To Have & To Hold

It was clear last week that if the Navy had anything to say about it the U.S. Navy was in Guam to stay.

The Japs had kicked the Navy out in December 1941. When the Navy came back in July 1944, it came prepared to settle down. Dredge boats plowed into Apra Harbor on Guam's west coast while the Japs were still resisting in the jungle-covered hills. Trucks moved mountains of coral sand to build a breakwater. Red-faced Seabees in green baseball caps, looking like goggled gods on their bulldozers, invaded the tropical paradise with noise and construction. By last week they had moved enough of Guam's earth to bury Tokyo's Imperial Palace, with all its moats and carp ponds. In nine months they had built the greatest advance base in the Pacific--some 5,000 miles from San Francisco, and but 1,500 miles from Japan.

On the island which had been only a Pan American Clipper stop before the war, five great airfields were clawed out of the hills and jungles. In & out of them flew mail, passengers, plasma, wounded. From the great asphalt acres roared the Super-forts of the 21st Bomber Command. Where Standard Oil had once maintained a few oil tanks, there were now enough facilities to hold four days' output of all the oil wells in Oklahoma.

Nerve Center. A few dirt roads had once meandered through Guam's hills. Now three-and four-lane paved highways laced the island, leading from harbor to cold-storage plants, asphalt works and ammo dumps. Spread across the island were neat tent cities where marines lived between campaigns, rest camps where submarine crews breathed the fresh smell of jungles, recreation centers where Navymen played baseball, drank strictly rationed beer. Four Fleet and three Army hospitals could accommodate nearly 10,000 patients, and back & forth along the asphalt highways roll caravans of khaki ambulances with their pitiful loads.

Overlooking it all, on a hilltop, was the modest wooden home of the Navy's Pacific Fleet Command--the nerve center of the naval force which now rules millions of square miles of ocean. In a bare little cottage which he shared with two other officers lived Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz. In the cottage next door, adjoining bedrooms were labeled: "Spruance Room," "Halsey Room."

Said the boss of the Pacific Fleet: "Here is our fleet base now and after the war whether we like it or not. We are responsible for peace in the Pacific and we must take that responsibility."

No future Congress would have to debate whether or not to appropriate money for the fortification of Guam. The Navy had fixed that up.

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