To the Victor: the Bases

Three and a half weeks after landing on Saipan, key to the Marianas and the approaches to Tokyo, Marine and Army troops finished the U.S. conquest of the island. Thus ended the bloodiest battle of the Pacific-island offensive: thus was won an air base within 1,500 miles of Tokyo (easy range for B-29 Superfortresses).

Best of all, it was a base which could readily be supplied by sea, unlike those in China to which every drop of gasoline, every ounce of explosive, must be flown in.

If U.S. forces had paid dearly for the 14 1/2-mile-long, 75-square-mile island, its futile defense had cost the Japs infinitely more: 8,914 enemy dead were buried in the first three weeks ; hundreds more were entombed in caves sealed by dynamite or bulldozers; 1,500 more were killed in a final, banzai-yelling counterattack two nights before the end.

Thereafter, what the communique called "elimination of scattered, disorganized remnants" of the enemy's original 20,000 or more troops went on apace. Translated from the Johnsonese of the communique writer, this meant that bearded, dust-caked, dust-choked infantrymen must poke into holes in quarries and caves in jungle-clad hills, shooting, burning or dynamiting the tenacious enemy either out into the open or into a ready-made tomb.

Death in the Night. The Japs, evidently surprised by the ease with which U.S. landing craft, "alligators" and "buffaloes" had surmounted the reefs to land the invaders on the west coast, had shown no sign of having a workable strategic plan for defense of the island. Their air power had been reduced to a handful of planes making night nuisance raids. Their navy had poked out a tentative finger toward the battle, suffered painful burns, and fled. Their losses: 900 planes, at least 58 ships.

All that the Japs had been able to devise had been delaying tactics to take as many U.S. lives as possible. Not until U.S. forces pushed the Japs down the narrow barrel of pistol-shaped Saipan, toward the muzzle (technically, "impacting the defense"), did the enemy react strongly. In an eleven-hour battle from shortly after midnight of July 5 to nearly noon on the 6th, the Japs drove 2,000 yards into the Americans' lines, almost reached the shore of Tanapag Harbor. It was the final, blind, furious attack of a wounded beast. It failed.

Rice with Zest. Early in the campaign, about 7,000 Jap civilians (mostly Okinawas, of mixed Chinese-Japanese extraction, from the Ryukyu Islands) had been captured and lodged in internment camps near Charan Kanoa. There remained at least 15,000 more, hemmed in with the soldiery on the northern peninsula.

U.S. commanders designated a special "escape highway" for them, which would be free from artillery fire, bombarded them instead with leaflets urging them to save their skins.

The result showed that these Jap nationals, at least, had no urge to die for the Emperor. Thousands streamed through the lines, starved, tattered, many of them sick, seeking the relative luxury of Civilian Internment Camp No. 1. Relieved of this obstacle in their path, U.S. troops mopped up faster. Internees had but one complaint : California-grown rice imported especially for them was too polished, too flavorless; they preferred native, unpolished strains.

Toward the Philippines. While the action on Saipan was hottest, General Douglas MacArthur had thrown an amphibious force ashore on lightly defended Noemfoor Island off northwestern New Guinea, followed this with jungle-trained paratroopers to outflank the Japs. In five days the island with its three airfields. 800 miles from Mindanao in the Philippines, was his; 410 Japs were buried, 24 were captured.

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