US ‘Pied Piper of Saipan’ dies at 80

US WAR hero Guy Gabaldon, who as an 18-year-old private in the US Marines persuaded up to 1,000 Japanese soldiers to surrender in the Second World War battle for Saipan, has died.

Mr Gabaldon, 80, died of a heart attack at his home in Old Town, Florida, his son Jeffrey said.

Using an elementary knowledge of Japanese, bribes of cigarettes and sweets, and trickery with tales of encampments surrounded by American troops, the diminutive Mr Gabaldon was able to persuade soldiers to abandon their posts and surrender.

The scheme was so brazen — and so amazingly successful — it won the young marine the Navy Cross, and fame when his story was told on This Is Your Life and the 1960 movie Hell To Eternity.

“My plan, as impossible as it seemed, was to get near a Japanese emplacement, bunker, or cave, and tell them that I had a bunch of marines with me and we were ready to kill them if they did not surrender,” he wrote in his 1990 memoir Saipan: Suicide Island.

“I promised that they would be treated with dignity and that we would make sure that they were taken back to Japan after the war.”

The 5ft 4in marine used piecemeal Japanese he picked up from a childhood friend to earn the trust of the enemy, who believed his story of hundreds of looming troops. In a single day in July 1944, Mr Gabaldon was said to have persuaded about 800 Japanese soldiers to follow him back to the American camp.

His exploits earned him the nickname the ‘Pied Piper of Saipan’.

The private acknowledged his plan was foolish and, had it not been pulled off, could have resulted in a court- martial. His family suspected his initial disobedience — though they say officers later approved — might have kept him from receiving the Medal of Honour.

“My actions prove that God takes care of idiots,” he wrote.

Born March 22, 1926, in Los Angeles, Mr Gabaldon signed up for the service on his 17th birthday and arrived on Saipan on D-Day.

But his military career was cut short after two-and-a- half years by injuries from machine gun fire and he spent the years that followed running a variety of businesses, including a furniture store and an import-export firm, and the unsuccessful pursuit of a California congressional seat in 1964.