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After the Typhoon: Multicultural Archaeologies of World War II
on Peleliu, Palau, Micronesia
Article in Journal of Conflict Archaeology · September 2013
DOI: 10.1179/1574077313Z.00000000026
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journal of conflict archaeology, Vol. 8 No. 3, September 2013, 193–248
After the Typhoon: Multicultural
Archaeologies of World War II on
Peleliu, Palau, Micronesia
Neil Price and Rick Knecht
Department of Archaeology, University of Aberdeen
with contributions from Steve Ballinger 1 ,
Steve Cypra 2 , Calvin Emesiochel 3 , Tangie Hesus 4 ,
Errolflynn Kloulechad 3 , Gavin Lindsay 5 ,
David McQuillen 6 , and Sunny Ochob Ngirmang 3
1
Cleared Ground Demining, London, UK; 2
Peleliu War Historical Society,
USA; 3
Bureau of Arts and Culture, Government of the Republic of Palau;
4
Independent guide, Peleliu State, Republic of Palau; 5 University of
Aberdeen, UK; 6 Special Assistant to the Governor of Peleliu State,
Republic of Palau
In the autumn of 1944, one of the worst battles of the Pacific War took place
between the Americans and Japanese on the small Micronesian island
of Peleliu in the Palau group. Over more than two months of combat, its
garrison fought almost literally to the last man, while US casualties were
proportionately among the heaviest of the entire war. Afterwards largely
overlooked in the public consciousness, the battlefield is now the best pre-
served of the Pacific theatre and is the subject of an extensive archaeological
survey, coupled with a programme of large-scale unexploded ordnance
removal. This paper is the second of two, following our previous publication
summarizing the more conventional results of the fieldwork. Here, we
instead explore the deeper ways in which the material culture of Peleliu can
illuminate the multicultural histories of the fighting and thus enable the
battlefield to stand as a lasting, reflective memorial to all those whose lives
it touched. We address the neglected narratives of the Japanese, the Korean
and Okinawan forced labourers, and also the marginalized members of the
US forces including African-Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans. In
particular, we attempt to bring out the indigenous perspective on the mate-
rial heritage of an imported and deeply alien war. In combination, we hope
194 NEIL PRICE and RICK KNECHT
the research can provide new theoretical avenues of exploration for the
archaeology of battlefields.
keywords Peleliu, Palau, World War II archaeology, indigenous archaeology,
forced labourers, Native American code talkers, US Marines
Historically, war is like a typhoon. After a typhoon, whatever you find on your property
becomes yours.
(Peter Ianguchel from Yap, Caroline Islands, quoted in Falgout et al., 2008: 119)
Peleliu 1944: the archaeology of a South Pacific D-Day
The Republic of Palau is today an independent island nation of some 21,000 people,1
lying at the western rim of the Carolines in Micronesia, south-east of the Philippines
and north of New Guinea (Figure 1). Palau’s early modern history has been a turbu-
lent one, marked by the colonial influence and occupation of Britain, Spain, and
figure 1 Peleliu Island in the Republic of Palau, western Micronesia.
Map by Jenny Johnston, University of Aberdeen
195AFTER THE TYPHOON
Germany successively, before absorption into the Empire of Japan (Peattie, 1988). In
the middle of the twentieth century, the islands’ very existence was threatened when
they were engulfed by the greatest armed conflict in history.
By late 1944, the Palauans had already been living under the rule of the Japanese
for thirty years when they found themselves on the frontline of the Pacific War.
The Solomons, Marshall Islands, and the Marianas had all fallen to the Americans,
who were now in bombing range of Japan itself. Their next target was the Philip-
pines, and the US command considered the capture of the Japanese air base in Palau
a necessary prerequisite for a successful invasion. The airfield was located on the
small coral and limestone island of Peleliu in the south of the Palauan chain, which
was garrisoned by troops of the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy (IJA and IJN).
Unknown to the Americans, in addition to the expected beach defences, the Japanese
had adopted a new strategy and concentrated their resistance in an extensive network
of more than 600 caves and tunnels within the Omleblochel Mountains in the
interior of the island.
On 15 September 1944, Peleliu was invaded by a substantial American force from
the 1st Marine Division, supported by a US Navy task force and later reinforced by
the 81st Infantry Division. Having relatively quickly taken the beaches and airfield,
though with heavy losses, the Marines encountered the in-depth defences of the
Omleblochel. Their experiences in the seemingly endless ridges, caves, and ravines
were rapidly translated into a new name for the mountain, and the central battlefield
zone has afterwards been most commonly known as Bloody Nose Ridge. Before the
final destruction of the Japanese garrison there, the Americans were forced to fight
one of the worst battles of the Pacific War.
This paper is the second of two devoted to the archaeological investigation of the
Peleliu battlefields. A full and comprehensively referenced outline of the campaign
can be found in our previous contribution to this Journal (Price and Knecht, 2012),
and we recommend that interested readers consult this first in order to familiarize
themselves with the background to the present work.2 The best short introduction to
the battle is probably Moran and Rottman’s 2002 book, but here the essential nature
of the fighting can be conveyed more briefly in bleak statistics:
• from an original projected timetable of three to four days for the campaign,
in the event it took more than two months of continuous combat for the
Americans to overcome the defences
• the fighting was exceptionally vicious, involving clearing each cave and bunker
individually using explosives, flamethrowers, burning liquid fuel, and hand-
delivered napalm; near the end, the remaining defended caves were sealed,
entombing their occupants alive
• the Japanese garrison numbered just over 11,000 men, of whom nineteen
survived
• in 1947, another 34 Japanese emerged from a cave where they had hidden since
the end of hostilities and offered the last formal surrender of the entire Second
World War
• approximately 3000 forced labourers, mostly Koreans and Okinawans, died
alongside the Japanese3
196 NEIL PRICE and RICK KNECHT
• one of these Koreans was discovered hiding in the jungle in 1954, the last known
combatant
• the American losses were proportionately among their worst of the war, with
more US fatalities on Peleliu than all the Allied dead of all five Normandy
beaches combined
• one Marine regiment lost 71 per cent dead and wounded, many units were
reduced by half, and overall the Marines and Infantry lost a third of their
strength
• 48 per cent of the surviving Marines were rotated home with psychological
trauma, and many committed suicide after the battle
In our first paper we described how the memory of the Peleliu campaign was largely
lost in the post-war decades, mostly due to a collective desire to gloss over its costly
pointlessness in favour of more clear-cut battles elsewhere. Memories and family
connections to the battle were made more painful, in subtly varying ways for the dif-
ferent communities involved, by the comparative historical obscurity to which one of
the formative experiences of their lives was consigned. One result of this neglect (and
also the comparative lack of post-war scrap-metal collecting4
) was the battlefield’s
almost complete reclamation by jungle, making it today the best-preserved conflict
landscape of the Pacific theatre. To a degree, the wartime history of Peleliu was
‘rediscovered’ by the general public, especially in America, through the attention
given to it in the 2010 TV mini-series The Pacific (Ambrose, 2010). The resulting
increase in tourist interest began to threaten the preservation of the sites, which were
largely undocumented except for an excellent but necessarily limited survey more
than twenty years ago (Denfeld, 1988). Coupled with the overwhelming presence of
unexploded ordnance (UXO), this meant that a professional programme of recording,
assessment, and heritage management planning was imperative.
Following initiatives from Steve Cypra, the son of a Peleliu veteran, and the Peleliu
War Historical Society, funds were granted by the American Battlefield Protection
Program (ABPP) of the US National Park Service (NPS) and administered through the
Palauan government’s Bureau of Arts and Culture (BAC). Archaeologists from the
University of Aberdeen were then sub-contracted to undertake a new field survey,
together with Palauan colleagues from the BAC. No fieldwork is viable on the island
without the presence of a UXO disposal team, and we were therefore joined on
Peleliu by Steve Ballinger and his personnel from Cleared Ground Demining, a not-
for-profit UK-based charity specializing in the removal of explosive remains of
war. The team was also accompanied by medic David McQuillen (himself a former
Marine), and local guide Tangie Hesus.
The survey was conducted on Peleliu in late 2010. Some 326 sites of various kinds
were recorded, including the landing beaches, caves, fortifications, standing buildings,
airfield, wrecked aircraft and vehicles, artillery and mortar positions, and a wide
variety of miscellaneous military artefacts; human remains were also frequently found
(see Price and Knecht, 2012, for summary descriptions, though note that exact site
locations are not given there due to the risk of looting; the full report on the fieldwork
has been delivered to the BAC and NPS as Knecht et al., 2012). The project publica-
tions have been authored by the Aberdeen team, with informal contributions from
197AFTER THE TYPHOON
our Palauan colleagues at the BAC and the Cleared Ground personnel. The resulting
work has been reviewed by the NPS/ABPP, the BAC, and a variety of agencies and
individuals in Palau and the United States.
In our first paper on Peleliu, we briefly reflected on the meaning of battlefield
archaeology and the place of this project within it: in simple terms, we asked why the
survey was being conducted. Although we there summarized the more conventional
results of the fieldwork, we also emphasized the reflective potential of the conflict
landscape that was at the forefront of our minds even in the field. In this paper we
therefore move on from the battlefield itself to explore the deeper ways in which the
material culture of Peleliu can illuminate the multicultural histories of the fighting.
A battlefield in the mind: Peleliu as numinous place
Contemporary relevance is an issue increasingly in focus for archaeological research,
and of obvious importance in the context of conflict heritage. This is far from simple,
and in fact only gains in complexity when the subject of discussion includes the
deliberate killing of human beings, for reasons believed justifiable. For decades now
there has been an explicit theoretical acknowledgement that, however much we try
to ‘recapture’ the essence of the past, we are equally implicated in its recreation
from our current-day perspective: the notion of ‘writing the past in the present’ (e.g.
Baker and Thomas, 1990). Similarly, this contemporary focus can lead to the reima-
gining of past events in ways that explicitly suit the needs of the present, as in
Jacquetta Hawkes’ famous observation that ‘every generation gets the Stonehenge it
deserves — and desires’ (1967: 174). Particularly in relation to the military past, there
is an obvious danger of political appropriation and abuse — a process to which much
of the twentieth century bears witness. However, even when interpretations of past
conflicts are benign in intent, they are also susceptible to more subtle forms of distor-
tion. If it is a truism that society regularly ‘re-examines and reinterprets that part of
the past that gives the present new meanings and new possibilities’, then we must also
accept that at times certain events can go out of historical fashion (Burns, 2011,
quoting Mumford). Our work on Peleliu is partly intended to redress that situation
for this battle and the people to whom it has meaning.
As Steve Cypra observed to us in conversation on Peleliu, there is a sense of place
there that overpowers any philosophical belief in the wilful abandonment of the past.
Alongside the natural beauty of the island — indeed, all of Palau — there is the
constant overlying knowledge of war and its aftermath. As we discussed in our first
paper, it is impossible to walk among the trees and rocks without encountering
leftovers from the fighting, often in the dangerous form of live explosives and
ammunition. In the Omleblochel, it is quite literally the case that men died for every
metre of ground amid the horror of the cave assaults. In the evocative words of a
colleague contemplating the fight for the ridge, the very worst of the combat there
‘was so deeply crazy that it falls off the edges of your imagination into the dark’. The
whole island, and especially the mountainous cave area, thus represents a concentra-
tion of human experience at its most extreme that is rarely found in the relatively
untouched state that prevails on Peleliu.
198 NEIL PRICE and RICK KNECHT
Ostensibly similar settings for traumatic military events, such as the Normandy
D-Day beaches, have become somewhat sanitized monuments with a certain packag-
ing of memory. They embody national (though not necessarily nationalistic) senti-
ment, and at least some sense of wartime sacrifice as a glorious offering. We do not
wish to imply that these sites lack dignity and appropriate respect for the dead — on
the contrary, many of them are honoured places of international pilgrimage and
commemoration. However, they no longer possess the sheer rawness of the Pacific
theatre, if indeed they ever did. Allied soldiers fighting in Europe could at least hope
for occasional respite in the form of a soft bed or ‘liberated’ stores, and were matched
against an enemy with ultimately similar cultural norms that included the willingness
to surrender when facing certain defeat. However, as Stephen Ambrose has bluntly
observed, ‘that never happened in the Pacific’ (Preface to Sledge, 2002: x; see also
Hastings, 2011: 258f.). Here, the American experience was characterized by continu-
ous physical discomfort, frequent tropical illness, and an opponent that regarded
literally suicidal tenacity as a virtue. Though the rejection of military triumphalism
has been expressed by combatants themselves for generations and in many theatres
of war, it is particularly prominent in the memoirs of Pacific veterans (e.g. Sledge,
2002: xv):
I experienced some unspeakable things in close combat. I refuse to abide anyone now who
seeks to either glorify or trivialize those realities.5
If the wartime sites of the Pacific were always different, and remain so today, Peleliu
is unique even amongst them. Most other Oceanic battlefields are now either heavily
developed and transformed (for example, on Guam and Saipan), logistically imprac-
tical for tourism (such as Guadalcanal), or otherwise inaccessible (as is the case with
Iwo Jima, which is now a Japanese military base and closed to visitors other than
veterans). In addition, some of the lower-lying atolls that saw conflict, such as islands
of the Marshall and Gilbert groups, are literally disappearing as sea levels rise (e.g.
Bennett, 2012). By contrast, Peleliu is both relatively untouched and open to outside
visitors. Peleliu’s unusual qualities thus go hand in hand with a pressure from tourists
who wish to experience them.
The heritage management of landscapes of trauma has seen a large body of work
in recent years (e.g. Logan and Reeves, 2008). Much of this research has focused
specifically on so-called ‘Dark’, ‘Black’, or Thana-tourism6 at sites associated with
human suffering and/or natural disaster, especially at memorial museums in places
ranging from Rwandan genocide crime-scenes to Chernobyl (e.g. Lennon and Foley,
2000; Williams, 2007; Sharpley and Stone, 2009). Even allowing for the critical com-
ponents of respectful and reflective commemoration (Benton, 2010), this is a complex
field embracing visitors with a very wide range of motives.7 In addition to such
moral and practical entanglements, one may also observe that much less attention
has been devoted to the experience of these places for those who actually live there
now, in particular when the sites in question relate to events that were externally
imposed.
On Peleliu, several different strands of perception are combined, with an ultimate
origin not only in the facts of the battle itself but also the pre-existing landscape and
culture within which those events took place. Physical contact with the battlefield
199AFTER THE TYPHOON
brings visitors experiences of place and remembrance that differ in crucial ways,
dependent on their nationality, prior knowledge, and outlook. For the local people,
the role of the battlefield in public memory is variable according to whether one
comes from Peleliu or another island, one’s family connections with the area, and
particularly one’s place in the complex social pattern of clans and traditional villages
(all factors largely invisible to outsiders, especially tourists). Not least, any under-
standing of the Peleliu battlefield must take into account the visits of veterans and the
families of the dead, and also the needs of others with a specific stake in the events
of the past and their effects in the present. All these perceptions furthermore change
over time, with an eventual fusion into contemporary life that is dependent on fading
direct memory, inter-generational communication, and even unpredictable external
factors such as The Pacific television series noted above and in our first paper.
Our primary objective is therefore to enable the Peleliu battlefield to stand as a
lasting, reflective (and, importantly, protected) memorial to all those whose lives it
touched. To this end we here address the neglected narratives of the conflict, as
viewed through this scarred landscape and the debris of war that we were able to
document in the archaeological survey. In contrast to the emphasis most common in
battlefield archaeology — on tactical disposition, equipment, and event-based revi-
sionism — we instead choose to focus more on the social dimensions of conflict on
this small island. Below, we examine the Peleliu experiences of the Japanese, the
Korean and Okinawan forced labourers, and also the marginalized members of the
US forces including African-Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans. In particu-
lar, we make a consciously problematic attempt to provide a platform for indigenous
voices on the material heritage of an imported and deeply alien war.
The Peleliu survey is thus firstly a multicultural approach to a multicultural event,
bringing together indigenous Palauans, former military personnel, and outsider aca-
demics from several nations. Even at this level, we hope that its somewhat unusual
research agenda and emphasis can provide new theoretical avenues of exploration for
the archaeology of battlefields. However, this study of a conflict’s historical legacy is
in turn operating within the larger, present-day arena of Asia-Pacific geopolitics. The
traumatic archaeology of Peleliu is very far from irrelevant as the Republic of Palau
negotiates its future between the economic and military influences of the United
States, Japan and other nations. While the island’s history echoes in the past and
present, this too is embedded in our work.
Imbalances in the Peleliu data
It requires no explanation to understand that the ‘conventional’ story of the Peleliu
landings is almost entirely an American tale, at the obvious expense of the Japanese
experience. This is not exactly a bias in the memory of the battle, but more something
to be expected given the scale of the defenders’ casualties. However, there is very
much more at stake than an imbalance between the victors and the defeated, and in
fact the Peleliu narrative contains many different layers of experience. These stories
have often been marginalized either by accident or design. They embrace a range of
ethnic and social groups, and extend to some perhaps surprising minorities who were
present on Peleliu. Crucially, in the present context, all these human reflections of the
200 NEIL PRICE and RICK KNECHT
campaign have left a record in the material culture of the battlefield, and in some
cases this is the only memorial of them that has survived. We examine a selection of
them here in turn.
The Americans on Peleliu: class and race on the battlefield
The US Marines and Soldiers on Peleliu of course represented a microcosm of
American society, particularly its distinctions of class and wealth. These were
reflected not only in the obvious ranking distinctions between the officers, non-coms,
and enlisted men of the armed forces, but also within the social strata of the military
community in their former civilian lives. By way of example, Eugene Sledge of the
5th Marines — author of the famous Peleliu memoir With the Old Breed (1981) —
was a well-educated doctor’s son and could have qualified as an officer, but left
college and volunteered for the infantry to make sure of getting into combat: his
comrades communicated their admiration for his courage, despite his being ‘kind
of a rich kid’. The social spectrum of the American fighting men can also be read
clearly in contemporary novels such as Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead (1948).
More fundamental than class divisions, however, were ethnic divisions within the
American forces, encoded to the point of racial segregation. On Peleliu as elsewhere,
African-American Marines were formed in discrete units and kept apart from their
white comrades (Donnelly and Shaw, 2002; Kulp, 2007). Despite being fully trained
Soldiers, they were also intentionally deployed off the line: two African-American
companies, the 11th Marine Depot and 7th Marine Ammunition, formed part of the
field supply base and were originally confined to the beachhead area. Several of the
Marine combat units also contained whites regarded as unreconstructed Southern
‘rebels’ (Sloan, 2005: 261) with whom it was felt mixing would be impossible. In fact,
the sheer desperation of the fighting on Peleliu meant eventually that almost all units
were allowed to volunteer for combat where needed — a situation with few prece-
dents — and numerous black support troops did so with alacrity (Figure 2). Their
frontline contribution was such that the I/3/7 Marines were saved by their efforts,
prompting one Southern Soldier to speak of his rescuers as ‘black angels sent by God’
(ibid.). In particular, the 11th Marine Depot Company fought far beyond the call of
duty and received the highest casualty rate of any African-American Marines in
the entire war (Nalty, 1995). The battle for Peleliu thus represents one of the many
small but significant early steps on the long path to civil rights and integration, with
a modest memorial in the form of equipment from these African-American units that
we documented in the beachhead supply areas.8
Hispanic Marines formed another under-represented ethnic group on Peleliu.
Though not segregated like the African-American Soldiers, they faced consistent pre-
judice, despite serving with distinction throughout the Pacific (and indeed in many
previous wars). In the archaeological survey, the only artefact we can associate with
a named individual had been the property of a Hispanic Marine, a bayonet scabbard
found in a cave surrounded by equipment including a webbing belt, helmet, and a
bullet-torn canteen. The scabbard was marked S. Gomez, Jr and we have been able
to trace a Santiago Gomez, Jr from Montpellier, Vermont, who was wounded on
Peleliu at the age of twenty-nine, but survived the war to marry the daughter of a
201AFTER THE TYPHOON
Marine buddy; he died in 1959. The discovery of his scabbard almost certainly rep-
resents the spot where Gomez was injured and his gear removed by a medic. Again,
a seemingly typical assemblage of mid-1940s equipment stands for something larger,
a whole sub-culture in the American war machine.
A third category of ethnic distinction in the US forces has not been explored at all:
the possible presence of Chinese Americans among the Marines and 81st Infantry
Division. We have not undertaken any research in this direction, but a search of this
kind would be worthwhile.
Native Americans on Peleliu
Alongside African-Americans and Hispanics (both ultimately immigrants to the
United States) there was one further ethnic group present on Peleliu among the US
military whose very existence was classified until the late 1960s: the Native American
code talkers. The American armed forces’ use of indigenous Soldiers in World War
II has been well documented (see Gilbert, 2008 for an overview and a useful guide to
the growing literature, especially online resources). In battle they acted as communi-
cators and the literal front line of American field intelligence, employing heavily
figure 2 A rare image showing African-American Marines mixing with their white counter-
parts, on the Peleliu front line in September 1944. The picture has not been previously pub-
lished.
USMC photo 127-10W-741/96331, photographer Bailey, in the public domain
202 NEIL PRICE and RICK KNECHT
encrypted versions of their own languages to ensure that crucial radio traffic could
not be understood by the enemy. Some code talkers served in the European and North
African theatre, including men from the Meskwaki, Lakota, Cree, Hopi, and Crow
nations. The Comanche were particularly prominent, and in fact the first radio
message from the Normandy beaches was in their language. However, the majority
of the code talkers fought in the Pacific, most of them (some 300 men) coming from
the Navajo nation.
The search for the Native American story of Peleliu is only beginning, but we
have found records of at least twenty-four code talkers who participated in the
invasion — twenty-three Navajos9 and one Comanche. Many of the code talkers
perceived Peleliu filtered through the traditional belief system of the Navajo, and
made ritual preparations that add another dimension to the material culture of the
battlefield. Their uniforms had been blessed in ceremonies back home, and each man
wore beneath his clothes a medicine bundle containing an arrowhead and sacred corn
pollen. Joe Hosteen Kelwood recalled that his uncle had advised him to offer the
pollen to the Pacific, ‘Mama Water’, who would look after him as he landed, but the
code talker was nervous that permission to make his prayers would be refused by
the Marine command. He therefore hid the pollen in chewing gum, which he spat
into the ocean as he boarded his landing craft for the Peleliu beaches (Reid, 2009).
Several of the Navajo communicators are still alive today and have contributed to
the programmes of oral history recording established to preserve the memories of
the code talker initiative in WWII.10 Traditional Navajo fear the presence of the dead,
as a spiritual pollutant and a force for evil. This made Pacific fighting particularly
terrifying for them, on battlefields where fallen troops might lie unburied for days.
Chester Nez, ninety when interviewed in 2011, operated as a code talker on both
Peleliu and Angaur, and records how during the fighting, at a certain time each day,
he often heard the bells of his family’s sheep back home in New Mexico. His parents
had performed a Blessing Way ceremony for him before his departure, and he
believed the sounds of his home were sent to him by their continued prayers and the
burning of cedar chips and sage (Walker, 2011). His account of landing on Peleliu
contains unsettling glimpses of familiar material culture in strange contexts: the night
before the invasion many Marines could not sleep and stayed up late playing cards;
when Nez finally reached the beach after a prolonged struggle from the reef, he found
the water full of bank notes, the previous night’s poker winnings from the pockets of
Marines who had died in the first wave. Nez noted that, despite the large-value bills,
nobody took the money (2011: 192).
Even with the code talkers, the racial tensions of home were present in the field.
Almost universally referred to as ‘Chief’ by their white comrades, each Navajo was
acutely conscious that the Marines were ordering them to use the language that they
were actually forbidden to speak at home. The military was thus reliant on men who
in 1944 were still denied the vote back in the United States.11
The Comanche code talker, Floyd Saupitty, is seen in a US Navy photograph along
with two Navajo communicators, pictured in late March 1945 on their way ‘to
the Japanese front’, presumably Okinawa which was invaded on 1 April (Figure 3).
Although he was definitely a code talker, Saupitty may have fought on Peleliu as
a regular Marine, as there are records that specifically state how even the Native
203AFTER THE TYPHOON
American communicators were sent into combat as casualties mounted (Paul, 1973:
69). Orders were explicit that all sensitive radio traffic on Peleliu was to be in
Navajo, which also mitigates against the Comanche’s role as a code talker in that
particular battle. Saupitty died in June 1974, and as far as we know did not record
his memories of Peleliu. However, during research for the archaeological survey we
found a previously unpublished image of him among the thousands of recently declas-
sified National Archive photos taken on Peleliu by Marine recorders and generously
donated to the project in scanned form by David McQuillen (see Price and Knecht,
2012). Images of code talkers in combat are very rare, and this photo shows Saupitty
on D-Day itself, apparently assaulting the long coral ridge immediately inland from
the beaches (Figure 4). This previously unpublished document is also part of the
battle’s material culture.
One Navajo died in the landings (PFC Tom Singer, recorded KIA on 29 September,
though Nez implies that he was killed during the initial invasion — 2011: 207), and
we believe that at least two more code talkers were killed shortly after D-Day when
the Japanese overran the E/2/7 command post.12 We will probably never discover
whether any of the several bullet-riddled radios we documented on Peleliu really
belonged to Native American communicators, but their presence still serves as a
figure 3 Three Native American code talker Marines who fought on Peleliu, here pictured
on their way to Okinawa in late March 1945. From left to right, PFC Joe Hosteen Kelwood
(Navajo), PFC Floyd Saupitty (Comanche), and PFC Alex Williams (Navajo).
USMC photo 129851, in the public domain
204 NEIL PRICE and RICK KNECHT
reminder of yet another layer of cultural experience encoded in the battlefield. Along-
side the code talkers, other Native Americans also served as regular Soldiers in the
Marines and Infantry. We have not undertaken a comprehensive and necessarily time-
consuming search of the relevant unit records to ascertain whether any of these men
were present on Peleliu, but it is highly unlikely that there were none among nearly
30,000 troops. Today their weapons and equipment litter the jungle, indistinguishable
from those of their American brothers of European descent.
Ironically, the fact that traditional Navajo warriors fought through the nightmare
of the Omleblochel is probably now known to more people today than at the time of
the battle. Similarly, visitors to Peleliu today can see the remains of the beachhead
depot where African-American Marines ferried ashore the supplies that were vital to
figure 4 A combat photo taken on Peleliu in September 1944, apparently moving inland
from the beaches on D-Day, judging by the terrain and the saltwater stains on the men’s
fatigues. We believe the man on the left to be PFC Floyd Saupitty, the Comanche Marine
pictured in Figure 3. The contemporary caption does not name him or mention that he is
a Native American (other ethnicities, particularly African-Americans, are identified in these
archives), but the existence of the code talkers was not officially acknowledged until 1968,
which would explain the omission. This picture has not been previously published.
USMC photo 127-10W-739/95497, photographer Vasicek, in the public domain
205AFTER THE TYPHOON
the success of the fighting inland, before heading to the mountains themselves. In a
jungle cave, a scatter of smashed equipment marks the spot where a Hispanic Marine
was hit while serving his country. It is objects and places like these, and above all the
people that they represent, that truly bring home the meaning of a World War.
‘American Samurai’
Beyond issues of ethnic diversity within the American forces on Peleliu is a broader
factor in the whole Pacific war, and an aspect of the fighting that has been substan-
tially blurred today in its contrast with modern political sensibilities: the very real
existence of racial hatred between the Americans and Japanese. Although the Nazi
regime in Europe inspired animosity for its political extremes and war crimes, there
was no sense in which the Germans were seen as racially inferior human beings. This
was not the case in the Pacific, where both sides demonized their opponents with
crude racial caricatures and stereotypes.13 The battle for Peleliu played a crucial role
in the dislocation of these perceptions.
One side of this psychological war was the Marine self-image as so-called
‘American samurai’ (Cameron, 1994), a kind of deliberately mythologized counter-
part to the elites of the Japanese Imperial forces. This identity took a serious dent as
the Pacific campaign progressed, with a gradual adjustment of how the relative
qualities of the opposing powers were seen. A parallel (and similarly shocked)
acknowledgement of Japanese military abilities was also echoed by British troops in
Burma, and of course in the aftermath of Singapore’s fall: in General Slim’s famous
phrase, he described the Japanese soldier as ‘the best fighting insect in the world’
(Hastings, 2011: 260). This is often commented upon for its racist condescension,
which overlooks the fact that it also contains a remarkably balanced understanding
of his enemy’s strengths and weaknesses. Throughout the war it was noted how
poorly Japanese troops fared when deprived of clear leadership, as on Tarawa in 1943
when a single direct hit on D-Day killed the entire senior defence command and
enabled the Marines to hold their precarious beachhead (Wright, 2000: 48–49), but
also how utterly determined was their individual fighting ability and resistance to
hardship. The Omleblochel caves bear graphic witness to their endurance.
On Peleliu, many of the elite troops defending the island had been picked for their
exceptional strength and physique, and there are several descriptions of the Marines’
astonishment to find themselves fighting Japanese who stood more than six feet tall
and could carry heavy ammunition boxes at a run (Sledge, 1981: 70, 123; Ambrose,
2010: 327). In the course of the battle, it became more obvious than ever that the
Japanese fighting man was individually a match for the Marines.
The Japanese
Beyond the neglected soldiers among the United States forces, the most obvious gap
in the documentation of the Peleliu fighting naturally belongs with their opponents.
In his landmark study of the Japanese South Pacific Mandate, Mark Peattie (1988:
271) observed the following:
206 NEIL PRICE and RICK KNECHT
In the years since the end of the Pacific War, the common virtue of the uncommon
valour displayed by American Marines who stormed the beaches and strong points of the
Japanese islands in the Pacific has justly become a hallowed part of American history.
Perhaps, it is time, after more than forty years, to pay equal tribute to the heroism of
those against whom they fought. A Westerner does not have to sympathise with the cause
of Japan in World War II to recognise that in the ferocious combat in the Pacific the
odds against the Japanese fighting man in Micronesia were overwhelming, his situation
usually hopeless, and the conditions in which he fought and died appalling.
We fully agree with this sentiment, and note with concern how little research has been
done along these lines in the twenty-five years since Peattie’s book appeared.
Several important surveys have already been made of oral history relating to the
Japanese administration (e.g. Ballendorf et al., 1986) and its institutions (Shuster,
1982), especially relating to the efforts of the Nan’yō Keizai Kenyūjo, ‘South Eco-
nomic Research Institute’ (see also Murray, 2006: chs 3 and 5 for an overview of
Palau’s colonial experience under the Japanese). Imperial oral histories of the Palau
occupation have been intensively analysed by Higuchi (1987; 1991), though this
work has attracted occasional criticism that it ‘uncritically reproduces conservative
Japanese nationalist discourse without engaging Islander Perspectives’ (Dvorak, 2007:
10; see below for a development of this theme). Archaeological surveys have also been
undertaken of the Mandate’s infrastructure on Koror (Ehrlich, 1984).
When considering the defence of Peleliu in 1944, it is particularly important to
move beyond the clichés of ‘fanaticism’ in explaining the last-stand mentality of the
Japanese (even the most recent historians still fall back on this cultural reflex — e.g.
Ambrose, 2010: 339). Not least, an acknowledgement is needed that much of it was
actually a matter of indoctrinated coercion in the face of a desperate desire to
live.14
The Imperial throne saw Japan’s Pacific conquests, including pre-war colonies such
as Palau, as representing new realities to which the rest of the world must inevitably
adjust. The armed forces that garrisoned them were the distillation of an intensely
militarized social ethic, with long antecedents far back into history. A virtual cult of
martial virility maintained intoxicating levels of self-belief among the Army and
Navy, centred on the officer class but also transmitted to enlisted men through a
culture of absolute obedience. This resulted in a reliance on purely introspective
calculation in the formulation of national military strategy. At the same time, this
was combined with a shocking ignorance of non-Asian culture, which typified the
failure of Japanese commanders to anticipate the American response from Pearl
Harbor onwards (Hastings, 2011: 190–95).
One of Japan’s greatest errors in this respect had in fact been committed four years
earlier in 1937, with their long series of war crimes in China. The worst of these was
arguably the sack of Nanjing, where the massacre of up to 300,000 people15 was
widely condemned abroad. In many ways this formed the root of the racial animos-
ity that so many American soldiers felt towards their enemy, and which fuelled the
bitterness of battles such as Peleliu. Strangely, the Chinese campaigns were in fact
literally present in the material culture of the Omleblochel fighting, in the form of
personal photos that the Japanese soldiers carried with them and which the Marines
found on their bodies. The IJA defence forces had previously served in Manchuria
and had travelled from there to Palau; snapshots recovered from the caves clearly
207AFTER THE TYPHOON
show men in winter dress, operating in the snows of China (Figure 5). In the minds
of the Americans, such images would obviously have reinforced the negative connec-
tions between the Peleliu garrison and the actions of the Japanese in mainland Asia.
To view this same Manchurian example from the opposite side, actions that
appeared to others as savagely aggressive war crimes were instead presented to the
Japanese soldiers as legitimate behaviour in the context of perceived injustice, as an
extension of the centuries-old honour system. This could take the most visceral form
of social pressure, as expressed in the invasion orders read out to Imperial troops
before the assault on Malaya: ‘When you encounter the enemy after landing, regard
yourself as an avenger come at last face-to-face with your father’s murderer’ (Hast-
ings, 2011: 203). In essence, this was based upon the eighteenth-century samurai code
of Hagakure (‘Hidden by the Leaves’; Yamamoto, 2008), appropriated and distorted
by the militaristic elements of Japan’s pre-war regime, and promoting the idea of
warrior honour to be achieved by living as if one was already dead. This dislocation
of perception among the Japanese persisted in the face of empirical reality throughout
the island campaigns, with a fatalistic preparedness for sacrifice that had tragic
figure 5 A winter photo recovered from a Peleliu cave, showing troops of the Japanese
garrison in the course of their earlier active service in China. For the Americans, pictures such
as this reinforced the link between their opponents and Japan’s well-known war crimes in
Manchuria. The image is now in the collection of Peleliu Museum, where it was photographed
by Rick Knecht.
208 NEIL PRICE and RICK KNECHT
consequences in their encounters with the Marines. That this was perceptible even
at the time can be seen in the memoirs of Americans such as Eugene Sledge, who
reflected on the difficulties of defeating an enemy that genuinely thought themselves
unbeatable (2002: 160).
It is this gulf in world-views — not some innate ‘fanaticism’ — that explains the
desperation of the Omleblochel defence on Peleliu. When confronted with the mate-
rial culture of the caves and the graphic evidence of combat there, this background
is essential for visitors in understanding why the Japanese fought so hard in such
utterly hopeless circumstances.
Only a very few survivors of the Japanese defence force are still alive today [2012],
most of them members of the small group that held out in a mangrove cave until
1947, as mentioned above (Figure 6). At least one of them, Tsuchida Kiyokazu of
the IJN, was as regular a visitor to Peleliu as age and infirmity allowed, and he has
discussed his wartime experiences with local people and tourists. Through the gener-
ous agency of guide Tangie Hesus, we have been fortunate to gain access to Tsuchida-
san’s photo album that he preserved through the years in the cave refuge. Containing
images of himself and his comrades (Figure 7), it is a vital first-hand document of
figure 6 Entrance to
the ‘survivor cave’ in
the southern man-
grove swamps where
Tsuchida Kiyokazu
and his comrades
from the Japanese
garrison hid for
almost three years
after the battle for
Peleliu; the vegetation
provides scale.
Photo by Rick Knecht
209AFTER THE TYPHOON
the defenders’ experience that otherwise only survives, in very partial form, from the
garrison of Angaur (Funasaka, 1986). The scanned images now form part of the
survey archive. Tsuchida-san has also deposited a recorded description of his Peleliu
service, in Japanese, with the Imperial War Museum in London.16
The horrific experiences of the Japanese garrison on Peleliu have also been mean-
ingfully articulated in other media that are useful in an archaeological context, as in
the 1998 novel Gyokusai by the prominent anti-war activist Oda Makoto (based on
interviews with veterans and translated in 2003 as The Breaking Jewel). The theme
of offensive and arguably glorious military sacrifice reflected in the title is explored
at length, giving an insight into the mindset of the Japanese soldiers. One character
has a friend attached to military intelligence, with unusually high access to inter-
cepted American views of the Japanese. Through this person, the troops on Peleliu
are astonished to learn that their opponents, or ‘Mr Enemy’ as they are trained to
formally call them, refer to the gyokusai as ‘suicide attacks’ (Oda, 2003: 44). The
soldiers simply cannot understand how actively choosing death in battle can be seen
as taking one’s own life. Instead, the assignment of a mission from which one is not
expected to return is actually welcomed. When the central character is ordered to
defend the Peleliu beachhead, he informs his squad with the words, ‘We’ve been
given as the place we’re to die the most important spot. It’s a great honour’ (ibid.:
52), and they respond with genuinely heartfelt cheers. In a battle that the garrison
rationally knows cannot be won, the focus shifts to elevate and empower the
figure 7 Tsuchida Kiyokazu as a young IJN seaman shortly before the invasion of Peleliu,
and at the sixtieth anniversary commemorations in 2004.
Portrait photo by kind permission of Tsuchida-san, courtesy of Tangie Hesus; 2004 image by
Rick Knecht
210 NEIL PRICE and RICK KNECHT
individual Japanese soldier: ‘Make sure you kill ten of them [Americans]. That will
be your personal victory’ (ibid.: 57, our italics and parenthesis). At the same time, the
impersonal nature of the war itself is not lost on the defenders, rendered in Oda’s
curious phrasing (2003: 69):
Suddenly a surprising thought crossed Nakamura’s mind. He realised he had never once
actually seen an American. He and the thought for a while confronted each other.
Today, the Japanese defenders survive on Peleliu through their material culture,
especially the contents of the caves. However, they are also present more literally,
in the numerous human remains still to be found on the ridge. We have cited the
unimaginable casualty figures above — nineteen survivors of a garrison numbering
nearly 11,000 — and as with many such statistics the overpowering sense is of a
terrible anonymity. In assessing the archaeology of Peleliu, another element that has
been under-studied in redressing this situation is the recording of Japanese portrait
photographs.
As mentioned above, many of the defenders carried personal snapshots of them-
selves, friends, and family members — as did their American opponents, of course.
Some of them have been found in the caves (Figure 8), while others were looted from
the bodies of fallen Japanese, kept as souvenirs by the Marines and Infantry alongside
more sought-after items such as battle flags and swords.17 Now, in the early twenty-
first century, as veterans grow old and pass away, it is not uncommon to find these
photographs posted to online tribute sites by people wishing to honour their veteran
relatives. In a few instances, the exception rather than the rule, they have been offered
for sale on the Internet, often by those for whom they no longer have any personal
value. We do not condone or participate in this trade in any way, nor do we have
any contact with the vendors, but it is nonetheless possible to capture screenshots of
these images from the sales websites and compile an informal catalogue of portraits.
However they appear online, with no provenance other than that they were picked
up on Peleliu, these photographs are a first step towards giving faces to the nameless
bones of the caves (Figure 9).
Later in this paper we address the more active commemoration of the Peleliu dead,
but we can now turn to other, often overlooked members of the Japanese garrison.
‘Peninsular Japanese’: ethnic Korean soldiers and forced labourers
Alongside the ethnic Japanese military personal on Peleliu, the IJA and IJN forces
also included men from Korea. This had been one of the first countries to be absorbed
by the Empire, and was regarded as ‘peninsular Japan’ in a situation resembling the
Nazi regime’s attitude to the ‘historically German’ territories of central Europe. For
a variety of motives, including outright coercion, it was not uncommon for Koreans
to enlist in the Imperial military, often in the hope of improving their circumstances.
Never fully accepted or treated as equals by the Japanese, their experience of the
fighting was often an uneasy balance between obedience and the small chance of an
independent identity.
Korean characters of this kind appear prominently, and positively, in Oda’s novel
of the Peleliu campaign (2003). At the climax of the book, the mortally wounded
211AFTER THE TYPHOON
squad leader Nakamura is astonished to receive a torrent of bitterness from the
Korean Corporal Kon, a man whom he has always believed to be his friend. At their
last extremity, Kon reveals that his reason for joining the Imperial Army had nothing
to do with the patriotism that Nakamura has lived for and assumed in his comrade,
but instead was solely a means of escaping the routine contempt shown to Koreans
by the Japanese. In the event, it is Kon who dies fighting heroically in defence of
a cave entrance, the death that Nakamura has so eagerly sought but which his
incapacitating injuries deny him.
Although some Koreans actively fought for the Japanese armed forces, a great
many more were simply pressed into service as labourers, their condition little better
than that of slaves. As we have seen above, approximately 3000 such men seem to
have been present on Peleliu at the time of the invasion, most of whom died in the
fighting. Virtually nothing has been written on the material culture or experiences of
these unfortunate people (Colt Denfeld is again an honourable exception, in a 1984
paper). At best, we encounter them at second hand, as in the memories of a Palauan
labourer describing the first American air attacks on the Babeldoab airfield, then
figure 8 A portrait of an unknown
mounted Japanese officer, found in a
cave on Peleliu among the bodies of its
defenders. The image is now in the collec-
tion of Peleliu Museum, where it was
photographed by Rick Knecht.
figure 9 A portrait of an unknown Japanese
soldier, perhaps the man from whose body it
was taken by an American during the battle for
Peleliu. The picture has been made public on
the Internet by a relative of the now deceased
US veteran; note the handwritten provenance.
Screenshot by Rick Knecht
212 NEIL PRICE and RICK KNECHT
being constructed by the forced workers: ‘Approximately ten Koreans and one
Palauan were killed by the U.S. attacks. These Koreans didn’t escape, even though
the siren sounded’ (Makino Tariu, in Higuchi, 1986b).18
Together with the Koreans, a handful of Okinawans (seventeen are mentioned) had
also been conscripted as workers and taken to Peleliu to help with the airfield project.
They remained during the battle, but had been allowed to surrender by the Japanese
to save on food when supplies became short (Ambrose, 2010: 358). Two Japanese
researchers have recognized the Okinawan experience in the Micronesian colonies
through oral history recording (Imaizumi, 2000; Tomiyama, 2002), and throughout
the war they were relegated to the status of second-class citizens under the rule of the
home islands. In Palau, many of the farmers working on Babeldaob during the time
of the Mandate were Okinawans who had been settled there by the Japanese as part
of their civilian colony. These people were forcibly evacuated during the war, but
several of them buried their possessions in the jungle before leaving; these caches are
still occasionally found today. The situation for the Okinawans, trapped between
the dominant culture of the Japanese and the advancing American forces, came to a
head in 1945 with the invasion of Okinawa itself when up to 150,000 civilians are
estimated to have died (Rottman, 2002).19
The Korean and Okinawan labourers not only experienced discrimination from
their captors, but also from the indigenous Micronesians who regarded them as poor,
uneducated, dirty, and disorderly. In general, the foreign workers were seen as
inferior, racially ‘impure’ versions of the colonial Japanese masters of the islands. The
Korean women were treated with special contempt by Micronesians and associated
with prostitution and sexual entertainment (Dvorak, 2007: 13). We have not found
any documentation to this effect in Palau, but it is possible that similar prejudices
existed there, too.
The forced labourers on Peleliu included not only Koreans, Okinawans, and
indigenous Palauans, but also many others transported to Palau by the Japanese.
Their numbers included Micronesians from other Pacific islands, as well as men
displaced from as far away as Sarawak, Borneo and Java (Figure 10).20 To the best
of our knowledge, these latter groups have left no recorded voice at all and at least
so far remain invisible in the archaeology.
With this in mind, the labourers’ material monument on Peleliu is strangely the
most long-lasting of all: the caves, tunnels, bunkers, and the very fabric of the
defences themselves were all built largely by these workers. The survey also located
several partially finished tunnels, apparently abandoned at the start of the American
assault. The picks, pry-bars, shovels, and even wheelbarrows of the labourers remain
in uncompleted caves and near the trenches and dugouts. When everything else has
gone, the memorial of these workings is likely to endure.
Women and war in the Peleliu campaign
Not all neglected narratives on Peleliu are a matter of ethnicity or culture. Women
of all nationalities were affected by the battle. At one level, this was true in a sense
that applies to every war: for the Americans, Japanese, and the forced labourers,
the fate of the male combatants was linked to the emotional and often economic
well-being of thousands of women in their home countries. Whether worrying about
213AFTER THE TYPHOON
their men in battle, grieving for their loss or disappearance, or living with the post-
traumatic stress of the survivors, women were linked to each of the more than 40,000
men who fought on Peleliu.
In the material culture of the battlefield, little could be obviously interpreted as
being directly connected to women, but we were also aware that their invisible pres-
ence was undoubtedly there. With particular reference to the Japanese artefacts from
the caves, how many of these things were presents from women at home, gifts to a
recent graduate, private talismans to keep the bearer safe? The personal snapshots
mentioned above can also be seen in this light.
We can also observe that a few women were actually present on the battlefield
itself. Some accompanied the Japanese — at least one fought alongside them — while
others were members of the local community trapped inside the chaos of war.
Towards the end of the fighting, a few American female nurses were also present.
The single woman known to have actively joined the defenders was a Japanese
civilian living on Koror, who had formed a relationship with a Major Michihuro
Hikino, command leader of the 326th Independent Infantry Battalion. She followed
him to Peleliu disguised as a man, and by the time her deception had been understood
she had already been fighting the Americans for some days and was accepted by the
figure 10 ‘Hindo [sic] and Javanese’ forced labourers, being evacuated on an LCT from
Babeldaob to the American base on Peleliu after the Japanese surrender.
USMC photo 127-10W-744/135513, photographer unknown, in the public domain
214 NEIL PRICE and RICK KNECHT
regular troops. The 326th were stationed on Hill Row at the far north end of the
ridge, and from a high point here this woman was said to have shot down many
American soldiers. She was killed in action while firing a heavy machine-gun on
one of the northern Omleblochel peaks, the site of her death remembered in both
Japanese and local oral tradition (her story also appears in Oda’s novel Gyokusai,
2003: 112–16).21 There are other reports that late in the battle American troops
discovered seventy-five Japanese women in a cave, apparently fully prepared to
defend it (Ambrose, 2010: 357f.). When they refused to surrender, the cave was sealed.
The story sounds unlikely and is very hard to verify, but if true then their bodies are
still buried inside the ridge.
Palauan women were certainly present on Angaur during the American assault,
forced into the caves along with indigenous men (Figure 11).22 Islanders from other
parts of Micronesia were also compelled to stay with the Japanese, and some women
may have been among them. Formal archaeological surveys of the wartime remains
on Angaur have never been undertaken, and the combination of Japanese and
Palauan presence in the caves there offers considerable potential for documenting yet
another neglected aspect of the Peleliu campaign.
figure 11 Micronesian women and children pictured on the day of their liberation from the
caves of Angaur, September 1944.
US Navy, National Archives photo 80-G-291698, photographer unknown, in the public
domain
215AFTER THE TYPHOON
Indigenous Palauans and the battle for Peleliu
The sections above have dealt largely with combatants in the struggle for Peleliu,
present on the island willingly or not. However, in the redressing of imbalance there
is one social and ethnic group above all whose stories have been neglected in the
standard narrative of the battle. If it took more than forty years to acknowledge the
Japanese perspective on the fighting, we would add that after nearly seventy years
it is more important than ever to recognize the experience of those whose homes
formed its battleground, namely the indigenous peoples of Oceania who have been
substantially written out of the history of the Second World War.
Two major studies of the Micronesian experience in World War II have been
produced from a largely Western perspective (Poyer et al., 2001; Falgout et al., 2008),
and a few historians in Japan have been trying to emphasize the neglected stories of
their former colonies (e.g. Morris-Suzuki, 2005). In general, however, as Dvorak
writes, ‘there is a shocking lack of recent work in Japanese or any other language
that looks closely at the deeply marginalized history of Pacific Islanders in relation to
Japanese empire’ (2007: 9).23
In the last three decades, most of the in-depth studies of the Palauans’ experiences
of the war have been conducted as postgraduate research. Higuchi Wakako (1986a
and b) and Karen Walter (1993) have made important contributions, but the key work
is Stephen Murray’s outstanding 2006 PhD thesis from UC Santa Barbara, ‘War and
Remembrance on Peleliu’. This material is now being augmented by an ongoing oral
history programme run by the anthropologists of the Bureau of Arts and Culture in
Palau; proceeding in parallel to the battlefield survey, fieldwork by Kelly Marsh and
Sylvia Kloulubak has added steadily to an indigenous understanding of the Peleliu
conflict. This work is not yet complete, and its results cannot be made public in their
entirety due to issues of sensitive cultural content and traditional knowledge that is
not passed on to outsiders. In advance of the BAC report, the thoughts we offer here
derive from our own conversations and encounters on the islands, and previously
published anthropological work that is relevant but has not been considered in
this context before. Our plans and long-term goals were presented in person to the
traditional chiefs on Peleliu at the time of the survey, who gave their approval to
the study and expressed satisfaction that their own stories are at last coming to a
wider audience alongside the more prominent American and Japanese perspectives.
The survey report has also been circulated informally within the community by the
governor’s office on Peleliu.
In exploring the archaeology of Peleliu, we write consciously as Western outsiders,
though working there together with (and under a contract administered through)
indigenous cultural agencies. ‘Our’ discoveries are also ‘theirs’. We have discussed
these findings and thoughts with our island colleagues, and obviously seek to avoid
offending the sensitivities of our hosts there who have made us so welcome. Alongside
the local staff with whom we worked directly, for the most part we have liaised
officially with government departments and with acknowledged representatives of
communities, for example the traditional chiefs and elders mentioned above. In
Palauan constitutional terms, the ultimate say in matters concerning their island rests
with the citizens of Peleliu State.
216 NEIL PRICE and RICK KNECHT
At the same time, as of course with any other group of people, there is no single
‘Indigenous Perspective’ with which we can engage. Palauans have their domestic
disagreements like anyone else, and sometimes we also disagree with them, which is
our right as well as theirs. Despite our intentional focus on indigenous perspectives,
it should therefore also be clearly understood that this section of our paper is not an
act of cultural ventriloquism: these are ultimately our words and opinions, not those
of the Palauans, however often we cite documented ethnographies of the war and
other anthropological observations. Much has been written on the difficult, reward-
ing and ultimately essential practice of so-called indigenous archaeology — a prob-
lematic term in many ways — and both the main authors of this paper have had long
and positive experience in this field from a number of countries and cultural contexts
(see Smith and Wobst, 2005, for a useful introduction and a guide to the literature).
In this light we feel strongly that an honest exchange of views, expressed with
mutual respect and goodwill, is the best path towards the fruitful consensus that is
highly prized in the traditional Palauan value system, and towards an archaeology
that best meets the latter’s needs and concerns.
The Typhoon comes to Peleliu
Micronesians from many territories refer to the war years as ‘the Typhoon’, a
generic image of an unstoppable external force sweeping across their islands and leav-
ing destruction in its wake (Poyer et al., 2001; Falgout et al., 2008: ch. 8, and epigraph
above).24 This vortex of war was ascribed an active agency as it ‘came looking for’
the Japanese, but the islanders were merely in the way. As a man from Ifaluk graph-
ically commented, the indigenous population ‘realised clearly that they were pygmy
bystanders, trapped on a battlefield where careless giants fought’ (ibid.: 332). In many
senses, this encapsulates the situation for the indigenous people of Palau in late
1944.
Three-quarters of the islands’ population are indigenous speakers of Palauan,
which is an Austronesian language of the rare Sunda-Sulawesi group, lying outside
the main Micronesian and Polynesian branches of Oceanic. This strongly implies
that the earliest ancestors of the modern Palauans came from the Philippines and the
Sunda Islands of the Malay Archipelago; later arrivals came from New Guinea and
the Carolines. Palau today is a fully developed democracy, and even at the time of
the battle was hardly a tribal backwater. However, it remained in many ways a tra-
ditional society, particularly with regard to world-views, spiritual beliefs, and social
organization. This was particularly apparent in the Palauans’ forced confrontation
with the military superpowers that clashed on Peleliu: ‘if advanced technology was a
godsend to Allied forces, it verged on an otherworldly, supernatural force [. . .] to
Micronesians’ (Falgout et al., 2008: 119).
In advance of the American invasion, on Peleliu and other islands Palauans were
drafted into labour battalions. Forced to construct defences and improve the airfield
facilities, many had to work under fire as the US planes and ships bombarded Palau
throughout 1944 (Falgout et al., 2008: 108–09). Others were given an opportunity to
‘put themselves forward’ for overseas service, such as the groups of forty to sixty men
who were sent in 1942 and 1943 to Papua as the ‘Palauan Young Men’, the ‘Palauan
Volunteer Group’, and the ‘Palauan Reconnaissance Unit’.25 Acting as bearers and
manual labourers, most were bombed but did not see direct combat.
217AFTER THE TYPHOON
Almost all of Peleliu’s population was evacuated to Babeldaob (the largest island
of Palau) a few weeks before the American landings. Peleliu had three operating
villages up to the evacuation, with two more temporarily abandoned (an excellent
overview of the island’s social institutions and village structures can be found in
Murray, 2006: ch. 4). The islanders’ absence during the invasion belied its impact
on their lives. Stephen Murray sums up the situation along the shoreline perfectly,
in a manner that extended to the whole island: ‘What for the Japanese was a strand
to defend with mines, obstacles, and bunkers, for the Americans a beachhead to
bombard and capture, was to dozens of Peleliu families their ancestral homeland’
(2006: 163).
On neighbouring Angaur, the Japanese garrison had not evacuated the islanders
but instead forced them into the caves to continue service as labourers (see Pedro,
1999, for a Palauan perspective on the battle for Angaur). When they were liberated
by the Americans in September, 192 Micronesians had survived in a group that
included not only indigenous Palauans but also islanders from Yap, Chamorros from
the northern Marianas, and Woleaians from the eastern Carolines (Figure 12; Poyer
et al., 2001: 250f.).
figure 12 A Micronesian extended family receiving candy from an American Civil Affairs
Officer. The picture was taken on Peleliu in October 1944, but these people had probably
come from Angaur, and may be Yapese. Note the traditional dress of the men.
USMC photo 127-10W-740/98025, photographer Arnold Johnson, in the public domain
218 NEIL PRICE and RICK KNECHT
A variety of coercive techniques were used by the Japanese to prevent Palauans
going to the Americans, ranging from outright death threats to promised reprisals
against family members who remained behind. On Angaur, the Palauans taken into
the caves were told that if they tried to leave their captors would kill them, and if
they nevertheless made a successful escape then the Americans would do the same.
Some of these journeys across the lines were culturally complex: even while the battle
for Peleliu was ongoing, at least one Palauan paddled there from Babeldaob together
with two defecting Japanese soldiers, and all three managed to surrender to the
Americans.
This is not to say that there were never any friendly (albeit unequal) relations
between the Japanese and the Palauans. As mentioned above, in Oda Makoto’s
Peleliu novel Gyokusai one of the main characters, Kon, is an ethnic Korean soldier
who has volunteered for the Japanese Army. His behaviour on the island differs
markedly from his comrades in his unusual relationship with the Palauans (2003:
43):
He also brought them [the soldiers in his squad] papayas and mangoes, delicacies of the
South Seas that Nakamura [the squad leader] and the other men had never before tasted.
When Nakamura asked how he got them, Kon said he had received them from the people
of the island. Nakamura was aware that natives who had formerly been employed in
building the naval base were now being used as coolies to construct fortifications. He had
caught sight of them a couple of times slowly carrying dirt and stones in straw baskets.
But it was only when he asked Kon where he got the fruit and Kon told him they came
from the islanders that he realized for the first time that there were also natives living
somewhere on the island. Kon went to their houses, and they gave him the fruit. No,
Kon corrected himself, it was actually barter. Nakamura asked in surprise, ‘You mean
there are people you know among them?’ ‘That’s right’, replied Kon, eating a mango with
evident relish. ‘Any number of them’. Kon in turn looked dubiously at Nakamura. ‘It’s
their island we’re living on, right?’
Beyond the embattled landscapes of Peleliu and Angaur, the Palauans on the islands
still occupied by the Japanese were far from safe, and in 1945 there are several ac-
counts mentioning a plan to herd all local people older than forty-five and younger
than fifteen into deep shelters which would then be detonated. This plan was never
implemented, though there are records of its existence,26 and there are also probably
apocryphal stories that one of the Japanese commanders on Babeldaob, Morikawa
Yoshiyasu, deliberately delayed the military police from implementing this mass
murder order until the end of the war, thus saving the lives of thousands of Palauans
(Falgout et al., 2008: 143–44; the tale is ably deconstructed by Higuchi, 1991).27
The Morikawa story represents an exception in its depiction of Japanese who cared
for the local people, most of whom were worked ‘like slaves’ (comment by Beches
Iluches, quoted in Murray, 2006: 195). In early 1945, approximately eighty young
Palauan men were even conscripted into a suicide unit called Kirikomi-tai, intended
to ram American vessels with explosive canoes; they never went into action, and
many survived the war to testify against their hated Japanese officers (ibid.: 195ff.).
Even after Peleliu fell, the indigenous Palauans throughout the island chain endured
another year of privation and oppressive uncertainty, until the Japanese mandate
219AFTER THE TYPHOON
was formally dissolved (Poyer et al., 2001: 165–68; Murray, 2006: ch. 8). Not least,
the northern islands, including Babeldaob where the Peleliu population had been
relocated, were heavily bombed and strafed by American planes for the remainder of
the war with numerous civilian casualties.
After the fighting
The defeat of the Japanese provoked mixed responses across Micronesia, but
especially on Palau where their occupation had lasted decades and the colonists had
become embedded in indigenous social networks. Palauan songs have been docu-
mented that express sorrow at the departure of the Japanese, while others instead
emphasize the need to rebuild after the war’s destruction and to start new lives with
new overseas partners, that is, the Americans (Falgout et al., 2008: 208, 210–12).
After years of the same Japanese propaganda that caused the Empire’s own citizens
and soldiers to prefer suicide to surrender, the Palauans were at first afraid of
Americans. Women experienced special terror of the Marines, believing they would
inevitably be raped and killed if captured (Falgout et al., 2008: 191).28 The Americans
also unknowingly breached Palauan cultural conventions, as described by Makino
Tariu, ‘[we] felt Americans had no discipline, because they smiled at us without any
reason. It was our idea that men should not show their teeth easily’ (Higuchi, 1986b).
These attitudes changed, however, as the same informant relates, ‘because Americans
supplied us with very big cans of corned beef and much food that was transported
from Peleliu. We said, Americans are excellent. They are great’. Wartime legacies can
be experienced in Palau even today, as for example in the popularity of Spam, eaten
frequently, usually fried, with a relish that originated in those first gifts of military
food after Peleliu had fallen.29
The most fundamental problem encountered by the returning Peleliu islanders was
of course the massive general destruction and the obliteration of their home villages.
The scale of the damage can be understood by the Americans’ issue of sunglasses
to the returnees, to cope with glare from the bare coral that had everywhere been
exposed by the bombing and fighting: their once-green, lushly tropical home had
disappeared. One member of a forced labour unit returned in late 1945 after two
years away, and recorded his shock at the defoliant effects of the fighting: ‘The view
[. . .] from Angaur had changed completely. The islands looked so white’ (Elibosang
Eungel quoted in Higuchi, 1986b).
Palauan returnees from the Japanese labour units were treated as heroes by their
original communities (Falgout et al., 2008: 110), and the evacuees from Peleliu were
at first happy to come back. However, they soon discovered the pollution of fishing
waters and agricultural soils, their literal removal in the course of earth-moving, or
burial under new roadways. Not least, more than half the island had been appropri-
ated and remodelled for a new American military base along the former invasion
beaches.
As Murray (2006: 211f.) eloquently puts it,
Everywhere they found desolation and military facilities smothering their most precious
sites. All five villages with their bai [ceremonial longhouses, key buildings of the
community], homes, piers, and boathouses had completely disappeared. Cemeteries and
220 NEIL PRICE and RICK KNECHT
burial odesongel of the homes of ranking kin members had vanished, taking with them
the important connections individuals and kin groups felt with their ancestors. [. . .] They
cried at what they found. ‘Where are our houses? Chedil, chedil, there’s where our house
was, everything is cleared off. How can we come back and live here? There are no trees,
just buildings all over our lands. All the odesongel and cemeteries, gone, wiped clean’.
[. . .] More than a built landscape had disappeared. These were an island people defined
by place, whose identities grew from named lands and the stories carried within those
lands, whose histories dwelt not in books but in sites and objects, in olangch whose
mnemonic functions taught people who they were and why they lived as they did. If the
identity and strength of a lineage ultimately rested on its long-validated claim to certain
lands which were valuable in specific Palauan terms — for their productivity, for their
location in the heart of the village or along the shore, for the myths attending them,
for the ancestors resting within them — then what did it mean when those lands were
cratered, blackened, buried under roads of crushed coral, covered by strange buildings?
When no sign remained of the village of which they’d been a vital part?
This cognitive, emotional and spiritual landscape was long thought to have been
literally erased by the battle, but the archaeological survey unexpectedly proved this
assumption to be incorrect.
The invisible landscape of Peleliu
Although in practice the survey focused primarily upon the battlefield, the formal
brief from the BAC included the basic recording of pre-war sites if any were found.
As mentioned above, the locations of Peleliu’s original villages and settlements were
known, and the surveys of these areas were assisted by the protocol of our relations
with the island’s traditional chiefs. Although the results of the battlefield survey have
been presented in accordance with the logical division of the island into combat zones
(the beaches, the airfield, the ridge, etc. — see Knecht et al., 2012), the actual geo-
graphical sequence of the ground survey followed the order of the traditional ranking
of the villages, beginning with Ngerdelolk. These were surveyed sequentially, with
the fieldwork preceded by formal discussions, presentations, and the seeking of
permission from ranking chiefs. In Ngerdelolk we also showed our respect by leaving
an offering in the Omuchel el Tekoi (‘the Beginning of the Word’) shrine house which
is dedicated to Ngirabeliliou, a powerful spirit that guards the island. A shell adze
blade found on the ground surface near the platform during surface collection was
also deposited there.
Palauan traditional villages typically feature a coral stone dock, often with a canoe
house, from which a stone path leads to the bai platforms near the centre of the
settlement. These platforms are artificial terraces on which ceremonial longhouses are
constructed, buildings that form the spiritual and political heart of the community.
Today the bai are mostly used as meeting places for male title holders, but female
title holders also met there in the past. In pre-war times these buildings also housed
the ‘bai girls’, a complex institution blending sexual service, status, and social
advancement. There were usually several bai in a village, some used by young men’s
and women’s clubs. Today as in the past, the bai are often rebuilt many times on the
same platform.
221AFTER THE TYPHOON
Recording of the pre-war landscape actually began outside the fieldwork. One
unexpected discovery was made in our research on the US Navy archive of aerial
photographs, taken before and during the invasion. In several pictures from March
1944, the airfield is seen being bombed in an effort to neutralize the Japanese planes
on the ground. One of these images is taken from an unusually wide angle and alti-
tude, showing considerable portions of the rest of the island (Figure 13a). Beyond the
mayhem and exploding bombs on the airfield, in the north-east of the shot can be
seen the canoe house, stone road, and one of two bais associated with the village of
Ngesias (Figure 13b; called ‘Asias’ on American military maps). This settlement had
a population of about 175 people in twenty to twenty-five households (Murray, 2006:
74), but had the misfortune in 1944 to be located at the foot of Bloody Nose Ridge.
The village was destroyed in the September bombardment and land battle, and we
believe this to be perhaps the only surviving photograph of its canoe house.
On the ground today, many of the villages are now completely overgrown, their
houses and cultivation patches overwhelmed by the jungle. Beneath the vegetation,
however, the remains of buildings were surprisingly well preserved and almost every
village — except perhaps Teliu by Orange Beach — has structural remains that are
cherished and maintained in some way.
In all, the survey documented sixteen pre-war Palauan sites, structures, and mid-
dens. Ngerdelolk in particular is actively maintained as a special place, with its bai
platform and standing stones carefully kept clear of undergrowth (see Blaiyok, 1985).
The site has continuing spiritual significance to the Peleliu community, and we there-
fore do not include photographs of it here. 30 At the water’s edge nearby, we were
surprised to also find that the seafront structural elements of the same settlement had
survived almost intact, though heavily overgrown with mangroves and jungle vegeta-
tion. In particular, substantial portions of the stone dock called Ngetkeuang remained
clearly visible together with a bathing pool (Figure 14a and b). The latter are com-
monly found between the stone docks and the path to the bai, where Palauans rinsed
themselves in the freshwater pools before proceeding to the village. Most of the stone
docks on Peleliu that were not destroyed in the war had been removed by construc-
tion connected to the pre-war phosphate mining, so this was a particularly welcome
discovery. The site was unusually well preserved in that it also retained its defensive
wall running parallel to the shore (Figure 15), of a kind recorded in late 18th-century
warfare soon after first contact with Europeans (Keate, 1788).
At Ngesias — the village in the 1944 aerial photograph mentioned above — we
were able to record the remnants of a bai platform, which was called Bai ra Itoi and
used by the elders for decision-making. At the time of its destruction during the war,
the surveyed bai platform at Ngesias had been repaired using oil drums alongside the
original coral. We also documented stone house platforms, a well called diong ra kles
and associated with a local legend (Murray, 2006: 72), and coral stone crypts from
the pre-war cemetery. These latter are called bluk in Palauan, and we found many of
them outlined with walls of Japanese beer bottles, placed neck-down in the ground.
Similar bottle-lined graves have been documented in wartime cemeteries elsewhere
in Palau. In addition to the building remains at Ngesias, several other villages were
recorded, including the bai platform, bathing pool, and dock remains at Ngerchol.
Some of the coral rock we saw piled up on the north end of White Beach (Chelechol
222 NEIL PRICE and RICK KNECHT
figure 13a and b A US Navy aerial photo showing the bombing of Peleliu airfield in late
March 1944. At the bottom right of the image, above the handwritten word ‘Peleliu’ (see
detail), can be seen the canoe house and stone road associated with Ngesias village, with the
older of two bai platforms visible at the head of the road. The settlement was destroyed
during the September bombardment and land battle; this is believed to be its only contem-
porary depiction.
Photographer unknown
223AFTER THE TYPHOON
figure 14a and b The
bathing pool and coral
stone dock at Ngerdelolk,
overgrown by mangroves but
substantially intact despite
the impact of the battle.
Photos by Neil Price
224 NEIL PRICE and RICK KNECHT
ra Ngebedangel) was from the bai platforms of Ngerkeyukl village, which was
located just inland from the Point.
Although several traditional sites were recorded before our survey, little is known
of Peleliu’s early settlement, and this is an area that could fruitfully be explored in
the future. Only one site, designated B:BE-2:7, has had any substantial amount of
archaeological investigation; pottery, shell, and shell tools were found with human
burials in a rich midden, with radiocarbon dates from AD 870–1540.31 Given the
island’s topography, it is unremarkable that wartime land use largely mirrored that
of previous inhabitants. In general, it is clear that the entire conflict landscape is
superimposed over an earlier, in parts prehistoric, one.
The large quantities of human remains on the ridge have been mentioned, and it
is obvious that the great majority of these represent the bodies of Japanese (and per-
haps Korean) defenders. However, based on the amount of accumulated flowstone
on them, we also believe that some of the bones may come from indigenous Palauan
burials. Palauan pottery was a frequent find all over the island, and it was clear that
nearly all of the natural limestone caves occupied by the Japanese had seen previous
use (Figure 16). Stone tools are very rare on Palau, and we found only one. Most of
the tools we saw were made of ground shell from giant clams and large univalves.
figure 15 The shorefront of Ngerdelolk village today, reclaimed by the jungle; BAC anthro-
pologists Sylvia Kloulubak and Kelly Marsh give a sense of scale, and stand on the defensive
wall that transects the stone path to the main settlement.
Photo by Neil Price
225AFTER THE TYPHOON
It is also probable that the conflict landscape incorporates sacred sites of natural
character — the Last Command Post in particular, with its eerie monoliths in a
jungle valley surrounded by deep sink holes, is hard to imagine being without any
pre-war significance (see below). There may be many more such places, and as outsid-
ers there is no reason why the Palauans would necessarily inform us of them. At least
one is already known, a large natural cave with an impressive oral history that was
already on the Palau Register as a traditional site prior to our survey; after the field-
work, it was designated as a wartime site as well — we dubbed it ‘land mine cave’
due to a dozen or so of these weapons found live inside.
This fusion of the recent and more distant past is critical in understanding the
battlefield and also for any visitor’s experience of it. Just as the indigenous Palauan
perspective on the fighting is as important as that of the combatants, so too is the
time-depth of its landscape. This dimension of ambiguous localities such as the Last
Command Post is thus an integral part of the battle narrative, and particularly its
sense of place. This can sometimes be manifested in unexpected ways, to which we
now turn.
Ghosts of Peleliu: indigenous Palauans and the caves
The Peleliu survey also had another, quite different dimension to its cognitive archae-
ology, and one that we have thought hard about including in this paper for reasons
of professional credibility (in ways that will become obvious). It concerns a category
of stories told about the battlefield by indigenous Palauans, tales that are not his-
torical or anecdotal in any normal sense, but that instead relate to what a Westerner
would conventionally term the supernatural: in essence, ghost stories. It might seem
tempting to dismiss these as ‘just’ local folklore, interesting enough, perhaps, but
hardly something for academic attention other than in that precise context. However,
this would be merely to perpetuate the condescending assumption that such tales have
figure 16 Sherds of
Palauan pottery of a
type found at many
sites on Peleliu.
Photo by Gavin
Lindsay
226 NEIL PRICE and RICK KNECHT
no ‘real’ meaning or importance. On the ground in Peleliu and elsewhere in Palau,
these are anything but stories to frighten the children. On the contrary, they are
taken very seriously indeed by adults, in fact by almost all the people we met. They
are also directly related to the battlefield remains.
Part of the intention with our involvement in the survey was precisely to address
the conflict archaeology of Peleliu in relation to those whose home this was and is.
In this context, even ghost stories are part of the heritage management of the battle-
field. They acutely affect how it is remembered, perceived, and experienced, and how
it is felt appropriate to engage with it in the future.
We were told many ‘spirit stories’ in Palau generally and on Peleliu itself, often
concerning precise dates and locations. Older locals on the island described how, in
the years immediately after the battle, all of Peleliu was visibly full of the foreign
dead. They could be seen in their hundreds, everywhere, shadowy figures in uniforms
standing silently either alone or in groups, on the beaches, in the forest and hills,
on the roads and in the buildings, even right next to you in the store. The spirits
decreased in number over time, we were told, and now are seldom seen except in the
caves. There, however, they are felt to still be numerous, powerful, and dangerous.
The stories were specific to individual caves and even to exact places within them.
Unsettlingly, these perceptions came to extend beyond the indigenous Palauans,
because foreign members of the team also began to experience phenomena similar to
those described by the local people. This applied in particular to the UXO disposal
unit who spent many hours underground defusing explosives, sometimes up to a
fortnight in a single cave. They described objects moving independently across the
cave floors as they watched, and also told of other, smaller human shadows appear-
ing on the walls beside their own. The shadows moved independently and adopted
different body postures from the team members, and usually seemed to be observing
what the visitors were doing. Thinking it might be some strange effect of their lights,
the UXO team tried shifting them, but the shadows remained and continued to move.
These experiences were sometimes accompanied by rapid drops in temperature, par-
ticularly noticeable in the extremely hot conditions. During the survey, members of
the archaeological team also caught glimpses of human figures in caves where no one
was present, even at one point seeing an indistinct person looking over the shoulder
of another team member as they documented a site. In addition, the feeling of ‘being
watched’ was at times almost overpowering on the ridge where the worst fighting
took place, especially in the aptly named Death Valley.
It is easy to explain these experiences, if required. The UXO personnel and archae-
ologists were often tired, dehydrated, and generally suffering from the tropical heat
and humidity. Health and safety was a constant concern, and we needed to maintain
focused concentration because of the unexploded ordnance that lay everywhere.
There is also no doubt that the battlefield is a sobering and depressing place to spend
significant amounts of time, and especially in the caves we were literally surrounded
by claustrophobic horror every day. In the evenings, we read and talked even more
about the battle. Not least, of course, we were already aware of the ghost stories told
by the local people, and of the island’s reputation for supernatural disquiet. The role
of the war dead in Palauan contemporary life was, after all, one of the reasons we
were there.
227AFTER THE TYPHOON
However, experience is inevitably subjective. Some acts of respect, or perhaps fear,
can appear to conceal their true purpose when viewed with non-Palauan eyes. During
the surveys, the British and American archaeologists on the team were initially
irritated to discover empty plastic bottles of the kind holding mineral water or soda,
apparently littering the caves. In fact, we soon learned that the bottles had been
deliberately placed there full of water (which had since leaked or evaporated),
intended to quench the thirst of the dead inside. Similarly, these ghost stories might
seem academic when sitting in a university office, but feel less so when one is deep
inside a pitch-black cave full of corpses, scuttling insects and atavistic fears, with only
a circle of torchlight for orientation.
Any archaeological engagement with indigenous world-views must naturally take
them seriously. The Palauan reading of the Peleliu ghosts is empirical and quite
different to that of British and American researchers; it also incorporates many points
of view, including outright scepticism. The others on the team — ex-military engi-
neers, relatives of veterans — all have their own perspectives too. Objectivity can be
a double-edged sword, and often something of an illusion: one person’s scientific
observation can be another’s prejudice. With this in mind, it is worth acknowledging
that maybe, just maybe, the things we were told of and that some of us saw were
actually there.
Some areas of the landscape itself were also felt to have ‘different’ atmospheres.
On one occasion a senior member of the team literally ran from a particular location
on the ridge, with a sudden and overwhelming feeling of dread and the urgent sense
that he should leave. There were several such occurrences, always at sites known
to have seen especially intense fighting, and often towards the approach of night.
Clearly, as academics we wish to emphasize our observations rather than our intu-
itions, but to omit episodes such as this feels somehow incomplete in presenting the
record.
The most unpleasant spot was generally agreed to be the Japanese Last Command
Post at the head of Death Valley, which we have mentioned briefly above. This was
the place where the senior officers of the garrison committed suicide two days before
the end, and where the last organized defenders made their stand. The site consists
of several small caves extending beneath large stone monoliths, that lean together to
create an enclosed and hidden space between (Figure 17). Oddly, we never saw birds
there, and the absence of their otherwise ubiquitous calls made the jungle uncomfort-
ably silent. Most of the Palauans — and the UXO team who had spent much time
there — agreed that it was the worst place on the island, to be avoided if at all
possible; several of our local colleagues discreetly found reasons to be elsewhere when
we surveyed it. Some visiting British soldiers, combat veterans on leave from
Afghanistan, found the physical sense of the place so urgently haunted that they
left immediately. It must be admitted that one’s skin positively crawled while there,
especially when alone. The cave interiors were particularly bad.
Again, there are prosaic explanations. At the Last Command Post, as with many
of the Peleliu sites, it was not healthy to dwell too long on the emotional state of the
men who had fought and died there. Every time we encountered a sealed cave, with
contents that we could probably guess at, one felt a lurch in the stomach. No one
wanted to speculate when the last Japanese on Peleliu actually died, presumably alone
after days, weeks, or even months in the stifling dark, only a few metres on the
228 NEIL PRICE and RICK KNECHT
other side of the rubble piles covering the cave entrances. The experiences of the
defenders especially preyed on our minds, recalling Conrad’s words from his Heart
of Darkness (2002 [1902]: 6): ‘imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the
powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate’.
Even away from Peleliu on the other islands, it became quickly known who we
were and what we were engaged in (Palau is a small community). People in the main
town of Koror were interested and eager to talk about the project with us, and the
work was always seen as a good thing to be doing. The ‘foreignness’ of the dead was
a consistent theme, the idea that they did not belong in Palau: they were not wanted,
nor did they want to be there. In everyday conversation with Palauans we met — taxi
drivers, people in shops, and so on — there emerged a feeling that by our presence
we were giving the war dead a measure of peace. This was achieved by honouring
their memories, and also in a strange way simply by taking the time to think about
them, handle their possessions, and do things on their behalf in the places where they
died. All this was somehow understood to almost physically defuse the charged and
dangerous atmosphere of the battlefield, making it better, and perhaps easing the
spirits’ departure from the island to their own appropriate places.
figure 17 Members
of the survey team
inside the enclosed
space of the Last
Command Post in
Death Valley. The
cave where the
Japanese officers died
is beneath the stone
monoliths, behind
UXO officer Steve
Ballinger and archae-
ologist Neil Price.
Photo by Rick Knecht
229AFTER THE TYPHOON
Peleliu memorialized
The processing of the Peleliu story began even while the battle was still being fought,
and gathered pace soon afterwards with the construction of formal memorials to
the dead. The American monuments, mainly erected by military units, are socially
situated in that their celebrations of endurance and courage contrast with historical
discussions dominated by the question of whether the battle should have been fought
at all. Their wartime opponents have also constructed a material version of Peleliu’s
heritage that runs the whole spectrum of Japanese social debate on the background
to the Second World War and the nation’s true role in it. Both sides largely ignore
the experiences of the Palauans, today as in the past, and the forced labourers have
also been forgotten. In all its variety, the monumentalized memory of the Peleliu
combatants was also documented in the archaeological survey.
Remembering the victors
The first such events came with the necessary creation of the Marine Corps and Army
cemetery on Orange Beach, where the bodies of those who died in the invasion were
interred as quickly as the area became safe enough to use. Burials continued there
throughout the fighting, as casualties were taken back down to the beachhead from
the front lines in the Omleblochel. Just under 2000 American dead were eventually
laid to rest there, marked by white crosses and commemorated on two stone-built
obelisks inscribed for the 81st Army Infantry, the ‘Wildcats’. The cemetery complex
was augmented by a flagpole and a small chapel constructed of local limestone and
coral.
After the war, the American dead were removed and gathered in large cemeteries
for the Pacific theatre that had been established in the Philippines and Hawaii, with
a few repatriated to the United States at their families’ request. Today, only one grave
marker remains as a symbol of the original burial ground, its cross decorated with a
Marine helmet and assorted items of military equipment that change regularly as
visitors add or remove them. The obelisks remain (Figure 18a and b), as do the
outer coral walls of the chapel; the interior and superstructure have gone. The entire
former cemetery is now overgrown with scrub grass and low brush, though its central
lawn is still maintained with bushes planted to spell the letters USA. The original
flagpole rusted and fell, but a new one was erected by the people of Peleliu. The Stars
and Stripes are only occasionally raised there now. While the cemetery is essentially
an extension of the landing beaches, the main American memorials are located further
inland around the sites of most intense fighting.
Near the summit of the ridge is a major complex of memorials set up by both sides
from the 1950s to the 1990s. The memorial to the First Marine Division is here, a
truncated obelisk which on its various sides includes the text of their Presidential Unit
Citation, a message from surviving Peleliu veterans and a list of Medal of Honor
recipients from the rededication on the fiftieth anniversary in 1994. Other memorials
include a separate tablet from 2007, inscribed by the officers and crew of the USS
Peleliu, a modern American warship named for the battle. Nearby on another spur
of the ridge is the memorial to the 323rd Infantry Regiment, erected relatively soon
after the fighting and frequently visited by service personnel; its large inscription is
simple, Lest We Forget Those Who Died (Figure 19a and b).
230 NEIL PRICE and RICK KNECHT
figure 18a and b Marines fire a volley during a dedication service at the cemetery on Orange
Beach in December 1944, and same area today with the 81st Army Infantry memorials.
USMC photo 127-10W-737/105472, photographer I. K. White, in the public domain; modern
photo by Rick Knecht
231AFTER THE TYPHOON
In addition to the official memorials to the Marines and Infantry, there are also a
number of privately sponsored plaques and inscriptions commemorating individuals
or discrete events in the battle. Examples include the crash site of a TBF Avenger
Torpedo Bomber and a tank wreck on Hill 210 (the latter set up by the 710 Tank
Bn), and the memorial tablet erected by survey team medic David McQuillen to his
uncle who died at the entrance to Death Valley shortly after D-Day (Figure 20). The
site of the Point, the heavily defended prominence at the north end of White Beach
that saw some of the worst combat on D-Day, is also marked by memorial plaques.
The American memorials are well maintained, and form focal points on the organized
tours for visitors. They are periodically renewed or rededicated, and more are added
at intervals as families wish to remember their veteran relatives.
The most comprehensive of the battlefield memorials takes the form of a small
museum, funded by Peleliu State, with several large grants coordinated by the Peleliu
War Historical Society whose energy and commitment to the island has been
expressed in many forms of support (including the impetus behind the survey itself).
Housed in a former fuel storage bunker, this had been the site of heavy fighting
during the battle, when the structure was hit by two 14-inch shells from the USS
Mississippi that killed up to twenty Japanese soldiers inside (Figure 21a and b;
see Knecht et al., 2012: part 3). Now only periodically staffed, the museum is air-
figure 19a and b The memorial to the 323rd Infantry Regiment on a spur of the Omleblo-
chel, with American military in the late 1940s(?) and archaeologists today (left–right: Knecht,
Lindsay, Price, Sangalang).
Period photographer unknown; modern remote photo by Gavin Lindsay
232 NEIL PRICE and RICK KNECHT
conditioned and stores a variety of the best-preserved artefacts to have been found
on Peleliu over the years.
Honouring the defenders
Much has been written on the complex post-war negotiation of Japan’s Imperial
activities (e.g. Igarashi, 2000), and this is reflected in the variety of their memorials
erected on the battlefield. As with the American markers, most of the formal monu-
ments are concentrated on and around the Omleblochel, commemorating individual
units and the collective sacrifice of the defenders.
The Japanese soldiers who died in the open, outside the ridge area, were mostly
buried by the Americans in mass graves, including reused anti-tank defences. Several
of these were emptied during the 1950s, but some apparently remain. As we have
discussed in our earlier paper (Price and Knecht, 2012), a great many bodies still lie
unburied in the caves of the Omleblochel and others lie exposed on the jungle
floor.
Among the Japanese memorials on the ridge are one erected in 1989 by the 2nd
Infantry Regiment, and several more outside the cave entrances. Near the summit is
figure 20 Cleared Ground Demining medic and former Marine David McQuillen, beside
the memorial he established to his uncle, First Sergeant Elmer Lowe, who was killed on
20 September 1944 in the northernmost section of Hill 210 where Death Valley begins.
Photo by Rick Knecht
233AFTER THE TYPHOON
figure 21a and b A Japanese fuel storage bunker in the southern part of Peleliu, shortly after
its capture in September 1944 and in use today as a museum.
USMC photo 127-10W-729/95115, photographer Smith, in the public domain; modern photo
by Rick Knecht
234 NEIL PRICE and RICK KNECHT
a large Shinto shrine with several satellite monuments (Figure 22). The memorials
are covered with objects picked up from the battlefield and brought to the shrines
by visitors, often items that are more of a personal nature (canteens, rice bowls,
etc.) than more overtly militaristic artefacts such as weapons (Figure 23). These
are accompanied by bundles of calligraphically inscribed wooden prayer sticks, offer-
ings of sake and water, ribbons, and other marks of respect. The inscriptions on
them are interesting and subtle, ranging from ‘leftist expressions of regret to rightist
invocations of the pre-war emperor system’ (Murray, 2006: xii). The latter texts are
sometimes phrased ambiguously, but ultimately promote a revisionist narrative that
sees Japan as the passive victim in the war, fighting for pan-Asian liberation from
Western colonial aggression. Appeals to peace and spiritual rest are also common,
simple prayers for the souls of the dead.
This emphasis on closure and respect is a critical aspect of the Japanese response
to Peleliu today, marking a vital and immediately understandable need on the part of
the defenders’ relatives, all too aware that their lost soldiers died almost to a man
and for a cause that was dubious at best. As for other Pacific battles, the families of
the Japanese dead of Peleliu were not even told the locations of their sons’ deaths
until the 1950s. They were informed that their loved ones’ spirits had been enshrined
at Yasukuni Jinja in Tokyo, but they received no bodies. Instead a symbolic box of
paulownias wood was presented to the families, of the kind used to house the actual
figure 22 Part of the Shinto shrine complex on the Omleblochel ridge.
Photo by Neil Price
235AFTER THE TYPHOON
bones of fallen soldiers when they could be recovered. These boxes were usually
interred in empty graves on the family plot. Over the following decades, family
members began to create informal societies of the bereaved, marking the anniversary
of the Peleliu campaign and slowly applying pressure on the Japanese government
to release information. These groups of Ireidan or ‘memorial tourists’ still visit the
island, lay flowers and garlands, and attend the privately funded shrines at the
summit of the ridge.
None of these bereavement societies include Korean or Okinawan members, or are
overtly concerned with the fate of the forced labourers. To the best of our knowledge,
there are no memorials to them of any kind on Peleliu.32
Inside the ruined headquarters building on the airfield, we found a very large
number of informal shrines. They are dominated by prayer wheels and senbazuru,
multi-coloured garlands of one thousand origami cranes that feature widely in Shinto
beliefs as blessings, symbols of goodwill, and offerings of peace (Figure 24). The
cranes are often folded by Japanese schoolchildren and taken to Peleliu (and other
island battlefields) on their behalf. The garlands are left to disintegrate in the ele-
ments, the wish that they represent being released as the paper falls apart. Within the
airfield HQ, seashells had also been brought up from the beach and deposited in small
piles. The crumbling pillars and walls of the building are covered in graffiti, much of
figure 23 A Japanese military memorial outside a cave entrance on the Omleblochel. Note
the offerings of sake, water, and deposits of equipment.
Photo by Rick Knecht
236 NEIL PRICE and RICK KNECHT
it memorial inscriptions in both English and Japanese. Many of these messages are
well preserved and clearly date from the 1940s, giving the names and home towns of
the scribes. Research and translation of these is still ongoing, but it may be that some
date from the battle itself, when this building formed the linchpin of the Japanese
airfield defence. Similar inscriptions are also found in other defensive positions around
the island (Figure 25).
Some Japanese military societies also come to Peleliu, honouring the unit memori-
als and also leaving offerings where the fighting was fiercest. These latter can take
several forms, including small wooden deity figurines placed in niches in the deepest
parts of the caves and tunnels, far away from the areas usually reached by ordinary
tourists. In one of the caves under the Last Command Post, at the spot where the
Japanese officers killed themselves, on every visit we always found that fresh forest
flowers had been laid; it was moving, and a little eerie, to think of these offerings
being made down in the underground dark (Figure 26).
There is a clear interest in taking coral and soil from Peleliu, including from the
caves, back to Japan. On the beaches in particular, the ‘most important spot’ of the
defence in Oda’s words above, one can observe emotional scenes as relatives make
figure 24 A prayer
wheel and senbazuru
garland made of one
thousand paper
cranes, left as a
peace offering in the
airfield Headquarters
Building.
Photo by Rick
Knecht
237AFTER THE TYPHOON
their first visit to the place that their loved ones died trying to hold. One such event
was described by a recent Der Spiegel team covering the legacy of the battle: ‘an
elderly [Japanese] man with a hearing aid is filling sand into a plastic bottle with
trembling hands’ (Weißenborn, 2012). This ‘Peleliu dust’ is then placed in the empty
graves of soldiers who died there — a phenomenon with archaeological implications
that has also been observed on other islands, such as Kwajalein (Dvorak, 2007:
16f.).
Periodically, bones from the caves and other localities are collected by teams from
Japan (a process that began in the 1950s) under the supervision of BAC archaeologists
and accompanied by UXO officers. These remains are usually assumed to be of
Japanese origin from their finds context, but in the absence of scientific analyses this
remains conjecture, albeit a likely one; not least, it is far from certain that no Korean
labourers are among these dead. The bones are blessed and honoured with prayers
and offerings, then cremated with modest ceremony on log pyres at the edge of
the existing civil cemetery that was originally the burial ground for Ngerchol village
(Figure 27). These rituals are sometimes attended by archaeologists and bomb
disposal team members as a mark of respect.
figure 25 ‘God bless
all the brave solders
[sic]’ — a graffito
on the wall of the
so-called ‘German’
blockhouse, named
due to its similarity
with European
emplacements.
Photo by Rick Knecht
238 NEIL PRICE and RICK KNECHT
In one final commemorative twist relating to the material culture of the battle,
the same cemetery also contains a handful of graves marked by salvaged aircraft
propellers. These burials are those of indigenous Palauans, but the symbolism of the
grave markers was adopted by the Republic’s government in an issue of postage
stamps aimed at the Japanese market. Here, the ‘propeller burials’ are incorrectly
depicted as honouring fallen Japanese fliers (Figure 28a and b).
Refighting Peleliu
Finally, moving from peaceful cremations to a totally different sphere of activity,
there is one further category of memorialization that takes a very direct material
form: the presence of re-enactors and the wearing of WWII-era uniform. A paper
of this kind is not the forum for a full discussion of this phenomenon, but it is not
uncommon for American visitors to the battlefield to wear replica Marine fatigues of
the period. The websites and blogs that document these travels often mention the
costuming as a conscious mark of respect to the US dead, and as a way to somehow
feel a greater connection with an experience of the battle. These visitors are often
figure 26 Fresh flowers laid in a cave beneath the Last Command Post in Death Valley,
at the spot where the Japanese officers committed suicide after transmitting their final radio
message, ‘our sword is broken and we have run out of spears’. No natural light penetrates to
this location.
Photo by Rick Knecht
239AFTER THE TYPHOON
relatives of veterans, but interestingly when the latter actually visit Peleliu they never
wear uniform beyond the occasional cap, badge, or medal. In the United States there
are of course a number of groups that re-enact Pacific battles, and even some societies
in which Americans dress as Japanese soldiers. In Japan there are few counterparts
to this, for obvious political reasons, though with occasional exceptions.33 On Peleliu
itself, Japanese visitors never wear uniforms, but it is not unknown to catch a glimpse
of an IJA field cap with its characteristic neck cape (though in fact this is also
intensely practical in the tropical sun). The few Japanese veterans who visit bear
minimal uniform details in the same manner as their former enemies.
As an extension of this live commemoration, the battle for Peleliu also features
frequently as the subject of model kits and gaming scenarios. A segment of the first-
person-shooter computer wargame Call of Duty: World at War is devoted to replay-
ing the campaign from many different perspectives, and online player comments
make up a significant part of Peleliu’s web presence.
Peleliu collected
It is entirely appropriate that Americans and Japanese see Peleliu as a place of
honourable memory and historical significance, alongside its potential for reflection
on the trauma of war. However, as we have seen, the promotion of these agendas
figure 27 A cremation ceremony held on Peleliu in December 2011, honouring the remains
of six individuals believed to be Japanese soldiers; their bones rest on the log pyre before the
flag. The then Honourable Governor of Peleliu State sits in the front row of benches.
Photo by David McQuillen
240 NEIL PRICE and RICK KNECHT
figure 28a and b A grave in
Peleliu cemetery, marked by
the salvaged propeller from a
Japanese Zero. The person
buried here, an indigenous
Palauan, lived through
the successive colonial
occupations of the Spanish,
Germans, and Japanese and
on into the American era.
Also pictured is a Palauan
postage stamp issued with an
eye to the Japanese market,
incorrectly depicting such
propeller tombstones as
memorials to fallen Imperial
airmen.
Photos by Rick Knecht
241AFTER THE TYPHOON
by non-Palauans also requires an acknowledgement that this same conflict was re-
sponsible for the near obliteration of indigenous culture on the island. The Palauans,
by contrast, quite simply ‘remember the war as having destroyed their entire way
of life’ (Murray, 2006: xii). Not least, the legacy of UXO continues to make living
on Peleliu unsafe — a problem common to much of Palau. As Murray again puts it
succinctly, ‘today residents struggle to reconstruct their society, retain and recover
their prewar past and attract tourism, an essential component of their economy’
(ibid.).
A key factor here is the presence of military debris throughout the island, and the
varying value placed upon it by different constituencies. Much of the damage done
to the historical resource on Peleliu is the result of ‘movers’, tourists who pick up
interesting pieces of battlefield material but then later redeposit them somewhere else
on the island, having felt uncomfortable about taking them away. They mean no
harm, and indeed their actions may actually be founded in respect, but the artefac-
tual context is nonetheless removed. Other objects are taken away deliberately by
collectors, some of them also motivated by a sense of worth that they place on the
past; needless to say, in the absence of documentation the tragic result is the same.
In a number of instances the battlefield has also been actively looted by people
engaged in deliberate criminal activity, stealing items to sell to collectors.
At its worst, this activity is carried out on a major scale and is highly invasive.
Sealed caves have been opened with backhoes, and others have been systematically
dug through (we encountered several such sites during the survey). Aircraft parts are
particularly sought after by individuals who wish to rebuild flying machines from the
war. As the Marines took the airfield, it was brought into active service as soon as
possible to facilitate American bombing of the Omleblochel. Engineers bulldozed the
remains of Japanese planes that had been destroyed on the ground, and these now lie
in a number of large heaps alongside the runways (1944 US military documentation
records a staggering 61 Zero fighter wrecks and the remains of 63 other aircraft,
including large transport planes — see Knecht et al., 2012: part 5). Much of this
material has now been removed, including very cumbersome items such as aircraft
wings and cockpit canopies. In addition to this, ordnance has been taken away in
considerable quantities — a fantastically hazardous undertaking — and the damage
done to large armoured vehicles suggests that some of the looters have access to heavy
equipment and boats, perhaps even private aircraft.
From the perspective of effective heritage management, it is a grave mistake to
believe that the existence of rich material ‘pickings’ on Peleliu is unknown — on the
contrary, we estimate that the looters’ documentation is if anything more comprehen-
sive in scale than our own, and not necessarily less exact in its details. A simple
Google search on ‘Peleliu’ generates more than a million hits and quickly demon-
strates the extent of the problem. There is also a very widespread dissemination of
images from the battlefield, and in a purely visual sense there is little left to ‘reveal’
(we were conscious of this in selecting illustrations for our earlier paper). The true
problem lies not in information, but in attitude.
In this context, especially given the ubiquitous UXO, it would be understandable
if many local people were to regard the marvellously preserved material heritage of
242 NEIL PRICE and RICK KNECHT
the battle for Peleliu as something more akin to a lethal form of litter. In a generally
low-income society, it also takes a peculiarly Western arrogance to see nothing
sympathetic in the temptation to turn heaps of apparently useless metal junk into
many thousands of life-changing dollars through sale to collectors. We must stress,
however, that understanding motive is not to condone the action.
In attempting to stem the increasing depletion of Peleliu’s heritage through
removal of artefacts and disturbance of their context, a key message must concern
the potential for income generation through sustainable battlefield tourism. This can
only be achieved by preserving the material in situ. Quite simply, it must be more
profitable to leave the artefacts alone than to remove them for sale. This will also be
assisted by a more effective communication of the Peleliu story from all relevant
perspectives, including those of the Palauans, in a manner that emphasizes how this
is their heritage too.
‘Communicable to later times’
The archaeology of wartime Peleliu speaks not only to those directly affected, but
also to the larger issue of island communities living in the shadow of conflict. This
is particularly applicable to the Pacific, but is also of broader relevance everywhere
that the events of a few short months (in some cases, merely days) forever transform
societies living in small and relatively sheltered environments. Often sparsely popu-
lated, these islands are forced to cope with a sudden and violent influx of outsiders,
frequently many times the number of original inhabitants, who leave behind them
material wreckage and cultural influence. The Peleliu story also speaks, of course, to
the wider human condition of war and its consequences.
It seems fitting to end this pair of papers with Eugene Sledge’s own summation of
what the fight for one tiny Pacific island meant to him, in the form of sentiments that
he in turn borrowed from Robert Graves:
[Peleliu] gave us infantrymen so convenient a measuring-stick for discomfort, grief,
pain, fear, and horror, that nothing since has greatly daunted us. But it also brought new
meanings of courage, patience, loyalty, and greatness of spirit; incommunicable, we found
to later times. (Sledge, 1981: 157f., after Graves, 1966)
Sledge consciously linked the experiences of the First World War with the legacy of
the Second, as a message to the future. By extension, we hope that the principles of
our work in Palau can open a path to a new kind of conflict archaeology, a way to
make the story of places like Peleliu ‘communicable to later times’.
Acknowledgements
This paper is respectfully dedicated to the memory of Rita Olsudong, Palau’s first
National Archaeologist. But for her untimely death in 2009, she would have been the
director of the Peleliu survey. She is much missed.
The survey would not have happened without the long-term and patient efforts of
Steve Cypra and the Peleliu War Historical Society, whose representations to the US
243AFTER THE TYPHOON
National Park Service resulted in both the funding and the impetus for the research.
Steve made many contributions both during the fieldwork and in the writing of this
paper. We thank him and the NPS American Battlefield Protection Program grant for
making the fieldwork possible. At the NPS, Paula Falk Creech and Hank Florence
have been helpful above and beyond the call of duty, often in trying circumstances
in which we were most grateful for their support. D. Colt Denfeld was also very
generous in his comments, and we have gratefully benefited from his long experience
of Pacific War archaeology. A very large portion of the field recording was under-
taken in exemplary fashion by PhD student Gavin Lindsay, and his enthusiasm made
a major contribution to the project. Our work on Peleliu is nothing if not collabora-
tive, and we are honoured by the trust placed in us by our Palauan hosts: we work
both with and for them. We extend our grateful thanks to former Governor Kangichi
Uchau, present Governor Temmy Shmull, and the State Legislature of Peleliu,
together with Speaker Desengai Matsutaro, for their hospitality, assistance, and the
loan of the Governor’s private boat. The hereditary chiefs of Peleliu honoured us
with permission to work on their lands. From the Palau Government Bureau of Arts
and Culture we thank Acting Director Sunny Ochob Ngirmang, together with Calvin
Emesiochel, Errolflynn Kloulechad, and Gener ‘Eigner’ Moon Sangalang, who all
worked with us in the field and have contributed insights to this paper. Local archae-
ologist Jolie Liston provided many suggestions and access to published reports.
Tangie Hesus accompanied us for much of the fieldwork, sharing his knowledge and
also giving us access to Tsuchida-san’s photo album. Thanks also to Reiko’s Guest-
house and Alex at the Store in Kloulklubed village, Peleliu, for housing, feeding, and
watering the team. As ever, we would most particularly like to thank Steve and Cas-
sandra Ballinger and their UXO disposal operation at Cleared Ground Demining —
Hiob Keptot, Morgan Matsuoka, Yosko Ngiraked, and James Ongklungel; they kept
us safe in the field and are improving the lives of Peleliu’s citizens at the conscious
risk of their own. Also on the Cleared Ground team, medic and former Marine David
McQuillen looked after our health and safety with great good humour, and gener-
ously shared his trove of archive information on the battle; he has been a constant
support throughout our work and has made many valuable contributions to this
paper. Hirofumi Kato was most generous with his time in translating Japanese
inscriptions for us. At the University of Aberdeen, thanks to Jenny Johnston of our
cartographic department for creating the map, and to all our archaeological col-
leagues there for advice on the project. Professor Sir Ian Diamond, Principal of the
University, has been very supportive as our work on Peleliu developed. Last, but
perhaps most important of all, several American veterans of Peleliu and Okinawa
contacted us in the course of the project to offer words of encouragement and
appreciation; we wish to preserve their privacy and do not name them here, but we
are humbled by their support for our work.
Note that in the above text we capitalize ‘Soldiers’ when referring to American
troops, by request following current US military convention.
Disclaimer: this material is based on work assisted by a grant from the United
States Department of the Interior, National Park Service. Any opinions, findings, and
conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors
and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of the Interior.
244 NEIL PRICE and RICK KNECHT
Demining Peleliu
If readers would like to help make Peleliu safe for its inhabitants and visitors,
the not-for-profit UK-registered charity Cleared Ground Demining gratefully accepts
donations towards the costs of UXO removal. Please contact them through their
website: <http://www.clearedground.org>
Notes
1 In our earlier paper (Price and Knecht, 2012) we
erroneously quoted a lower figure for Palau’s popu-
lation, due to our inadvertent consultation of an
outdated census.
2 Since our first paper appeared, several new Peleliu
studies and memoirs have been published, including
McEnery and Sloan, 2012; Mace and Allen, 2012.
3 These numbers are problematic, though based on
the new calculations we present in our first Peleliu
paper (Price and Knecht, 2012: 45). There are many
alternatives, including Moran and Rottman, 2002:
36–39 and Wright, 2005: 137, but we believe ours to
be the most accurate published so far. There is at
least no disagreement that thousands of the forced
labourers died in the battle.
4 The ‘minimal’ impact of post-war scrap metal col-
lecting is relative; even on Peleliu, the majority of
Japanese artillery pieces were removed, aircraft
parts were piled in large dumps near Scarlet Beach,
and so on.
5 The same sentiment is present in the titles of books
on the Peleliu campaign: Islands of the Damned
(Burgin, 2010), To the Far Side of Hell (Wright,
2002), The Forgotten Corner of Hell (Moran and
Rottman, 2002), The Devil’s Anvil (Hallas, 1994),
and so on.
6 Note that this is distinct to the vicarious thrill-
seeking of so-called ‘war tourism’, a very different
concept.
7 This is especially the case at the most ‘obvious’ sites
of this kind, those associated with the Holocaust
(e.g. Young, 1994; Macdonald, 2008).
8 Here and elsewhere in this paper, we do not provide
photographs of battlefi eld finds at the request of the
Bureau of Arts and Culture on Palau. Full illustra-
tions of the survey results may be found in the
archive report (Knecht et al., 2012) available on
application from the National Park Service.
9 The Navajo code talkers that we have traced on
Peleliu were Roy Begay, Lloyd Betone, John H.
Bowman, Sany Burr, Andrew Cayedito, Del Cayedi-
to, John Chae, Joe Hosteen Kelwood, Jimmy King,
Edward Lueppe, Ben Manuelito, James T. Nahkai,
Chester Nez, Roy Notah, Lloyd Oliver, Dan Orhi-
ya, Samuel Sandoval, Tom Singer, Preston Toledo,
Francis Tsinajnnie, and Alex Williams; they were
commanded by Lt Col. James G. Smith. If readers
are aware of any other code talkers who were
present on the island, we would be most grateful for
this information.
10 A useful portal to these resources can be accessed
through the US Government Naval History and
Heritage Command’s web pages, <http://www.
history.navy.mil/index.html>, and also the records
of the Library of Congress’ Veterans History Project
at <http://www.loc.gov/vets> [all accessed May
2012]. Several of the Peleliu code talkers’ sons served
in Vietnam, where they carried on the tradition
until the use of Native American languages in com-
munications was discontinued early in that war.
11 Navajos were fi rst granted the vote in Arizona in
1948, New Mexico in 1953, and Utah in 1957.
12 This information comes from former radio operator
Harvard Lewis who served with battalion, knew the
code talkers who were killed, and saw their bodies;
we are very grateful to him, and David McQuillen,
for sharing these memories with us. The battle for
Peleliu was thus responsible for a quarter of all code
talker fatalities in the entire war — see also Nez,
2011: 258.
13 A typical wartime American view of the Japanese
was recorded in the memoirs of George Hunt, who
had been honoured for his courageous leadership of
K/3/1 Marines in their defence of the Point for the
first two days of the Peleliu landings. In sharp con-
trast to the more measured tone of Sledge’s book
(which was published in the 1980s), Hunt’s account
first appeared only two years after the desperate
fighting he describes. It makes uneasy reading today,
blending the unconscious racism of the time with
the visceral hatred that many Marines understand-
ably felt for their enemy, but we reproduce it here
to give a flavour of the emotional background of
the battle: ‘The Jap loves the night, and he loves to
sneak. He is an animal who prowls noiselessly with
padded, two-toed shoes on his feet. When he attacks
by himself or with a few others and suddenly
appears out of the night over our holes with bayonet
and knife, he is dangerous and clever. But like all
animals he succumbs easily to the instinct of the
mass, and when he attacks in great numbers he is
blind and stupid and, like a wolf, seeks a crowd and
the protection of numbers. Then he is easy prey for
our weapons. The Jap is treacherous and unscrupu-
lous and thinks nothing of his own life. Perhaps
he is fanatic; perhaps he is merely stupid in under-
estimating us. When he screams “Banzai!” it is to
245AFTER THE TYPHOON
convince himself of his own spirit. If it is to under-
mine our spirit, it is a pathetic endeavour. When he
defends he is tenacious and brave and shoots well
until we have disorganized his positions which are
so heavily constructed and thoroughly dug in that it
is often very costly to smash them. Then, confused
and leaderless, he huddles in his pillbox or cave
attempting to kill as many of us as he can before his
death. If the terrain favors him, for a while he will
succeed in doing so, but his defeat and death are
inevitable’ (Hunt, 1958: 92–93).
14 A feeling encapsulated by the diary entries of
Hayashi Tadao, a young Japanese writing early in
the war: ‘Japan, why don’t I love and respect you?
[. . .] I feel that I have to accept the fate of my gen-
eration to fi ght in the war and die [. . . ]We have to
go to the battlefi eld without being able to express
our opinions, criticise and argue pros and cons
of issues [. . .] it is a great tragedy’, quoted in
Ohnuki-Tierney, 2006: 79f.
15 Estimates of the Chinese death toll at Nanjing vary
widely, from 60,000–300,000, but it is almost certain
that well over 100,000 people were killed and at
least as many women raped.
16 Made in 2001, the recording is available online at:
<http://www.iwm.org.uk/search/global?query=kiyo
kazu+tsuchida&.x=0&.y=0> [accessed May 2012].
17 The whole phenomenon of souvenir hunting is a
fascinating and complex aspect of this and other
Pacific battles, and a subject to which we hope to
return in a later paper.
18 The airfield is still in use today.
19 The American forces that invaded Okinawa were
largely comprised of the Peleliu veterans, reformed
in their units after recuperation on Pavuvu.
20 These territories had in fact been invaded by
Japanese forces launched from Palau (Hastings,
2011: 217).
21 The Japanese version of this story comes to us from
Katsuhiro Shirakakata, courtesy of Steve Cypra;
we gratefully acknowledge this information.
22 From the Report of Operations in Capture and
Occupation of Southern Palau Islands: Marines 3rd
PHIB Corps, 10/14/44, p. 47 (Angaur): ‘A total of
182 civilians came into our lines. Of this group,
most all of the women and children, and some of
the men, suffered from malnutrition. As of 1200
October 14, 1944, 42 of this group were hospital-
ised. Thirteen civilians were received from some of
the small islands just north of Peleliu. At the end of
the operation, plans were underway to place these
in the Angaur Camp’. These Angaur residents were
also mentioned and pictured in several contempo-
rary newsletters produced by the ‘Wildcats’.
23 Some especially interesting perspectives on the
indigenous voice during the Pacific campaign have
been put forward by Dvorak (2007), who grew up
on the Marshall Islands in the post-war years as the
child of American atomic weapons engineers work-
ing on Kwajalein. In addition, the work of Geoffrey
White has provided great insight into the Pacific
War experience of the Solomon Islanders and other
indigenous peoples of Oceania — see White et al.,
1988 and Fujitani et al., 2001, White and Lindstrom,
1989; White has also published extensively on
the conflicted memorialization of Pearl Harbor as
the central early event of the War. For further
overviews of the Pacific Islander experience, see
Matsuda, 2012: ch.18 and notes therein.
24 Curiously, towards the end of the war the Japanese
adopted the same imagery, though applying it to
Americans: ‘In the forefront of the invader, his great
carrier task force rampaged about [. . .] like a mighty
typhoon’ (Mitsuru, 1999: 44).
25 Several songs and other memoirs of their adventures
have been documented — see Falgout et al., 2008:
110–15. Ubal Tellei was one of the Palauans sent
to work for the Japanese in New Guinea, and has
published his reminiscences (1991).
26 A large underground shelter matching the descrip-
tion in the oral tradition was located in the Palauan
state of Ngatpang by BAC archaeologists in 2005.
It was still mined with a series of Japanese aerial
bombs.
27 There is a very similar story of a Japanese officer
warning the inhabitants of Tobi Island, one of
Palau’s South-west islands, of a massacre planned to
take place in a much smaller bomb shelter at the end
of the war.
28 This kind of propaganda had devastating power,
as seen with particular horror on Saipan which had
a large Japanese civilian population. When the
Americans invaded the island in 1944, the Japanese
military held them at bay long enough to allow
almost all the non-combatants to commit suicide.
Literally thousands of people threw themselves from
the high cliffs of the north coast, in increasing des-
peration as the Americans fought harder to breach
the Japanese lines, ironically in order to save them.
Fully believing that they would be tortured, raped,
and even eaten if captured by the Marines, the civil-
ians died in orderly family groups, pushing each
other over the edge in turn. Human bones can still
be seen today at the foot of what is now called
Banzai Cliff.
29 Sometimes colonial food traditions are oddly com-
bined on Palau, as in Spam sushi, a staple of our
lunchtime bento boxes in the field. Across many
Pacific islands there was also a pre-existing prefer-
ence for heavily salted meat that originated with the
salt-pork brought by European sailors, as well as a
cultural preference for pork as a high-status food.
30 Other platforms, bathing pools, and cemeteries are
also maintained, but not as regularly.
31 This site was placed on the Palau Register of
Historic Places in 1994.
32 Impressive Korean memorials have been erected on
Saipan and Tinian.
33 In Japan there is even a group that dresses as the
Waffen SS, blond wigs and all.
246 NEIL PRICE and RICK KNECHT
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Notes on contributors
Neil Price is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, and
is also an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand
in Johannesburg, South Africa. A leading specialist on the Vikings and ancient reli-
gion, he has global interests in a wide range of archaeological subjects. Alongside
further work on WWII in the Pacific, he is currently researching Viking burials,
historical piracy, and the archaeology of the nineteenth-century opium trade.
Correspondence to: Neil Price, Department of Archaeology, University of Aber-
deen, St Mary’s, Elphinstone Road, Aberdeen AB24 3UF , UK. Email: neil.price@abdn.
ac.uk
Rick Knecht is Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Aberdeen,
Scotland. He specializes in the archaeology of high-latitude North America, espe-
cially Alaska and the Aleutians, where he works closely with indigenous communities
and has established several museums. Rick also works in Micronesia, where he was
previously Ethnographer and Director of the Oral History Program for the Bureau
of Arts and Culture in Palau. In addition to further research in the Pacific, Rick is
currently directing excavations at a number of Yup’ik sites in Alaska.
Correspondence to: Rick Knecht, Department of Archaeology, University of
Aberdeen, St Mary’s, Elphinstone Road, Aberdeen AB24 3UF, UK. Email: r.knecht@
abdn.ac.uk
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