Banzai Cliff

The sea cliff where Japanese soldiers and civilians jumped into the water below in the final days of the 1944 battle.

Banzai Cliff is a lower, sea-level counterpart to Suicide Cliff a short distance to the south. Where Suicide Cliff faces jungle below, Banzai Cliff drops directly into the ocean — the name comes from the battle cry shouted by Japanese soldiers as they jumped. The two sites together mark the final act of organized Japanese resistance on Saipan, which ended on July 9, 1944, though small groups of soldiers continued to hide in the island's caves for years afterward.

The site now has a Japanese memorial park with stone monuments, flower offerings, and incense holders that are regularly tended by Japanese visitors. A path runs along the clifftop. The water below is clear and shallow over reef — a dissonant peacefulness given the history. Visiting both Banzai Cliff and Suicide Cliff on the same morning, combined with the American Memorial Park in Garapan, gives a coherent picture of what the island went through in those weeks in 1944.

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Witnesses aboard American naval vessels offshore described watching hundreds of people jump from the cliff in groups, some holding hands. Soldiers threw grenades into the water among the survivors to prevent capture. The scale of what happened here — civilians who had lived on Saipan for decades dying rather than being taken prisoner — was incomprehensible to the American commanders who observed it.