Word: garapan
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...both Crusade pictures,* who freshened up his knowledge of the Pacific theater on a trip to Tokyo for talks with surviving enemy foot soldiers and officers. In one interview, he found that the Japanese ex-officer, with whom he was talking, had directed mortar fire on the town of Garapan, Saipan, where Feldkamp, a World War II Marine Corps combat correspondent had been crouching in a hole ducking the fragments...
...their last charge the Japs smashed into a spot in our front line about five o'clock in the morning. They picked a place along the beach a couple of miles north of Garapan and for a while they may have thought they were getting somewhere as they swept forward, firing and screaming, waving swords, brandishing bayonets on rifles or tied to sticks, and grabbing up carbines from fallen Americans...
...push to Garapan gave Hays & Hepburn special problems. It was so hot that the fluid in their batteries boiled while charging. Their equipment was frequently choked by clouds of coral dust from the roads. But they managed to stay with the foot soldiers, pausing to explain the action, letting the microphone gather the battle noises: wounded groaning, Jap bullets pinging against metal, the sharp splat of mortar shells exploding, the high hum of planes, artillery in the background, and the cries of men giving battle directions...
...their left, the attackers moved on Garapan (see map), the largest town (pop. 10,000) on Saipan, and the capital of the whole Marianas chain. On their right they skirted the shores of Magicienne Bay past Laulau. In the center, struggling yard by bitter yard up the slopes, blasting and burning the Japs out of caves and crannies, they seized Mt. Tapotchau...
...dawn on D-day Saipan looked like a low-lying prehistoric monster whose high, rising spine was Mt. Tapotchau. Already the sugar-mill town of Charan Kanoa was afire or smoking at several points and there was some smoke rising from Garapan from the bombing and shelling of the previous two days. At 5:45 the big guns began-gunfire from 5-inch destroyer to 16-inch battleship shells. Tinian Island, five miles south of Saipan, got its share of shells against artillery emplacements and other targets...
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