Talk:Battle of Saipan

Medals for Japanese Soliders?
The article has a section listing medals awarded to the Americans. Were no medals awarded to any Japanese soldiers or are they just not listed here? Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.35.135.174 (talk) 02:39, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Incorrect name
My name is Bruce M. Petty, author of Saipan: Oral Histories of the Pacific War. You have me down as David Petty. Please correct.


 * Confirmed and done. I might add though, that as this is a wiki, next time something like this comes up, feel free to just go ahead and correct it yourself.  That's kinda the idea.  A note on the talk page might not be noticed for some time, as in this case where it took over a month.  -Graptor

NPOV Issue
The Guy Gabaldon content was added with a POV-pushing link. I've independently verified some of the information, restored NPOV, and removed the rest. Jehochman (Talk/Contrib) 19:03, 24 March 2006 (UTC) Is there any discussion or consideration about unquestioningly accepting Bergamini's view of the role of the Emperor in the suicides, the number of civilian suicides, etc.? Seems to me there are other expert opinions and conclusions. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.181.37.194 (talk) 05:06, 27 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I made some edits to the Gabaldon information (recent efforts) based on the references. &mdash; ERcheck (talk) 14:24, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Book by Akira Nakamura
This was inserted into the text, and then reverted:

However, there is a testimony of gasoline's being able to be reeled to surroundings of the elderly person and the child of the Japanese gathered by the U.S.Army, to ignite, and all women's who have come out from the cave according to calling the U.S. military being made source nakedness, being loaded into the track, and to have having been carried away, too.

I understand why it was reverted, its English needs serious cleaning up, I put it here so it is not forgotten. --Stor stark7 Talk 17:56, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

If you really think it's worth including, please take a crack at cleaning it up. I would, but I just don't understand it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.88.58.254 (talk) 15:45, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

It's back in the text, and it really doesn't make sense in the context, I'm not a regular editor, but this section of the the article jumps from a list of the casualties for the American military to this information, which really makes no sense in English and has no context in the article to clarify its meaning. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.177.103.226 (talk) 15:25, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

The name of the Japanese commander
The summary, under the section 'Commanders' gives Takeo Takagi as the Japanese commander, the second paragraph of the introduction names Lieutenant General Yoshitsugu Saito as the Japanese commander. Something seems wrong here. --Andrzej Gandecki (talk) 17:02, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Smith vs Smith
The paragraph beginning "The operation was marred by" seriously misrepresents to context of General Ralph Smith's dismissal. It should either be truncated to simply note the dismissal or expanded to cover the controversy or throughly. The dismissal is well covered in "Coral and Brass" by Holland Smith as well as "To the Marianas" by Edwin P. Hoyt. There were in fact several elements of the 27th division failed repeatedly to carry out orders. Ralph Smith was given every oppertunity to correct the problems and failed to do so. His succesor did get the division to complete the missions ordered but only after dismissing several regimental commaanders. SqeePjox (talk) 04:47, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Actually Holland Smith's book was full of errors and falsehoods, and other Marine and naval personnel wanted nothing to do with it for that reason. The definitive work on the incident is "Howlin' Mad vs. The Army" by Harry Gailey. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.105.96.39 (talk) 10:07, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Fleet
The Marianas invasion did not have a bigger fleet than the Normandy invasion.Brocky44 (talk) 19:07, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Why is there no mention of the Escort Carriers, such as the USS Gambier Bay, that supported the Marines with air cover during this battle? Stbodie (talk) 16:16, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Contradiction of "Battle of Saipan order of battle"
The last sentence of the intro to Battle of Saipan says that Lieutenant General Yoshitsugu Saito commanded the 43rd division, whereas Battle of Saipan order of battle says that he commanded the 31st army. Now I know that the 43rd division was part of the the 31st army, but if someone knowledgeable on the subject could clear this up, I will remove the contradiction template. Jmfriesen (talk) 00:39, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Redundancy
Section Civilian surrenders and suicides and section Battle (before the first sub section) both contain this paragraph:

"In the end, about 22,000 Japanese civilians died. Almost the entire garrison of troops on the island — at least 30,000 — died. For the Americans, the victory was the most costly to date in the Pacific War. 2,949 Americans were killed and 10,364 wounded, out of 71,000 who landed."

--Mortense (talk) 18:00, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Edited to correct duplicity Jabberjawjapan (talk) 15:51, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Overreliance on Bergamini
The discussion of the mass suicides on Saipan relies much too heavily on David Bergamini's Japan's Imperial Conspiracy, which is a highly controversial source, without giving any indications of the controversy. Bergamini has been scathingly criticized by most mainstream scholars on this period in history:

Herbert P. Bix: "[Bergamini's] book took some courage, but embedded in it was a full-blown conspiracy theory that no sane person could accept." From an interview: http://cgi.cnn.com/ASIANOW/asiaweek/foc/

Sheldon: "The book is a polemic which, to our knowledge, contradicts all previous scholarly work, whether in English or in Japanese. It also contradicts the facts upon which this previous scholarship rested. Specialists on Japan have unanimously demolished Bergamini's thesis and his pretensions to careful scholarship." From a peer-reviewed journal article: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=2693904

David M. Kennedy (historian): "One reviewer observed that Bergamini was "believable only by violating every canon of acceptable documentation." The historian Barbara Tuchman said that Bergamini's thesis "appears to be almost entirely a product of the author's inference and of his predilection for the sinister explanation."" Source: http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/98apr/horror.htm

Theodore Cook: "You name it, He did it. The bible of the Hirohito conspiracy theorists. It asks many of the right questions. The problem is where he says he finds the answers. Best to avoid using, but read it to see where others get their “inside knowledge.”" Source: www.fas.harvard.edu/~asiactr/sino-japanese/ChinaWarBib.pdf

Joshua A. Fogel "...David Bergamini’s Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy, a work long ago dismissed by serious historians of Japan as based on little substantial evidence..." Source: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/china_review_international/v015/15.1.fogel.html

There are a number of links to academic criticisms of Japan's Imperial Conspiracy in Wikipedia's own article on the book. Unfortunately, they are mostly behind a subscription-only wall.

There's no question a large number of civilians killed themselves at Saipan, in one of the most dreadful incidents of the war in the Pacific. However, Bergamini's figure of 22,000 civilian suicides is implausible. The number of civilians on the island at the time of the invasion is given as 26,000 by Gordon L. Rottman, and American records indicate that 18,000 civilians were interned (http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=129784). That means the civilian suicides could have been as much as 8,000, still horrible but much less than Bergamini's figure. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yaush (talk • contribs) 17:21, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Banzai charge
The narrative states that it was comprised of about 3,000 Japanese, yet later it goes on to state that over 4,300 bodies were counted... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.105.96.39 (talk) 10:10, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Hirohito's Involvement in Civilian Mass Suicides
I have checked the quotation cited in Bergamimi...pp1012-14 of "Japan's Imperial Conspiracy" -- there is no such claim in these pages cited. The reference is wrong. This needs to be removed. talk — Preceding unsigned comment added by Canadaman1 (talk • contribs) 07:24, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

The article claims that Hirohito personally ordered the mass civilian suicides that took place during and after the battle. This claim is only backed by Bergamini's work, which as another comment has pointed out, is unreliable at best.

Other books, notably Herbert Bix's Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, do not mention such an incident. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AlatonGlannah (talk • contribs) 19:31, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * As of Jan 2020, the references are back in! I'm not a SME on this and prefer editors who are to attend to this issue. HammerFilmFan (talk) 22:46, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

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Simplified Opposing Forces
The OOB had gotten kind of unwieldy and there was a separate OOB page anyway, so I moved the detailed info to that page and dropped in a compact Opposing Forces into the main article. Hungrydog55 (talk) 01:43, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Civilian casualties in the infobox
The infobox says 7k and 22k with no explanation for the discrepancy. MyIP19216811 (talk) 16:20, 21 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I suspect 22,000 was the number of civilian deaths on all three islands, Saipan, Tinian, and Guam, mistakenly attributed only to Saipan. "Report on the Capture of the Marianas" linked in the article lists 14,785 civilian internees on Saipan by 10 August, while the National Park Service (link here) estimates a pre-invasion population of 26,000, of whom 18,000 were finally interned by the end of the war. So 7,000-8,000 is probably the correct figure. The Pittsburgher (talk) 23:02, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

References and Citations
I fixed some missing citations. I added details and attributed existing quote to Rear Admiral Miwa. Also added another oft-mentioned quote by Fleet Admiral Nagano. Both Saipan-related quotes have been frequently misattributed and are often presented as if they were contemporaneous with events, but both were given a few months after the war when they were interrogated. Each quote has a citation that includes a reliable secondary source that cites the primary source. But the primary source (which is publicly accessible) is given as well.

For Nagano's quote, I used an up-to-date source that correctly cited the source, but I also used was Hoffman's vintage 1950 book. Though much more information and perspective has been gained in the past 70+ years, it still has a wealth of detail and citation, and I suspect it is still a source book for many of the subsequent studies. If there are problems, please remove it, though I'd suggest returning the book to "Further Reading".

Also, I had removed the "citations needed" banner for the "Battle" Section after addressing the specifically marked "citation needed" templates, but realized that there was still a lot of uncited material to be addressed. If someone wants to take it on, the whole "Battle" section could use a bit of work.

Also, the citation formatting could use some updating. Right now, it is quite messy. To make a start, I templated all the book references. If nobody objects I'd like to fix the citation style and make it consistent. My preference is to use the short footnote format, which allows readers to see the source at a glance, and can allow convenience links. Wtfiv (talk) 23:17, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Removed Jone's Ōba, The Last Samurai as reference and moved to 'Further Reading' for now. Jone's engaging work is a somewhat fictionalized account of Ōba's 16 months based on his reminiscences many years after the events, supplemented information gleaned by Jones, but it does not use sources. In the article, a description of Ōba's holdout from the other sources is given, but described events based on Ōba's memories as recorded by Jones have been taken out. Wtfiv (talk) 02:30, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Ongoing edits
As I find myself reworking the article, I've just added the above subheading In addition to the contenxt changes below, I continue to check citations as I come to them and rework them into sfn format, and add new sources as appropriate. Wtfiv (talk) 22:29, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Reworked material based on Bergamini's Japan's Imperial Conspiracy. Removed Bergamini as source. Citations had no book pages, and the details of court intrigue seem to go beyond the Saipan battle. Summarized point simply using Bix as source with convenience link. Also, slightly reworded citation with Frank, as Frank's point is more nuanced. Convenience link given. Also added a bit from Kawamura showing that some people saw the effects of Saipan's fall even as it was occurring. Wtfiv (talk) 03:53, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Reworked "Civilian Casualties" section. Removed Bergamini as source, replaced it with two works that are specifically focused on the topic of civilian casualties in Saipan. Removed Beevor as source for civilian deaths but kept the park service's estimate. Added Astroth's estimate, which details how the estimates were made. (Unfortunately, I could not find a web accessible link to the page.) These changes shift the estimate of civilian casualties up to 8,000–10,000. Both the park service and Astroth agree on approximately the same number of survivors. The difference in numbers is a 2,000 person difference in estimates of how many civilians were originally on the island before the invasion. Wtfiv (talk) 17:16, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Deleted Military Awards section. It listed or discussed three Medal of Honor awardees and two Naval Cross Awardees, but there were seven Medal of Honor awardees in the battle, and ten Navy cross awardees. Removed information on Lee Marvin. Section made up the majority of paragraphs on casualties. The links to Guy Gabaldon, who was listed in the Military Awards section, is moved to the "See Also" section, as was the link to Lee Marvin. Both articles have all the information that was previously in this article. Wtfiv (talk) 00:58, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Created new section on island geography and Japanese preparations.

Removed D-Day in the Pacific point in lead. Had earlier removed the citation that went with this point. But citations shouldn't be in lead, they should be in text. And citation only pointed to a book title without a page number (Goldberg's D-Day in the Pacific).

Reworked maps: Island map is now a .svg, which incorporates the original map use and Hoffman's (1950s) series of maps showing the progress of the campaign. New map allows for clearer view when zoomed. The overview map has been changed too. Expanded crop so that all Allied landings in the Pacific can be seen so interested readers can have its context in terms of order, recolored elements with Saipan blue, reworked circle area to make Saipan more prominent given the expansion of the map. If these don't seem like an improvement, we can revert them. Wtfiv (talk) 22:29, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Reworked entire American strategic decisions area with multiple sources cited throughout section.Wtfiv (talk) 22:46, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Reworked paragraph on preinvasion bombardment. Created new section. It now includes the discussion of the air attack, which was a key piece of the pre-invasion. Wtfiv (talk) 05:38, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Deleted further point in lead comparing Saipan to the invasion of France around the same time stating that the units left Hawaii on June 5, the day before Overlord. The Saipan invasion fleet was gathered from many locations. The units in Hawaii left on a staggered schedule, many had left by late May. The details are now in the American strategic decisions area. Wtfiv (talk) 05:43, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Have drafted much of the narrative from 15 June to 30 June. Included section on Battle of Philippine sea and attempted integrated previous information (e.g., motorized flame tanks).

Interestingly, this article has been around along time stating that Major Takashi Hirakushi committed suicide along with Saitō and Igeta (Both Hirakushi and Igeta were not introduced or explained until their "suicides".) But Hirakushi lived to write a book that gives the story of Saitō's suicide. Hallas (2019) gently questions Hirakishi's reliability as a source. Wtfiv (talk) 07:04, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Added much material from 30 June to 9 July, along with new citations as needed. Have also have added many new images that are meant to support text. The breakdown of the subheadings in the "Battle" section, should roughly track the front markers in the island map. Other sections have been edited and moved. Wtfiv (talk) 01:30, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Completed material up to aftermath. Major additions are done. I may add a few smaller points into various parts of the article, but the next steps will be second draft edit clean up and rebuilding the lead based on the article. Wtfiv (talk) 16:54, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Added new lead and final map showing the piercing of the Japanese defense perimeter. The the process also encouraged me to build a Robert B. Sheeks article. I'm thinking the article needs a thorough proofing, and might be ready for GA consideration. I'd like to thank the anonymous editors who started cleaning the drafts. I'm thinking the article needs a thorough proofing, and might be worthy of a GA consideration. Wtfiv (talk) 16:03, 29 February 2024‎ (UTC)