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

first marines are hunkered down, pinned down further north on white beach one and two are captain pope, private first class fox, but what they didn't know is colonel nakagawa's men had changed their tactics. >> they had five levels of caves. we were not prepared for that kind of a defense. >> to our left it was a point of land which the japanese had fortified. we scared them completely, fire control down the beach. it was just terrible. >> you're still getting heavy gunfire from the japanese. >> they didn't have a fixed fire pattern apparently. they would run their mortars out on the platform, get back in the cave, and do that repeatedly. >> it was chaos. >> as the 1st and 5st marines gathered, they witness aid different kind of confusion. >> we were jumping the gun, so to speak, because some

high-ranking officer thought it was time to go, even though we had not been requested. we finally went up to the line of departure and the wave officer said, i don't have any orders to send you ashore. and you wouldn't let us go in. we floated around all night long. >> pfc fred fox and k company under the command of captain george hunt gant mission of securing the volatile left flank. this area of peleliu, known as the point, was defended by five well placed and enemy pill boxes like this one. they were barely visible, hidden in the coral and had their sights set sharply on the advancing marines. >> it's a pimple on the shoreline that sticks out, but from the tip of the point, you can look straight down the whole length of white beach one and two.

you have a field of fire that is absolutely beautiful. you can't miss. >> first day we took the point, but we lost two platoons. the japanese counterattacked and divided. >> it was 18-year-old fred fox's second night on peleliu when he came face to face with the enemy. >> i crawled over, climbed down the cliff and i took about three steps and i heard a splash behind me. there were japs right under me. as soon as i turn around, a bayonet hit me right here in the chest. i grabbed the bayonet where it's attached to the rifle and i had this pistol, i just slammed it right in his face. he dropped everything and i took his rifle and jabbed it into him. i got a hit and then i got a hit across here. with a sabre. >> fox fell from the edge of a cliff and landed in the water. all night he lay there, clinging to life while japanese soldiers

walked above him. >> one thing i do remember is i felt like i was talking to my father. he died when i was 13. and i said, dad, if you'll get me out of this mess, i'll be the best little boy you ever had. and i yelled, corpsman to the medic and the voice said, what the hell are you doing out there? and i said, i can't get up. he said, well, i'll come get you. >> that voice turned out to be a machine gunner from the bronx. he saved pfc fox and was awarded the silver star for his act of valor. >> i found out later on it was andy burns. and i wanted to track -- track him down and hug him. >> it took two days for the remainder of captain hunt's company k to secure the point. in the bitter fighting there were horrific casualties. >> they walked into a buzz saw. before they were relieved, there were 78 marines left out of 235.

>> while k company 1st marines had their bloody battle at the point, the 5st marines had their own task, taking peleliu's coveted airfield. it became the first scene for the only run and gun scene for the marines in the pacific. >> my intelligence officer said, there are tanks coming across there. i said, send our tanks after them. >> you had how many? >> five. >> how many did they have? >> i think it turned out to be 13. >> i was standing out there, what in the world are our tanks doing back there? somebody said, our tanks, hell! they're japanese. then all hell broke loose. we fired machine guns, bazookas. tanks came all the way through, broke through our line. it was horrendous. >> colonel nakagawa's height tanks with half inch armor and weighed three tons prp there

were no match for the heavily armored sherman tanks. >> one told me he had to change from anti-tank ammunition to high explosive because it was going through the tanks without exploding. there wasn't enough metal on them. >> the tank battle cost marines 59 casualties but proved fatal for nearly 500 japanese. mane while, the fir1st marines e moving inside, puller was a life-long leatherneck cut from the same cloth of george c. patton, his cousin. >> he has a reputation of putting himself in great risk in order to accomplish the mission. >> i think he cared for his marines but i certainly think that with the tradition of the corps, he wanted to win.

>> puller and his men paid the price for the navy's assumption they already had all the targetings. as a result, 35 marines were killed or wounded. >> on the morning of the second day we ran into this block house that was not supposed to have been there. >> i was told by the regiment they were going to target list for the navy and the navy had not touched it. >> we had to 3u8 back. we lost some men trying to maneuver around it. we pulled men back, pulled the troops back probably 100 yards and brought in naval guard. >> the uss mississippi was quick to respond, shelling the block house with 14-inch guns. >> after three or four hits with the battleship, we were able to get the japanese out of there and move on. >> at terrible cost, the men of the 1st marine division had moved inland. now after 17 hours bobbing offshore, the 7th marines were finally on the beach. >> i just thought to myself, well, i think i'm all right now as far as holding up under

battle conditions because i've seen my own marines, you know, dead and just with the waves washing back and forth. >> peleliu's terrain was the japanese's biggest ally. coming up, the rugged fight for the bloody hills of hell. zo

>> oliver: the men of the first marine division men of the 1st marine division struggled for every yard of the coral island they took, but they battled more than just japanese soldiers. >> it was hot. i have heard figures between 110 and 120 degrees. and unsanitary conditions. and the dead bodies. not our bodies, but the japanese bodies there were around. water was very, very scarce. we would run across a depression

where a little bit of water collected there and green scum on it. and we would just brush away as much of the scum as we could and dip a little bit as we could into the canteens. >> since drinking water was scarce on the islands, the marines brought in their own supply, but even this didn't go as planned. >> i don't know how it happened, but the water supply was being brought in to us, was put in gasoline 55-gallon drums and somebody forgot to wash them out. and the water was not palatable. >> along with heat and lack of water, peleliu's drain became yet another nightmare for the marines. >> there wasn't a cave on the island that wasn't supported by at least one other cave or other gun bunker. if you were assaulting one, you were being fired at from two or three places. >> machine gunfire causes a lot of casualties. we couldn't even tell where it

was coming from. >> and they had caves in those hills with steel doors. they'd open the steel doors, one a howitzer out, fire a few rounds and close the steel doors. >> there was a 155 long tom. it was firing point blank. it was just like throwing grafl up against the war. that's how hard this coral rock was. >> the most difficult terrain to maneuver through on peleliu was a hilly region called the umurbrogols. >> the marines that were documenting all of this couldn't pronounce umurbrogol. they said, what does it sound like? they said it sounds like peleliu. >> it didn't reveal the brutal terrain. the 1st marines were given their most difficult order yet. take these hills, later known collectively as bloody nose ridge. >> this was a nickname they gave it because somebody said, you

know, going up there was like getting a bloody nose. >> we were going into the attack every day and we were getting kicked off every day. >> you're quoted as saying the attack was the most difficult assignment you've ever had. >> true. when we were -- when we were told to go up on top of that high ground, over that rough terrain, where the japanese were able to fire at us spoeradicall without us returning fire, we were suffering casualties, it was a struggle to get up there physically. >> one of the fiercest battle took place when captain pope took his already depleted "c" company against the hill. some say general rupertus shouldn't have sent him to take the hill. >> rupertus was advised to replace them with the 81st infantry division. he didn't want to do that.

he wanted us to be a total marine show. >> i landed at 2:35. i had at this point about 90 minutes. >> on d-plus four, shortly bra noon, pope and c company began their assault. describe the terrain of that hill top. >> undescribable coral rock, jumbled everywhere, as if a giant had created it a billion years ago. no rhyme or reason to it. we couldn't go through it to get to the machine guns firing at us. couldn't get a flame thrower. couldn't get a charge. couldn't get there. japanese attempted to throw us off. we had hand-to-hand combat. a lot of short-range fire, a lot of grenades used. but we ended up at dawn the next morning, the fact we had no ammuniti ammunition. >> they were down to fighting with shovels, throwing rocks, empty ammunition cans, fighting with knives, bayonets, hand-to-hand on the tip of that ridge that night. it was that bad. but he held -- still held the

tip. when he was ordered to withdraw the next morning, he had 15 marines left. >> years after the battle, the men who fought there gave hill 100 a new name. >> the guy who were there called it pope's hill. >> they probably called it that damn hill. >> for his axe of courage and valor, every pope received our nation's highest decoration. >> general davis is responsible for my having received a medal of honor. he wrote the citation and i'll never forget that. and he has a distinguished commanding officer who is responsible for my having lived through that battle. so, i owe him my citation. i owe him my life. >> 72 japanese soldiers held out on peleliu for two years after the battle was over. find out how when "war stories" returns.

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>> oliver: d-plus five peleliu's air strip was under american control and marine corsairs were making the shortest bombing runs in history. the 1st and 5th marines continued their fight against the japanese defenders. >> the entire campaign was nothing but one continuous blood bath. we just couldn't seem to get a foothold. >> the marines came to rely on the courage of navy corpsmen with a thin line between life and death on the battlefield. >> i never had a navy corpsman that didn't go beyond the call of duty. >> the corpsman is always vulnerable, and the marines all knew that. they protected the corpsman. as a result, the bonding is very close between the navy corpsman and the marines. >> you needed to take care of one another. you know, you looked out for

your brother. >> camaraderie is hard for people to understand. >> and on peleliu, navy corpsmen had their hands full. some of the 1st marines became casualties. on d-plus six after visiting bloody nose ridge, general geiger to pull his battered and exhausted marines needed to be pulled off the island. ray davis' 1st battalion suffered a horrific 70% dead or wounded. >> that's the highest casualty rate you'd experienced in the war, wasn't it? >> oh, by all means. i didn't have anywhere in three wars that i know of where that kind of casualty took place. >> after just a week of fight ng, the 1st marines were replaced by the army's 81st infantry division, known as the wildcats. >> we hated the fact that they had to come in and finish the job for us, but by the same token, our ranks were so

decimated at that point that we were no longer an effective fighting force. >> colonel nakagawa kept his vow to fight until the bitter end. the 5st and 7th marines along with the wildcats fought until there was nearly nothing left of the japanese garrison. 72 days after marines hit the beach, colonel nakagawa sent his final message. >> the message he sent was a cherry blossom, cherry blossom, cherry blossom. and they would know what that meant. that the island had fallen. he had fallen. and he committed suicide. >> the fight for the tiny island was finally over but at horrible costs. the marines suffered some 6500 casualties, the army another 3,000. for the enemy, less than the 100 of the original,000 troops were alive. ray davis and gordon gayle were awarded the red cross for their

sacrifice on peleliu and nearly 600 men of the 81st infantry division received heroic awards. >> i was entitled to a purple heart, but i had lost so many men that had had arms blown off and legs blown off and just really serious wounds that -- i just felt like it would be an insult to them. for me to wear the same medal. >> in a bizarre twist, more than 2 1/2 years after the last shots were fired, some of the few remaining japanese soldiers still refused to believe that the war was over. >> there were 72 japanese who held out, hid in the caves.

in that time, their numbers dwindled from 72 down to 34. and 34 actually surrendered in april of 1947. >> in this "war stories" exclusive, one of the japanese holdouts told us how he literally lived under the boots of american troops. >> translator: i was hiding in a small, narrow cave that i discovered. we were trying to stop laughing because the americans were right on top of us and then goofing around, we would say we could kill them if we wanted to, but we just stayed hidden. >> today the republic of peleliu looks very much like it did before the preinvasion bombardment in 1944. and some 600 palaun people inhabit the island and many japanese have come back to the island to search for the bones of their war dead. >> the government there has said they can take them off the island now. >> jim has taken dozens of u.s.

veterans, including fred fox, back to the island. >> it was the first marine to come back as a civilian. believe it or not, i found my old k-bar, it's a marine knife. and i know it's mine because i bent the hand guard up. >> he's come to terms with his ghosts. some have not. it's very emotional with some of these guys to take them back. >> the island was completely back to its jungle paradise. mother nature in the 50 years had grown back all the vines and the trees and covered up all the devastation that the war had brought to the island. >> to this day, the debate still rages as to whether we should have gone there in the first place. >> it strikes me there's a lot of people who wish we hadn't gone there. >> well, i can think of a lot, yes.

and the debate for whether or not we needed to go there is a very difficult one for me. i lost half my men and 60% of my officers. and it's hard to think that we didn't need to do that. >> i'm oliver north. you're watching "war stories "on th

decades after decades after the battle for peleliu, no one questions the courage and determination of the soldiers, savers, airmen and marine who seized this japanese fortress. peleliu's sometimes called the forgotten battle of the pacific war. but for those who fought there it will always be remembered. one marine said about the bitter struggle, all gave some. some gave all. theirs is a war story that deserves to be told. i'm oliver north. good night. i'm oliver north. i'm oliver north. good night.

captioned by closed captioning services, inc. tonight on war stories confrontation in cuba. castro betrays his own people. >> the 20 years i spent in prison were terrible. >> meet the men abandoned at the bay of pigs. >> we were there to fight. >> and see how soviet missiles threatened a world war. >> very, very close to nuclear holocaust. >> it is kennedy, cruise ship and castro. that's next on "war stories." i'm oliver north. this is "war stories" coming to you from naval air station key west, florida, just 90 miles south of