The Pacific island of Saipan on Saturday marked the 80th anniversary of a fierce World War II battle between Japanese and U.S. troops that claimed over tens of thousand lives.
The U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, with Saipan as its capital, held a ceremony commemorating the Battle of Saipan, attended by U.S. and Japanese officials. Due to their advanced age, no surviving former soldiers were able to attend the ceremony.
On June 15, 1944, U.S. military forces landed on Saipan, which was then under Japanese control as part of a League of Nations mandate. The ensuing battle lasted more than three weeks and is estimated to have resulted in the deaths of about 41,000 Japanese troops, 8,000 to 10,000 Japanese civilians and 3,000 American soldiers, as well as an unknown number of indigenous people.
After the battle ended on July 9 that year, with organized Japanese resistance ceasing, the island became a U.S. base for air raids on the mainland of Japan during the war.
Saipan Mayor Ramon Camacho told Kyodo News before the Saturday anniversary that he hopes present and future generations will learn lessons from the war and recounted how some Japanese civilians chose to leap to their deaths from cliffs rather than face capture by the Americans.
In the battle, a number of Japanese soldiers also staged suicide attacks on U.S. forces.
In 2005, then Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko visited Saipan and paid tribute to those who died in the battle.
