f8415cfc-c78c-42cd-9ee3-d52c3f9b9cc5

Miller, Glenn_WAPA-246_WAPA 4170_OralHist_Video.mp4

Glenn Ellsworth Miller was born December 29th, 1924 in Mount Palatine, Illinois. His father was a farmer who got serious sunstroke and could no longer farm. His family moved to Chicago when he was two. They later moved to Bloomington, Illinois. Glenn has seven sisters and two brothers. Glenn is married with two of his own children. Glenn and a friend were on their way to a movie when they heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor. Glenn was drafted in 1943 when he was 18 and sent to Chicago that June. He was told he could choose which branch of the military he preferred and he chose Marine Corps. Glenn attended boot camp in San Diego, which he found to be hard work, but exciting to finally leave Illinois. He was then sent to Pearl Harbor, to a transient center, into the 37th replacement battalion, was then assigned to the 2nd Marine Division in about March of 1944. The division had just come back from the battle of Tarawa, as well as Tamogi and Guadalcanal. They were stationed in a camp on the Big Island of Hawaii. Glenn was a camouflage expert during the war. Sometime in the early part of May, they boarded the ships for Saipan, although they weren’t told until they were well out at sea. Glenn remembers being aboard an APA, which was a difficult ship to be on. The bunks were five or six bunks high with little room to move. A week or two before arriving at Saipan, they picked up the 4th Marine Division. Glenn recalls talking to a Sergeant Gahr and seeing pictures of his family. At the time of landing on Saipan, Glenn was in Easy Battery, 2nd Battalion, 10th Marines and they landed on Green Beach two at around 1:00 in the afternoon on June 15th. Glenn was shocked at the number of casualties he saw right away. The water was rough that day and some men had difficulty transferring to the alligators and fell in the water or were crushed. They immediately moved into the area where they were going to take their guns and worked to get them dug in and sandbagged and began to receive artillery fire that afternoon. Glenn recalls that they landed at the south end of what was the fighter strip, and seeing a number of 16 inch shells that didn’t explode. The odor on the island was horrible and reeked of dead flesh. Glenn’s Division was located near Camp Susupe but he didn’t see many of the local people who were there. He recalls that one day they were moving up toward Garapan and came upon a bank that had been destroyed. They blew up a safe and found one million, three hundred thousand yen in it. They rolled it up to make cigarettes out of it and built fires in the evening. Glenn was also involved in the battle at Tinian. They took a little island north of Okinawa, called Iheya Shima. There were no Japanese troops there at all. Then they went as a regimental combat team, landed on Okinawa to take over the lines at Churey [sp?] Castle and then went and finished the island there; General Buckner was killed in our forward observation posts. They were there for six weeks. Glenn remembers Tinian as having horrible black flies. He managed to sleep through the bonzai attack, as he was in an exhausted while there. The battle there was nine days, although they stayed for several weeks. They then came back to Saipan, established camp over Magacin Bay and they were there until we went to Okinawa. Glenn describes his experience with the battle of Saipan as a horrible one. When the war ended, Glenn was still on Saipan. They left and landed in Nagasaki on the 23rd of September. When they returned home, their ship landed in San Diego and there were only two people on the dock - a paper boy and a beautiful blond girl who was the wife of the captain of the ship. Due to the GI bill, Glenn went to college. The 60th anniversary was Glenn’s first time back to Saipan since the war.

U.S. National Park Service, War in the Pacific National Historical Park

This digital asset is in the public domain. This digital version was made possible through the National Park Service by a grant from the National Park Foundation through generous support from the Mellon Foundation. When using this asset for any purpose, including online, credit 'Courtesy U.S. National Parks'.

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War in the Pacific National Historical Park, Code: WAPA

Guam , Guam
War in the Pacific National Historical Park, Guam , Guam
Latitude: 13.3905000686646, Longitude: 144.654006958008

ICMS (Interior Collection Managment System) : WAPA-00246
NPS Museum Number Catalog : WAPA 4170

War in the Pacific Oral Histories

2025/03/07

T. Stell Newman Visitor Center, Collections room, Safe and Shelf SLF D-01

Public Can View

Rose Manibusan, Jennifer Craig

Organization: American Memorial Park
Role: Chief Interpretation
Address: Micro Beach Road, Garapan, Mp 96950
Email: wapa_interpretation@nps.gov

Saturday, April 5, 2025 12:04:40 AM

Saturday, April 5, 2025 12:04:40 AM

Miller, Glenn_WAPA-246_WAPA 4170_OralHist_Video.mp4

mp4

992.0 MB

Historic

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