Word: coconut
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Guinea. General MacArthur's men (Sixth Army veterans of Buna) had landed at Saidor on the northern New Guinea coast, found scant opposition, lost three men dead, buried eleven Japs, seized the settlement's grass huts, coconut groves, rubber plantations (the first recovered from the Japs), an unused air strip. Then they fanned out, trapping Jap patrols who were skirmishing with Australians some 60 miles down the coast. With an Australian column poised inland in the Ramu Valley, they set up a two-pronged threat to Madang, the next important Jap base northwest of Finsch-haven...
Prize: An Airfield. From their beachheads the Marines plunged along jungle trails to the main Jap positions. At Cape Gloucester the Japs had hacked a pattern of runways through the coconut groves, had built a staging point for barges bound from Rabaul, on New Britain's northeast tip, to outposts in northern New Guinea...
Through Arawe's coconut groves the Japs had cut a runway now unused and overgrown by tropical bush. Arawe's harbor served as a barge-staging point for supplies to Jap centers on New Britain's south coast. In American hands Arawe would sever one enemy line of communication, would provide a jumping-off place for the next Allied amphibious advance. Most important, it would turn an idle airstrip into a forward base against Rabaul...
Atolls of War. The Marshalls group has more than twice as many atolls (33) as the Gilberts (16), but in total land area they are slightly smaller. Their 160 sq. mi. (half as large as New York City) of sand, coral and coconut palm are scattered over 150,000 sq. mi. (as large as Montana) of blue water...
...these key atolls, and perhaps to others, the Japs have been hauling tons of cement and steel. As at Tarawa, they have fashioned pillboxes of coconut logs, concrete, metal and many feet of sand. Under palm trees are coastal batteries...