George Miller

U.S. Marine Corps
Pacific Theater

“[The Japanese] just pulled their guns into the cliffs and mountains in Saipan, so when we came in it was like shooting ducks out there—and we were the ducks!”

George Miller was born on October 24, 1922. He was 19 when Pearl Harbor was attacked. Miller served in the South Pacific as a Marine and fought in Saipan. The highest rank he achieved was corporal.

Before I was drafted, I had strong feelings in opposition to the fascist governments in Germany, Japan, and Italy. I chose the Marines to be sure I would engage in battle against one of these three countries.

Boot camp was like everyone else’s experience: very difficult. It’s totally different from civilian life. Because of the war and the need for getting guys into the combat outfits as quickly as possible, boot camp was shortened to seven weeks. That was quick! Ordinarily it’s thirteen to fourteen weeks. I went out of boot camp and into infantry training, which was seven weeks, then was immediately sent overseas. I went to the island of Hawaii to join the Second Marine Division. We trained there. I got there between Thanksgiving and Christmas and we trained until May. During the training, I was subjected to anti-Semitic remarks that were directed toward me and another Jewish Marine by our platoon sergeant. This was very humiliating. It’s interesting to note that when we landed in Saipan this bigot froze and could not even dig a foxhole for himself.

We left from Hawaii and it took us thirty-three days to Saipan. As soon as we left Hawaii, we encountered a severe windstorm, which resulted in the loss of 137 Marines who were washed overboard because they were asleep on the on the top decks of the ships.

On June the 14th we went into battle and my company was in the first line of assault. There is D-day, which is the day the attack starts, and there is H-hour, the one I was in, which is when the first troops get on the island. We went in on amphibious tractors. They were to take us onto the island of Saipan. We were to get on the island, go about a mile and a half, get off the amphibious tractor, and set up a firing line.

What happened was that the Japanese artillery, which was supposed to have been destroyed by the Naval Air Force flying off aircraft carriers, had not been destroyed at all. They had just pulled their guns into the cliffs and mountains in Saipan, so when we came in it was like shooting ducks out there—and we were the ducks! The amphibious tractor that I was in was hit. The front of it was hit; thank God. If it had been the back, I wouldn’t be talking to you now. The tractor stopped moving. We had to jump in the water and wade to get to the shore. Total chaos—because all the plans that had been set up to move in together as a unit didn’t exist anymore. The winds also took some of the tractors off in different directions. That was it, the first half of the day.

I was a Browning Automatic Rifleman. There was a guy who carried ammunition for me along with the ammunition I carried. We got on the beach. The Japanese had zeroed in on the beach. It was chaos—so it was the last place you wanted to be. We just took off because it was dangerous. We just took off by ourselves and we headed straight. We didn’t know where we were going—just getting away from the beach was the whole point. I can’t tell you how far in—whether it was a half a mile or a mile and a quarter. We got there and everything got quiet. Then we began to hear a lot of machine gun fire. We decided we’d better find our outfit because we were totally by ourselves. We saw some Marines and even though they weren’t our outfit they were part of the regiment. Somehow or other we could tell that. So we knew our guys had to be somewhere near there.

We took off and had to run about 100 feet through machine gun fire coming from the Japanese to get to the company that I belonged to. Then we retreated a short distance and started to dig foxholes to stay for the night. Meanwhile, the Japanese artillery was firing continuously. You would shake from the vibrations. We were just five hundred yards from the beach. We could actually see the Japanese soldiers running in front of us. The night was horrific. I was sent to make connections with the other companies in our battalion. I was running and diving. When you hear artillery, the shells sound like a locomotive over your head. They make this noise, and then when it stops - you have a problem, because it means it’s over your head and is going to drop. When the noise continues, that means it’s not near you. We were five hundred yards from the beach so the Japanese had no problem hitting something. The whole night was just frightful; we could hear Japanese soldiers roaming around.

The next morning the Japanese were counterattacking. Japan had controlled Saipan since 1921. They had gotten the island from Germany as a result of WWI. Civilians were there as well as the Polynesians who were called Chamaros. When the Japanese soldiers were counterattacking to drive us into the water, they put the civilians out front. The civilians would holler, “Don’t shoot; don’t shoot!” Then the Japanese soldiers would move their guns up closer. This happened three times. I was lying in a foxhole on my side as the bullets were bouncing all over the place. A bullet must have hit a tree and ricocheted — which caught me in my right thigh. They had to take it out later in the hospital. It was a 31 caliber the size of my small finger. Because it was crooked, it tore up a lot of flesh. Therefore, when they took me off the island it was put down that I had a shrapnel wound. As anybody will tell you who’s been hit, it brought on a lot of pain. As it turns out, it hit the bone, cracked it, but didn’t break it, thank God. It damaged the nerve and a lot of ligaments and muscles leading to the right knee.

When I was hit, this guy, the Corpsman of our platoon—under machine gun fire with the bullets bouncing all over—ran to me and gave me a shot of morphine to stop my screaming. Corpsmen, in the Marines, are sailors. They are the guys who went through Naval medical training and were the unlucky ones who were assigned to the Marines. When the firing stopped slightly, another Marine came over and I put my arms around him and got on his back. He carried me off and put me on a stretcher. Four guys carried me back to the beach. They would drop me, because the artillery shells were coming over our heads, and dive for cover. Then, they would pick me up and drop me and so on. When I got to the beach they put me on a Higgens boat and I was put aboard the ship. It was not a hospital ship but a supply ship with Marines and supplies to be landed when they could get close to the beach.
When I got on the ship I needed to pee badly, but I couldn’t. This officer came to me. I didn’t notice he was a chaplain and I said to him, “I can’t piss.” I was feeling rough. They put me down below on a top bunk in the sleeping area. I looked at my leg; it was swollen at the thigh and the rest was skinny. It reminded me of a movie I saw when I was a kid, called, “Bring ‘Em Back Alive.” In the movie, a python swallowed a pig whole.

While I was lying there, a Kamikaze pilot dove toward the ship. There was all kinds of shooting going on. I will never forget the black sailor who came running down with blood running down his face. The Kamikaze didn’t hit the ship. If it had, I wouldn’t be talking to you. There was no way I could have saved myself.

In the next day or two another Kamikaze tried to destroy the ship. I was put down below deck with other guys who were wounded.

They had a little clinic aboard the ship. When I had to go to the bathroom some sailors helped me to the clinic. There was a guy in the clinic who, we had been told, was killed in battle. But there he was—obviously not dead. I was very happy to see him. He was a guy who I used to drink beer and talk with.

Another interesting thing that happened while we were aboard the ship was when a young Naval chaplain was asked a serious question by one of the wounded men. This sounds like a made up story, but actually it’s true. The question to the chaplain was, “Whose side do you think God is on?” He answered, “From what I see from the side of this ship, I don’t think He’s on anybody’s side.”

I couldn’t eat on the ship. We were on the ship—believe it or not—for 22 days. Every night we would go from Saipan to Eniwietok, to get the ship away from danger. Then in the daytime we would return to Saipan. It probably took between 10 and 15 days before the ship could be unloaded. It’s not that the care wasn’t good aboard the ship — there just wasn’t much they could do anyway. They bandaged up my wound and that was it. Then we went back to the Hawaiian Islands.

I want to tell you about Tokyo Rose, who was an American. She went to Japan prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor and became a propagandist for the Japanese government. She would be on the radio saying things that she felt were detrimental to the morale of the American soldiers and Marines. She said that the Marines who were going to invade an island would die a wet death on the beaches. She would say that you couldn’t be in the Marine Corps unless you had killed your mother or your father. I heard this myself. As preposterous as this may sound today, this is what she said.

The Tokyo Rose statements meant that surrender to the Japanese Marines would be worse than death. On Saipan there were 24,000 Japanese soldiers and 5,000 Japanese Marines who were the elite of the Japanese military. In the first 72 hours in Saipan there were 1,000 dead Marines and 3,000 wounded. At the end of the battle, there were approximately 3,500 dead American Marines and 13,000 wounded.

The purpose of taking both Saipan and Tinian was to have a land based airfield to bomb Japan proper. Tinian is where the two planes with the atomic bombs took off for Japan. While the battle of Saipan took place, there was a gigantic naval battle between the American Navy and the Japanese Navy. This battle was given the name of the Great Mariana Turkey Shoot because 17 American planes flying off aircraft carriers were shot down, compared to about 375 Japanese planes. Many major Japanese ships were sunk. The result of this naval battle meant that the Japanese naval force could not bring reinforcements to Saipan. The Japanese soldiers and Marines on Saipan could only surrender or die. It also meant that the U.S. Marines could be reinforced.

The Japanese did not give up easily. I was told by the men, as well as reading about it, that the Japanese made one last push. They got high on rice wine and charged in a frontal assault on the American Marines until all the Japanese soldiers were either killed or wounded. When the battle was considered over, the Marines there got the civilians to come out of the caves where they were hiding. There were also a few Japanese soldiers still alive. Both the Japanese soldiers and the civilians were so frightened of the Marines (recall the statements of Tokyo Rose) that over 900 of them jumped off cliffs and mountains to their death. A few actually just got into the water and walked until they drowned. I wasn’t on the island when this happened because I was taken off the second day and the battle lasted 25 days.

After the war, I returned to school the University of Arizona in January, 1946, and finished my degree in history, education, and political science. I went to work at Amphitheater High School for three and a half years. Then I taught school in Clarkston, Michigan for two years. Because I was then summoned to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee and was an unfriendly witness, I lost my teaching job. I was blacklisted and could not get another job teaching. I returned to Tucson and got into the painting business and was a painting contractor. I also served as a Tucson City Council member. I was elected four times, and in the middle of the fourth term, in April of 1991, I resigned to run for Mayor. I was elected Mayor in 1991, and again in 1995. Since I retired, I’ve been teaching adults who want to become American citizens and am also in my sixth year of teaching government courses at Pima College Downtown campus.