TARGET: JAPAN

[Music] [Music] Navy day 1943 the Navy had come a long way since the dark day at Pearl Harbor within 2 years we had rebuilt our shattered Fleet Americans saluted a bigger more powerful navy than any the world had ever known on every ocean the fleet was an action in the Pacific after 2 years of a desperate holding War we were ready to take the offensive behind on Navy day 194 three lay guad Canal behind lay victories in the Coral Sea Midway and the Illusions but ahead for every man on every ship lay hard and bitter fighting to execute the master plan agreed upon by the high command and Admiral King in the Pacific we Face two major enemies distance and the Japanese both will become tougher as we advance we are fully aware of these problems and we have made plans to solve them in spite of great distances and a fanatical enemy we will go forward we will not stop this side of complete victory in the fall of 1943 US supply lines stretched from Pearl Harbor over 4,000 miles to the distant areas of combat forced Upon Us by Japan our immediate task was to push the Navy's combat zone to the north thus shortening the distance over which supplies must be carried to the fleet preliminary step toward this objective was the costly seizure of taroa and Mak from which we could strike at the Marshall Islands 200 Mi to the north once there the combat zone would be only one week from Pearl Hara instead of 3 weeks we struck at quadel line in any we talk with all our power this time we had plenty of amp ious craft able to climb over underwater reefs and obstacles heading for Shore the soldiers Sailors and Marines witnessed an intensity of Firepower far greater than a teraa we'd been around a little but this was a new kind of hell we surprised them by coming in the back door through the Lagoon instead of from the Open Sea when we hit the beach we got a load of the damage the bombardment had caused the job the big navy guns had done was complete even the concrete of the pill boxes was on fire everything was burned out or smashed flat it was an ungodly mess but the islands were ours and turning them into air strips wouldn't take the seab bees more than a few days with a take of quadine and anyak the Navy had forward bases which placed within its range of operations other Island groups still deeper in the Pacific by Shifting the combat area another 1500 Mi further west our forces would be in a position to drive toward Tokyo by either of two possible routes already light could penetrate the dark area into which since December 7th 1941 our Navy had been able to appearer only dimly through the periscopes of its submarine Fleet submarines back for refueling were bringing news of missions accomplished blows at Japan's all important lines of Supply With the Enemy losing an average of a ship a day almost every returning submarine had a broom lashed to its Periscope for 300 years the naval symbol of a clean sweep at sea at home new ships were ready to join the fleet and young men at the rate of a million a year were being turned out by training stations to man them more men would be needed more than a 100,000 women waves Coast Guard Spar and women Marines were taking over specialized jobs to release men for combat Duty and more women would be needed in Navy drafting rooms American engineers and inventors were devising new weapons among them rocket projectiles a startling new development in Naval ordinance at the naval aircraft Factory new and deadlier planes were being tailor made for specific duties and important developments were a foot in jet propulsion already jet assisted carrier planes were able to take off with bomb loads equal to those of landbased bombers [Music] by 1944 our ples were ranging far and wide clearing the way for our next strategic move to keep the enemy guessing as to where this move would be we were lashing out with diversionary attacks in all directions at param mairu to the north at samatra 5 5,000 m to the south at the Bonin close to Japan's heart and at scattered jaet bases tro kusai pipe Yap and halaha among the great new Tactical developments in Naval Warfare has been the task force a team of ships and planes and Men whose size and makeup is determined by its specific mission task force 58 was an invasion force and as such it was built around the carrier and where at one time we had but a single carrier in action in the whole Pacific this one Invasion Force alone included many heavy striking power was vested in the big guns of the battleships whose importance is today no longer questioned supporting and accompanying the carriers and battleships were countless other vessels from Cruisers and destroyers down through all the landing craft to the ships of the train ammunition ships and Hospital ships transports manned by the coast guard repair ships and Tenders in Myriad variety and the tankers without whose fuel combat craft would be helplessly tied to the land ultimate purpose of all this strength is to back up the man with the gun the marine or soldier who must take and hold the beach head prayers were said one calm June day by men who were about to go into battle from the highest to the lowest echelons they were briefed in the job ahead then task force 58 struck at sipan in the Marianas Island 1100 mil deeper inside Japan's Pacific Fortress than we had ever struck before San just another spot on the map but for us in the Marines and the army guys it was the toughest scrap so far under an umbrella of planes that have been pounding the island for days the Coast Guard took us in and we had protection from navy guns offshore but none of us realized what we were in for until we hit the beach [Music] sipan had belonged to the jeps for years and they were going to hang on to it at all [Music] cost securing the beach head was hard enough pushing Inland was murdered the whole job took more than a month of the toughest and dirtiest kind of fighting [Music] oh Guam a little later was the same thing all over again this time the jeets had a different reason for fighting so hard Guam had been their first grab of the war from us and they'd made a lot of it so they had to be pried out gouged out burned [Music] [Applause] out this is the way it's going to have to be all the way to Tokyo when our flag went up over the old Marine Barracks on Guam we felt pretty good we had won we were [Music] alive but a lot of Marines weren't [Music] alive seen those names on the grave names of fellows we had lived with you don't have to explain that feeling [Music] almost a year had passed we had now penetrated deep inside Japan's alter Fortress to sipan and the Poo Islands from the palow the Navy had reached out to the Philippines supporting MacArthur's drive from the south and from the Philippines our combined forces can strike directly at The Fortress of Asia severing enemy lifelines to Malaya and the Rich East Indies and we can drive for Japan itself either from the Philippines or from the Marianas but from the Philippines where the best Harbors are it is 2,000 miles airline to our Target Tokyo as far as from Mexico to Hudson's Bay and other approaches are longer still across these vast distances our Armed Forces must Advance mile by mile toward a determined enemy whose own supply routes grow shorter as ours grow longer thus every mile we go forward over the immense reaches of the Pacific involves increasing effort and sacrifice these are sober facts which every Navy man knows none better than the secretary of the Navy James foresto we have traveled far on the road to Victory and we're on the eve of further great events but the Rhythm and tempo of that Victory must not be lost we cannot afford for a moment to relax the iron pressure now being applied with steady and inexorable power for those Brave dead on distant Islands the war is truly over for us it cannot be over until the job is done for the tough Showdown battles ahead our ships and men are ready today to together with our Pacific armies and the forces of our allies they make a fighting team which has no equal about the task before them these men have no Illusions it is immense and calls for more ships planes and men more new weapons more sheer fighting power than we have ever yet amassed only with the full weight of the nation behind it can this Force these figh men be kept moving as they must be kept moving ever forward across the Pacific until they are able at last to strike the death blow at Japan