Word: rabaul
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...enemy thus became enemy airplanes, the primary defensive position, U.S. air bases. Let Russia or anyone else slip ground troops-airborne or seaborne-into such "islands of tundra" as Nome or Point Barrow, said the airmen, and you could isolate them like the mighty Japanese bases of Truk and Rabaul were isolated in the Pacific war. You would bomb the planes and shelters and leave them all shivering in the cold with no place to march to. Don't make U.S. airplanes vulnerable by scattering them through the wilderness, they said. Let them range from bases in the heartland...
...Purple Hearts. General Douglas MacArthur, commander of the Southwest Pacific Theater, wanted a certain airfield at New Britain's Cape Gloucester (the Japanese base at Rabaul was at the island's other end). On Dec. 26, 1943, the 1st Marine Division landed on Gloucester. The jungle was worse than the Japanese. Twenty-five men were killed by the fall of giant, rain-rotted trees. Men sank in the swamps up to their waists. In the constant rain, food turned to slop. Letters fell apart in pockets; every day bright blue-green mold had to be scraped from shoes...