Plans for a simultaneous two-pronged attack were dropped on the third day on the island.
One downside (if not the only downside) of minimal opposition was that intelligence officers had no idea what Japanese units they'd encountered. They had managed to form some idea of the garrison of the island before landing - that, after all, was one of the primary jobs of division intel - but where there were fewer Japanese, there were fewer chances to take the customarily rare prisoners for interrogation. (Interesting to note: many Americans recalled that the few Japanese prisoners they took were surprisingly helpful when interrogated. Reasons for this compliance abound, though the most likely seems to be that soldiers simply were not prepared for the possibility of being captured, and were overwhelmed to find that it wasn't really as bad as they had been lead to believe. Since Japan did not sign the Geneva Convention dictating what information a POW was required to provide, many went all out). One prisoner taken by the 24th mentioned the 50th Infantry; no corpses had been turned up bearing insignia or identification relating to this regiment, and the intelligence officers thus decided that there were still substantial Japanese reserves on Tinian. This would eventually turn out to be true; for now, the two divisions would alternate in their advances - a move that historians analogized as "elbowing."
The 2nd Division was the first to take a long advance, and in a little over six hours had covered 4,000 yards. Upon reaching their objective, patrols were sent out an additional 500 yards and encountered only five Japanese soldiers, two of whom were killed.
Over in the 4th Division sector, the 23rd and 25th Marines moved only a few hundred yards, pulling up and digging in at their objective by noon. They too sent out patrols; these advanced a thousand yards and found no sign of the enemy.
The 2nd Division reported scattered "snooping" Japanese; the 4th Division spent a night as peaceful as they could hope for on the front lines. Aside from the heat and the rain, Tinian in these late days of July was not a bad place to be.
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