USS Columbia - Naval Cruise Book

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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

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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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•h After three years, heading back to the Atlantic. smaller islands — Param and Eten. Both, how- ever, were strategically important since both had air strips which were the objects of much explosive attention from American bombers. Twisted wrecks of planes littered both islands and, on one air strip, patched-up bomb craters seemed to cover a larger area than did the stretches of original concrete that had not been hit. Each of three substantial concrete buildings on Eten had received direct bomb hits that tore large holes through the center of them. One of the buildings was still used as a storage place for the small food supply in which roaches of the B-29 class seemed to show as much interest as the none-too-well-fed Japs. On October 7, 1945, the inspection was completed and the COLUMBIA returned to Guam. Later that month, on the 31st day of October, 1945, the Gem bade farewell to Guam on her way back to the Philadelphia Navy Yard to join the Atlantic Fleet. Thus ended the wartime Pacific duty of the COLUMBIA. With her assignment to the Atlantic Fleet, the Gem left behind her a trail of remarkable war service. She had truly lived up to her name; she was without a doubt the Gem of the Ocean. Back in Philadelphia.