Battle of Saipan

So if you know your World War II history, Palau is the Battle of Peleliu.

Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands is the Battle of Saipan and Tinian.

We know from what happened just over 80 years ago that this is an area of high strategic importance if you're dealing with an aggressive Asian power that is trying to get across the Pacific.

With a massively growing Navy, for example.

A brush with military law was a recommendation.

These full-blooded men were trained in a ruthless array of hand-to-hand killing techniques and then thrown into the battle for Saipan.

Emperor Hirohito's treasure and the bulwark of the Japanese Empire in the Pacific, where they would wreak havoc in and around, but mostly behind, enemy lines.

They witnessed inhuman atrocities, walked into an ambush after the cunning Japanese used wounded Marines as bait, endured body-punishing extremes of heat, hunger, and thirst, fought a relentless enemy who would not surrender, and watched their best friends die.

There are some real and powerful stories behind that image.

For example, in July 1944, some 4,000 Japanese soldiers launched an all-out attack on the American 27th Infantry Division in one of the largest bonsai charges of the war at the end of the Battle of Saipan, while civilians on the island committed suicide en masse.

A similar attack had taken place at Attu the year before, and throughout the Battle of Okinawa, still the deadliest battle in American history, there were stories of desperate Japanese units fighting to the last man and of civilians who chose death over capture.

The overall numbers seem to back the story up, too.