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When US and German Soldiers Fought Together and Lesser-Known World War II Events

Khalid Elhassan August 25, 2020 35 min

Itter Castle - Battle of Castle Itter — The French Army's former commander in chief, Maxime Weygand, leaving Itter Castle. Agence France Presse

7. Shipwrecked Castaways

In June, 1944, the US Navy sank a convoy of 3 Japanese supply ships off Anatahan, a small Marianas island about 75 miles north of Saipan. 36 soldiers and sailors survived, and managed to swim to Anatahan, where they were taken in by the Japanese head of a coconut plantation and his wife.

The US military successfully invaded the Marianas in 1944, seizing the main islands and bypassing the smaller ones such as Anahatan. The Japanese on that island, lacking means of communication with their chain of command, were cut off and effectively isolated from the outside world. Matters soon grew dire on the resource-poor island, as the castaways barely managed to keep body and soul together, surviving on coconuts, lizards, bats, insects, taro, wild sugar cane, and any edible that they could find.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.