Where It Hurts

The heaviest blow of the vast Pacific war struck the Japanese Empire in the week when U.S. air bombardment of the homeland began. U.S. amphibious forces, from what was probably the mightiest naval task group ever assembled, stormed ashore on heavily fortified Saipan. They were only 1,500 miles from Tokyo. Previous landing assaults had been against the outer perimeter of Jap defenses. But this was disaster close to home.

Despite rigorous thought-control by their war lords, Japan's millions could easily see that if a landing could be made at Saipan, it could be made in the Bonins (only 615 miles from Tokyo). What could be done there might be done on the sacred shores of Honshu itself.

Besides, this amphibious campaign--of the made-in-America type by which U.S. forces in two hemispheres have conquered historic handicaps--would win bases for U.S. air fleets. If the Americans' monstrous B-29s could come from western China to Yawata, they could come from Saipan (and, doubtless, Guam) to Yokohama, Nagoya, Osaka, Kobe.

Wide-awake Jap civilians could foresee greater trials. So could the bemedaled staff at Imperial Headquarters. The assault in the Marianas, one of the great strategic blows in the war against Japan, raised new questions for the Japs, even as it created new strategic openings for the U.S.

Nutcrackers I and II. In the Marianas Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander of Pacific Ocean Areas, is forging a close-in nutcracker to splinter the hard shell of Jap defenses. While his Fifth Fleet under Admiral Raymond A. Spruance (only "a portion" of his Pacific force, as Nimitz thoughtfully pointed out) battered a way toward Japan from the south, another "portion" swept down the northerly Kuril Island chain last week and bombarded Matsuwa, 1,075 miles from Tokyo.

As though to underscore the threat, carriers, detached from Spruance's Fifth Fleet, steamed up to the Bonins. Their planes circled over the Port Lloyd anchorage used by Commodore Matthew C. Perry in 1853, then dived to pock the runways of Peel Island (Chichi Jima) which Perry had vainly urged the U.S. to take for a coaling station.

Far to the south, General Douglas Mac-Arthur's forces battled for two more Jap airfields on Biak Island off New Guinea; his planes flew from previously captured Jap fields to blast such strong points as Truk in the Caroline Islands. It appeared that this whole, forbidding 2,000-mile chain had now been definitely bypassed.

MacArthur's drive, aiming toward Japan through the Philippines, is the southern crusher of the wider, more inclusive Nutcracker II.

The Word of an Officer. Nimitz has said that he is going to the coast of China. Although he was not bound by his officer's word to do so, that was still a likely part of the ultimate plan to defeat Jap land power. The glittering strategic openings which appeared this week:

1) Aerial assault, perhaps followed by new amphibious leapfrogs, up the island chains of the Marianas and Bonins toward Japan.

2) The same treatment, down the rocky island chain of the Kurils from the Aleutians.

3) A strike west from the Marianas to Luzon in the northern Philippines, while MacArthur storms Mindanao in the southern Philippines.

4) A strike west-northwest to Formosa (less than 150 miles from the coast of China) by Nimitz, while MacArthur returns to Luzon.

Overwhelming carrier-based air power had canceled out the virtues of the Japs' "unsinkable" (and nonmaneuverable) island carriers; overpowering naval might, from warships to supply, to airport and repair craft, had overcome the enemy of distance. Now the Pacific was a frightful menace to the Jap.

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