Peleliu: WWII's Most Well-Preserved Battlefield

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Support for this program was also made possible by... Additional support provided by... [ Gunfire, explosions ] [ Men shouting ] [ Typewriter clacking ] Under a vibrant green canopy of palms, hardwoods, and vines in this remote jungle in the far western Pacific... one feels an uneasiness.

[ Footsteps crunching ] A restlessness of souls.

The feeling that something truly horrific happened here in this tropical forest permeates your every step.

I think that going back to a battlefield gives a person a sense of history.

Because they can touch it.

They can smell it.

They can feel it.

And in doing so, it touches them.

We just are in awe that somebody stood here and put their life on the line because they believed that side was right.

A boat's bow cuts a wake into clear turquoise blue waters as it passes through the magnificent Rock Island chain off the Pacific nation of Palau.

In World War II, this was the approach route for a fight that would go down in history for its brutality and most likely needlessness.

Des Matsutaro is heading home to the island of Peleliu.

A group of travelers and historians are along for the ride.

They are about to step back into a savage World War II battle in a little-known part of the world.

When people ask me where I'm from, and I would say Guam, because that's where I was born.

And they still say, "Where's that at?"

So I just say I'm from Hawaii, just east of Hawaii.

Just keep going.

The First Marine Division is in those transports over there.

They'll take Peleliu.

In the far western Pacific, 800 ships of the United States Navy sailed into these same waters in September of 1944 with thousands of Marines and United States Army soldiers aboard.

That month, Army General Douglas MacArthur, overall commander in the southwest Pacific, was planning his triumphant return to liberate the Philippine Islands.

Part of that plan included securing the island of Peleliu, which is two miles wide by seven miles long and 500 miles east of the Philippines.

Taking a Japanese runway on the island was the mission.

MacArthur sold President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the idea of invading the Philippines.

Admiral Chester Nimitz approved the Peleliu part of the plan and made the final call to invade.

However, Admiral William "Bull" Halsey pushed back, saying Peleliu and the Japanese-controlled Republic of Palau islands should be bypassed.

Halsey felt that since Japanese air and sea power was weak in Palau, there was no need for a ground invasion, especially on Peleliu.

Halsey lost this planning battle, and the small island of Peleliu was forever changed.

I know you hear a lot of stories.

You know, history throughout that you always hear the two combatants that fought here.

But very little story was shed onto how it affected the people that actually lived in that community, and it highly affected my people.

That's because, in some ways, the fight from September of 1944 is still being fought here on Des Matsutaro's Island.

Palau is an island nation in the western Pacific Ocean.

Over 340 islands spread over 180 square miles, making up the Republic of Palau.

Peleliu is one of the southernmost islands in the Palau chain, surrounded by a massive coral barrier reef.

Before the Americans arrived in September of 1944, it was all jungle, like today.

That would change.

Today, Peleliu is home to roughly 600 residents who make a living fishing or farming.

These days, Des Matsutaro's job is tourism, providing support to historians, researchers, and travelers who want to step back in time to World War II or dive in crystal clear Pacific waters.

What makes Peleliu and the Palau Islands unique today is what is left from the battle decades ago.

That would be millions of artifacts from the fight.

A strict law in Palau forbids any war relic from being removed from this island.

Jail time and heavy fines await anyone who tries.

20-millimeter cannon round there.

Japanese canteen.

Some of the troops stationed here.

A lot of people call this island "Museum Island."

You can literally walk around the island and pick up a spent shell that was left, you know, 80 years ago.

Here's one of the rounds that hit this thing right there.

The Japs have a good airstrip.

We must seize it to protect our invasion of the Philippines.

Battleships, cruisers, destroyers, transports -- over 600 ships of all types.

As the United States approached Peleliu in September 1944, marines and soldiers on the transports readied themselves for battle.

Des Matsutaro says the Japanese knew what was coming towards this small island.

Prior to the invasion.

The Imperial forces that were on this island had decided to evacuate all the civilians out of here.

And one was for the safety concerns of the individuals that are here.

But more importantly, a lot of the local men were tasked to develop and construct a lot of the defensive positions around the islands.

The caves.

Coastal defense positions.

And they didn't want any of those men to go over to the US side and reveal where these positions are located.

11,000 Japanese soldiers from the experienced 14th Infantry Division, as well as Imperial Navy personnel, were on the island in September of 1944.

The Japanese were under the command of Colonel Kunio Nakagawa.

He directed his troops, as well as native islanders and Korean laborers, to build hundreds of fortified interlocking concrete bunkers, pillboxes, caves, and armored fighting positions on Peleliu.

Nakagawa took full advantage of the island's sharp ridges, deep valleys, and jagged mountain ranges.

The days of early war Japanese suicide banzai charges into American lines were long over.

On Peleliu, the Japanese took full advantage of their environment.

500 limestone caves, natural and man-made, were prepared.

The new Japanese game plan was for the Americans to come to them.

Well, if you look at Peleliu from a distance, it's got nice beaches and greenery.

But what awaits you is coral rock outcropping that's rough.

But then, you implant fortifications within it, and then it's a different story.

And even though when the Marines landed there, they thought it was going to be over fairly quickly, that's what they were told.

Surface vessels of Admiral William F. Halsey's Third Fleet move in to attack gun emplacements, pillboxes, and other defenses on the beaches and inland.

The assault is concentrated mainly on Peleliu and Angaur Island.

Turrets are loaded with 2,000-pound projectiles, 200 pounds powder.

And 300 heavy guns train on a target.

Commence firing.

During three days and nights, the Navy will pour 6,000 tons of hot steel on the island.

Coordinated with the land-based heavy bomber sorties is carrier aircraft support from Task Force 58.

Torpedo bombers and their fighter escorts leave flight decks to join in the attacks.

They got us up about 4: 00 in the morning and fed us.

And at 6: 00, daylight, I was standing at the rail of the ship.

I looked over at the island and the only thing I saw was smoke and bombs bursting and shells exploding.

I said, "This is going to be a cakewalk."

There was destruction everyplace.

There's no way we're going to be here very long.

Commanding the First Marine Division, General William Rupertus told his men the fight would be fast and furious, lasting three to four days.

Ironically, the mission was code-named Operation Stalemate II.

On September 15th, 1944, 25,000 Marines of the First Marine Division loaded in amtracs and other landing craft and approached the island of Peleliu.

16,000 soldiers of the Army's 81st Infantry Division were also prepared to land if the Marines found trouble on Peleliu.

But they weren't needed... yet.

On September 17th, the 81st landed on another nearby strategic island named Angaur and began to fight the Japanese there.

Caves 15 feet deep dug out of solid coral.

Entrances barricaded with coconut logs, leaving firing slits only a couple of inches wide.

Initial forces head for Peleliu for first landings in the Palau group.

The shelling of the island continues, supplemented by fire from landing craft.

And then we drove the amphibious tanks out, and you'd get down and they'd pop right up, even though there were metal.

But a lot of it was aluminum, of course, and they had extra shields on the side to protect the treads on the side of the tank.

Frank Pomroy served on Guadalcanal, but Peleliu would be another story.

At 8: 32 AM on September 15th, the American naval and air bombardment stopped.

First Marine Division Colonel Lewis "Chesty" Puller, a hero of Guadalcanal, led 3,200 men of his First Marine Regiment toward his assigned landing beach.

Puller's men were aboard amtrac vehicles which could maneuver over Peleliu's vast coral reef.

Puller's men would land on the left, code-named White Beach.

The Fifth Marine Regiment would land in the center, and the Seventh Marine Regiment on the right, which was designated Orange Beach.

As the Marine landing craft came ashore, the Japanese opened up from hidden gun and mortar emplacements untouched by the pre-invasion bombardment.

When we were on the beach, oh, just being pounded, pounded.

The guys were getting shot up.

Like Frank Pomroy, Oliver Marcelli fought on Guadalcanal and Cape Gloucester and was handed the Peleliu landing, too.

We come in on landing craft.

And at that time, front end of the landing craft fell forward, and you had to get off and get on the beach and duck as soon as possible.

Was I surprised whenever I got on the beach, about the middle of the morning, find out I couldn't even get off the damn beach.

They had us pinned down.

We were right at the end of the runway on the island.

Bill Finnegan was another First Marine Division veteran of the Guadalcanal and Cape Gloucester battles.

He knew right away that Peleliu would be an entirely different animal.

I think we were all in a state of shock because we were breaking the -- one of the first rules of amphibious landings, which is get off the beach.

They killed hundreds of people on the beach.

Absolute hell.

In other words, you figure you're going to get killed in, you know, the next shot.

And that's the way it is, and that's the way you live after that.

The Japanese had the high ground and could see every movement by the Marines.

Peleliu was no longer a jungle.

It was exposed and so were its invaders.

The shelling of this small island revealed sinister gorges, mountains, and ridges, which would be labeled by marines and soldiers as Death Valley, Suicide Ridge, the China Wall, Bloody Nose Ridge, The Point, and the Wildcat Bowl.

To truly understand the war artifacts on Peleliu today, one must take inventory of how much ordnance was expended here during this fight in 1944.

During the Battle of Peleliu, nearly 6,000 tons of Navy artillery shells were used.

Over 800 tons of aircraft bombs were dropped.

Over 15 million bullets were fired.

Hundreds of thousands of grenades, mortar rounds, and artillery shells were deployed.

Some of them were duds called unexploded ordnance or UXO.

It's estimated that between 10% and 20% of World War II bombs failed to explode on Peleliu and remain on the island.

The Japanese amount of ordnance expended on Peleliu is unknown, but it's likely similar, making this tiny island one of the most dangerous World War II battlefields in the world.

Fortunately for us here, nothing serious has ever happened as far as unexploded ordnances going off or anything like that.

Cleared Ground Demining, a nonprofit organization, was tasked with fixing this dangerous situation.

Explosives expert Steve Ballinger leads the group charged with removing hazardous unexploded ordnance from Peleliu.

Ballinger's first order of business was educating the locals.

When I first came here on the 65th anniversary, I walked into the elementary school and I found people who had the history displays using live American and live Japanese hand grenades with their pins removed, the land mines being used as paperweights, cluster munitions scattered around the jungle, thousand-pound bombs sat on the south dock in Peleliu being used as tourist dive sites.

It was actually quite shocking.

Also, I was taken to a large stockpile of heavily crystallized antipersonnel mines.

And that's what really sort of got us immediately involved.

But we were asked to come and do an assessment, which we did.

And like I say, I was totally shocked.

So immediately we set up with a clearance program.

And in the decade of being here now, we've removed in excess of 66,000 items of ordnance.

This was all areas that you see those corsairs dropping napalm and so forth.

They just had this place plastered here.

But of course, during all the air strikes, the Japanese just climb in the caves.

And there's lots and lots of unexploded shells which the Navy, Marine artillery units fired up in here.

And they're all over the place out there.

Visitors don't venture too far off the marked paths Ballinger's team has laid out on Peleliu.

It's too dangerous.

Researcher and historian Andy Giles visits Peleliu frequently.

That's The Point down there.

It sticks out, yeah.

This is one of the amphibious tractors that was knocked out on the day of the invasion.

Made its way in off the beach, and probably got hit by one of the 75-millimeter rounds from The Point.

Who knows how many Marines were killed in it?

You can see the Australian hardwood tree that's growing up out of it.

You can see the engine block, a reminder of how nature eventually reclaims all this.

The first wave is pinned down.

20 landing vehicles are knocked out, but we're on the beach.

This bunker on The Point was responsible for killing many Marines of Chesty Puller's First Regiment.

The weapon is actually still in there, although it's buried under coral debris from a recent typhoon.

But this gun here was not touched by pre-invasion bombardment.

It was almost invisible, as you can see, because it was oblique from the frontal fire, and the Japanese had coral piled up around it, which made it further, further invisible.

We're looking at a position that took an earnest amount of Marine lives, and it had to be taken by a unique assault.

It was heroically taken by Captain George Hunt's K Company.

It allowed Marines to get inland, but they didn't get far.

So this was one of the most active and bloody sites on the whole invasion beach.

And if the Japanese had been successful in holding this position and counterattacking down the beach this way, they could have rolled up the whole invasion.

[ Explosion ] Puller, consistently aggressive, pushed his Marines hard.

His First Regiment had already suffered hundreds of killed and wounded early in the fight.

And all of a sudden, the biggest Jap I ever saw jumped out of his trench, and he had fixed bayonets.

I was going to jump up and try to stop him, but about I don't know how many people fired over my head, and that bayonet slid in the sand about four feet from my nose.

The initial objective for the First Marine Division was to take the Japanese airfield on Peleliu.

Thick, concrete Japanese pillboxes surrounded the airstrip.

Most were still firing on September 15th, 1944, unaffected by the pre-invasion shelling.

Every grenade that was thrown in would come back.

So I had a couple of rifle grenades, and I used them on those pillboxes.

So a rifle grenade goes off on contact, and it worked.

So that helped get us off the beach.

The Japanese crew that was manning the gun came pouring out of here on fire, and the Marines basically killed them all as they came out this rear entrance here.

We're on a massive Japanese gun emplacement here that was barricaded with barrels full of coral rubble.

And you can still see what looks like 120-millimeter coastal defense gun partially buried down in the heart of the pit here.

Meanwhile, thousands of Japanese lay hidden underground, secretly waiting for the next stage of the fight following the initial landing.

Hundreds of caves held gun emplacements and thousands of Japanese soldiers.

Some of the caves had electricity, hospitals, and even barracks.

One on the northern end of the island could hold 1,000 men.

And you can see this one had a -- this was probably a sleeping chamber or something back here for officers.

A Japanese round.

Most were engineered so the Marines would have to clear them out one cave at a time.

And we could look up and hear what sounded like machinery squeaking and see that they were closing four to five metal doors.

They could roll their artillery out on tracks and fire down on us and then roll it back, close the door, and they're sealed up.

You know, the people that dug out these caves pretty much knew that it wasn't a matter of if they're going to die, it's when they're going to die.

Des Matsutaro takes Scott Peterson, a United States Marine veteran visiting Peleliu on a tour of the island's so-called 1,000 Man Cave.

This was dug out by the Japanese prior to the invasion, and it took the Japanese soldiers about 11 months to dig out not only this cave, but all cave systems around Peleliu.

So, if we continue on this way, I can show you more of the cave.

Des tells Scott that, at one time, hundreds of Japanese soldiers occupied this particular cave system, which is roughly 1,000 feet long.

The cave had nine entrances and interconnecting tunnels with dozens of rooms.

Artifacts of a doomed enemy are everywhere today.

You'll see a lot of broken bottles down here.

And these are all broken beer bottles.

They had beer at one point.

But more importantly, after they consumed the beer, they used those bottles to hold their water.

Was it only soldiers and sailors that dug these tunnels out?

These -- These tunnels were also dug out by local men that were here.

And then, you can see way down here at this end.

And that entrance was actually sealed off by the Americans.

So rather than chasing their Japanese enemy into the cave system, they would seal off the cave forever, entombing the men that were occupying it.

More alcoves carved out.

And you can see Japanese mess kits right here.

There's two of them, three of them right here.

It's the traditional naval mess kit.

When you go in here, it's sort of mind-boggling to see what they've done.

They've tunneled it out into this elaborate cave complex here They call it the Caisson Cave because there are a lot of Japanese artillery caissons, the old sort of wagon wheel type.

You can see some of the 75-millimeter tank rounds from Sherman tanks that they fired through the entrance here.

A massive Japanese coastal gun sits in a cave entrance close by.

It didn't fire a shot during the battle.

Steve Ballinger's group discovered why.

The ammunition barge carrying the shells for the gun had been sunk offshore.

There was a real misconception when I first arrived here that, well, it's old.

It's not going to go bang.

We believe in rendering safe items of ordnance we've found, transporting them to one of our central demolitions ranges, where we conduct controlled high-explosive demolitions utilizing modern-day explosives to get rid of old and unstable World War II ordnance.

Thankfully, we've got rid of ordnance that -- all the ordnance that is having an impact on people's daily life and daily activities.

There's still ordnance out there, and just like in Belgium and Holland and France, you know, you'll still be finding ordnance the minute you put a shovel in the ground and start excavating.

They did a lot of good work here.

And they did clear out a lot of the areas that are attractions to many of the people that come out here.

A lot of the caves, the landing beaches, there's still a lot out there that poses a threat.

United States Marines are also in Palau assisting in the cleanup of unexploded ordnance.

They train local Palauan demolition crews on ways to handle World War II explosives safely.

You deal with bombs... How this benefits the community, it's giving them the hands-on on training that they would need to help dispose of the ordnance around all the surrounding islands still from World War II.

Unexploded Japanese sea mines were also deactivated by the Marine-led expedition.

On land, the team uses ropes to safely dislodge unexploded artillery rounds located near the once-Japanese-held airfield.

I will be on the far right side, and all we're going to do is stay on line and we're going to push about 50 meters past zone four.

More recently, additional Marines from the Seventh Engineer Support Battalion, in coordination with Navy Seabees, worked with locals to clear new construction sites of unexploded ordnance.

Any live World War II ammunition found is blown up using C-4 type explosives.

Fire in the hole.

Fire in the hole.

[ Explosion ] Meanwhile, Marines move on the airfield against stiffening resistance.

[ Gunfire ] By the end of the first day of the Peleliu invasion, the Fifth Marine Regiment of the First Marine Division had advanced to the southern edge of the Japanese airfield.

And we set the machine gun up.

Then somebody hollered, "Tanks!"

and we looked out.

There were about a dozen tanks running across the airfield.

So we were firing at -- There was one coming right at us, and we kept firing, and I was trying to knock off a track, so I kept firing at the treads.

While he was coming right at us, a tank came right at the machine gun and crushed it.

And then, it got stuck down in the gully behind us, and a Jap opened up the cover of the tank, as one Marine had dashed up on the side, and he tossed in a hand grenade.

And, so, it killed any occupants that were inside.

We let loose with everything we had.

I mean, literally.

We had the Navy planes coming in and our Marine pilots.

We had a couple of tanks of our own that we had gotten ashore at that time.

But we stopped all 13 of these tanks before they got halfway across the airstrip.

Today, this Japanese light tank, with its turret blown off by an American tank, rusts away on the old airfield.

This particular vehicle was shot and destroyed here and never removed.

Was left here as a memorial or a deterrent for other defenders that were still on this island.

An American Sherman of the 710th Tank Battalion is also a casualty of the fight here after running over a Japanese mine.

What we're looking at here is an LVT(A) with a short barreled 75-millimeter gun turret mounted on it.

That's an open turret.

This one has a terrible shell hit in the top of the hull here that shrapnel went through it.

The shell probably killed a lot of the crew.

Can also see a big perforation right here, so... Not far away, a Japanese fighter plane rots in the jungle.

What's left of a Zero.

The famous Japanese Zero.

These guys ruled the sky early in the war.

It wasn't just the Japanese the Marines were fighting on Peleliu.

The Americans were also battling searing heat and humidity well over 110 degrees.

A severe lack of water was also a significant issue.

When you go into that environment, that's the only way you can understand how difficult this fighting was.

You're sweating.

It is a literally earth sauna.

We had no water.

They had ordered gasoline drums to be cleaned out and filled with drinking water so they could take it ashore.

They didn't do a good job of cleaning because you never tasted such horrible stuff.

I found some dripping water.

Cool dripping water.

I filled up all my canteens, and I sipped cool water all night because, the next day, everybody was practically dying of thirst.

[ Gunfire ] First thing in the morning, they told us we had to cross the airfield because there were a lot of guys being killed, because Japanese were firing artillery and everything else as we crossed.

As Marines dashed 8/10 of a mile across the airfield, heavy enemy fire came from this huge concrete building.

The Japanese Air Administration Building.

Americans eventually took the position with small arms fighting, including hand grenades and mortars.

Housed all the officers that were involved in the administrative and aspects and the running of the operations here on the airfield.

Check out these enormous blast doors that they used as part of the structure.

You can see the damage from the pre-invasion shell fire caved in a large part of the roof.

Construction equipment is brought up to the beaches and driven to the airfield.

The airdrome has two runways, both approximately 4,000 feet long with 460-foot turning circles at either end.

From here, our fighter planes can strike against the entire Palau group.

With the airfield finally secured, Marine commanders believed that Japanese resistance would crumble.

It did not.

They said, "Well, we've got to get up that ridge up there.

And that was Bloody Nose Ridge that we were going to attack.

To the northwest of the now- secured airfield began a series of ridges and limestone cliffs, some rising more than 300 feet above the now-naked and revealed jungle floor.

The Umurbrogol Mountain Chain is a jagged maze of razor sharp coral rock and deep canyons.

Here were the majority of the 500 Japanese-controlled caves, holding thousands of loyal army and Imperial naval combatants willing to die for their emperor.

We're approaching this Bloody Nose Ridge, and by then, our ranks had thinned out.

Between the beach and the minefield and crossing the airfield, there weren't too many of us left.

So we tried to go up this one ridge, and there was so much fire, we had to, you know back down again.

After we took the ridge, Bloody Nose Ridge, and we couldn't dig holes, so we just piled rocks around ourselves.

We were on what they call a military crest, which is down below the top of the ridge.

It was the middle of the night.

I was dozing, and all of a sudden, boom, boom, boom, there's hand grenades going off all around us.

[ Gunfire ] The Japanese on Peleliu were as fanatic as everyplace else we fought them, and they would pop out at night, mostly, and they hit us all over the place at night.

That night, we had an attack by about a dozen Japanese or something came into our line.

This one Jap came at me.

He had his bayonet on, and I had picked up an M1 rifle.

I shot him right through the head, and he fell on top of me.

They can't sleep at night because Japanese infiltrators are always slipping up on them and slitting their throats.

The wear and tear on not only the physical, but the psychological.

And so many of them talked about the psychological disabilities that crept up on people.

Captain Everett Pope, Marine platoon leader, was awarded the Medal of Honor on Peleliu.

Pope landed on the island and led a rifle company of 235 men, part of the First Marine Regiment of the First Marine Division.

His group attacked a high ridge.

Later, the crest was named in Pope's honor.

It was still daylight when we got up.

We moved up against terrible odds as best we could.

We received terrible fire across the canyon from our rear.

When we got to the top, we were quite startled when we realized that we were not on top of the hill.

We were on a plateau with high ground dominating it, really, to the south.

And the Japanese were able to fire down at us, which is not a good tactical position to be in at all.

Well, we ran out of ammunition up there and no one could get up there to supply us.

We had some few grenades.

We had some bayonets.

We had some brave Marines.

We held that hill overnight.

As daylight came, the Japanese formed up a very heavy attack of 50 or 100 men, and we were, at that point, ordered to withdraw.

At about the same time, I decided we were going to get out of there anyhow.

And, so, we came tumbling down the hill.

There were eight of us at that point.

A lot of brave Marines died on that hill.

I never -- I can never forget it.

The Umurbrogols, the heat, and the fanatical Japanese enemy would be the ultimate undoing for the men of the First Marine Division on Peleliu.

Over the next six days, the Japanese inflicted a casualty rate of well over 50% for Chesty Puller's First Marine Regiment.

Much of the damage coming from the unforgiving Umurbrogol Mountain Range.

Some argue Puller was doing what his commanding general, William Rupertus, ordered him to do on Peleliu.

Others criticized Puller for being too callous with the lives of his men.

Despite the ongoing and epic marine bloodshed, Rupertus refused to call on support from the Army's 81st Infantry Division.

Above all, General Rupertus wanted his Marines to finish the job.

You're talking 14,000, 15,000 individuals that got killed here in such a small island.

I mean, it's a small island.

It's a two-by-seven-mile island.

Just imagine 25,000 people here trying to kill each other.

And that's what we had in the Battle of Peleliu.

Such a beautiful, natural, beautiful place like this.

I mean, it's a dark history.

I mean, again, 15,000 people lost their lives.

It's a murder scene we're at here.

In late September 1944, hundreds of Japanese poured from the 1,000 Man Caves' nine tunnels.

Lacking food and water and drunk on sake and beer, they attacked the American soldiers in a last-ditch banzai charge.

50 Japanese survived and went back into the cave.

Many of them later were killed with flamethrowers and explosives, and the caves' entrances and exits were sealed up.

Five Japanese eventually emerged from the cave in February of 1945.

They wouldn't typically come inside and chase the enemy in here because there were just so many variables to take into account.

You don't know how many people would be in here.

You wouldn't know how many of these caves were booby trapped.

I mean, there are so many variables, so common practice is that they would just seal off the cave.

Today, spiders, crickets, and bats are the only inhabitants of the caves on Peleliu.

They have beetles here, which we call scorpion beetle.

And bats, of course.

And those are naturally found in these types of elements.

Des Matsutaro admits it can be unnerving to wander around in these tunnels alone.

And as I said, I'm a man of science, but there's some stuff that goes on in there that I've heard of and personally experienced that I don't think science can really answer to.

This is the medical room here.

Over here on this side is a frame of a bed or an operating table.

But this thing had a distinct lid here at one point, and that's where all the bodily fluids would flow and be stored into this drip tank.

We had to clean out some caves, and it took a lot of grenades, and we never knew if we'd got anybody in there.

But we'd use explosives and make sure the cave was sealed up.

Learning how to fight in that kind of environment means you're going in and that opponent is waiting for you.

It's very personal fighting.

They used a lot of napalm to pull them out of the caves, and they were all burned to death.

They were good soldiers because of the fact that they just fought to the death.

They were nuts, I know that much.

They're crazy.

You could have given up, but they would never give up.

I think the Japanese soldier and the Marine were facing at cultural differences.

Extreme, but yet very similar.

When you look at the Japanese, there's an idea of laying down your life for your country.

There is nothing better.

And if we have to die here, I want to die honorably.

In late September, the First Marine Division took stock of its dead and wounded.

Their casualty rate was approaching 46%.

It was time to remove the division's remnants from the island.

On September 23rd, Marine commander General William Rupertus reluctantly allowed the US Army's 81st Infantry Division, the Wildcats, to assist the bloody Marines on Peleliu.

It took a direct order from his superior, General Roy Geiger.

The 81st Division eventually relieved the Marines on October 20th and finished the fight for the Umurbrogols and the rest of the island.

The Army suffered a 30% casualty rate on the island, closing out the battle for Peleliu in late November.

Today, the relics and artifacts on this island speak to the ferocious fight that involved men on both sides.

Some are still here.

So Peleliu Island still has remains of many, many Japanese individuals within not just this cave system here, but the whole ridge itself.

A few years ago, when the demining team came and swept this area, they found remains of many humans that were here, as well as unexploded ordnances.

Could come across human remains, maybe from sniper positions and things like that, up on the high ledges.

By swinging the detector and investigating signals, you're picking up metal fragmentation.

It's not necessarily metal fragmentation.

It could be metal buttons or belt buckles from the tunics.

And we will come across human remains.

And then those reports get passed up our chain of command through the Palau government.

Des Matsutaro's son, Kory, works with his dad on Peleliu.

He's driving to a Japanese concrete bunker.

As a boy, he came face to face with his island's deadly history.

Yeah.

Me and three of my friends, we went inside looking for coconut crabs.

And then, we found two coconut crabs.

But then, one of my friends, like, flashed light on the ground, and it's like, "Whoa, what is this?"

Then we seen, like, this Japanese, like, uniform, like the army green uniform.

And it has, like, a red -- the flag symbol, like, on the right of the uniform.

So he, like, pulled it out of the ground.

As soon as he pulled it out, we noticed, like, the bones, like, falling off the uniform.

So he put it down.

And then, we noticed there was like another body, like, they're, like, parallel with each other and they were just, like, laying on, like, inside of the bunker.

To me, it's been a very proud moment to attend missions where, you know, US soldiers have gone home.

They've done the flag ceremonies and done the ramp ceremonies, and they've been flown home.

And the same with the Japanese.

They have their way of dealing with their human remains.

Of the 11,000 Japanese on Peleliu, only a few dozen would survive the battle.

Tomomi Takemoto lives in Japan.

She visits Peleliu from time to time.

She's looking for clues and evidence of her great uncle, killed on the island, who is still listed as missing in action.

I'm the only one listened to his story from my grandfather, so I felt like I should, or I have to find something more that he couldn't find.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if your great uncle had been been manning one of these defensive positions we're looking at here.

You know, very likely he would have been in one of these types of positions here.

Every time I come here, I'm always hoping that I find something.

But, also, when I come here, I feel connection to my great uncle and my grandfather because he is already passed away.

You can see here where some of the excavations were going on, and they uncovered, you know, lots of Japanese relics.

This is a Japanese helmet, Japanese canteen.

I feel something.

I don't -- I cannot explain, but I feel something like he's looking at me or he's walking with me.

During her trip, Peleliu did not give up any secrets for Tomomi.

But sometimes just walking on the sacred ground is enough.

And if you want to go to a battlefield and see these places where the extraordinary things occurred and horrifying things appeared, you go to places like that.

All of a sudden, I heard a tank, and I realized it was an American amphibious tank, and it came over a ridge off to my right.

So two of them jumped down.

And about that time, I went like this, and the fellow snapped a picture, and he said, "That's the best picture I've ever taken."

I was on Peleliu for six days, and as far as I'm concerned, five months of Guadalcanal was compressed into equal amount on six days on Peleliu.

Peleliu was absolutely the worst experience anybody could go through.

You'll never get it out of your mind, you never get it out.

Never get it out of your mind.

As I haven't had an -- I can't say that I've had a night's sleep in -- ever since I've been back, and it's just a turmoil.

And the ringing in your ears from the cannon fire and the this and the that.

You just go on and on.

After 72 days, not the predicted three- or four-day battle, the fight finally ended on Peleliu.

Today, Americans are back on the once-Japanese-owned airfield on the island using heavy equipment, bulldozers, graders, and backhoes.

Marines and sailors from a Marine Corps engineer detachment are working to improve the 6,000-foot airstrip on Peleliu.

Unexploded bombs and ordnance from the fight in 1944 must be cleaned up first.

The reconstruction of the historic airfield on Peleliu is due to rising tensions in the Pacific Rim.

The adversary is no longer Japan, but China.

This is a visual reminder that, in the 21st century, Peleliu is once again a critical military setting.

It does concern me as a historian out here.

It seems like it's not even 180.

It's going 360 again.

They developed this airfield, the Japanese did.

The Americans currently are developing the airfield for, again, military purposes.

It will definitely change the way we are as a people here in Peleliu.

If you don't know your history, the saying goes, you tend to repeat yourself And hopefully that's not the case.

It was a general of the army who sent a thrill through the Allied world by returning victorious, as he had promised, to a land he had been forced to withdraw from in the face of overwhelming forces.

General Douglas MacArthur landed in the Philippines on October 20th, 1944.

Peleliu and Palau had never been a direct threat to his right flank.

Admiral William "Bull" Halsey was right.

The two-by-seven-square-mile island of Peleliu should have been bypassed.

16,000 men on both sides of the fight died here in battle, a fight that made no difference during World War II.

For those like Des who live on Peleliu, the constant reminder of that battle is in plain sight today.

Every careful step reinforces the startling cost in both ammunition and human lives expended here.

Trying to have people understand what actually went down out here.

It's hard for a lot of people to comprehend that something like that would happen here.

The way humans treat other humans is unbelievable when it, you know, comes down to these types of situations.

But that's just the reality of war.

In many ways, that fight for survival continues here today on what is known as World War II's most well-preserved battlefield.

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