Word: kuriles
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...forging a close-in nutcracker to splinter the hard shell of Jap defenses. While his Fifth Fleet under Admiral Raymond A. Spruance (only "a portion" of his Pacific force, as Nimitz thoughtfully pointed out) battered a way toward Japan from the south, another "portion" swept down the northerly Kuril Island chain last week and bombarded Matsuwa, 1,075 miles from Tokyo...
...most Japs were careless. There was a false alert May 24 (when U.S. flyers apparently extended a flight over the Kuril Islands). Lazy inhabitants suddenly discovered that their many safety trenches, dug along Tokyo's streets, were waterlogged. Said the Tokyo press next day: "It was high time that sirens sounded again, because the majority of Tokyo's population had become indifferent to air danger and had neglected preparations. . . . Some of our citizens still seem to have rather thick skins. Let them wait until . . . they have to crawl on their bellies in water-filled trenches; they...
...never be sure. Against the crushing sea power being built up against him, he must try to be ready at any point on his long line. A U.S. surface task force impudently rammed that fact home last week by slipping in to bombard the Paramushiro naval base in the Kuril Islands, northernmost of the island chain the Japs consider their home territory...
...Eyes fixed hardest on the Marshalls, Tokyo looked nervously around her whole Pacific frontier. Simultaneously with the Marshalls attack bombers struck at Wake 750 miles to the north and on the edge of the Jap's mid-Pacific system. Navy bombers had struck twice at Paramushiro in the Kuril Islands. In New Guinea, U.S. and Australian troops were closing a trap around one Jap force while bombers at tacked the coastal base of Madang. U.S. troops on New Britain had widened their beachhead and Douglas MacArthur's planes steadily attacked the Admiralty Islands, through which Japan...
Tokyo announced that Jap labor battalions were beaverishly building new air strips in the Kuril Islands, a road which would "figuratively speaking, lead to the attack on America." But the road was fast becoming a one-way street to Japan...