By mid-August, the Guam campaign petered out in the usual manner. Organized Japanese resistance largely ceased. The few surviving Japanese servicemen, most of whom refused to surrender, instead took to the hills and caves, where they starved, died of disease, or continued on in a hand-to-mouth existence, occasionally posing a threat to American bases or patrols. “The Japanese officer does not admit, even to himself, that his forces can be defeated,” one American officer claimed in a wartime analysis of the Japanese fighting soldier. “Surrender or retreat are beyond his comprehension.”
