Word: guam
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Farther west, at Guam, the part-Marine, part-Navy garrison had been subdued by the Japanese. Guam, long denied the sinews of defense by a strangely bemused Congress, could have met no other fate. It was almost under the guns of the Japanese fortified island of Rota 70 miles to the north. But east of Wake, on Midway, Marines also stood fast. Quartered on an island group that is a Pacific paradise beside Wake, they sent out no news beyond the fact that they were still hanging...
...power from effecting a junction. If, with the help of the Army, he could break off the rungs by which the U.S. Navy has to climb over the shoulder of the Pacific to Singapore, his job would be much easier. Therefore the attacks on Pearl Harbor, Wake, Midway and Guam were important; but the penultimate rung, the Philippine Islands, was most vital to his cause...
...Admiral Kimmel had been struck with war's most effective weapon: surprise. His whole mission had been vitally changed. He needed to re-establish the lifeline between the U.S. mainland and Admiral Thomas C. ("Tommy'') Hart's Asiatic Fleet along the line Honolulu-Midway-Wake-Guam-Manila. But for the moment his mission was mainly defensive. It was almost as thoroughly defensive as the mission of Lieut. General Walter C. Short, commander of Honolulu's Army defenses, who also fell victim to surprise, but who could probably blame it on the extraordinary inadequacy...
...lifeline ran through perilous territory. At Guam it passed through the heart of the Japanese Mandated Islands, fortified and fitted with plane-and-light-craft bases beyond the eyes of prying U.S. agents. Through its length the lifeline was vulnerable, as Navy men well knew, to harassing attacks from Japan...
Japan had taken on a crowd. With astounding success the little man had clipped the big fellow at Pearl Harbor, kicked the shins of a lot of other little fellows like Guam and Wake, stomped toward the rest of the crowd with impassioned, fiery eyes. But the fighters who had been hit were getting up; the rest were waiting with knives out. Japan was going to be busy, perhaps for a long time, certainly in a lot of places. To "Hubby" Kimmel and the Navy, as to 130,000,000 plain U.S. citizens, only one finish was conceivable...