Word: angaur
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Dates: during 1944-1944
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When the Japs were masters of Angaur, in the Palau Islands, they tied noncooperative natives to trees and bashed in their heads with coconut-palm logs. This put a quietus on native dancing, which the Japanese considered a heathenish practice...
Battlefronts Writer John Walker is a veteran of the war in Europe (he was one of the last correspondents to escape from Warsaw before the Nazis goose-stepped in) but he got his Pacific baptism by fire when our troops swarmed ashore at Angaur...
After nearly four weeks the Japs still held out on Peleliu's Bloody Nose Ridge, and in a small pocket on nearby Angaur Island. Already on Peleliu 11,083 Japs had been killed, 214 captured; on Angaur 1,150 were dead and eleven were prisoners...
...hillside caves and mangrove swamps had not come cheap. The marines killed more than 8,000 Japs but lost 981 in killed and missing (against Tarawa's 984), had 3,639 wounded (against Tarawa's 2,072). Percentagewise, the 81st Infantry Division's losses on Angaur were higher. In killing 1,075 Japs, the soldiers had 880 casualties: 106 dead, five missing, 769 wounded...
Palou's Significance. Plainly, meeting entrenched Japs was an operation expensive in human lives, which are highly regarded in the U.S. if not in Japan. Wherever possible, U.S. strategy has been to by-pass Jap defenses. From air bases on Angaur, Peleliu and Ngesebus, the U.S. can now neutralize not only the 25,000 Japs on Babelthuap, Koror and the other northern Palaus, but also an estimated 100,000 others on once-mighty Truk, Ponape and other Caroline islands...