendorf. >> he says, there's no mortar gets. show me a target, i'll shoot at it. >> they thought they had done all they could do, but actually they hadn't. >> they hit many of the caves and gun bunkers because they couldn't see them. >> if you look at the preparation fires, there's a discussion as to whether those navy prep tires, the pre d-day

prep fires were as vigorously supported as they should have been. were they? >> they were high in volume. my belief is we didn't have a proper target assessment capability. >> months before the bombardment, reconnaissance photos of peleliu were taken by air and submarine, but what they didn't show were the many fortified ridges and cliffs hidden beneath the island's thick vegetation. this is what the island looked like before the shelling and this is what that same area looked like after the bombardment. >> the intelligence that we had on peleliu was probably the worst or as bad as any other island during the entire pacific war. we found out later that they were all entrenched in these underground caves, some of them as many as four and five stories deep, that even had electric lights, you know, running in them and stuff like that.

so they were probably down there playing cards. >> the bombardment of peleliu was more or less after a catastrophe. >> 15 september 1944, d-day, or day of departure for 1st marine corps of peleliu, after breakfast of steak and eggs, all went on deck for morning prayer service. >> the chaplain brought the people up to the front part of the ship, the lft and held service there. >> they slowly made their way to the beach. >> as you're getting in the lvt, can you see the beach from -- >> yes. >> is it being pounded? >> yes. i could see 10 or 12 fires on the shore. >> we go in pretty good, then we hit this reef and it goes over the reef. and first thing i saw was the platoon commander, and he had a

bloody -- coming out of his shoulder. ran over to him and a japanese machine gun starts shooting at us. >> the first wave of amtracs, did you see any? >> the first ones i saw were burning. >> on the beach? >> yeah. some of them got hung up on the reef, too. >> 26 amtracs took direct hit and 60 more were damaged or destroyed. the beaches looked like a junkyard and the water ran red with blood. at 8:32 a.m. the first marines hit the beach. colonel nakagawa's garrison was waiting with a hail of fire. >> this was the first time there had been any opposition to a landing in our experience. >> were you saying, whoa, things aren't quick the way they were supposed to number. >> we said that very quickly. >> we received gunfire. jumped off and morter shell hit me and put a sliver on my knee. >> i landed on my sidearm and

that's all i had. >> except for a flame-thrower, the whole thing got completely wet. things were happening so fast and so furious. i said, i'm getting ready of this damn thing. and i dropped it. >> this is your first exposure to fire? >> it's my first exposure. platoon sergeant was a ga guadalcanal marine and i said, you know, i'm scared. he said, so am i. i said, you can't be scared. you're a veteran of guadalcanal. he said, you're going to be a veteran in five minutes. and i was. >> when qult war stories" returns, sherman tanks like this one and the only run and gun tank battle for marines in the pacific war.

>> oliver: 15 september, 1944 15 september 1944, h-plus three hours, nearly 6,000 marines of the 1st marine are