Word: ryukyu
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...three island chains which constitute steppingstones to Japan (see map), the Ryukyu line is the most inviting. Iwo, already serving as an advanced base for fighter bombers, is too small; the rocky Bonin and Izu Islands, which would be defended as savagely as Iwo, are also too small. The Kurils, extending northeast toward Russian Kamchatka, are not much larger, and are blanketed by weather almost as foul as that in the Aleutians...
...question stood out: granted that . tactical air assaults on airfields, seaports and naval bases are designed primarily to isolate a battlefield, what battlefield was being isolated? Southwest of the target areas lay the Ryukyu Islands, Formosa* and the China coast. The Japs could take their choice and pay the price...
...Tokyo Bay. Whether Japan could be invaded before the Jap armies on the mainland of Asia had been engaged was still debatable. But the way to China did not necessarily lie through Luzon and Formosa. The Japs themselves had pointed to the possibility of a northern route through the Ryukyu Islands to the great ports around the mouth of the Yangtze River...
...that was not the immediate purpose of "Jock" McCain's strikes. He was beating down enemy air power on a line from Japan through the Ryukyu Islands to the Formosa Strait - bottleneck in enemy communications to points south, notably the Philippines. His planes harried air fields on either side of the 95-mile passage, on Formosa and in China, to prevent reinforcement of the battered Jap air fleets on Luzon, and to keep Formosa-based aircraft from attacking U.S. ships off Luzon...
Significance. Because Saipan's civilians are mostly ignorant peasants from the comparatively remote Ryukyu Islands, and presumably less fanatical than civilians who will be found in Japan proper, Saipan furnishes no perfect example for the future. But Pacific forces have learned a lot about the many problems of occupying enemy territory. And the Orient can learn there that Americans are at their considerate best once victory...