World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF THE PACIFIC: New Jumps

Tokyo Radio last week warned Manila residents to complete their air-raid shelters. Tokyo also announced (at least to the outside world) that Davao, the Philippines’ second city, had been evacuated of civilians in anticipation of American landings. There were no landings at Davao last week, but in two other places the U.S. sprang forward again.

The curtain raiser for this double attack was played over the Philippines. For seven days Admiral William F. (“Bull”) Halsey’s Third Fleet flyers ranged over thousands of square miles of the central and southern Philippines, knocked out 501 of the Jap’s fast-disappearing planes—more even than the 420 wiped out in the Battle of the Philippine Sea last June. As spice for this performance, Halsey’s flyers damaged or sank all of 173 ships ranging from big cargo carriers to light coastal vessels. Then the double blow struck.

Morotai. One attack hit Morotai, a 695-sq.mi. mountainous, jungled island north of the larger island of Halmahera. On Morotai MacArthur’s Sixth Army troops swarmed ashore under cover of heavy air and sea bombardment. Much as at Tarawa, troops had to leave their landing boats at a reef, wade through waist-deep water before they hit the beach.

Apparently no Japs defended the Morotai beaches. Only U.S. casualty: an officer who broke his leg.

At Morotai, where engineers started building an airfield immediately, MacArthur’s greatly augmented force of bombers will be within good striking distance of the Netherlands East Indies. But, attractive as the western view seemed, MacArthur’s eyes were lifted to the northern horizon where the Philippines lie, 300 miles away. Said he: “They are waiting for me there. It has been a long time.”

Palau. The same day that MacArthur struck, and three months to the day after Saipan, Admiral Nimitz’ marines attacked, 500 miles due east of Mindanao. Their target: the Palau Archipelago (five principal islands, 100 smaller ones). Palau was the brightest star (and capital) of Japan’s vast mandated empire. “The spigot of our oil barrel,” the Japs called it, when their ships left port to tap the great oil reserves of the stolen Indies.

There last week Vice Admiral Theodore S. Wilkinson led a great amphibious force, similar to those which had invaded the Gilberts, the Marshalls, the Marianas.

Peleliu Island and its 8,000 Japs (of the 40,000 in the Palaus) were the first target. The island’s twelve square miles had been rocked six times in eight days by swarms of Army and Navy bombers. Then for three full days warships smothered Peleliu with a hail of steel.

Nevertheless, many of Peleliu’s Japs, waiting in their pillboxes, blockhouses and hillside caves, were still alive and full of fight when Major General William H. Rupertus’ famed ist Marine Division (Guadalcanal, Cape Gloucester) hit the teach last week. TIME Correspondent Robert Martin, lying on the sand between two marines, pinned down by mortar fire, heard one say “I wonder where we are.” Said the other “It sure as hell ain’t Staten Island.”

Three times the Japs counterattacked with their inferior tanks, were thrice thrown back. Peleliu’s airfield, best of the five in the Palaus, fell to the determined marines the second day. After three days 5,495 dead Japs were counted. Peleliu was doomed but, like all dug-in Jap positions, it would not come cheap.

Two days after the assault on Peleliu Admiral Wilkinson made his second move. He gave Major General Paul J. Mueller’s 81st (“Wildcat”) Army Division its baptism of fire by sending it ashore on southernmost, phosphate-producing Angaur Island, six miles south of Peleliu. Initial resistance was lighter this time.

More to Come. Complete capture of Palau would give the Navy its best frontline anchorage west of Pearl Harbor—far superior to Guam and Saipan 850 miles to the northeast, and one of several big naval bases needed for operations against the Philippines, Formosa or China.

The capture of Peleliu and Angaur alone will not secure the anchorage. That is situated off the northern Palaus: 25-mile-long Babelthuap and Koror (where the capital is located). But, said Admiral Nimitz: “We will have a base from which to cover and support General MacArthur’s Philippine campaign.”