World Battlefronts, THE WAR: To the Bitter End

THE WAR To the Bitter End

Tokyo's offer of surrender did not mean the immediate end of fighting; that had to go on until the surrender was completed. Men killed and were killed. Those who lived had one immediate comfort: they who had stormed scores of Pacific beaches under fire felt sure that the bloodiest invasion of all would be called off; men destined to occupy Japan would walk ashore down gangways, instead of fighting in the shallows and on the sands,

U.S. Lull. When the Japanese made a move to throw in the towel, U.S. land forces were engaged in no major operations. In northeast Luzon, the 38th ("Cyclone") Division was raising the dust with its mop-up of trapped Japs, taking casualties as' well as inflicting them. In the Marianas, three companies of marines waged miniature amphibious war, seized five islets north of Saipan, lost one man.

Even at sea, there was no active front: Admiral William F. Halsey's Third Fleet, with its British task force attached, had just finished a two-day pounding of northern Honshu with rockets, bombs and shells, and had withdrawn to the east, presumably to refuel.

In the Air. Just before midnight on Friday, Aug. 10, 350 pilots and crewmen of Brigadier General Roger Ramey's 58th Bombardment Wing gathered in the briefing room on Tinian. A group newly named Kagu-tsuchi (for a Japanese fire god) was scheduled to make a strike; for many of the B-29 crews, it would be their 35th mission—all they needed to complete a tour and get a U.S. leave.

The group commander, Colonel William K. Skaer, talked matter-of-factly for a minute about the mission, then added: "We have no official word of the Japanese surrender proposal, but tonight's mission has been canceled." Thereafter, General Carl Spaatz decided, his Superforts and long-range fighters should stay aground—unless the Japanese dillydallied too long over surrender terms.

There was no such letup at Okinawa, dearly bought eyrie of the Far East Air Forces. General George C. Kenney sent B-24s to burn Kurume, on Kyushu Island; later waves turned aside to secondary targets near by.

After 48 hours, Halsey returned to the attack. U.S. and British carrier planes swooped on military installations around the enemy capital to help the war lords make up their minds.

The Japs also had landed a blow: a bomber leveled off in Buckner Bay, Okinawa, and sent its torpedo crashing into a "major U.S. war vessel" (carrier or battleship).

Red Threat. On the mainland of Far Eastern Asia, another war had begun as the old one was ending. For 16 years, the Russians had kept an army poised along their Siberian frontier facing Manchuria, had blooded it in border clashes with the Japs' well-trained, ill-famed Kwantung Army.

Somehow, even during the darkest days of their war against the Nazis, the Reds had managed to keep their Far Eastern forces almost a million strong. Last week, under the overall command of bulky, brilliant Marshal Alexander M. Vasilevsky, they poured across the border. The Reds had plenty of tactical aircraft in support; they had plenty of guns, plenty of motorized equipment, plenty of battle-tried officers & men.