Word: coconut
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Leyte, Major General Andrew Bruce's 77th Division caught the Japs so far off balance that, before they recovered their poise, the 77th had penetrated Ormoc. But there the Japs stood, and stood fast. Most of last week the 77th used its artillery to blast a group of coconut log and concrete blockhouses 600 yards north of Ormoc on the road to Valencia. The Japs still had artillery and mortars, still had enough infantrymen to make three desperate counterattacks...
...position, which G.I.s dubbed Coconut Grove, was reduced to ruins, and the ruins were sticky with Japanese dead. The measure of the enemy's desperation was in his tactics: one sortie was made by advancing so close to U.S. lines that the artillery range could not be shortened for fear of hitting U.S. troops. That enemy drive was stopped by machine guns, and the enemy dead that day were estimated at 500. But no position constructed like Coconut Grove could withstand the artillery pounding indefinitely, and at week's end it was mopped up. The 77th swiftly pushed...
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...
Some guests stayed for coffee, chocolate, coconut layer cake. Eleanor Roosevelt lighted a fire in the library's huge marble fireplace...
...Japs made efforts (sometimes successful) to keep relations good. They gave natives the same medical treatment they gave their own men, established first-aid stations for bomb victims, paid for coconut trees they destroyed. And Jap enlisted men were prohibited from entering native homes. Said one Guam native: "High Jap officers would come in and eat with us. I liked Jap equality better. The Americans made us feel as if we were inferior...