U.S. Marine Corps
6th Marine Division
The 6th Marine Division - the "Striking Sixth" - was the only Marine division formed overseas, activated on Guadalcanal in September 1944 from battle-tested units already in the Pacific. It fought one campaign: Okinawa. In that single campaign, the division fought the bloodiest battle in Marine Corps history at Sugar Loaf Hill - a position so contested that it changed hands multiple times over ten days of savage close combat. Deactivated in 1946, the Striking Sixth burned fast and bright.
DIVISION STRUCTURE - THE REGIMENTS
INFANTRY
RECONSTITUTED 1944
1911
ORIGINAL ACTIVATION
Corregidor
COLORS BURNED 1942
Motobu
YAE-TAKE ASSAULT
3rd MarDiv
LATER ASSIGNMENT
The 4th Marines were the legendary China Marines who burned their colors on Corregidor rather than let them be captured by the Japanese. Reconstituted in 1944, the regiment was assigned to the 6th Marine Division and stormed Mount Yae-Take on the Motobu Peninsula. The regiment earned a new set of battle honors on Okinawa before later being transferred to the 3rd Marine Division, where it serves today. The 4th Marines carry two lineages - the pre-war China service and the World War II rebirth.
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INFANTRY
EST. 1942
1942
ACTIVATED
Eniwetok
MARSHALL ISLANDS
Guam
LIBERATION
Sugar Loaf
11 ASSAULTS
The 22nd Marines came to the 6th Marine Division as combat veterans of Eniwetok and Guam. On Okinawa, the regiment shared the nightmare of Sugar Loaf Hill, throwing assault after assault against the fifty-foot mound while being raked by fire from the Horseshoe and Half Moon. The 22nd Marines were ground to a nub at Sugar Loaf - companies went in at full strength and came out with handfuls of survivors. The regiment was deactivated with the division in 1946 and never reactivated.
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INFANTRY
EST. 1944
1944
ACTIVATED
Okinawa
ONLY CAMPAIGN
Sugar Loaf
DEVASTATING LOSSES
1946
DEACTIVATED
The 29th Marines was the newest regiment in the 6th Marine Division - activated in 1944 with no prior combat experience. Okinawa was its first and only campaign. At Sugar Loaf Hill, the 29th Marines fought alongside the 22nd Marines in the desperate multi-day assault, suffering catastrophic casualties. The regiment went from untested to hardened to decimated in the span of weeks. Like the 27th Marines of the 5th Marine Division, the 29th Marines existed briefly, fought once, and earned a legacy disproportionate to its short lifespan.
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ARTILLERY
EST. 1944
105mm
HOWITZERS
155mm
HEAVY GUNS
Okinawa
ONLY CAMPAIGN
Sugar Loaf
FIRE SUPPORT
The 15th Marines provided artillery fire support throughout the Okinawa campaign, firing in support of the infantry's advance through the Shuri defense line and the nightmare at Sugar Loaf. The regiment's guns supported both the Motobu Peninsula operation in the north and the brutal attritional fighting in the south. Deactivated with the division in 1946.
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OKINAWA - THE LAST BATTLE
April 1 - June 21, 1945
OKINAWA
APRIL FOOL'S DAY
L-Day
APRIL 1 - EASTER
60,000
TROOPS ASHORE D-DAY
Yontan
AIRFIELD CAPTURED
Minimal
RESISTANCE AT BEACH
L-Day at Okinawa fell on Easter Sunday and April Fool's Day, 1945. The 6th Marine Division landed on the Hagushi beaches and advanced inland against almost no resistance. Marines were suspicious - after Tarawa, Peleliu, and Iwo Jima, an unopposed landing seemed like a trap. It was. Japanese General Ushijima had abandoned the beaches and concentrated his 100,000 troops in fortified positions across the southern third of the island. He wanted to fight the battle on his terms, in terrain he had spent months preparing. The 6th Marine Division seized Yontan Airfield on L-Day and turned north, assigned to clear the northern two-thirds of Okinawa while the Army divisions turned south into Ushijima's kill zone.
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OKINAWA
APRIL 1945
Yae-Take
MOUNTAIN STRONGPOINT
4th
MARINES REGIMENT
1,500
JAPANESE DEFENDERS
Guerrilla
WARFARE
The 6th Marine Division's first real fight on Okinawa came at the Motobu Peninsula in the north, where Colonel Udo had fortified the rugged terrain around Mount Yae-Take with 1,500 troops. The 4th Marines - the reconstituted China Marines - assaulted the mountain fortress in terrain so steep that supplies had to be hand-carried up the slopes. It took a week of hard fighting to reduce Udo's position. Motobu was a warm-up. The division would soon turn south and walk into something far worse.
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OKINAWA
MAY 12-19, 1945
11
ASSAULTS TO TAKE
2,662
MARINE CASUALTIES
1,289
PTSD EVACUATIONS
7
DAYS OF FIGHTING
Sugar Loaf Hill was a fifty-foot mound of earth in the Shuri defense line that became the most contested piece of ground in Marine Corps history. It did not look like much - just a low hill in an urban landscape south of the Asato River. But Sugar Loaf was the western anchor of a triangular defense complex with the Horseshoe and Half Moon hills. Each position covered the others with interlocking fire. Take Sugar Loaf and you were enfiladed from the Horseshoe. Take the Horseshoe and Half Moon poured fire into your flanks. Marines from the 22nd and 29th Marines assaulted Sugar Loaf eleven times over seven days. Companies that attacked at company strength came off the hill with fewer men than a squad. The 6th Marine Division suffered 2,662 killed and wounded taking Sugar Loaf - and another 1,289 Marines were evacuated with combat fatigue so severe they could no longer function. The psychiatric casualties at Sugar Loaf were unprecedented. Men broke. Some could not stop shaking. Some went catatonic. Some could not speak. The intensity of close combat at Sugar Loaf - grenades at ten yards, bayonets, fighting in the rain over the same fifty feet of churned earth littered with the dead from both sides - exceeded what the human mind could process. Sugar Loaf was finally secured on May 19. It cost the 6th Marine Division more casualties than most divisions suffered in entire campaigns.
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OKINAWA
MAY - JUNE 1945
Naha
CAPITAL CITY
Kokuba
RIVER CROSSING
Urban
COMBAT
Oroku
PENINSULA
After Sugar Loaf, the 6th Marine Division drove into Naha - the capital of Okinawa - fighting through rubble-choked streets in some of the war's most intense urban combat. The division crossed the Kokuba River and conducted an amphibious assault on the Oroku Peninsula, where Japanese naval troops fought to the death. The naval commander, Admiral Ota, sent a final message praising the Okinawan civilians who had suffered alongside his troops, then committed suicide in his underground headquarters. The 6th Marine Division was in continuous heavy combat for nearly three months on Okinawa - an endurance test that ground down even the hardened veterans the division was built from.
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POST-WAR
DEACTIVATED APRIL 1, 1946
Tsingtao
CHINA OCCUPATION
1946
DEACTIVATED
19
MONTHS OF EXISTENCE
Never
REACTIVATED
After Okinawa, the 6th Marine Division deployed to Tsingtao, China for occupation duty - bringing the division full circle, as the 4th Marines had served in China before the war. On April 1, 1946 - exactly one year after L-Day on Okinawa - the 6th Marine Division was deactivated. Like the 5th Marine Division, it was never reactivated. The division existed for nineteen months. In those nineteen months, it fought the bloodiest hill battle in Marine Corps history and helped win the last battle of the Pacific War.
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2,662
CASUALTIES - SUGAR LOAF
1,289
COMBAT FATIGUE EVACS
11
ASSAULTS ON SUGAR LOAF
19 Mos
TOTAL EXISTENCE