Hi:
Are you sure that is Saipan? I have visited both invasion beaches on Guam, and a Sherman still sits off-shore, off Agat, about 50 yards – rusting away. Looks like that one, but who knows, salt-water hates steel where-ever it meets it.
BTB, The one thing that I took away from Guam was how small the battlefield was. This tank was coming up to a Japanese gun emplacement, but the post-war documentaries make it look like a big battlefield. I would guess that the emplacement was not more than the size of one medium-size (or smaller) two story building today, if even that big. (And, with signs not to go onto the tank, and not go beyond the Coral reef, what lovely water today.)
Today you can look inside the emplacement, and you can see out of the apertures on the other side, but the position is blocked to entering. When I looked inside, I totally changed my opinion of the valor of the IJA. What brave souls they must have been, it was obviously hopeless.
Swab Jockey
