Sandburg, Clyde Wayne
Navy Reserves Aviation Radioman 3rd class

Clyde Wayne Sandburg from Seattle, Washington, King county.

Parents: Mr. and Mrs. Clyde Peter Sandburg

Service era: World War II

Date of death: Sunday, July 2, 1944
Death details: On June 15, 1944, approximately 70,000 Allied troops landed on the island of Saipan in the Mariana Islands. For three weeks, American troops fought through well-organized Japanese defenses in cave-riddled mountainous terrain and pushed the enemy inland. By early July the Japanese were unable to retreat farther. At dawn on July 7, 1944, approximately four-thousand Japanese troops launched a massive banzai charge against U.S. Army and Marine Corps lines. The 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 27th Infantry Division’s 105th Regiment bore the brunt of the charge and took heavy losses. Barely one hundred men from each battalion survived the attack uninjured. American reinforcements stopped the attackers and defeated the Japanese force, securing the island by July 9. Many soldiers and marines who went missing in the attack remain unaccounted-for. First Lieutenant George M. Sandburg entered the U.S. Army from Florida and served in the 106th Field Artillery Battalion, 27th Infantry Division. On July 2, 1944, 1LT Sandburg was killed in action on Saipan, but the exact circumstances of his loss are unknown. His remains have not been recovered or identified following the war, and he is still unaccounted-for. Today, First Lieutenant Sandburg is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, findagrave.com