VISITING THE BATTLEFIELD OF PELELIU (Palau)
Palau today is paradise on earth. It’s clean, diverse and clear waters offer the best diving in the world. Its forests and waterfalls offer amazing hikes. It’s green hills and island are post card perfect. It’s kind people will make you feel welcome. It’s therefore almost impossible to imagine that only 80 years ago this was hell on earth. But the traces of the bloodbath are there to be seen: all you need is curiosity and a good guide to show you these hidden historical treasures.
After winning the epic battles of Guadalcanal, Tarawa and Saipan the 1st Marine Division landed on the southwest corner of Peleliu (Palau) in September 1944. The US thought they now knew how to fight the Japanese on the islands in the Pacific: the recipe was massive naval bombardment of land-based targets followed by troops arriving on shore in waves, gathering on an island’s beaches until they had abilities and numbers to push inland.
The only problem on Peleliu was that Japan had learned their lessons too.
Here, the Japanese troops took on a new strategy: Peleliu’s many caves, connected by networks of tunnels, allowed the Japanese to dig in and hunker down and emerge to fight almost unscathed from the Allied bombardment. They held out for almost a week before U.S. forces were even able to secure the southwest area of Peleliu, including the key airstrip. When the Marines turned north to begin their advance towards the Bloody nose ridge, they were targeted along the way by heavy artillery fire and a fusillade of small arms from Japanese forces that had been installed in caves. Over the next eight days, U.S. troops sustained about 50 percent casualties in some of the most vicious and costly fighting of the Pacific campaign.
