All Over the Map

The great island of Luzon (41,000 sq. mi., pop. four million) was the epicenter of a man-made earthquake which rocked the whole Japanese Empire last week. Off Luzon's western coast, the Jap radio screamed, were vast U.S. convoys whose guardian warships were blasting the defenses in Lingayen Gulf, 100 miles north of Manila. The Japs said troops were landing. General MacArthur's return to the Philippines, begun at Leyte last Oct. 20, might be nearing its crowning achievement. Among the smaller Philippine islands to the south, landings had been made to consolidate the hold of the liberating armies..

Almost 2,000 miles to the west, British carriers from .across the Indian Ocean flew off aircraft to blast the Pangkalanbrandan refinery on Sumatra. Northeast, 3,000 miles from Luzon, a U.S. Ninth Fleet task force stood in to the fogbound coast of Paramushiro, where the Japs' Kuril Islands nudge Soviet Kamchatka, and laid heavy fire on harbor installations at Suribachi.

The whole area in between was quaking and ablaze. B-29s from western China struck an aircraft factory at Omura, in southwestern Japan, and droned seven hours over occupied Nanking. Others, from India, hit at Bangkok. Still others, from Saipan, worked on the unfinished business of wrecking aircraft factories at Nagoya, and kept Tokyo's air-raid wardens sleepless, night & day.

On the Superfortress route between Saipan and Tokyo were hornets' nests of Jap fighters and bombers: a surface task force of the U.S. Pacific Fleet steamed in and battered these airfields and harbor facilities in the Bonin Islands with big guns. The Third Fleet's carrier planes hammered Okinawa and Formosa.

For the Japanese, who call this era Showa ("Enlightened Peace"), the immediate prospect promised more enlightenment than peace.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.