81^st Infantry Division

The 81st Infantry Division arrived in the Palaus in September 1944 for simultaneous amphibious operations on separate objectives. Assaulting Angaur on September 17, its regiments pushed south to the island's tip by September 20 and then turned to reduce the Japanese holdout in the Lake Salome Bowl depression in the northwest. The 322nd Infantry Regiment spent weeks in repeated attacks against this fortified position — attacking, withdrawing under fire, encircling with artillery and air bombardment, and attacking again — before reducing the last defenders through late October.

At the same time, the 321st Infantry Regiment was detached to reinforce the 1st Marine Division on Peleliu, one of the most costly island battles of the Pacific war. It advanced along the western coast, assaulted the Umurbrogol Mountain cave complex, and eventually took over from the Marines in the final reduction of that fortified pocket, completing it by late November. A third regiment occupied Ulithi Atoll without opposition on September 22, securing an anchorage that became one of the Pacific Fleet's most important forward bases.

After rehabilitation in New Caledonia, the division moved to Leyte in May 1945 and spent the summer in construction, amphibious training, and mopping up scattered Japanese remnants in the island's northwest. Its wartime record encompassed one of the Army's major amphibious assaults in the central Pacific, a sustained reinforcement commitment at one of the war's hardest battles, and the unopposed seizure of a strategically vital fleet anchorage — a sequence of sharply different island operations across the Western Pacific.