Word: corale
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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...
They are strung in a double chain: the Radak, or Sunrise, group on the east; the Ralik, or Sunset, group on the west. They are run-of-the-Pacific, tropical atolls: low, narrow coral formations studded with is lets, enclosing calm lagoons where volcanic cones may once have jutted (see map, p. 26). Twenty years ago, when the Japs settled down to prepare for World War II, the islands had a population of 10,000 Kanakas, lazygoing, brown-skinned Micronesian fishermen and boatmen...
...Marshalls, probably the next step on the long, coral road to Tokyo through the mid-Pacific, got some stiff but preliminary pokes last week...
These armed LVTs (Landing Vehicles, Tracked) proved themselves in the reef-guarded Gilberts. Other landing craft were halted by the coral rings around the islands. The Alligators (originally developed by Donald Roebling for hurricane rescue work in Florida swamps) kept going, climbed over the barriers, crawled up on the beaches, ranged inland. Their tanklike, clanking steel treads worked...
...clean wind blew from the Pacific, rippled the Stars & Stripes and the Union Jack flying side by side over the battered Gilberts. By virtue of a bloody conquest, the U.S. Navy had assumed military control over the 16 coral atolls. By virtue of a 49-year rule (1892-1941), broken briefly by the Japs, the British Colonial Office reassumed civil control...