Battle of Peleliu
Contents
A Controversial Attack
Bloody Nose Ridge
Lessons of Peleliu
On September 15, 1944, U.S. Marines fighting in World War II (1939-45) landed on Peleliu, one of the Palau Islands of the western Pacific. Over the next several weeks, ferocious Japanese resistance inflicted heavy casualties on U.S. troops before the Americans were finally able to secure the island. Though the controversial attack on Peleliu resulted in a higher death toll than any other amphibious assault in U.S. military history, Allied commanders and troops learned important lessons that would benefit them during the invasion of the Philippines and the Japanese home islands.
A Controversial Attack
By the end of February 1944, Allied forces had gained control of the Marshall Islands in the western Pacific Ocean and moved on to the Marianas, where 20,000 U.S. troops–by far the largest force used in a Pacific operation thus far–put ashore on Saipan on June 15. After fierce resistance by the Japanese, Saipan was declared secure on July 9; the neighboring islands of Tinian and Guam were under American control by late August. The next objective for Admiral Chester Nimitz’s Pacific Fleet was the Palau Islands in the western Carolines, 500 miles east of the Philippines.
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