D-Day on Saipan

At sea
June 15, 1944

Dear girls,

We’ve been on this baby for a long time now, and of course are getting restless. The heat becomes more and more oppressive – shirts are always wet and soggy, and you actually steam when you go below decks. Wish we were doing this in winter, as we did last time. Hard, terribly hard to bring yourself to realize that summer is coming into her first full bloom back home, that you girls are wearing flouncy, starchy summer dresses, that the windows are wide open to welcome the warm night air, and the comforting hum and rumble of New York at night. What plants do you have in the window this year, Mother? I was always partial to the grapefruit we had in Hastings. I hope it won’t be too long before I see it all again. By next summer, it must be.

All my love,
Phil

15 June-- . . . one enemy division landed . . . but was surrounded by our troops. Our plan would seem to be to annihilate the enemy by morning.

- Tokuzo Matsuya, 9th Tank Regiment

We landed on Saipan on June 15, nine days after Allied armies had invaded Normandy half a world away. Naturally, the European landing grabbed all the headlines back home; but, believe me, those first two or three weeks were just about as bad as things could be.

- Captain Irving Schechter, 1982, quoted in Henry Berry's "Semper Fi, Mac."

"You never know how things are gonna turn out, though, and that's the truth. You aim for one place, sure as an arrow, but before you hit the mark, the wind gets you. I don't believe I ever met one person who became what they wanted to be when they were your age."

- Robert McCammon, Boy's Life