Saipan, the first American objective in the Marianas, is roughly the size of Manhattan Island. It is located more than 3,200 miles from Hawaii and 1,300 miles from Tokyo. Saipan was seized by the Japanese the same day they bombed Pearl Harbor. By the spring of 1944 Tokyo had declared it to be a “National Defense Zone” and to defend it at all costs. Saipan was used as a key maintenance stop for planes on their way to and from various missions in the Pacific. A 27,000-man garrison defended the island under the leadership of General Hideyioshi Obata. Saipan was to Japan what Pearl Harbor was to the United States except that is is a thousand miles closer to Japan’s coast than Pearl Harbor is to America’s. Naval strategists say that, from many points of view, Saipan was the most important single battle of the Pacific War. “Capture the airfields on Saipan and the B-29’s have a clear path to Tokyo and Imperial Japan.”