Rehearsal for Obliteration?

Tokyo Radio boasted last week that three more Jap admirals had been killed in action. Proud total since Sept. 1: 22. By Tokyo's account, one of last week's casualties, Vice Admiral Nashaharu Arima, crashed his torpedo bomber into a U.S. aircraft carrier. The U.S. Navy acknowledged no such damage.

Why an admiral would be flying a torpedo bomber Tokyo did not even attempt to make clear. But there was a possible explanation in a recent speech by Colonel Kingoro Hashimoto, head of the central headquarters of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association. Cried Colonel Hashimoto: "We must crash into the enemy in suicidal attacks at the front and at home . . . the only thing for us to do is to decide to die, so this burning determination may take the form of firepower in the general war situation."

Many Pacific war observers--especially Marines--believe that by such incomprehensible devotion to self-destruction Japanese military fanatics are building up to a super-Wagnerian climax which might result, if carried to its mad extreme, in the virtual annihilation--self-inflicted or imposed--of one of the nations of mankind. Recent suicides (military and civilian) indicate that the Jap yen for suicide is due less to fear of torture and imprisonment by U.S. captors than to a belief that somehow each death provides "a shield for the Emperor" and "contributes to the inevitable victory."

Some examples of the enemy's fanatical tenacity:

P:Marine pilots flying Corsairs still drew heavy antiaircraft fire from Jaluit, one of the Marshall atolls bypassed and hopelessly isolated in last February's capture of Kwajalein--although Jaluit is one of the most thoroughly bombed spots on earth.

P:Navy Lieut. Eugene Sanford, ex-policeman from Evanston, Ill., was riding in a launch off Saipan when he saw a big PB2Y flying boat sinking. Japs who had been hiding in Saipan's caves for three months had swum out to the plane and blown a hole in it with a hand grenade. Lieut. Sanford killed the Japs with a Tommy gun--a fate which they must have known was inevitable.

P:Marines digging into Peleliu's blockhouses found a board inscribed in Japanese: "Defense to the death! We will build a barrier across the Pacific with our bodies."

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