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Saipan: The Battle That Doomed Japan in World War II
The story of the Battle of Saipan has it all. Marines at on Pacific beaches, in hellish volcanic landscapes in places like Purple Heart Ridge, Death Valley, and Hell’s Pocket, under a commander known as “Howlin’ Mad.” Naval carriers battling carriers from afar, fighters downing Japanese aircraft, submarines sinking carriers. Marine-army rivalry. Fanatical Japanese defense and resistance. A turning point of the Pacific War. James Hallas reconstructs the full panorama of Saipan in a way that no recent chronicler of the battle has done. In its comprehensiveness, attention to detail, scope of research, and ultimate focus on the men who fought and won the battle on the beaches and at and above the sea, it rivals Richard Frank’s modern classic Guadalcanal. This is the definitive military history of the Battle of Saipan.
799 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 1, 2019
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220 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
February 7, 2025
James H. Hallas's book SAIPAN: THE BATTLE THAT DOOMED JAPAN IN WORLD WAR II is a story within a story, aka a battle seen through the eyes of its witnesses. As a result, the diversity of perspectives, from generals to ordinary infantrymen, from Americans to Japanese, allows us to see the intricate, unpredictable play of fate that divides the dead from the living. Some American soldiers predicted their own death, and others boasted nobody could kill them. Strategists on both sides devised plans, making assumptions on the incomplete data. Americans underestimated the enemy's quantity on the island, while the Japanese miscalculated the point of an American attack and overestimated the capacity of their own air forces.
It's hard for European and American minds, nurtured in Christianity, to comprehend the Gyokusai attack on July 7th 1944 when the remaining Japanese personnel, along with civilians, launched forward in suicidal rage. Some were armored only with bamboo sticks with attached bayonets. Japanese blew themselves up with grenades if wounded, taking a reckless American with them. After the fighting subsided, the Japanese civilians, convinced the Americans were devils, started to commit suicide en masse. I vividly remember a story about a girl. Her family: mother, father, and 4 children - gathered in a cave. The mother was telling the children they were going to a wonderful land. Nobody was afraid. The father ignited the grenade. The girl was the only one who survived out of her family and was later taken care of by American doctors. Women threw babies from a cliff and then jumped themselves. Many deliberately swam toward the open sea to drown.
The multitude of recollections, the book's strong side, also slows down the listening (I have an audiobook). Once you get distracted, it's no longer clear who is talking about what. Maybe, in paperback and ebook formats, this flaw is less distinctive.
The sequel to the book, 'Guam: The Battle for an American Island in World War II,' will be released in March 2025.
It's hard for European and American minds, nurtured in Christianity, to comprehend the Gyokusai attack on July 7th 1944 when the remaining Japanese personnel, along with civilians, launched forward in suicidal rage. Some were armored only with bamboo sticks with attached bayonets. Japanese blew themselves up with grenades if wounded, taking a reckless American with them. After the fighting subsided, the Japanese civilians, convinced the Americans were devils, started to commit suicide en masse. I vividly remember a story about a girl. Her family: mother, father, and 4 children - gathered in a cave. The mother was telling the children they were going to a wonderful land. Nobody was afraid. The father ignited the grenade. The girl was the only one who survived out of her family and was later taken care of by American doctors. Women threw babies from a cliff and then jumped themselves. Many deliberately swam toward the open sea to drown.
The multitude of recollections, the book's strong side, also slows down the listening (I have an audiobook). Once you get distracted, it's no longer clear who is talking about what. Maybe, in paperback and ebook formats, this flaw is less distinctive.
The sequel to the book, 'Guam: The Battle for an American Island in World War II,' will be released in March 2025.
January 22, 2021
Mixed feelings. 2,5 stars rounded up.
The book covers the battle of Saipan and the Philippine Sea, but is very lacking on the research side. The book shows little analysis, almost no comparison to previous amphibious assaults or to the ones that came after apart from casualty lists. Only part where the writer shows some opinions and backs it up is when he writes about the whole Smith vs Smith.
I felt the book was a bit too long. It should've been edited about 50-100 pages shorter. There's about 100 pages worth of first person accounts of people being blown to bits, especially in the landing phase. It picks up the pace especially after Battle of the Philippine sea and becomes a better in its coverage.
It seems the writer(or editer) wasn't critical enough in what to leave out and opted to put everything in the book, every eye witness story, even when there's no evidence to them happening(admits this in one of the footnotes).
I cannot recommend the book to anyone but Pacific War buffs. You don't get big epiphanys while reading this apart from "there's a lot of gore in war". Even if you like reading battle stories, I'd rather recommend reading a memoir instead of this.
The book covers the battle of Saipan and the Philippine Sea, but is very lacking on the research side. The book shows little analysis, almost no comparison to previous amphibious assaults or to the ones that came after apart from casualty lists. Only part where the writer shows some opinions and backs it up is when he writes about the whole Smith vs Smith.
I felt the book was a bit too long. It should've been edited about 50-100 pages shorter. There's about 100 pages worth of first person accounts of people being blown to bits, especially in the landing phase. It picks up the pace especially after Battle of the Philippine sea and becomes a better in its coverage.
It seems the writer(or editer) wasn't critical enough in what to leave out and opted to put everything in the book, every eye witness story, even when there's no evidence to them happening(admits this in one of the footnotes).
I cannot recommend the book to anyone but Pacific War buffs. You don't get big epiphanys while reading this apart from "there's a lot of gore in war". Even if you like reading battle stories, I'd rather recommend reading a memoir instead of this.
September 20, 2020
If you're looking for a book about Saipan, this might not be it. The author doesn't tell a flowing story, instead it is disjointed. The author describes every person that was wounded or killed in minute detail along with their back story. How many times does an author have write about the gore, about every landing craft that was hit, about every tank that failed? The book is so deep in useless details that the story is lost. I can't believe anyone published this book for the author.
June 19, 2019
Long, but worth the read in the end.
Anyone who holds the opinion that we should never have used the A bombs on Japan should read this to hopefully enlighten them as to the Japanese mindset, both military and civilian
Anyone who holds the opinion that we should never have used the A bombs on Japan should read this to hopefully enlighten them as to the Japanese mindset, both military and civilian
February 12, 2021
This is an incredibly detailed and well-researched account of the battle for Saipan. Hallas leaves no source unexplored and no detail he has discovered during his research unused. These include hundreds of accounts of landings, expeditions, individual skirmishes, wounds, letters home, amputations, crash landings, suicides, burnings, torpedoes, backstories of marines and infantrymen, inter-service conflicts, maggots and dysentery, explosions, and list after list of casualties, weaponry, ammunition, etc. company by company. The strength of the book is in these endless details, rather than the big strategic picture.
Intentionally or not, Hallas thus shows the utter horrors of war, the inhumanity and the madness. Tens and hundreds of men killed and mutilated in order to gain tens and hundreds of yards of ground on a speck of an island in a vast ocean. Many survivors will suffer from nightmares and worse for the rest of their lives. Hillsides, beaches, coral reefs, crops and farms destroyed. Civilian populations displaced and annihilated with flamethrowers.
Hallas tells the story in a rather balanced way using also Japanese sources along the way. Of course, the American soldiers are usually depicted as extremely heroic and the camaraderie between them is admirable but the Japanese are not dehumanized either. Furthermore, Hallas doesn't sugarcoat the war crimes committed by the Americans: executions of prisoners, mowing down surrendering Japanese troops, even using civilian women and children escaping to the coastal lagoons for target practice.
On both sides, the leaders were at fault. The fanaticism, Emperor worship, and utmost propaganda of the Japanese militarists is well known. The misguided bushido that considered fight till death against an overwhelming enemy and suicide ahead of surrender as honorable led to so much needless suffering on Saipan as well as elsewhere during the Pacific War. But the Americans had their share of lunatic "heroes" like Gen. Holland "Howlin' Mad" Smith and the megalomaniac Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Unfortunately, the military profession rewards these kinds of characters.
This is a powerful book of one of the most important battles of the Pacific War and its human costs. If you're interested in the big strategic picture of the war rather than the men who fought it (or the civilians who got trampled en route), you may skip this book. It's also an overly long book. Many times when you think that the action is nearly over, another dramatic operation or counterattack takes place with resulting loss of life and limb, with men screaming in agony at being bayonetted -- or not, if a machine gun burst mercifully splatters their brains on the soldier crouching next to them.
For the Japanese perspective, I recommend "The Battle for Okinawa" by Hiromichi Yahara, a memoir by the highest ranking Japanese officer to survive the battle. And for the broader political-historical context, "Japan 1941" by Eri Hotta, which gives an excellent blow-by-blow depiction of how incompetence and delusion had Japan stumble into the decision to bomb Pearl Harbor.
Intentionally or not, Hallas thus shows the utter horrors of war, the inhumanity and the madness. Tens and hundreds of men killed and mutilated in order to gain tens and hundreds of yards of ground on a speck of an island in a vast ocean. Many survivors will suffer from nightmares and worse for the rest of their lives. Hillsides, beaches, coral reefs, crops and farms destroyed. Civilian populations displaced and annihilated with flamethrowers.
Hallas tells the story in a rather balanced way using also Japanese sources along the way. Of course, the American soldiers are usually depicted as extremely heroic and the camaraderie between them is admirable but the Japanese are not dehumanized either. Furthermore, Hallas doesn't sugarcoat the war crimes committed by the Americans: executions of prisoners, mowing down surrendering Japanese troops, even using civilian women and children escaping to the coastal lagoons for target practice.
On both sides, the leaders were at fault. The fanaticism, Emperor worship, and utmost propaganda of the Japanese militarists is well known. The misguided bushido that considered fight till death against an overwhelming enemy and suicide ahead of surrender as honorable led to so much needless suffering on Saipan as well as elsewhere during the Pacific War. But the Americans had their share of lunatic "heroes" like Gen. Holland "Howlin' Mad" Smith and the megalomaniac Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Unfortunately, the military profession rewards these kinds of characters.
This is a powerful book of one of the most important battles of the Pacific War and its human costs. If you're interested in the big strategic picture of the war rather than the men who fought it (or the civilians who got trampled en route), you may skip this book. It's also an overly long book. Many times when you think that the action is nearly over, another dramatic operation or counterattack takes place with resulting loss of life and limb, with men screaming in agony at being bayonetted -- or not, if a machine gun burst mercifully splatters their brains on the soldier crouching next to them.
For the Japanese perspective, I recommend "The Battle for Okinawa" by Hiromichi Yahara, a memoir by the highest ranking Japanese officer to survive the battle. And for the broader political-historical context, "Japan 1941" by Eri Hotta, which gives an excellent blow-by-blow depiction of how incompetence and delusion had Japan stumble into the decision to bomb Pearl Harbor.
January 23, 2022
8/10 This is a thorough and readable account of the WWII battle for Saipan including a few new sources from the 21st century. It's a blend of logistics and personal stories at a good ratio.
My only complaints are it's difficult to tell the specific date sometimes and the timeline jumps a little back and forth. I think this might have to do with sources sometimes using different dates for the same day.
My only complaints are it's difficult to tell the specific date sometimes and the timeline jumps a little back and forth. I think this might have to do with sources sometimes using different dates for the same day.
September 7, 2020
Hallas telescopes the expansive fighting of World War II in the Pacific by detailing the battles of Saipan, in the air, land, on the sea and under it. American marines, airmen, sailors and submariners fought against the Japanese.
Why I started this book: I was on a World War II kick after Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945 and had a long weekend needing a good book.
Why I finished it: Dialing in on Saipan, Hallas shows how a vast war was experienced individually. How the scars, memories and nightmares could and did last a lifetime. Due to the nature of historical research and first hand accounts, I had heard several of these stories before in The Fleet at Flood Tide: America at Total War in the Pacific, 1944-1945 and The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942-1944 but it still stunning to releasing the vast distances and the incredible brutality and banality of war.
Why I started this book: I was on a World War II kick after Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945 and had a long weekend needing a good book.
Why I finished it: Dialing in on Saipan, Hallas shows how a vast war was experienced individually. How the scars, memories and nightmares could and did last a lifetime. Due to the nature of historical research and first hand accounts, I had heard several of these stories before in The Fleet at Flood Tide: America at Total War in the Pacific, 1944-1945 and The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942-1944 but it still stunning to releasing the vast distances and the incredible brutality and banality of war.
November 19, 2023
Many books by military leaders or about battles are long I was there in excruciating details that for some reason the author deemed important. This book does not stray from that path.
This book chronicles one of the more important battles of the pacific theater for a few reasons. The first and foremost reason is it showed the Americans that even in defeat, the Japanese preferred death by suicide than living. They killed themselves by the thousands. This type of fanatical behavior was expected from the military, but the civilian side shocked the military. It showed us what would happen with an invasion of the Jap homeland.
This book is lacking in some regards one of which is showing the versatility of the fast attack carrier group which was a recent concept within the navy.
This is a good book to read about the battle for Saipan if you have read other books with broad overviews of the campaigns and battles fought by the marines and army island hopping.
This book chronicles one of the more important battles of the pacific theater for a few reasons. The first and foremost reason is it showed the Americans that even in defeat, the Japanese preferred death by suicide than living. They killed themselves by the thousands. This type of fanatical behavior was expected from the military, but the civilian side shocked the military. It showed us what would happen with an invasion of the Jap homeland.
This book is lacking in some regards one of which is showing the versatility of the fast attack carrier group which was a recent concept within the navy.
This is a good book to read about the battle for Saipan if you have read other books with broad overviews of the campaigns and battles fought by the marines and army island hopping.
June 27, 2025
This book might not examine the operational or tactical level of the Battle of Saipan as thoroughly as other authors would, but it still provides an excellent overview of this grueling campaign while also providing countless eyewitness reports to showcase the human experience of those who lived through it, and often those that did not. These reports cover the American and Japanese combatants as well as the civilians caught in the middle. I really enjoyed reading this one and would recommend it to someone looking for a solid overview of the battle, which also includes the so-called “Marianas Turkey Shoot” out at sea.
April 24, 2023
Well written, detailed account of the hard fought Battle of Saipan. Hallas also includes a short account of the Battle of the Philippine Sea including the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot." The hardships, horrors and sacrifices of the American Marines, sailors, and soldiers, the island's civilian inhabitants, and the Japanese on Saipan should never be forgotten. The 2nd and 4th Marine Divisions stormed the heavily defended beaches of Saipan, assaulted the nearby island of Tinian days after Saipan was secured, then fought at Iwo Jima months later.
Highly recommended.
Highly recommended.
May 18, 2021
I really enjoyed reading about the Battle of Saipan. I liked how the author described battle from both land and naval perspectives. I found the style of writing very similar to Mark Zuehkle Canadian Battle Series. This book describes in detail one of the US Marine Corps least known battles as it was fought in the shadow the D-Day landings in Normandy.
January 18, 2020
One of the best holistic summaries of a pacific battle that I’ve read. Who provides dramatic first person account of the Mariana turkey shoot. It provides a wonderful first person look at the invasion in ground battles of Saipan
June 25, 2019
An extremely vivid and detailed account. Arresting and compelling. Consumed it in under a week. Haunting to say the least.
May 22, 2020
My Dad
My dad, Earl Printy Arthur, was a hospital corpsman at Saipan. He is alive and well in Ohio. 843 412-1992. May 2020. Mike Arthur.
My dad, Earl Printy Arthur, was a hospital corpsman at Saipan. He is alive and well in Ohio. 843 412-1992. May 2020. Mike Arthur.
July 15, 2023
After reading reviews here I find it hard to believe we all read the same book. Some claim lack of research and detail while others praise such. I do agree that that Hallas seemingly described each and every one of the over sixteen thousand U.S. servicemens deaths and woundings, gruesomely so. This book is certainly not for the squeamish. I would argue that it would be hard to find a better book on the invasion of Saipan.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews