USS Columbia - Naval Cruise Book

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Jap hospital — Truk. in the war. Only five planes had escaped destruction on the whole atoll. Many military installations had been removed, as directed in the surrender documents signed September 2, but scores of huge bomb craters pocking the island near the beach gave evidence of the thoroughness with which all military targets were blasted. Huge fuel storage tanks, twisted into grotesque shapes by fires which raged after bombs struck; a few crumbled shells of concrete buildings; shattered hulks of storage buildings; hulls or sterns of sunken ships sticking out of the water; scores of vehicles rusting away after bombs or flames had crumpled them; — all these gave proof of the deadly precision with which American fliers had rained down destruc- tion on the former home of the Imperial Japan- ese Fourth Fleet. Only intensive cultivation of almost every inch of arable ground, saved the Japs from being completely starved out. On a visit to the Japanese Naval Hospital on Dublon, numerous patients suffering from malnutrition and allied diseases testified to the urgent need of the garrison for food. Leading natives as well as Jap civil government officials were inter- viewed by General Blake ' s party and it was found that the 10,000 natives on the atoll were in fairly good health. Although many of the natives were unfamiliar with Americans, they appeared to be ready to cooperate. General Blake, USMC, checks Jap gun. 40

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he ixspectiox of truk AAN September 9, the COLUMBIA proceeded - to Guam via Iwo Jima and Saipan, assist- ing in the transportation of troops. Upon arrival at Guam on September 18, she was assigned duty as flagship of Vice Admiral G. D. Murray, USN, Commander Mariana Islands. On October 1, 1945, the COLUMBIA left Guam bound for Truk. She was to serve as headquarters ship for Brig. General Robert Blake, USMC, future Island Commander of the atoll, and members of his party who were to make a survey of conditions existing on the former Jap stronghold. Truk atoll had been completely neutralized by severe poundings during the war from Allied Air and sea forces, and a tight naval blockade had prevented importation of materials and supplies. The Japanese military commanders and the civil governor of Truk had surrendered to Vice Admiral George D. Murray, USN, Commander Marianas, aboard the USS PORT- LAND on September 2, but since that time no United States occupation troops had been sent ashore. Jap air support. As the COLUMBIA lay ofl Truk on October 3, Lt. General Shunzaburo Magikura, com- mander of the 31st Imperial Japanese Army and military chief of the vast Nipponese com- mand based on Truk atoll, with his conferees, arrived on board at 0900 to report on the prog- ress of Truk ' s demilitarization and to be informed of inspection tours planned by the American survey group. The Japanese delegates arrived alongside the COLUMBIA in a highly polished and well-kept gig, manned by Japanese sailors done out in their dress uniforms. The delegates themselves were dressed in their formal military uniforms, thus affording the Gem ' s crew their first glimpse of what the well dressed Japanese officer wears. Close inspection, how- ever, revealed many a patched trouser and frayed cuff in the Japanese group. The pre-inspection conference lasted for two hours and was held in the CO LUMBIA ' S ward room. The Jap conferees answered extensive verbal questionnaires and also presented data they had previously been directed to compile. (They also enjoyed a few American cigarettes). The Jap General revealed the urgent need for food. Truk, he said, had been cut off from supplies since June 1944, when the last transport to sneak through the American blockade brought 600 tons of rice. Approximately 4,000 Japs died after that time 60 percent of them from disea.se and malnutrition. General Blake and his party went ashore on October 4, to make their first inspection. It is believed that General Blake ' s inspection marked the first time since 1935 that an American had set foot on the shores of the Jap Pearl Harbor. Inspecting Dublon Island on the first day, the American party found the naval base site had been bombed into uselessness and that broken skeletons of planes littered the ramp from which hundreds of Jap pilots had left to scout the sea lanes and cut off American shipping earlier 39

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Paratn Airfield. The following morning the American party inspected Moen Island. To the party, it seemed that only the excellent natural defenses of the surrounding coral reef, with four or five easily- mined entrances, remained to suggest the awe with which Americans viewed the former Japan- ese Pacific bastion in the early days of the war. Once, this fortress of more than 100 islands bristled with huge guns, smaller guns, pill- boxes and all the other war implements with which the Japs had fortified the islands from the time they wrested control from the Germans Figures don ' t lie — they were really by-passed. in 1914. But, as trucks of the inspecting party bounced and groaned over main highways that were little more than dirt trails, it was difficult for most observers to escape the conviction that Truk was never quite the Truk of legend because the Japs lacked something the Americans dis- played in abundance — the ability to conceive and execute big ideas. There were more than 2,000 Japanese construction battalion men on Moen Island, but there wasn ' t one road on the island, or on Dublon, that wouldn ' t have made the building demons — the American Seabees — blush for shame. Narrow, one-car lanes of gravel, rocks and dirt wound their tortuous and bumpy, way around the island. When one Jap officer was bounced ofT his truck seat he was asked why the roads were so bad. No concrete, he replied. But when asked why good roads were never built in the last 25 years, he suggested that it was a case of carelessness. He smiled, apparently understandingly, when one enthus- iastic marine pointed to a bomb-pocked airstrip patched with crushed rock and said B-29 ' s would be able to land there in a few days. With bugs and worms ravaging the sweet potato crop, the Jap garrison of 8,680 on Moen suffered sharply from malnutrition. Rank upon rank of living scarecrows lined up along the route of the inspection party, men with ankles as thin as skinny wrists, with sunken-in cheeks and with every rib showing sharply. On October 6, the survey party visited two 41