Word: sanding
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Atolls of War. The Marshalls group has more than twice as many atolls (33) as the Gilberts (16), but in total land area they are slightly smaller. Their 160 sq. mi. (half as large as New York City) of sand, coral and coconut palm are scattered over 150,000 sq. mi. (as large as Montana) of blue water...
...these key atolls, and perhaps to others, the Japs have been hauling tons of cement and steel. As at Tarawa, they have fashioned pillboxes of coconut logs, concrete, metal and many feet of sand. Under palm trees are coastal batteries...
...India, a sergeant who had been a Cleveland molder cast a sour look at the local foundry facilities: a fire in a sand pit, with hollows scooped in the ground for molds. There were no furnaces, patterns or flasks. So he made his own. With a furnace of firebrick taken from the town dump, his three enlisted men and several Indians turn out 500 different items from junkyard aluminum and used brass cartridge cases...
Skillful Jap engineers had used stone-hard coconut logs, steel rails, concrete and sand to make incredibly stout fortifications. They had staggered 500 pillboxes in such fashion that marines who captured one found themselves under fire from two others. Covered with three or four feet of sand, the redoubts defied aerial reconnaissance, survived everything but direct hits with heavy shells or bombs. Often a 2,000-lb. bomb, striking within a few feet of a pillbox and digging a 15-ft. hole, merely threw more sand on top of the Jap fortifications. Surveying Betio's defenses after the battle...
When they buried Uncle Kim the coffin was covered with a flag. "I had been to one or two funerals before, but I had never seen one like this funeral. . . . The grass felt soft and warm to my bare feet and the little puddles of sand were hot enough to burn my toes. . . . 'Trouble, trouble, trouble,' Grandpa whispered. . . . 'Man born of woman is full of trouble.'. . . The wind lifted Grandpa's white corn-silk beard up and down.... He was bent like an old tree weighted down with branches. . . . Uncle Mott's face...