Power Shift

The change had been reluctant, gradual and unpublicized, but by last week the fact was indisputable: the U.S. was pulling most of its weight out of the Pacific and shifting to the Atlantic. The great Pacific battleground, which had once been dotted with Army & Navy bases, crisscrossed with the wakes and aircraft courses of the mightiest fighting fleet in history, had become a lightly patrolled frontier. Behind a defense line running through the Marianas to Okinawa, Japan and Alaska, the U.S. had retreated to its own West Coast.

Strategy and hard necessity had dictated the shift. The greater threat to the postwar world lay across the Atlantic, a fact recognized by the North Atlantic pact. Under a peacetime budget, the U.S. could no longer maintain overwhelming defenses in both oceans at once.

Last week the changeover was in full swing. Marine air groups at Tsingtao, Guam and Ewa (outside Pearl Harbor) had been pulled back to the mainland; naval air headquarters was moving to San Diego and closing down four of its five air stations on Oahu. The Air Force was preparing to send its 81st Fighter Wing back to the West Coast, leaving Pearl Harbor's air defense to Hawaii's Air National Guard and its 25 overage F47 Thunderbolts. The Army had cut its garrison forces from 9,000 men to 6,900. By summer, the onetime bastion of the Pacific would be little more than a training base.

Of the seven other Pacific bases which the Navy had asked to retain at war's end, only Guam-Saipan was still active, and Guam's personnel had been halved. Adak, Leyte, Manus and Iwo had been abandoned or left in housekeeping status: Kodiak had become a minor base. Pacific fleet strength had also been sharply cut back. Three carriers and six cruisers were headed for mothballs, leaving only a handful of combat ships to guard the supply lines to the occupation forces in Japan.

The Navy's big bases now were in Norfolk and Guantanamo.

Even with its reduced strength, the Pacific fleet should be able to handle any threat directed against the U.S. itself. But U.S. allies in the western Pacific were understandably reluctant to lose the morale effect of U.S. forces on the spot. And Navy men were as sad as if they were leaving an old friend. For 27 years, the Pacific had been the Navy's ocean. They would miss its warm waters and its good weather. Said one admiral wistfully: "The Atlantic is a hard, cruel ocean."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.