Word: jima
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Thus spoke the civilian Secretary of the Navy, James Vincent Forrestal, to the men of the Navy and the Marines, as he stood aboard the flagship poised for the invasion of Iwo Jima...
...Jima the battle ground forward, slowly, bloodily but steadily. According to Japanese custom, the enemy garrison, now estimated at an original 20,000, was fighting a rear-guard action with no hope of reinforcement or relief...
According to American custom, the battlefield had been isolated. Throughout the bombardment and invasion of Iwo, air strikes from carriers in Admiral Raymond Ames Spruance's Fifth Fleet kept Japanese heads down on Chichi Jima in the Bonins, where a single airstrip had a potential nuisance value. Last week, for the second time, Vice Admiral Marc Andrew Mitscher took the famed fast carrier Task Force 58 into Japanese home waters, and sent off air strikes against airfields around Tokyo. This time coordination with Major General Curtis E. ("Old Ironpants") LeMay's 21st Bomber Command was closer...
Beyond Iwo, the Japanese cannot hope to outguess the attackers. Chichi Jima might eventually be taken as a platform for launching robot bombs against Tokyo (615 miles away). The only thing the Japs can be sure of is that their home islands, soon to be mapped in detail by U.S. photo-interpreters, are the eventual objective. They cannot be sure whether the assault troops will come direct, or by way of the Kurils, Ryukyus, China or Korea. They cannot be strong at every point of possible attack. They can either spread their forces thin or concentrate them at the likeliest...
...their drama, the air strikes on Tokyo were incidental. They were designed to isolate the battlefield, to pin the Japs' home-based aircraft to the ground, while more Navy plans unfolded at Iwo Jima-also known as Sulphur Island...