Palau - Part II: Visiting the WW II sites on the island of Peleliu

Peleliu

Click on the image above to view the album (I recommend you read the entry, then view the photos)

While most days I spent 4-5 hours under the water, the day our ship reached the South Dock inlet along the island of Peleliu, I took advantage of the opportunity to enjoy a land excursion to the historic WW II sites around the island.

Peleliu was a battle that incurred extremely high casualties during the war. To make matters worse, it’s relevance to the overall war effort in the Pacific has been highly debated, and thus, it is a fairly controversial battle. It is also a battle that has recently increased in popularity and awareness because of “The Pacific” series HBO debuted this spring. There is actually an entire episode on the marine’s contributions at Peleliu, so if you watched the series, you may find this especially interesting.

I’m going to summarize what I learned, but you may also enjoy looking through the pictures and reading through the captions. We had a wonderful guide named Tangie Hesus, who is truly the local historian. He has created and maintains an interesting museum with many artifacts and accounts from the battle. He was extremely knowledgeable and did his best to answer our questions and show us around.

The marines landed on Orange Beach, attempted to take the Japanese airfield and the Japanese administration building, and then worked their way up “Bloody Nose Ridge.” We visited Orange Beach, the monument where many soldiers were buried until 1957 (they were moved to Arlington), and the remaining walls of a chapel that had been built on site. Tangie told us of the struggles to gain position on Orange Beach and told us many stories of marines returning to Orange Beach and the nearby jungle and sharing stories of how their best friends perished. The beach was 118* the day of the battle (Palau is only 7 degrees from the equator). It was sobering to stand on a beach, now calm and peaceful, that had seen so much carnage and death. The monument to the fallen marines had plants arranged to actually spell “USA.” The island of Peleliu itself lost nearly all of its vegetation during the battle – it’s hard to imagine when you’re standing there because the island really feels like a jungle. After the battle, the US tried to plant a tree that grew extremely fast to create some cover for the locals. But they planted a pine that was toxic to the indigenous plants, so now they are centering efforts on removing the pesky pine. Much of the island’s vegetation has grown back, but when you look at pictures that were taken where you were standing and see no vegetation at all, it is astounding.

From there we drove through the airfield and onto the Japanese administration building. This building had definitely seen war. The concrete was riddled with mortar divets and bullet holes, there were gaping holes in the walls and ceiling, and rebar was jaggedly jutting out throughout the remains of the building. We got to explore a nearby Japanese bomb shelter – which I found especially eerie, because the men inside were probably forced out with a flame thrower. On some of the pillars there were tributes to the Japanese soldiers who had lost their lives with wreaths bearing a thousand paper cranes.

After stopping to see several different vehicles that had been damaged and abandoned (including a Japanese tank and a US Amtrak), we headed up the steps to Bloody Nose Ridge. Over 11,000 Japanese were entrenched in the ridge, hiding in 600 caves, as 800 snipers were perched, hidden, and ready. Our guide took us back to see a 200 mm rifle that had never been fired (it was about 90% assembled when the US arrived). We also got to go back to some of the caves where the Japanese had hidden, poised to attack.

Tangie Hesus has also created a museum full of artifacts, correspondence, and photographs documenting the perspective and experiences of both the Japanese and the American troops. We spent a little while walking through the museum and then headed up the hill on Bloody Nose Ridge and paid our respects to the Marine Monument and the Japanese Shrine.

Later on that afternoon we did a dive at Orange Beach and we saw rifle barrels, cargo boxes, fuel cells, remnants of ships…and all sorts of different war related carnage. It was all hidden with coral, but was really cool to see. I found my mind imagining how everything got there and also felt like a scuba-historian as I tried to discern whether I was seeing just coral, or historical artifacts.

It was really awesome to actually visit a WW II battle site and I was personally surprised when I realized I have never visited one before. Much of Europe was involved in the war, but nearly all of those sites have been repaired and rebuilt. There is only a small village in Peleliu, so much of the wreckage from the war remains intact. My grandfather was also on an aircraft carrier ship called the USS Cowpens, which fought in Palau, so it was really amazing to envision his ship at the ready in the waters our boat was traversing.