Surrounded by 54 Enemy Soldiers: The 7-Minute Battle That Made an American a Legend

The date was September 18, 1944, and the place was a hellish fragment of land in the Pacific known as Peleliu. At 07:30, the air was already thick with the scent of cordite, salt, and decaying vegetation. Private First Class Arthur Jackson, a nineteen-year-old from Oregon, pressed his body against a jagged coral outcrop. To his left, he watched as Japanese machine-gun fire literally tore apart the Marines of his regiment. This was his third day on the island, and despite the chaos surrounding him, he had zero confirmed kills to his name. That was about to change in a way that would etch his name into the annals of military legend forever.

The Japanese defenders, led by Colonel Kunio Nakagawa, had transformed Peleliu into a fortress of coral and concrete. They had abandoned the suicidal banzai charges of early war years, opting instead for a defense-in-depth strategy that utilized 500 yards of interconnected tunnels and 12 reinforced concrete pillboxes. These bunkers were arranged in a lethal half-moon arc across the southern peninsula, each housing between five and 35 soldiers. Major General William Rupertus had predicted the island would be secured in four days; he was off by seventy. On the first day alone, 1,300 Marines fell. By the time Jackson stood up from his coral outcrop, the 1st Marine Regiment had sustained a staggering 70% casualty rate.

The Mathematics of Death

The tactical problem facing Jackson’s platoon was simple and brutal. A massive pillbox dominated their approach, its three-foot-thick concrete walls impervious to grenades and rifle fire. Every time a Marine attempted to move, the Japanese gunners opened up with Type 92 machine guns, which fired 450 rounds per minute. The Marines were pinned—they couldn’t advance, and they couldn’t retreat. Three men had already died trying to flank the position.

Tanks were useless in the steep, narrow coral ridges. Artillery risked hitting the Americans pinned just yards from the bunker. The only solution was for someone to cross 150 yards of open ground, reach the pillbox, and destroy it from close range. The mathematics were suicidal: a man sprinting across that distance would be exposed for at least ten seconds. In that time, a single Japanese machine gun could put 75 bullets into the kill zone. The pillbox had at least two.

Arthur Jackson looked at the open ground, then at his brothers-in-arms bleeding out in the dirt. He didn’t ask for permission. He didn’t coordinate with his sergeant. He simply stood up and ran.

The Seven-Minute Blitz

Jackson carried a 19-pound Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) at his hip, firing full-auto as he sprinted. The goal wasn’t accuracy; it was suppression. He needed the Japanese gunners to duck for the few seconds it would take him to reach their blind spot. Bullets cracked past his head, and coral chips sprayed his face, but he didn’t stop. When his magazine ran dry, he dove behind a boulder, slammed in a fresh one, and kept going.

He reached the “dead zone” beside the main firing slit, where the Japanese guns couldn’t reach him. Armed with white phosphorus grenades, which burn at 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, Jackson began his work. He shoved the phosphorus through the slit. The effect was immediate and horrific—Japanese soldiers stumbled out of the bunker with their uniforms ablaze, only to be cut down by Jackson’s BAR.

To finish the job, Jackson utilized 40 pounds of plastic explosives brought up by a fellow Marine who had followed his charge. He shoved the massive charge into the bunker and dove for cover. The resulting explosion lifted the concrete structure off its foundation, sending debris 60 feet into the air. Thirty-five Japanese soldiers were dead in an instant.

But Jackson wasn’t done. Instead of returning to the safety of his lines, he looked toward the next pillbox.

Breaking the Line

Over the next 90 minutes, Jackson embarked on a systematic campaign of destruction that defied every law of probability. Using the jagged coral ridges as natural channels of cover, he moved from one position to the next. He developed a lethal rhythm: find the blind spot, close the distance, and neutralize the threat.

At the second bunker, he discovered a ventilation shaft on the roof—a small four-inch opening designed to clear smoke. He shoved his BAR muzzle into the hole and emptied a full magazine into the room below. Two pillboxes down, ten to go.

He attacked the third and fourth positions by identifying a narrow eight-foot corridor where neither bunker’s guns could reach. He sprinted the gap and cleared both with grenades and BAR fire. By now, he had killed 55 enemy soldiers. His weapon was overheating so badly it burned his hands through the wooden foregrip, and his ammunition was nearly gone.

The Counterattack

The Japanese high command on the island, realizing their southern perimeter was being dismantled by a single man, launched a counterattack of 40 reserve soldiers. Jackson, now wounded by a bullet that had grazed his thigh, was scavenging ammunition from the dead. He had hand-loaded individual rounds into his empty BAR magazines when the 40-man force emerged from a tunnel.

Jackson braced his weapon against a coral outcrop and fired in controlled five-round bursts. He was down to his last few bullets when a Marine rifle squad, inspired by his actions, finally broke through the gaps he had created. Caught in a devastating crossfire, the Japanese counterattack force was annihilated in less than three minutes.

Jackson, bleeding through a makeshift bandage on his leg, pushed on to the final triangle of bunkers. In a final four-minute flurry, he destroyed the remaining three positions, using his last two grenades to clear the 12th pillbox.

The Hero of Peleliu

In roughly 90 minutes, Arthur Jackson had destroyed 12 pillboxes and killed 50 Japanese soldiers. He had single-handedly broken the backbone of the Japanese southern defense.

Three days later, Jackson was back in the line, fighting despite his wound. His name quickly moved up the chain of command, eventually reaching Admiral Chester Nimitz and President Harry Truman. On October 5, 1945, a 20-year-old Jackson stood in the White House as the President placed the Medal of Honor around his neck. Truman told him, “I’d rather have this medal than be President.”

The Silent Years and the Cuban Incident

Arthur Jackson returned to Oregon, where he lived a quiet life as a mail carrier. He rarely spoke of the war, and his neighbors had no idea a Medal of Honor sat in his closet. He remained in the Army Reserve, eventually rising to the rank of Captain.

However, his military career took a mysterious turn in 1961 while he was stationed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. During a violent confrontation with a Cuban worker suspected of espionage, Jackson shot and killed the man in self-defense. In the hyper-tense atmosphere of the Cold War, the incident was buried by the military. Jackson requested a court-martial to clear his name, but it was denied. He left active service in 1962, a hero haunted by a shadow he wasn’t allowed to explain.

A Legacy Preserved

Jackson spent his later years in Idaho, finally opening up about his experiences to veterans’ groups and schools. In 2011, he visited the USS Peleliu, the massive amphibious assault ship named after the battle that defined his life. He presented the crew with his Medal of Honor flag, which now hangs in the ship’s Hall of Heroes.

Arthur Jackson passed away on June 14, 2017, at the age of 92. He was the last surviving Medal of Honor recipient from the Battle of Peleliu. Fifty Japanese soldiers had tried to stop him on that coral ridge in 1944. They all died. The nineteen-year-old Marine who refused to stay pinned down lived another 73 years, a living testament to the fact that sometimes, one man’s courage is enough to change the course of history.