WWII

For doughboys and leathernecks, the care of children started on the first day of the invasion, and from the way it keeps on, it looks as though “the Children’s Hour on Okinawa” will outlast Lillian Hellman’s play on Broadway.

There is nothing spectacular about the mop-up operation. That would be very nice except that men continue to die in skirmishes waged in caves, draws and canyons. These pitched, butter little battle do not make news.

Admiral Minoru Ota is dead. In a cave overlooking the completely levelled installations of the Naha harbor, with only the masts and stacks of sunken ships showing, the commanding officers of the Japanese Okinawa base forces committed suicide.

Now that censorship has been lifted on the details of flame-throwing tanks, it’s possible to tell how they clicked during the largest-scale tank action of the Okinawa campaign.

Her superstructure was a flaming shambles, her skipper and 76 of her complement were dead, her wounded had to be placed in life jackets and cast overboard, but the destroyer Hazelwood refused to go down.

An infantry replacement who cracked a Japanese defense line that whole battalions couldn’t even dent is rapidly becoming a legend hereabouts.