US Marine discovers a near-dead baby in a cave in the jungle of Saipan island, 1944
US Marine discovers a near-dead baby in a cave in the jungle of Saipan island, 1944 1944. A US Marine cradles the barely living body of a tiny infant, who was found facedown in a cave in the jungle of Saipan island, where native islanders had been hiding to escape the fighting between US and Japanese forces. Photo by W. Eugene Smith. In a photo that somehow comprises both tenderness and horror, an American Marine cradles a near-dead infant pulled from under a rock while troops cleared Japanese fighters and civilians from caves on Saipan in the summer of 1944. The child was the only person found alive among hundreds of corpses in one cave. The battle for the Pacific island of Saipan during World War II is one of those well-remembered battles between Japan and America, one made worse by the mass suicide of local Japanese civilians who jumped off cliffs, fearful of capture by the Americans. The Americans declared Saipan “secure” on July 9, 1944, after a battle that obliterated the...