Photographs from the Battle of Saipan

26-G-2506 Coast Guard and Marine invaders inspect the shambles that was a sugar refinery laboratory before the U.S. Navy guns blasted the town of Charon-Kanoa on the southern rim of Saipan.

26-G-2510 Guns of a U.S. task force spot the sky with a curtain of flak to protect the Coast Guard-manned assault transport USS Callaway from which this picture was made, from a Japanese plane attack off the coast of Saipan in the Marianas.

26-G-2557 Japanese night raider, stabbing at American invasion forces near Garapan, capital city of the Marianas, are met by hot fire from anti-aircraft batteries. Like giant skyrockets, the Yankee fire pierced the sky and appropriately it happened on a July night close to the historic fourth.

26-G-2626 In go the landing barges, loaded with Yankee fighters and manned by Coast Guardsmen, to seep the beaches of Saipan and thrust the Japanese defenders, fighting frantically, back into the cane fields and ravines of Saipan, Japanese stronghold in the Marianas. Standing off the coast is a Coast Guard-manned assault transport, from which the invasion “buggies” swarm to shore.

26-G-2645 Along the shores and on the hill slopes of Saipan, thousands of Japanese lay dead as their bitter resistance failed to stop the American waves of Coast Guardsmen, soldiers, sailors, and Marines storming in from landing craft and crushing irresistibly the length of the Marianas bastion.

26-G-2649 Japanese snipers, hiding in the thickets, hit tow Marines (center and left) topping them into the sands as a landing party storms ashore in final mop-up operations in the final stages of the conquest of Saipan, Japanese stronghold in the Marianas. This striking picture of battle action was made by a Coast Guard combat photographer just as the two Marines dropped wounded to their knees. The photographer had gone in with the invading party.