Word: palau
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Liberators and PBYs from General MacArthur's command struck repeatedly at Davao, capital of Mindanao. U.S. carriers, of which more than 50 now roam the Pacific, hammered Halmahera, the Jap island stronghold which MacArthur bypassed in occupying Morotai. Still other carrier planes ranged 325 miles behind Palau to strike the Jap base...
...this place and hour of defeat we know that this campaign has tacked six months on to the U.S. war against Japan. They raided us at this base last night and we dozed in slit trenches. Somebody mentioned the fact that today the Navy landed in Palau. A captain stopped to chat with me this morning. I asked him whether he'd heard the news about Palau. "Palau is swell." he said, "But, God, they've got to hurry - they've got to hurry...
...Palau. The same day that MacArthur struck, and three months to the day after Saipan, Admiral Nimitz' marines attacked, 500 miles due east of Mindanao. Their target: the Palau Archipelago (five principal islands, 100 smaller ones). Palau was the brightest star (and capital) of Japan's vast mandated empire. "The spigot of our oil barrel," the Japs called it, when their ships left port to tap the great oil reserves of the stolen Indies...
More to Come. Complete capture of Palau would give the Navy its best frontline anchorage west of Pearl Harbor-far superior to Guam and Saipan 850 miles to the northeast, and one of several big naval bases needed for operations against the Philippines, Formosa or China...
...fleet anchorage in the western Pacific, fronting on the Philippine Sea. Saipan and Guam could serve only as staging points for a fleet; what was wanted was a landlocked basin such as Pearl Harbor, a blue lagoon like Kwajalein, Eniwetok or Majuro. A fine harbor could be had at Palau, a poorer one at Yap; a lagoon could be secured at one of several atolls in the western Carolines-far beyond the bypassed enemy strongholds of Truk and Ponape...