To New Lines

Last week the Navy and the Army moved up to Japan's outer doorstep in the Central Pacific (see map). Simultaneously, a new Central Pacific Command was created; at its head Pacific Commander in Chief Admiral Chester W. Nimitz put a 57-year-old Hoosier, Vice Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, veteran of the Battle of Midway.

On Tarawa, Makin and Abemama, tiny pin points of coral and sand, Admiral Spruance's Marines and soldiers fought Japs for whom there was no line of retreat. But ahead of the Americans there was a pregnant line of advance--to the Marshalls, to the Japs' great naval-and-air center at Truk.

Patrolling offshore were U.S. battleships, cruisers and destroyers--the greatest fleet ever assembled in the Pacific, Honolulu said--lazily hurling explosives against enemy defense positions and shore installations. The fleet included a tremendous carrier striking force.

The Islands. Makin is a group of four main islets and several smaller ones, surrounding an eleven-mile-wide lagoon. Marine raiders landed in August 1942, killed every Jap (348) in sight, left after two days. Last week the invaders were there hoping to stay; the Navy said that resistance was only moderate.

At Tarawa, the Japs were formidably dug in on nine large islets which form the backbone of the 22-mile-long atoll. Twenty-four hours after the initial landing, battle-hardened Marine veterans of the Pacific Fleet and green but tough Army units, under the remote command of Lieut. General Robert C. Richardson Jr., were still fighting desperate Japs.

Abemama, a number of small islands around a lagoon, could be developed into an emergency fighter airdrome. Reports from Honolulu suggested that fighting on the 12-by-5-mile atoll, 80 miles southeast of Tarawa, was light.

The Preparation. The landings had been well prepared. For seven straight days, land-based Liberators operating from new, secret bases (possibly Funafuti in the Ellice Islands, which the Japanese bombed Nov. 17, or from Nanumea, which the Marines occupied Sept. 4) had pounded atolls in the Gilbert and Marshall groups. Carrier-based planes later joined the assault against Tarawa, Mili and Maloelap.

Bombers and torpedo bombers from a U.S. carrier force unloaded 90 tons of explosives on Nauru, 500 miles west of the Gilberts. And on Saturday, when the landing forces struck, Army Liberators again attacked objectives in the Marshalls. Purpose: to ground or knock out the Jap air force before the invasion fleet arrived.

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