Word: peleliu
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Peleliu Island and its 8,000 Japs (of the 40,000 in the Palaus) were the first target. The island's twelve square miles had been rocked six times in eight days by swarms of Army and Navy bombers. Then for three full days warships smothered Peleliu with a hail of steel...
Nevertheless, many of Peleliu's Japs, waiting in their pillboxes, blockhouses and hillside caves, were still alive and full of fight when Major General William H. Rupertus' famed ist Marine Division (Guadalcanal, Cape Gloucester) hit the teach last week. TIME Correspondent Robert Martin, lying on the sand between two marines, pinned down by mortar fire, heard one say "I wonder where we are." Said the other "It sure as hell ain't Staten Island...
Three times the Japs counterattacked with their inferior tanks, were thrice thrown back. Peleliu's airfield, best of the five in the Palaus, fell to the determined marines the second day. After three days 5,495 dead Japs were counted. Peleliu was doomed but, like all dug-in Jap positions, it would not come cheap...
...days after the assault on Peleliu Admiral Wilkinson made his second move. He gave Major General Paul J. Mueller's 81st ("Wildcat") Army Division its baptism of fire by sending it ashore on southernmost, phosphate-producing Angaur Island, six miles south of Peleliu. Initial resistance was lighter this time...