World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF THE PACIFIC: End in New Georgia

The Japs relinquished another position last week, though not without a fight. After 52 days of stubborn resistance they gave up Bairoko, their last holding on the island of New Georgia.

Some of them tried to escape in barges across Kula Gulf to Vila on Kolombangara Island. PT boats operating in the dark gulf took a heavy toll. The original Jap garrison at Bairoko was estimated at 400 men, probably increased later by troops retreating from Munda, twelve miles south.

In & around Vila this week an unknown number of Japs uneasily awaited the next step. U.S. artillery and aircraft menaced them from New Georgia. They were cut off from their big base on Bougainville by U.S. troops which had skipped around Kolombangara to land at Vella Lavella (TIME, Aug. 30). Unless they could be evacuated by sea under the noses of U.S. naval and air forces, their fate was slow death.

It is not likely that U.S. soldiers will be thrown into an amphibious assault on Vila. Soft, mucky, much-bombed Vila Airfield is of no use to anyone. The Japs there, hemmed in and immobilized, may be left to starve to death. Said a Navy officer: “It may be necessary for us eventually to go in and bury their dead.”