World War II artefacts and wartime use

of caves in Guam, Mariana Islands

D. Taboroši. Current address: Laboratory of Geoecology, Graduate School

of Environmental Earth Science, Hokkaido University, N-10, W-5, Sapporo,
Hokkaido, Japan. email: danko@ees.hokudai.ac.jp

J. W. Jenson. Water and Environmental Research Institute of the Western

Pacific, University of Guam, Mangilao, GU 96923 email: jjenson@uog.edu

When referencing this article, please use the following convention:

Taboroši , D. & Jenson, J.W. 2002 .World War II artefacts and wartime use of caves
in Guam, Mariana Islands Capra 4 available at –
http://capra.group.shef.ac.uk/4/danko.html

Introduction
News reports from Afghanistan during 2001-2002 have highlighted the role
caves can play in warfare. The wartime use of caves, however, is not
peculiar to this conflict. It has been suggested that caves were used as
fortifications at least since the Neolithic times, and that some of the earliest
evidence of emerging military command structure and tactics comes from
Neolithic cave paintings (Ferrill, 1990). Man-made cave systems were used
as bases for Jewish guerrillas fighting against the Romans in Palestine
(Watson, 1996), and the Vikings used lava caves as hideouts (Ólafsson,
1993). In medieval Europe, limestone caves were incorporated into castles,
such as Pembroke and Carreg Cennen in Wales, and were used for water
supply, storage, and defensive purposes (Fry & Lyons, 1997). During the
American Civil War, caves were the foremost source of potassium nitrate for
the production of gunpowder (Whisonant, 2001). Perhaps the most
extensive use of natural caves in warfare in recent times occurred in World
War II, when caves on islands throughout the Pacific were involved in many
aspects of the war. This article is a summary of the wartime use and
associated artefacts in the caves of Guam and the neighbouring Rota, Tinian,
and Saipan, part of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands
(CNMI), in the western Pacific.

Geology of Guam
Guam, the largest and southernmost of the Mariana Islands, is an elongate
island, 550 km 2in area, 48 km long, 6-19 km wide (Fig. 1). It is divided
into two major physiographic provinces: southern Guam, a rugged volcanic
highland with some limestone outliers, and northern Guam, an undulating
limestone plateau with two volcanic inliers.

There are hundreds of caves

on the island, mostly in the
Plio-Pleistocene Mariana
Limestone, a reef and
lagoonal deposit that covers
nearly all of the northern
plateau and the eastern
flank of southern Guam;
and the Miocene Alifan
limestone, a reef deposit,
which caps much of the
mountain ridge running
along the western edge of
southern Guam.

The caves in these units

belong to four general
categories: pit caves, flank-
margin caves, stream
Fig. 1: Map of Guam and the Mariana Islands, showing caves, and sea caves. The
locations mentioned in text
principal publication on the
geology of the island is a
report with a 1:50000 scale
geologic map by Tracey et al. (1964). The karst features of Guam are
described in Mylroie et al. (2001) and a detailed inventory is provided by
Taboroši (2000).

History of Guam
The Mariana Islands are thought to have been first inhabited between 5000
and 4000 BP. Spain colonised the islands after Magellan’s landing in 1521.
The Spanish rule ended on Guam when the United States took possession in
1898, following the Spanish-American War. The island was administered by
the US Navy until the Japanese invasion forces captured it on December 8,
1941. Liberated by the US on July 21, 1944, Guam was a restricted military
area until 1962 (Rogers, 1996). Since the war, it has remained a territory of
the US.

Wartime Use of Caves

There was extensive use of the caves on Guam in the years during, and
following World War II. The caves were used primarily for defensive
fortifications by the Japanese forces; water sources; places of refuge by
civilian population; and hiding places by Japanese stragglers following the
war. The Japanese military forces excavated numerous artificial caves, which
vary widely in extent, design, and engineering. They also modified many
natural caves for wartime use. The man-made caves range in size from pits
a few metres deep to intricate tunnel systems, usually hand-dug in natural
escarpments by civilian forced labour (Fig. 2). The most accessible
examples of this type are the tunnels in Hagåtña, Nimitz Hill, and Mataguac
Hill.

The interconnected caves located

behind the courthouse in Guam’s
capital, Hagåtña, have numerous
entrances and were used as
shelters for Japanese commanders.
Similar tunnels on Nimitz Hill were
used as a communication centre,
and as the command post of
General Takeshina, commander of
the Japanese forces on Guam. Hand
dug tunnels in a sinkhole on the
southeast side of Mataguac Hill
were part of the last Japanese
command post on Guam, where
General Obata, who had taken over
after Takeshina was killed, and his
staff committed ritual suicide in the
final days of the battle.

Natural caves also saw extensive

Fig. 2: Entrances of hand-dug caves in wartime use and modification.
Sumay, Orote Peninsula, Guam, with and Many were enlarged or connected
without concrete-reinforced walls (entrances
are about 1 m tall)
to other caves, and walls, ceilings,
and entrances were often
reinforced by concrete. Most of
such caves on Guam were part of the defensive fortifications installed to
repulse the American invasion, and were typically converted into pillboxes
and gun emplacements. Although many such caves were destroyed, sealed,
or buried, during and after the war, numerous examples remain along the
coast of Guam from Piti to Tumon Bay and on the ocean-facing slope of
Nimitz Hill (MARS Inc., 2000).

Coastal caves that intersect the freshwater lens were commonly used as
water sources. Marbo Cave, on the Pacific side of northern Guam, for
example, was used by the Japanese Army from 1942 to 1944, and by the
U.S. Army from 1947 to 1950 (Randall and Holloman, 1974). It contains a
large concrete platform, which provided a base for an electrical water pump.
Another example is the Tarague Natural Well #4, a vertical-walled collapsed
cenote located on Andersen Air Force Base, in northern Guam. It was used
by the U.S. military following the war, and contains a concrete platform and
housing for the now defunct water pump.

Caves were also used as places of refuge and as living quarters for the
civilian population (Fig. 3) and some exhibit remarkable modifications. A
large, 40-m deep cave in Tinian known to have been used by Okinawan
civilians during the American bombardment of the island in 1944, contains
105 constructed features, including walls, enclosures, overhangs, cupboards,
walkways and stairs, all made of rock (OEESC Inc., 2001).

The famous Guma'Yu'os

Cave (House of God in the
local Chamorro language)
in the Togcha Gorge was
used by the Japanese as a
field hospital and by
Chamorro civilians as a
church, at separate times
during the war. It
contains a stone altar.
Some caves (Tinta, Faha,
and Fena caves) are sadly
remembered as sites of
mass executions of
civilians by the Japanese
forces in the waning days
of the final battle for
Fig. 3: A Japanese family hiding in a cave on Saipan, Guam.
found by U.S. Marine patrol on June 21, 1944. National
Archives and Records Administration. 127-GR-113-
83266. During the war, US Navy
radioman George Tweed
was accidentally left behind when the American forces withdrew. He was
kept hidden by the local people in a fracture cave for two and a half years
until the liberation of the island in July 1944. Following the war, thousands
of Japanese stragglers retreated to caves throughout Guam and the Mariana
Islands, leaving most of the artefacts that are found today. Caves in the
remote cliffs of northern Guam and deep in central southern Guam were
used for many years following the war. The last Japanese straggler of the
war, Sgt. Shoichi Yokoi was found hiding in a cave in southern Guam on
January 24, 1972, twenty-eight years after the war ended.
World War II artefacts found in caves
World War II artefacts commonly found scattered or concealed in caves in
Guam and the Mariana Islands include helmets (Fig. 4), radios, batteries,
canteens, gas masks and gas mask canisters, shoe parts, metal and
porcelain bowls (Fig. 5), scraps of metal, ceramic fragments, eating utensils
(Fig. 6), tea pots, beer, sake, medicine, and soy bottles, and toothbrushes.

Fig. 4: Japanese helmet left Fig. 5: Japanese ricebowls bearing the Imperial Navy seal on
on a stalagmite in Kettle the bottom, Kettle Cave, Saipan
Cave.

Fig. 6: Travertine-encrusted Fig. 7: Machine gun bullets on belt (probably US .30 cal),
kettle in Kettle Cave, Japanese glass bottles, and a human bone in Awesome Cave,
Saipan. Mt. Santa Rosa, Guam

Fig. 8: Map of chambers 2 and 3 of site TN-1/2/5-
1121 on Tinian, CNMI, from report by Gosser et al.
(2001). Note the numerous artefacts and ordnance,
paved area, constructed walls, and rock piles. The
numbered features are mostly constructed rock
platforms, containing World War II artefacts and
human remains.
Ordnance found in caves is
generally limited to small,
portable items that could be
transported to a firing position
nearby or were a part of
personal armaments (Fig. 7).
The most common types of
Japanese bullets are 8 mm (for
Nambu, Type 14, and Type 94
pistols), 9 mm (for Type 26
pistols), 6.5 mm (for Type 38
and 44 rifles), and 7.7 mm
(for Type 2, 92, and 97 rifles).
The bullets can come in clips
of 5 rounds for rifles and light
machine guns, and feeder clips
of 30 rounds for heavy
machine guns. Ordnance
includes 58 mm Type 89
Mortars and 20 mm, 37 mm,
47 mm, and 57 mm Anti-
Aircraft Projectiles, and Type
97 Hand grenades.
Common American bullets and
ordnance include .30 cal and
.50 cal rifle and machine gun
bullets, .38 cal and .45 cal
pistol bullets, and MKII hand
grenades, but are not often
found in caves. In the recent
years, ordnance and other
World War II artefacts have
become uncommon in caves
on Guam, but are still
ubiquitous in caves on Saipan,
Rota, and Tinian (Fig. 8).
There is evidence that some
caves were booby-trapped. A
cave in Rota was found to
contain numerous strategically
placed boreholes filled with
picric acid, a highly sensitive bulk explosive detonated by heat, shock, or
friction, whose trigger mechanism has deteriorated.

Finally, human remains are now rarely found in caves. In the three decades
following the war, formal bone-collecting missions were organized by
Japanese veteran groups and the Governments of Guam and the CNMI, and
most human remains were repatriated to Japan. Since then, bones that are
still found may be turned over to the Japanese Consulate.

Discussion
Caves in Guam and the Mariana Islands, having seen extensive use in World
War II, exhibit a range of modifications for wartime use and contain
important artefacts. Common in the decades following the war, World War II
artefacts are being actively removed from caves by amateurs. So far, there
have been no island-wide comprehensive archaeological surveys, and
published materials focusing on the World War II archaeology of caves on
Guam are rare. Archaeological work on the island is typically carried out by
contracted companies as part of environmental impact investigations.
Unpublished reports resulting from such work and pertaining to specific sites
can be found at the Micronesian Area Research Center at the University of
Guam, the Historic Preservation Office at the Environmental Department of
COMNAVMARIANAS (U.S. Navy on Guam), and the Historic Resources
Division of the Government of Guam’s Department of Parks and Recreation.

Acknowledgements
We wish to express our appreciation to Brett Wallace, a military trained
explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) technician, for identifying bullets and
ordnance and reviewing the manuscript. Jennings Bunn, historic preservation
officer and staff archaeologist for the Environmental Department of
COMNAVMARIANAS, has been an active source of information regarding
archaeological studies and reports. David Lotz of Guam Department of Parks
and Recreation generously shared his knowledge on wartime use of caves.

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©CAPRA 2002