Private William "Willie" Hokoana Jr. (1915-1989) of Paia, Maui was a Soldier assigned to the 105th Infantry Regiment, 27th Infantry Division. This picture of him holding a browning automatic rifle was taken July 13, 1944 while on Saipan . He had used that BAR to fend of a Japanese attack, killing an estimated 200 Japanese soldiers just a week prior. He would be awarded the Silver Star for his actions.
Below is a transcription of an article in the July 22, 1944 Honolulu Star-Bulletin that describes what Willie did.
WITH THE 27th INFANTRY DIVISION ON SAIPAN, JULY 22
There’s a sapling of a tree along the beach north of Tanapag that carries the scars of a battle between one American Soldier, a Hawaiian armed with a Browning automatic rifle, and more than 200 Japanese. The American is alive; the enemy are dead.
Private Willie Hokoana, 30, of Paia, Maui, onetime truck driver, picked up his Browning on Nafutan ridge, along the south cost of Saipan, early in the campaign. He had been an assistant bazooka man because, as his sergeant said, “Koko was the only guy in the squad big enough to carry all the bazooka rockets.”
Hokoana spent two days cleaning the automatic rifle. Then his unit moved from Nafutan, and he began using his Browning. Most men put it down on the ground to fire, but Hokoana preferred to rest it on a rock or a tree – “I can sight better that way,” he says.
On July 7, Hokoana found that sapling of a tree with a crotch about shoulder high to a tall man. Hokoana is a tall man, and put his rifle in the crotch of that tree and he stayed there in the open for a crucial 90 minutes while the Japanese launched attack after attack against the beach defense line he was guarding.
That day the enemy made their last determined effort to break the tightening American grip on Saipan.
Some 5,000 Japanese launched the daylong offensive down the western coastal strip of the island. They overran some American positions, they isolated others – Hokoana was one of the latter. But they could not overcome the Americans and, in the end, there were only Japanese bodies along the beach and in the canefields of the western coastal strip.
Hokoana and his automatic rifle accounted for at least 200 of those Japanese soldiers, according to his commanding officer.
“I started shooting from a trench, where three other men were firing from.” Hokoana recounted. “But pretty soon all three of them got hit, and I figured I’d better move out.”
The young Hawaiian saw a tree some 10 feet ahead of the trench, and there was that handy crotch for his rifle.
“So I run up there and get all set,” Hokoana said. “Sure enough, pretty soon they start coming in along my line of fire. So I shoot them down. And that goes on for about an hour and a half.”
“Boy, I was sweating all that time.”
Several men kept Hokoana supplied with ammunition, gathering it from all around the defended area, loading it into clips and passing it up to him. Some of the ammo came from the wounded and killed automatic riflemen.
“I figured I was done for anyhow, so I wanted to take as many of them with me as I could,” Hokoana said. “I had a gun rest, all I had to do was press the trigger when I see a them.”
Toward evening the Japanese gave up their attempts to storm the American position and resorted to sniping only. Hokoana then returned to the trench, leaving a stack of ammo clips around the base of the scarred tree.