Strong Men Armed

and Mili.

Admiral Nimitz chose Kwajalein.

He chose it because by knifing right into the heart of the Marshalls he would bypass all those Japanese outposts on the eastern atolls, and he would make Kobayashi’s work there useless. The neutralizing of the bulk of 28,000 troops stationed in the Marshalls could speed up the war by opening both the Central Pacific and Southwest Pacific fronts.

More, Kwajalein Atoll was lightly defended, it had airfields, and its lagoon was the largest in the world. It was 65 miles in length and 18 miles in width within an atoll chain forming a shape best described as a flattened pyramid canted on its right-hand base. Its terminals were Ebadon Islet on the west, the twin islets of Roi-Namur about 40 miles to the east, and then Kwajalein Islet about 45 miles south of Roi-Namur and a bit to the east.

Nimitz was concerned only with Kwajalein Islet in the south, where a bomber field was under construction, and Roi-Namur in the north, where there was an excellent air base.

But Nimitz’ commanders—Admirals Raymond Spruance and Kelly Turner, General Howlin’ Mad Smith—were concerned about the risks of an operation against Kwajalein.

It could be taken, but afterwards the vast Pacific Fleet which had brought the assault forces to Kwajalein was going to be turned over to Admiral Halsey to cover General MacArthur’s proposed landing on New Ireland in the Southwest Pacific. The fleet’s withdrawal would leave the men on Kwajalein alone and at the mercy of a ring of hostile airfields, especially Eniwetok with its lines running directly back to Japan. Neither Spruance nor Turner nor Smith wanted to take on Kwajalein without first nailing down some or all of those airfield atolls in the east.

It was then that Admiral Nimitz took a long look at Majuro Atoll nestling almost exactly in the center of that quartet of outer bastions. It was then that Captain Jim Jones took his Recon Boys up to Majuro by destroyer while the greatest invasion fleet yet assembled waited for word of what he found there.

25

Mr. Michael Madison said, “Perhaps you gentlemen would like a drink?” and the Recon Boys of Captain James Logan Jones blinked and wondered if they were back on Apamama.

Though they were not—though they were on Majuro Atoll in the Marshall Islands—it was certainly true that one of this tall half-caste’s daughters had just shinnied up a coconut tree and had slid back down grasping a blue saki bottle filled with palm toddy. Now she was going up again for more and it looked like Majuro might be better than Apamama.

It was not this for which Lieutenant Harvey Weeks had led a platoon ashore on Majuro’s Calalin Islet, for which Lieutenant Leo Shinn had led the point of the platoon in its reconnaissance across the islet. They had come as the scouts of the big invasion force which was to arrive nine hours later. They had left Captain Jones back aboard their destroyer, inflated their rubber boats and passed through the same ordeal of confusion, surf and wind which had nearly swamped them off Apamama. They had talked to the Micronesians and found that there was only a Japanese warrant officer left on the island. That had been on the night of January 30.

Now it was the dawn of January 31 and here was Mr. Michael Madison offering glasses and palm toddy. Actually it was a moment worthy of celebration. The landing on Calalin at eleven o’clock the preceding night represented the first American invasion of soil which Japan had held prior to World War Two, and that “invasion” was made a “conquest” a little later when a Warrant Officer Nagata was surprised and captured.

Nagata said that the 300 to 400 Japanese who once garrisoned the island had been evacuated long ago. This piece of good news was relayed to Captain Jones. After some delays, Jones was able to message Admiral Hill to call off the bombardment of Majuro which had already begun. Luckily only a few shells had fallen, and most of Majuro’s valuable installations were unharmed. The 2nd Battalion, 106th Infantry, of the Army’s 27th Division could now come ashore unopposed, the work on the first of several airstrips could commence, Majuro Lagoon could be made into an anchorage—and Admiral Chester Nimitz could go ahead with the Marshall Islands conquest which had depended so much on the seizure of Majuro.

26

To bombard Kwajalein Atoll and transport the troops there, Admiral Turner had an enormous fleet of nearly 300 ships, including one big and ten smaller aircraft carriers and seven old battleships.

To make the assault on Kwajalein Islet in the south and Roi-Namur in the north, Major General Howlin’ Mad Smith, the expeditionary troops commander, had two full divisions and a brigade. Of this force, Smith would use the Army’s 7th Infantry Division against the southern islet and the Fourth Marine Division against Roi-Namur. The brigade, consisting of the orphan Twenty-second Marine Regiment and the remaining two battalions of the 106th Infantry, would be in floating reserve.

It was an overwhelming force, something like 40,000 troops going against Kwajalein Atoll’s 8,000 defenders, or whatever number survived the preinvasion bombardment and shelling which was to outdo anything attempted before. The Navy gunfire people had learned from Tarawa that pillboxes could only be knocked out with direct hits from big shells or big bombs, and that these missiles must be armor-piercing. Old battleships such as Maryland, Colorado, Tennessee, New Mexico, Idaho, Mississippi and Pennsylvania had been found to be ideal for bombardment. They had been schooled in it, had learned how to knock out beach installations with patient, pinpointed fire directed by the Joint Assault Signal Companies (JASCO) whose mission was to put ashore spotters trained in calling down naval gunfire. It had also been learned that neither shells nor bombs will destroy underwater beach defenses. This had to be done by hand, by sailors who volunteered to swim into enemy beaches under covering gunfire and there to explode antiamtrack obstacles or to disarm underwater mines. They formed the Underwater Demolition Teams, and these too would be used for the first time at Kwajalein.

Impressive, too, was the massive preliminary bombing of December-January, during which land-based planes on Makin, Tarawa and Apamama dropped 1,677 tons of explosives on Kwajalein, Wotje, Maloelap, Mili and Jaluit. Carrier-based planes also hit these and other atolls with multiplying fury, sinking ships and damaging cruisers, knocking down planes and destroying them on the ground. Seventh Air Force high-altitude bombing added to the misery of the Marshalls. Then came 6,919 tons of naval shells fired against Marshalls targets for three days preceding and during the invasion. Already, as the American armada separated into Northern and Southern Attack Forces, the bombardment had killed Vice Admiral Michiyuki Yamada on Namur. Already a radioman on Roi-Namur had made this notation in his diary: “Convoy left Pearl Harbor on January 22 to attack us.”

A convoy had left Pearl Harbor on that date and it was the Northern Force headed for Roi-Namur. It carried the men of the Fourth Marine Division.

They had sailed from San Diego in California and had paused but a day in Lahaina Roads while their officers went ashore to confer with naval officers. Then they moved on, learning, a few days out of Hawaii, that they were sailing straight from the States to the battleground. Their zigzag course between San Diego and Roi-Namur Islets covered considerably more than the 5,000-mile beeline lying between these points and they began to boast of it; being a brand-new outfit, the Fourth was desperate for things to boast about. They hadn’t much, other than that among their ranks were the sons of five Marine generals—including Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vandegrift, Jr.— and that a private first class named Stephen Hopkins was also the son of Harry Hopkins, the right-hand man of President Roosevelt. Of course, Lieutenant Colonel Evans Carlson of Raider fame was on the division staff, and this was another desperate distinction.

But combat honors? No. Tradition, no. Even the Third Marine Division had a regiment able to claim descent from the Third Marines of World War One. Not so the Fourth. All their outfits were brand-new, born of the Marine Corps’ expansion from a 50,000-man prewar force to one now approaching half a million. The Fourth’s regiments had double-digit numbers that made them sound like Army outnts—the Twenty-third, Twenty-fourth, and Twenty- fifth Marines, the Fourteenth Marine Artillery, the Twentieth Marine Engineers. The Fourth Division was not nearly