Word: palau
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Landing. The surprise achieved by MacArthur was complete. The large force had feinted toward Palau, then reversed itself at night to steam southward into Hollandia. Other feints had been made toward Madang and Wewak, Jap-held bases in Australian New Guinea, where enemy forces had been concentrated, perhaps in expectation of the attack...
Seizure of Hollandia, with its three excellent airfields which have accommodated as many as 300 Jap planes at a time, means that MacArthur would gain a base 960 miles southeast of the great Jap base at Palau (whose seizure may be necessary before landings can be made in the Philippines) and 1,200 miles southeast of Mindanao, second-biggest island in the Philippines...
From the islands of Palau the Japanese had launched their first air attacks on the Philippines. From Palau they had staged their advance into New Guinea. It was Palau that they called the "spigot" of their oil supply-i.e., The Netherlands East Indies. And Palau was one of Japan's finest naval bases...
...Blow. At Palau it looked as if the Jap Navy would choose to retire from another segment of the Pacific rather than give battle. Japanese scout planes had sighted the U.S. battle force as it approached, and long before the U.S. fleet hove in sight, Japanese vessels fled from the harbor...
What U.S. pilots saw as they glided in over Palau was a huge, reef-encircled lagoon, splotched with hilly green islands near the eastern rim. Sprawling over a round island near the main entrance to the lagoon was the sizable town of Koror, mostly composed of laborers' barracks. The U.S. airmen saw the results of Jap labor-two or three islands razed level for fighter and bomber strips, cement jetties from which roads curled back into the jungle to camouflaged fuel and ammunition dumps...