How to Get to Heaven

The war with Japan had entered its second phase. Every one of the Japanese occupied lands, from Malaya to the Solomons, was still a threat of a new Japanese offensive. But every one was also a place to be attacked, and therefore to be defended--a sponge sucking at Japan's limited total of men, ships and planes. The prospect that seemed empty and wishful when the Japs were advancing was now a reality. The Japs were now the defenders, and they had to choose places to let go by default--as perhaps they did last week in China (see p. 33)--or to defend all.

They might risk a final smash at Alaska, at the northwestern U.S., at Australia, India or Soviet Asia. But they could no longer nurse any one or all of these plans with the freedom of aggressors; they now had to allow for Allied attacks everywhere in the Pacific.

> Marines were still killing Japs in the Solomons (see col. 1) when a smaller Marine detachment raided tiny Makin Island, 1,250 miles northeast of Tulagi. Under tall, battle-hardened Lieut. Colonel Evans F. Carlson and his second-in-command, Major James Roosevelt, they killed at least 80 Japs, destroyed two seaplanes and a radio station, looked on while Jap bombers from a nearby island pounded what was left of their own men and installations. Then the Marines retired.

> Roving U.S. submarines returned to their bases with word that they had sunk two Japanese merchantmen and a transport in mid-Pacific and a big Japanese merchantman off the occupied Aleutians. The U.S. submarine score to date: 60 Jap merchantmen and naval ships sunk, 31 probably damaged.

North from Tulagi lie Jap bases which the U.S. and Australian forces will need soon to clean out: all the airdromes, troop centers and anchorages in the upper Solomons, within easy range of the Marines' southern toehold. The job even then would not be finished. For the Japs' great concentration point at Rabaul in New Britain would still be dangerously close--660 miles from Tulagi, 200 from Bougainville. The Japs would even then still be in upper New Guinea, a scant 350 miles from Rabaul. Above Port Moresby last week, an Australian force (with some U.S. troops) was slowly retreating, and soon the Japs may be in lower New Guinea, all too near (375 miles) to Australia itself. Until this entire corner of the Japs' Pacific empire is taken, the holding of any one point cannot be a decisive advantage to the U.S.

"Bits of Heaven," a U.S. traveler in 1936 called a pregnant nest of Pacific islets which the U.S. sooner or later must take or neutralize. The islands: the Truk group (see map) in Japan's mandated Carolines.

Truk is the Japs' Pearl Harbor. Here, by post-War I donation, they have one of the finest harbors in the Pacific. Here, ringed by protecting reefs, they have one of the hardest-to-get-at naval and air bases in the world.

The mandated Marshalls, 1,200 miles eastward toward Hawaii, protect Truk on one side. The rest of the Carolines surround the Truk group itself: many & many a tiny island like Makin may offer no real protection, but does insure the Japs of ample warning of assault upon Truk.

When the U.S. is able to occupy some of the outlying islands, Truk undoubtedly will be subjected to air assault. Naval and land assault is another matter. The Navy may prefer to move against the upper Solomons, New Britain and New Guinea to the southwest, against Makin and other Gilbert Islands in the southeast, and thus finally to immobilize Truk and bottle the Japs within their bits of heaven.

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