“The Deadly Dentist: Mocked for His Medical Degree—Until He Held an Entire Island Alone Against 98 Soldiers”

At 5:47 a.m. on July 7, 1944, on the blood-soaked island of Saipan, the traditional rules of war evaporated. Captain Benjamin Salomon, a dentist by training, was no longer looking at X-rays or filling cavities. He was dragging a 93-pound, .30-caliber M1917 Browning machine gun through a literal carpet of human remains. The corpses of the enemy had piled so high in front of his tripod that he could no longer see the next wave of the 5,000 Japanese soldiers charging his position.

This is the story of “Doc Hollywood,” the Beverly Hills dentist who became a one-man army and earned a place in the pantheon of America’s greatest heroes.

The Soldier in the White Coat

Ben Salomon was never a “typical” dentist. Born in Milwaukee to Jewish immigrants, he was an Eagle Scout who possessed an iron constitution and a natural gift for marksmanship. Though he built a thriving practice in Beverly Hills, cleaning the teeth of aspiring Hollywood stars, the shadow of the Nazi advance in Europe haunted him.

When he was drafted in 1940, the Army tried to pigeonhole him into the Dental Corps. Salomon fought it. He wanted the infantry. He outshot every man in his regiment and was named the “best all-around soldier” in his unit. Despite rising to the rank of Sergeant in a machine gun section, the Army eventually forced a commission on him: First Lieutenant, Dental Corps.

For two years, he was a “desk jockey” in Hawaii, filling cavities. But Ben didn’t spend his afternoons at the beach. Every day after his dental shift, he joined the infantry in the mud, running obstacle courses and winning regimental competitions. He was a dentist by title, but an elite infantryman by choice.

Saipan: The Aid Station in Hell

In June 1944, Salomon finally reached the front lines of Saipan. When the 2nd Battalion surgeon was wounded, Salomon stepped up. His aid station was a flimsy tent just 30 yards from the shoreline and 50 yards behind the forward foxholes.

On the night of July 6th, the Japanese high command issued a final, desperate order: Gyokusai—the “shattering of the jewel.” Every soldier able to walk was to charge the American lines. Their goal was simple: kill ten Americans for every one Japanese life.

At 4:45 a.m. on July 7th, the largest Banzai charge of the Pacific War erupted.

The One-Man Stand

As the American perimeter disintegrated, Japanese soldiers burst into Salomon’s medical tent. Salomon didn’t hesitate:

He shot a soldier who was about to bayonet a wounded American.

He clubbed two more with his rifle and used a knife to dispatch a third.

When four more crawled under the tent walls, he kicked, stabbed, and headbutted his way through them.

Realizing his patients were about to be slaughtered, Salomon ordered the medics to evacuate the 30 wounded men. “I’ll hold them off,” he commanded.

He ran to a nearby machine gun position where the entire crew lay dead. Salomon took the handles of the M1917 Browning and began to fire.

98 to 1

The battle raged for 15 hours. When American forces finally retook the position the next day, they found a scene that defied human imagination. Ben Salomon’s body was slumped over the machine gun. In front of him were 98 dead Japanese soldiers.

The evidence of his struggle was written in the sand:

He had repositioned the heavy gun four different times because the piles of dead bodies were blocking his line of sight.

His body was riddled with 76 bullet wounds and over 20 bayonet stabs.

A medical examiner concluded that at least 24 of those wounds were inflicted while he was still alive and firing.

The 58-Year Wait for Justice

Despite the overwhelming evidence of his valor, Salomon was initially denied the Medal of Honor. A general cited a technicality: as a medical officer wearing a Red Cross brassard, he was forbidden by the Geneva Convention from bearing arms. The bureaucracy ignored the fact that he was defending patients from an enemy that had already violated the convention by attacking an aid station.

It wasn’t until 2002—58 years after his death—that President George W. Bush finally presented the Medal of Honor to the USC School of Dentistry in Ben’s name.