Map No. 32: Kakazu Pocket

 

On 22 April the 1st Battalion, 106th Infantry, supported by self-propelled guns of the 106th Cannon Company, which moved over a path prepared by an armored bulldozer, systematically searched out and destroyed enemy positions in its rear along the escarpment. Japanese soldiers were still hidden somewhere in the West Pinnacle, which the enemy used as an observation point and as a control center for spigot mortar fire. But the enemy machine guns behind the lines at this point had been destroyed, and supply lines to Iso were for the first time free from serious harassing fire. The 1st Battalion, 106th, now had pulled back 600 yards to straighten and shorten the lines along the escarpment and to establish contact with the 105th Infantry on the east. In the 105th Infantry zone, Colonel Winn continued to reorganize the 1st and 2d Battalions.

On 23 April two assault companies of the 1st Battalion, 105th, which had relieved the 2d Battalion, climbed on top of the escarpment to the east of the East Pinnacle in much the same manner as had the 2d Battalion on 20 April, and similarly caught the enemy by surprise. Company C reached the crest of the escarpment at the edge of the East Pinnacle stronghold and found itself in the midst of the enemy. A wild hand-to-hand fight ensued in which bayonets, clubs, and grenades were used, and more than a hundred Japanese were killed within an hour. S/Sgt. Nathan S. Johnson led the battle and was himself credited with killing more than thirty of the enemy. On one occasion he jumped over a small mound of earth and found himself among a dozen Japanese. He killed eight with his rifle and clubbed the other four to death.{299} At the end of the day the 27th Division held the escarpment as far east as the edge of Nakama, the division boundary.

The end of the West Pinnacle fight came abruptly, on the night of 23 April. Precisely on the hour of midnight the enemy bugler within the pinnacle, who had in previous days and nights frequently sounded his bugle as a signal, blew a call, and thirty Japanese soldiers emerged in a wild yelling banzai charge, rushing straight into the lines of the 1st Battalion, 106th Infantry, dug in south of Iso. There they were wiped out.

The Kakazu Pocket

On 20 April, while the 2d and 3d Battalions, 105th Infantry, were involved in the disastrous battle on the escarpment, it was left to the 1st Battalion to mop up the Kakazu Pocket. All three rifle companies of the battalion were involved by noon in a grim fight for the village. The 96th Division had complained about the bypassed Japanese stronghold on its right flank, and General Hodge, XXIV Corps commander, had ordered General Griner to have Kakazu Ridge cleared by nightfall.{300} By 1635 the 1st Battalion had fought its way to the western edge of Kakazu village and had swept Kakazu Ridge almost to its eastern tip.

Just when it seemed that the 1st Battalion, 105th, might be able to clear the Kakazu Pocket, it was ordered to the escarpment to support the 2d Battalion and prevent a break-through. Company A was left behind to clean up the village of Kakazu. A 16-man patrol went into the village and passed through its rubble-strewn streets without receiving a shot. At 1700 it reported to Colonel Winn that there were no enemy troops in Kakazu. He was not satisfied for he could hear small-arms fire from the direction of the village, and he instructed Capt. Louis F. Ackerman, commander of Company A, to make another check of the village. The patrol was not fired on as it retraced its steps toward the village, but Captain Ackerman had barely stepped into the street when he went down with a shot in the back. Four men in succession were killed trying to rescue him, and then the entire patrol was scattered. Only one man returned that day, although three other survivors were rescued on 24 April. Kakazu was still a death trap.

During the night of 20-21 April, Japanese in large numbers came from the escarpment, moved around the left flank of the 27th Division, set up mortars and machine guns in the Kakazu area, and occupied the pocket in strength.{301} this increased opposition the division Reconnaissance Troop slowly fought its way toward the village of Kakazu and reached its edge at 1145, 21 April: There the entire troop was pinned down, and a platoon of tanks was called up. In three more hours of creeping and of fighting into the rubble of Kakazu only fifty yards were gained. The troop then pulled back, and at 1600 division artillery placed mass fire on the village. Later it tried to enter, but the Japanese emerged from underground and stopped it with a wall of fire. (See Map No. 32.)

The events of 21 April in the Kakazu Pocket placed the 27th Division in a bad situation. The enemy was in force behind its lines; the division had no reserve; and there was a broad gap between it and the 96th Division. Available combat strength was stretched thin. While retiring from the front lines as division reserve, the 3d Battalion, 106th Infantry, was ordered into position on Kakazu West, "that damned hill," as the men called it.{302} There they had dug in by nightfall.

On the evening of 21 April General Hodge ordered Brig. Gen. William B. Bradford, Assistant Division Commander, 27th Division, to take command of operations in Kakazu Pocket with full authority to coordinate action with the 96th Division. At the same time General Hodge directed that the right-flank elements of the 96th Division should not "be moved out of their own zone except by agreement with CG 96th Div. or specific orders from this Headquarters." XXIV Corps considered the enemy positions holding up the right flank of the 96th Division to be within the 27th Division zone of action.

During the night of 21-22 April the Japanese placed heavy artillery fire on the lines of the 105th Infantry, and before daylight they started an attack around the regimental left flank. Naval star shells illuminated the front, and naval fire was called in to break up the attack.{303}

On the afternoon of 22 April General Griner requested a battalion from XXIV Corps reserve to help deal with the enemy in Kakazu Pocket, estimating the Japanese force there to be at least a battalion. General Hodge ordered the 3d Battalion, 17th Infantry, to proceed at once from the 7th Division zone on the east to the Kakazu area. In the steadily worsening situation, General Griner in the afternoon of 22 April directed the 102d Engineer Battalion to assemble near Machinato Inlet as division reserve and to be prepared to fight as riflemen. By night, there was not only a 1,200-yard gap between the 96th Division and the 3d Battalion, 106th Infantry, at Kakazu, but also a gap between the 3d Battalion, 106th, and the 1st Battalion, 105th, at the bottom of the escarpment. If the enemy broke through in either place he could cut through to the coast and the service installations in the rear. At 2000 General Griner ordered the 2d Battalion, 165th Infantry, less Company F, to leave its position near Machinato and move to the left flank. With the aid of these troops the gap between the 105th Infantry and the 3d Battalion of the 106th was closed by trio. The larger gap between divisions, however, remained open. At 2130, 22 April, the 27th Division had every rifle company committed to a defensive line that stretched southeast of Kakazu village to the west coast beyond Gusukuma.

On the night of 22 April General Hodge decided to form a special force to eliminate Kakazu Pocket once and for all. A formidable force of four battalions of infantry was assembled from the 27th, 7th, and 96th Divisions, supporting units of tanks, armored flame throwers, self-propelled assault guns, and 4.2-inch chemical mortars, and was given the mission of taking the ridge and town of Kakazu. These units were placed under the command of General Bradford, Assistant Division Commander, 27th Division, and were known as the Bradford Task Force. On 23 April plans were completed and the troops moved into place for an attack to take place the next day.

The 24th of April dawned dark and rainy after a night marked by unusually heavy enemy artillery fire. After a 23-minute artillery preparation the Bradford Task Force attacked at 0730, determined to fight its way through the Kakazu Pocket. No enemy resisted it; the Japanese had vacated their positions in the Pocket during the night. Within two hours all battalions reached their objectives. In the afternoon, adjacent battalions of the 96th and 27th Divisions dug in along the division boundary at the foot of the Urasoe-Mura Escarpment and had solid contact with each other for the first time since 19 April. On 24 and 25 April, when it was at last possible to examine the Kakazu area, approximately six hundred Japanese bodies were counted, and there was evidence of mass burials and of many dead in sealed caves.

 

URASOE-MURA ESCARPMENT