Short History of World War II - James L. Stokesbury [184]
Yet the deed was done; the great battle fought and won—or lost. In Tokyo the Tojo cabinet resigned. At sea, the empty Japanese carriers fleeing northward would never be a threat again. From now on, they came out to sea at their own risk, to serve as decoys and targets. The Imperial Fleet would definitely try again, for the Japanese preferred death to ignominious surrender. But after the Marianas Turkey Shoot it would never again be a major threat.
The Pacific is the greatest ocean in the world, and the flow of ships, men, and matériel was ever westward: 2,500 miles from San Francisco to Pearl, 2,000 miles from Pearl to Tarawa, 500 from there to Kwajalein, 1,200 more to Saipan. From there, 1,200 to the Philippines, or 1,200 to Tokyo. The endless Pacific rollers washed the beaches clean of the debris of death and battle. As the Marines and infantry flowed on to another island and yet another, the great supply depots built up behind them. For every man who was shot at in this war dozens toiled behind the front, hauling crates, shuffling papers, drinking beer, fighting boredom. Foolish mistakes cost millions of dollars. The earliest shipments of sugar to the southwest Pacific went out in paper bags. They rotted and disintegrated in the first tropic rainstorm; bulldozers created islands in the swamps made of huge mounds of sugar, and on top of those islands later, better-packaged stores were piled. Still the goods and the men spewed out of the American West Coast ports; it was a war in which technical expertise counted for much, and where the Japanese labored for months with picks and shovels and wheelbarrows, the Americans made airstrips in hours and days with bulldozers, steam shovels, and huge earth-movers. The material flood reached out to the islands, to New Zealand, to Australia. And at the business end of the machine, old men of eighteen and nineteen turned their faces to the north, to the Philippines, to Japan, to the only way home again.
From Saipan the Marines went to Tinian, within artillery range. Every gun on Saipan was lined up hub to hub, and together with the fleet, pounded away at the Japanese garrison. Yet still they fought. The Americans declared the island secured on August 1; it took three more months of deadly hide and seek to ferret out and kill the last of the defenders from the caves on the southern end of the island.
Guam was next—American before the war, now held and fortified by 19,000 Japanese. It took three weeks of heavy fighting by army and Marines to secure the island, but some of the garrison got into the hills and did not surrender until long after the war officially ended. With the capture of Guam the Marianas were secure, and the Carolines and Truk, well bypassed. The American high command was definitely looking forward to the Philippines now, and Admiral Nimitz decided the next move was to be to the western Carolines and to the Palau Islands. Spruance and the rest of the central Pacific leaders went off to new commands, and Halsey took over 5th Fleet, which became 3rd Fleet in the transformation. Task Force 58 therefore became Task Force 38, with Mitscher still running it. The next target was Peleliu.
Peleliu is a small island two miles wide and six long. Its highest point is a hill officially named Urumbrogol Mountain, later changed by the troops to Bloody Nose Ridge. It was garrisoned by 10,000 Japanese dug into a honeycomb web of connecting caves and bunkers. The conquest of the island followed the same pattern as all the others, with one notable