At 06:30 on June 15th, 1944, First Lieutenant Frank Tchechowski’s Higgins boat was closing on Saipan when Japanese shore batteries found the range and the ocean erupted. He was 29, a Pennsylvania steelworker who had entered the Corps as a buck private and earned his commission through Guadalcanal and Tarawa.
30,000 Japanese troops had dug into every cave, ridge, and tunnel on the island. American intelligence estimated 15,000. They were wrong by half. The United States Marine Corps was the poorest equipped branch of the American military. When Marines landed on Guadalcanal in 1942 for their first ground offensive against Japan, they carried rations, uniforms, and weapons left over from the First World War.
Bolt-action Springfield rifles with six-round clips against an enemy that had conquered half the Pacific in 6 months. The Marines won that campaign, but winning with leftover gear cost lives that better equipment might have saved. On Saipan, that price became clear within hours. By nightfall on June 15th, more than 2,000 Marines lay dead or wounded across the invasion beaches.
Japanese artillery positioned on the central heights overlooked every landing zone. Machine gun nests hidden in cliff faces cut down men wading through chest-deep water toward shore. A 2-day naval bombardment of 165,000 shells from 15 battleships had missed most of the fortified positions entirely. Over the following days, the 2nd and 4th Marine Divisions pushed inland.
But the Japanese had turned Saipan into a fortress. 32,000 defenders fought from interconnected cave systems and camouflaged sniper nests across volcanic terrain. They ambushed advancing columns and vanished into tunnels before counterattacks arrived. They placed wounded Americans in open ground as bait, waiting for corpsmen to approach before opening fire.
The advance was measured in yards per day. The casualty lists grew with each one. Four months before the landings, Colonel James Risley, commander of the 6th Marine Regiment, had seen enough. After Tarawa, where over 3,000 Marines fell in 76 hours, Risley ordered the creation of a scout-sniper platoon. 40 men, handpicked, trained to operate behind enemy lines for days at a time.
Their job would be reconnaissance, silent elimination of Japanese positions, and mapping enemy fortifications to guide the advance of line companies. Risley chose Tchechowski to build and lead the unit. The Mustang lieutenant’s method of selecting his 40 men shocked every officer in the regiment. He did not request volunteers with top marksmanship scores or spotless service records.
He went to the brig. At Camp Tarawa on Hawaii’s Parker Ranch, he reviewed the case of every Marine locked up for fighting. He wanted the ones who had won. A man who put another Marine in the infirmary and ended up behind bars had proved he could handle himself when everything fell apart. A man with a black mark for disobedience had proved he could think without waiting for orders.
By March of 1944, Tchechowski had selected his 40. Other officers in the regiment called them trash, discipline problems, the worst Marines in the 6th. Tchechowski saw something different. These were men aged 18 to 20 who had already survived some of the bloodiest fighting in the Pacific. Most of them had lived a lifetime by the age of 19, and they reported to no one but their lieutenant, who answered directly to the regimental commander.
Tchechowski’s about to send 40 brave rats behind 30,000 Japanese. Please like this video if you want to see what happens next. It helps more people find these stories. Subscribe. Back to Tchechowski. On May 30th, 1944, the 40 Thieves boarded the USS Bolivar at Parker Ranch. They carried Springfield rifles fitted with eight-power Unertl telescopic sights, knives, and a collection of weapons stolen from every Army and Navy depot on Hawaii.
In 16 days, they would land on an island where firing a single round behind enemy lines meant instant discovery and death. Every kill would have to be silent. From January through May of 1944, the 40 Thieves trained in the jungles and volcanic slopes of Hawaii’s Parker Ranch in ways no standard Marine unit practiced.
Every man learned to kill without making a sound. Knives, garrotes fashioned from piano wire, bare hands. They practiced stalking sentries from behind in total darkness, covering ground through dense vegetation without radio contact or compass bearings. Stealth was the foundation of everything. On Saipan, a single noise behind Japanese lines would mean the difference between completing a mission and never coming back.
The platoon’s primary weapon was the M1903 Springfield rifle fitted with an eight-power Unertl telescopic sight. The Springfield was a bolt-action design from before the First World War, largely replaced in standard infantry by the semi-automatic M1 Garand. But for precision shooting at distance, nothing in the Marine arsenal matched it.
The Unertl scope added nearly 2 lb and several inches of length, making the rifle impractical for close-quarters combat. From a concealed position on high ground, however, it could place a round into a man-sized target beyond 800 yd. Every man in the platoon qualified as a sniper. Their training demanded accuracy at ranges where the target could not hear the shot that killed him.
But sniping was only part of what set the platoon apart. The 40 Thieves operated on a simple principle. The Marine Corps would not give them everything they needed, so they would acquire it through other means. Their methods were not subtle. They stole a captain’s jeep from an Army motor pool and drove it until the engine failed.
They raided Army and Navy storage depots for ammunition, rations, and medical supplies that appeared on no requisition form. They took a pig from a Hawaiian rancher for an unauthorized roast. In their most audacious move, they convinced two Army privates to go absent without leave and brought them along to Saipan as unofficial members of the platoon.
The name 40 Thieves spread through the 6th Regiment with a mix of admiration and disbelief. But behind the reputation was a platoon preparing for the most dangerous type of warfare in the Pacific. Operating behind enemy lines meant no artillery support, no reinforcements, and no medical evacuation. If a man was wounded beyond the Japanese forward positions, his platoonmates carried him out or he died where he fell.
If the platoon was discovered, they fought their way back through enemy-held jungle or they did not return at all. On the morning of June 15th, the Thieves rode their landing craft through a wall of Japanese artillery fire toward the beach at Charan Kanoa on Saipan’s southwest coast. The boat’s ramp jammed on approach.
Men climbed over the gunnels and dropped into chest-deep water, holding their Springfields above their heads to keep the Unertl scopes dry. They waded ashore under machine gun fire and pushed inland with the 6th Marine Regiment through the first chaotic hours of the invasion. For 48 hours, the scout-sniper platoon fought as regular infantry alongside line companies, helping to secure and expand the beachhead.
But on the evening of June 17th, Tchechowski received orders directly from Colonel Risley. Japanese defenders had dug into a ridgeline north of the American perimeter. Advancing companies were taking casualties from positions they could not locate. Risley needed eyes behind those ridges. He needed to know what the enemy had built in the terrain ahead and where their artillery observers were hidden.
At 0200 on June 18th, 1944, the 40 Thieves slipped past the forward American positions and moved into the darkness beyond the perimeter. No radio contact, no fire support. 40 men armed with bolt-action rifles, knives, and stolen ammunition moving into jungle held by an enemy that outnumbered them 700 to 1.
The first scout-sniper patrol behind Japanese lines on Saipan had begun. No one in the regiment knew whether all 40 would come back. The 40 Thieves moved through Japanese-held jungle north of the American perimeter for 2 days without being detected. They traveled at night in single file, communicated through hand signals, maintained absolute silence.
During daylight hours, they observed from concealed positions on ridgelines and mapped everything they found. Japanese artillery batteries, command posts, supply routes running through ravines, troop concentrations, the locations of sniper nests that had been killing Marines from positions no advancing company could identify. When the platoon returned to American lines on June 20th, Tchechowski delivered a detailed map of Japanese positions to Colonel Risley.
The intelligence was specific and actionable. Three previously unidentified artillery batteries on the high ground north of the perimeter, two command bunkers connected by underground tunnels beneath a sugarcane field, a network of camouflaged sniper nests built into volcanic rock along a ridge that advancing Marines had been unable to pass.
Within hours, Risley directed naval gunfire and artillery onto the positions the Thieves had identified. Line companies that had been pinned down for 3 days advanced 300 yd in a single morning. Two Japanese artillery batteries that had killed dozens of Marines were destroyed within minutes of receiving the coordinates. Ground that had cost heavy casualties to approach now fell with minimal losses.
The Scouts had shown the regiment exactly where the enemy was hiding. But the platoon’s value extended beyond intelligence gathering. Tchechowski’s men eliminated threats that artillery could not reach. Bypass Japanese positions, individual snipers, machine gun nests, and cave mouths, forward observers directing enemy fire required men on the ground with precise rifles and and patience to wait for a single clean shot.
The first major test of the platoon’s sniping capability came on the slopes of Mount Tapochau, the highest point on Saipan. Japanese troops used the northern face of the mountain as a resupply route, sending soldiers down steep trails on bicycles loaded with ammunition and food. The route was beyond effective range of American infantry positions.
Standard patrols could not reach it without crossing open terrain under direct enemy observation. Tachovsky positioned his snipers on concealed high ground overlooking the trails. From ranges beyond 600 yards, the Thieves picked off Japanese cyclists one by one. Within days, resupply along the Tapochau pale route slowed to a fraction of what it had been.
Soldiers who had moved freely on the mountain now refused to descend in daylight. A single platoon with bolt-action rifles had shut down an enemy supply line without firing a shell that could be traced to its origin. The effect reached beyond the 6th Regiment as the 2nd and 4th Marine divisions ground forward through the island’s interior.
Every advancing unit encountered the same problems. Japanese positions that could not be mapped by conventional means, snipers killing from invisible locations, tunnels connecting defensive lines in ways that intelligence had not predicted. Commanders across Saipan needed exactly what Risley’s Scout Sniper Platoon was providing.
By the 3rd week of June, Risley was sending the Thieves on continuous rotations. One team returned while another deployed. Each patrol lasted 2 to 3 days behind Japanese lines, moving through terrain that line companies would not reach for another week. The platoon covered ground no other American unit had entered, sometimes operating miles from the nearest friendly position near Charan Kanoa.
They moved by night, observed by day, and killed only when a target presented itself without risk of detection. On June 25th, Risley called Tachovsky to the regimental command post. The American advance had reached the outskirts of Garapan, Saipan’s capital city. Naval bombardment had leveled most of it, but no American had set foot inside the ruins.
Japanese strength in the city was completely unknown. Risley needed a reconnaissance patrol into Garapan before line companies moved in. The Thieves would be the first Americans to enter the capital of an island defended by an enemy that had sworn to die rather than surrender. And that enemy had been fortifying the rubble for weeks.
The Garapan reconnaissance patrol lasted 36 hours. Tachovsky took a small squad through the shattered streets of Saipan’s capital while the rest of the platoon held concealed positions on the outskirts. What they found surprised them. Naval bombardment had flattened most of the city.
Entire blocks had been reduced to rubble and ash. But the Japanese had not abandoned the ruins. Defensive positions had been constructed from collapsed concrete and sniper nests were hidden in the shells of buildings that still had partial walls standing. The Thieves mapped every position they identified and returned to American lines with intelligence that allowed the 6th Regiment to plan its approach into the city.
They also returned with something unexpected. In the wreckage of what had once been Garapan’s commercial district, the patrol had found a general store partially intact. They filled their packs with fabric, canned food, and drinks. Even in a destroyed city on a contested island, the 40 Thieves could not pass up an opportunity to acquire supplies through Marine methods.
The Garapan reconnaissance marked a turning point in how the platoon was perceived beyond the 6th Regiment. When line companies advanced into the city using intelligence from Tachovsky’s patrol, they encountered far less resistance than expected. Commanders who had been skeptical of a platoon built from brick fighters began asking Risley how his Scouts operated.
Word of the Thieves spread up the chain of command through daily situation reports and officer briefings. A Marine Corps combat correspondent named Vic Calman had been following the 6th Regiment through the campaign. He spent time with the Scout Sniper Platoon and began documenting their operations. Calman would later publish an article in the December 1944 issue of Leatherneck Magazine describing the platoon as the craziest, fiercest, and most lovable Marines on Saipan.
He wrote that Tachovsky’s Terrors had wreaked havoc in, around, and mostly behind enemy lines, but that their unofficial exploits were becoming Marine Corps legends faster than their official record could keep up. The platoon’s reputation grew within the regiment through results that other units could measure directly.
When the Thieves identified a position, it was destroyed. When they reported a route clear, it was clear. When they marked a tunnel entrance, the follow-up assault team knew exactly where to place demolition charges. Line company commanders began requesting specific Scout Sniper support for their sectors.
Risley found himself managing a resource that every unit on his front wanted. But as the Thieves became more effective, the Japanese began to adapt. Enemy commanders noticed that their concealed positions were being located and destroyed with a precision that standard American reconnaissance could not explain. Defensive lines that had been invisible to frontal observation were suddenly being hit by accurate artillery fire from coordinates that could only have come from behind their own positions.
Japanese patrols behind the front lines increased. Sentries were doubled on supply routes where soldiers had been disappearing. Ambush tactics evolved. The enemy began placing wounded American Marines in visible positions in open terrain, then building concealed firing positions around them.
When Scout teams or corpsmen moved toward the wounded, Japanese marksmen opened fire from multiple angles. It was a tactic designed to exploit the one instinct that American troops could not override, the impulse to rescue their own. By late June, the Thieves were no longer just hunters. They were also being hunted.
Japanese units behind the forward lines were actively searching for the Americans who moved through their territory at night. Patrol routes that had been safe a week earlier now carried the risk of walking into a prepared ambush. On June 27th, the platoon was moving along the northern slopes of Mount Tapochau pale when a Japanese concussion grenade detonated without warning.
The blast killed PFC Daniel Kenny instantly. The rest of the patrol froze in elephant grass as Japanese soldiers closed in from three sides. The Thieves had walked into exactly the kind of trap they had been trained to set for others. The ambush on Mount Tapochau cost the platoon one of its best. The surviving Thieves fought their way out of the trap through elephant grass in near total darkness, dragging Kenny’s body with them.
They reached American lines before dawn on June 28th. It was the first time the platoon had lost a man on patrol. Tachovsky adjusted immediately. Patrol routes that retraced earlier paths were abandoned. Each new mission took a different approach through different terrain. Departure times shifted. Instead of moving at fixed intervals, patrols launched at irregular hours to prevent the Japanese from predicting their rhythm.
The platoon began moving in smaller elements, splitting into teams of eight to 10 men that could cover more ground while presenting smaller targets. If one team walked into a trap, the others could maneuver to support or withdraw independently. The adaptation worked. Over the following week, the Thieves continued their rotations behind Japanese lines without another casualty.
They mapped enemy positions as the American advance pushed north through Saipan’s interior. The 2nd and 4th Marine divisions, supported by the Army’s 27th Infantry Division, fought through terrain that grew more difficult with every mile. Volcanic ridges gave way to dense jungle. Sugarcane fields provided concealment for Japanese defenders who waited until American troops were within grenade range before opening fire.
Mount Tapochau, the island’s highest peak at 1,550 ft, dominated the central highlands and served as a natural fortress. By late June, the Japanese defensive strategy was shifting. General Yoshitsugu Saito had abandoned hope of holding fixed positions against the sustained American advance. His forces were being compressed northward.
Supply lines were severed. Ammunition reserves were dwindling. But Saito still commanded thousands of troops, and he was not retreating without inflicting maximum damage. Japanese tanks became a growing threat. Type 97 medium tanks, each weighing 15 tons with a 47 mm main gun, began probing American positions at night. The attacks came without warning.
Individual tanks or small groups crashing through perimeter lines in the darkness, firing into foxholes and supply points before American anti-tank weapons could be brought to bear. The standard defense against a tank required a coordinated response with bazookas, anti-tank guns, or artillery. But at night on unfamiliar ground, coordination broke down.
In the first days of July, a Japanese tank broke through the forward defensive line and drove directly toward the 6th Marine Regiment’s command post. The tank’s 47 mm gun could destroy the command post and kill every officer inside. Tachovsky was near the perimeter when the tank appeared. He grabbed a bazooka.
The weapon had not come through official supply channels. Like most of the platoon’s heavy equipment, it had been acquired through Marine methods from an Army depot weeks earlier. Tachovsky moved to a firing position and put a rocket into the tank at close range. The vehicle stopped. The threat to the command post was eliminated. It was the kind of action that earned a Silver Star, and it did.
But the tank attack was a symptom of something larger. Japanese forces across Saipan were running out of options. Compressed into the northern third of the island, cut off from resupply and reinforcement, Saito’s troops had no path to victory through conventional defense. The American advance could not be stopped by fixed positions or piecemeal counterattacks.
The only question was what the Japanese would do when they had nothing left. The Thieves found the answer on their patrols in the first week of July. Behind Japanese lines in the north, they observed something that no American unit had seen before on this scale. Thousands of Japanese soldiers were gathering, not in defensive positions, not behind fortified lines.
They were assembling in the open in formation, collecting every weapon available. Wounded men wrapped in bandages joined the ranks alongside officers carrying samurai swords. On the evening of July 6th, Tchokachi reported to Risley that the largest concentration of enemy troops the platoon had ever observed was massing north of Tanapag.
Whatever was coming would not be a probe or a counterattack. It would be everything the Japanese had left. General Saito issued his final order on the evening of July 6th. Every Japanese soldier still alive on Saipan would attack the American lines at dawn. There would be no retreat, no surrender. The order called for Gyokusai, a suicidal charge in which each man was expected to die for the emperor and kill seven Americans before falling.
Wounded soldiers who could not walk would crawl. Those who could not crawl would hold a grenade and wait for the enemy to pass. Officers would lead from the front carrying samurai swords. The entire remaining garrison would move south in a single wave across the Tanapag plain toward the American perimeter. Tchokachi’s intelligence report from the evening before had reached Risley and moved up the chain of command.
The scouts had identified the concentration area near Makunsha village north of Tanapag, but the sheer scale of what was forming exceeded anything American commanders on Saipan had prepared for. This was not a company-sized counterattack or a probing action. It was the largest banzai charge of the entire Pacific War.
At dawn on July 7th, approximately 3,000 Japanese soldiers surged south across the Tanapag plain. Wounded men in blood-stained bandages ran alongside officers waving swords. Soldiers armed with nothing but sharpened bamboo spears charged into automatic weapons fire. The first wave struck the Army’s 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 105th Infantry Regiment, 27th Infantry Division.
The impact was catastrophic. The Japanese overran forward positions within minutes, pouring through gaps in the perimeter and driving deep into the American rear. The 105th Infantry suffered devastating losses. Both battalions were nearly destroyed as a fighting force. Lieutenant Colonel William O’Brien, commanding the 1st Battalion, was killed fighting at close range.
He would receive the Medal of Honor posthumously. Across the Tanapag plain, the charge dissolved into hundreds of individual close-quarters engagements where the lines between attacker and defender ceased to exist. The 6th Marine Regiment was positioned south of the Army units. When the banzai wave crashed through the 105th’s lines, elements of the charge swept into sectors held by the Marines.
The 40 Thieves found themselves directly in the path of the oncoming assault. This was not a sniper engagement at 800 yards. This was hand-to-hand range against an enemy that had no intention of surviving the morning. The platoon fought with everything available. Their Springfields were accurate at distance, but slow to reload in a close-quarters fight.
When Japanese tanks rolled through alongside the infantry wave, the Thieves reached for the weapons they had stockpiled through months of Marine methods. Molotov cocktails, glass bottles filled with gasoline sealed with fabric wicks, ignited and thrown at engine decks and exhaust vents. It was improvisational anti-tank warfare at its most primitive, and it worked.
Burning fuel poured into engine compartments. Crews who survived the initial flames were caught in the open when they abandoned their vehicles. The banzai charge spent itself over the course of 12 hours. By nightfall on July 7th, approximately 4,300 Japanese soldiers lay dead across the Tanapag plain and surrounding terrain.
The charge had inflicted severe casualties on the American forces it struck, but it had also destroyed what remained of Japan’s organized fighting strength on Saipan. General Saito did not live to see the result. He had taken his own life before the attack began, following the tradition of a commander who had failed to hold his position.
On July 9th, 1944, American command declared Saipan secured. 25 days of fighting had killed nearly 3,000 Americans and over 29,000 Japanese troops. Only 931 Japanese soldiers surrendered. The rest had fought until they were killed or had taken their own lives. But for the 40 Thieves, the official end of the battle did not mean the end of their war on the island.
Risley had one more task, and it was the kind that only his scout snipers could handle. After Saipan was declared secured, the killing did not stop. Thousands of Japanese soldiers remained hidden in cave systems, tunnels, and jungle across the island. Some had not received the order for the banzai charge. Others had survived it and retreated into the volcanic interior.
They emerged at night to raid American supply points, attack sentries, and kill Marines who believed the battle was over. Organized resistance had ended on paper. In practice, Saipan was still a combat zone. Risley assigned the 40 Thieves to the mop-up operation. The work was considered among the most dangerous in the Marine Corps.
Clearing bypassed enemy positions meant approaching cave mouths and tunnel entrances where desperate men with nothing to lose waited in darkness. There was no front line to mark where safety ended and danger began. A Japanese soldier with a rifle could be hiding behind any rock formation, inside any destroyed building, beneath any section of collapsed trench.
The Thieves moved through this terrain methodically, identifying occupied positions and eliminating them one at a time. It was slow, exhausting work that continued for weeks after the official end of the battle, but it was precisely the type of mission the platoon had been created for. Small unit operations in contested terrain requiring stealth, precision shooting, and the ability to function independently without support.
By the time the mop-up was declared complete, the 40 Thieves had been in continuous operations on Saipan for over a month. The platoon did not rest for long. Within weeks, the 6th Marine Regiment was ordered to Tinian, the island immediately south of Saipan. The invasion of Tinian launched on July 24th, just 15 days after Saipan was secured.
The Thieves crossed to the neighboring island and resumed scout sniper operations against another Japanese garrison dug into another volcanic landscape. The skills they had developed on Saipan translated directly. Reconnaissance behind enemy lines, silent elimination of defensive positions, mapping fortifications for advancing line companies.
Tinian fell in 9 days, a fraction of the time Saipan had required. The results the 40 Thieves achieved across both campaigns drew attention from command levels far above the regiment. First Lieutenant Frank Tchokachi received the Silver Star, presented personally by Admiral Chester Nimitz for his actions during the Battle The citation recognized his leadership of the scout sniper platoon behind enemy lines and his destruction of the enemy tank that had threatened the regimental command post.
Tchokachi had entered the Marine Corps as a buck private. He had risen through the enlisted ranks, earned a commission, survived three major campaigns, built an elite unit from men the Corps considered expendable, and received one of the military’s highest decorations for valor from the The significance of what the 40 Thieves had demonstrated on Saipan extended beyond one regiment.
They were among the first organized scout sniper platoons in Marine Corps history. The concept had been born out of necessity after Tarawa, when Colonel Risley recognized that conventional reconnaissance could not meet the demands of Pacific island warfare. On Saipan, the concept had been proven under the most extreme conditions.
A 40-man platoon operating behind enemy lines had provided intelligence that saved hundreds of lives, shut down supply routes, eliminated positions that artillery could not reach, and fought through the largest banzai charge of the war. Senior Marine commanders took note. The scout sniper platoon model that Risley and Tchokachi had built would influence how the Corps structured its elite reconnaissance and sniping capabilities for decades.
Every modern Marine scout sniper can trace the lineage of their role to units like the 40 Thieves. But the men who had lived through Saipan and Tinian carried something home that no decoration or official recognition could address. They had entered combat as teenagers. Most were 18 or 19 years old when they landed on Saipan.
By the time they returned to the United States, they had killed at close range, watched friends die, and spent weeks behind enemy lines where every hour carried the possibility of a death no one would witness. Tchokachi himself never spoke a word about any of it. Not to his wife, not to his children, not to anyone for the next 67 years.
Frank Tchokachi came home from the Pacific and never spoke about what happened on Saipan. He returned to the Midwest, earned a degree at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and settled in Sturgeon Bay, a small shipbuilding town in Door County, Wisconsin. He married Roxy, the woman he had written V-mail letters to from Parker Ranch. He raised a family.
He became the mayor of Sturgeon Bay. He lived a quiet and respectable life that bore no visible trace of the lieutenant who had built an elite platoon from brig fighters and led them behind enemy lines on one of the bloodiest islands in the Pacific. His son Joseph grew up knowing only that his father had served as a Marine in the Pacific.
Every question about the war was shut down immediately. Tychowski refused to discuss combat with his family, his friends, or anyone else. The footlocker in the garage that held his military records, personal letters, photographs, and medals remained closed for decades. Whatever Saipan had done to him, he carried it alone.
Tychowski was not the only one who went silent. The surviving members of the 40 Thieves scattered across the country after the war and spent their lives trying to forget what they had experienced by the age of 20. The images they carried, friends killed at close range, enemy soldiers who refused to surrender, the mass suicides of Japanese civilians at Marpi Point, where entire families leaped from cliffs rather than face capture, became nightmares that repeated for decades.
Corporal Bob Smotts, the Osage hunter from Oklahoma, who had run point on patrols through the jungles of Saipan, described the same dream recurring every night for 70 years. He saw Kenny die. Then he chased the Japanese soldier through the elephant grass every night for the rest of his life. Frank Tychowski died in 2011 at the age of 96.
At his funeral, a man who had known him at the University of Wisconsin told the story of how he first learned that the quiet older student in his class had saved an entire platoon on Saipan by destroying a Japanese tank with a stolen bazooka. Joseph Tychowski had never heard the story before. After the funeral, Joseph opened the footlocker.
Inside were his father’s platoon roster for the 6th Marine Regiment Scout Sniper Platoon, personal letters, photographs, and the Silver Star. It was, as he later described it, like time travel. He searched every name on the roster. Three members of the 40 Thieves were still alive. Bob Smotts in Georgia, Roscoe Mullins, and Marvin Strombo in Montana.
The seven surviving leathernecks he eventually located provided the oral histories that became the foundation of a book published in 2020 coinciding with the 75th anniversary of victory over Japan. One story captured the weight these men had carried. During the battle, Marvin Strombo had taken a flag and a saber from a dead Japanese officer.
He kept them for over 70 years. Then he wrote a note to the dead soldier’s family. He told them the flag had never belonged to him. He prayed it would find its way home. It did. The men of the 40 Thieves were teenagers who fought a war designed for men twice their age. They were called trash by officers who did not understand what Tychowski had seen in them.
They stole everything the Marine Corps would not give them and they performed behind enemy lines with a courage that most of them refused to talk about for the rest of their lives. Thank you for watching this story to the end. If it meant something to you, please take a moment to like this video. It really helps us find and share stories like the 40 Thieves, stories that deserve to be remembered.
Please subscribe and hit the bell so you do not miss the next one. Let us know in the comments where you are watching from today. Frank Tychowski never told his own children what he did on Saipan. His 40 Thieves spent their lives trying to forget. Somebody has to remember for them. That is why we tell these stories.
