Pacific Compromise

Two days after the Third Fleet unlimbered its mightiest guns against Hitachi (see above), Marianas-based 6-295 dropped hundreds of tons of fire bombs on the same city (industrial area: three square miles). To the layman this might have looked like coordination between Navy and Air. Not so. The airmen frankly admitted that they had not even waited for the Navy's damage reports: Hitachi had long been on their list of targets and they had bombed it regardless of what Halsey's guns might have done.

This was a result of the divided command system (TIME, July 23) in the Pacific. The example was perhaps not very significant; the command setup was new.

But on its most localized testing ground--the great Okinawa base--there was evidence of inherent confusion. Into its 485 square miles were packed many thousands of men with many bosses: MacArthur had his ground forces, Nimitz his shore establishments and Spaatz was setting up his B-29 housekeeping command. In addition, both MacArthur and Nimitz had their own air commands.

Until last month, when all Army forces (except the Washington-directed strategic bombers) were turned over to MacArthur and all the Navy to Nimitz, the mixed forces on each island were under a theater commander--e.g., Nimitz had the Seventh Air Force and several infantry divisions, MacArthur the Seventh Fleet and some Marine flyers.

Now, not only was there no overall operational direction, as Eisenhower had in Europe; apparently there was nobody (below the Joint Chief of Staff in Washington) to decide which targets would be attacked by which forces based on the single island of Okinawa. Fighting men wondered how the Pacific compromise would work.

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