At the Battle of Peleliu, from 15 September to 27 November 1944, US Marines and Army troops2 captured the island from its Japanese garrison after more than two months of savage fighting. Promised as a battle of a few days, it became a nightmare of cave warfare on the coral ridges the Marines called Bloody Nose Ridge. The garrison was nearly wiped out, American losses were heavy, and the island's strategic value has been debated ever since.
The commander promised Peleliu would fall in three or four days. Instead the Marines found a honeycomb of caves and a new Japanese way of fighting, and the battle ground on for over two months on a ridge they would never forget.
Part of The greatest battles of the Pacific War · Before: The Battle of Tarawa · Next: Battle of Leyte Gulf
The road to the Palaus
As American forces drove toward the Philippines in 1944, Peleliu and its airfield were targeted to protect the flank of the coming invasion. A heavy bombardment was expected to make the landing quick, and the Marine commander William Rupertus predicted the island would fall in a few days.1
A new kind of defence
The Japanese commander, Kunio Nakagawa, had abandoned the old tactic of defending the beaches.3 Instead he fortified the rugged interior with hundreds of interconnected caves and bunkers, planning to make the Americans pay dearly for every yard, a defence in depth that would be repeated on later islands.
Bloody Nose Ridge
Once ashore, the Marines ran into the coral spine of the island, the Umurbrogol, which they came to call Bloody Nose Ridge.4 Its caves and sheer rock had survived the bombardment untouched, and attacking them in the fierce heat cost appalling casualties for tiny gains.
Cave by cave
The battle became a slow, grinding reduction of the ridge, cave by cave, with flamethrowers, demolitions and tanks.2 Army troops joined the exhausted Marines, and the last Japanese defenders held out into late November2, most of them fighting to the death.
Why Peleliu mattered
Peleliu was an American victory, but at a terrible cost, and many historians argue the island could have been bypassed2, as others were. Its real significance was grim foreknowledge: Nakagawa's defence in depth was the shape of the fighting to come on Iwo Jima and Okinawa.