So Much Water, So Little Land

About the Book

During the Second World War, the author served for nineteen months as executive officer aboard the LCI(L) (Landing Craft Infantry Large) 1052. These craft were flat-bottomed, amphibious vessels designed primarily to put troops on the beach; yet these versatile sea-going ships were capable of both hitting enemy shores and operating as small boats in protected waters. Because of their mobility, LCIs collectively became known as the Waterbug Navy. For the 1052, hostile confrontations with the Japanese came only on those occasions when suicide planes and submarines struck at the ships anchored in the enormous lagoon and supply base at Ulithi. So important was this Caroline Islands atoll that Admiral Chester Nimitz tagged it the U.S. Navy’s secret weapon. At the time of these enemy attacks, the 1052 was assigned to Service Squadron Ten, the largest and most important of the Navy’s floating logistical commands. In the central Pacific--a region of so much water, so little land--mobile logistical support for the fleet was an absolute necessity. With the end of hostilities, the 1052 was assigned to evacuating Japanese prisoners of war from by-passed atolls in the Marshall Islands and Chinese government troops from French Indochina. For the last five months of Barrett’s active duty, he served aboard the LST (Landing Ship Tank) 339. The following is an extract from Chapter 5 (“The Navy’s Secret Weapon”: Ulithi Atoll): The 1,333-mile voyage from Eniwetok to Ulithi took twelve days with maximum speed averaging only six knots. There were times when it appeared as if we were standing still in the water. . . . To the casual observer Ulithi did not appear to have much military value. But its thirty-odd small, low, flat islands together with fringing coral reefs formed a huge elongated oval which enclosed and sheltered a natural anchorage of 183 square miles that could handle nearly one thousand ships - something that neither Pearl Harbor nor Guam could do. It lay only fifteen hundred miles from Japan, nine hundred miles from Iwo Jima, twelve hundred miles from Okinawa, and nine hundred from Leyte. Pearl Harbor was thirty-six hundred miles to the east. Early in the war the Japanese established a weather station on one of the islands but made only limited use of the anchorage. Whereas the atoll under U.S. and Allied control became one of the largest forward naval bases in history and the hub of naval operations in the western Pacific after September 1944. Its capture proved to be a giant step on the road leading to the Japanese mainland. So important was Ulithi that Admiral Chester Nimitz called the base the “Navy’s secret weapon” and his censors made certain that no reporter divulged the secret. After the war Nimitz wrote: “The advantages of the bloodless occupation of Ulithi are beyond question, for Ulithi provided the Pacific Fleet with an anchorage and logistic base of major importance, largely replacing Majuro, Kwajalien, and Eniwetok. Every subsequent operation of the central Pacific forces was at least in part launched from here.” My family never knew at the time that I was in the Carolines. Mother and my sisters thought I was either in the Marianas or the Philippines. The American public did not learn about the big naval installation at Ulithi until the latter part of July 1945, even though several months earlier Life magazine had featured an article entitled “Life Visits an Enchanted Isle: Americans Take Fassari and Find It the Kind of Romantic South Sea Island They Have Always Dreamed About.” Fassari was the home of the few natives still at Ulithi when the Americans arrived in the Carolines back in September of 1944. Upon landing, the troops were greeted by the King of Ulithi, Ueg by name, and a few score of his people. These friendly Micronesians were those left behind when the Japanese departed plus a small group that had escaped by canoe from Yap. Their chief village was on Mog Mog, an island the Navy soon decided it n

About the Author

John Barrett, emeritus professor of history at the Virginia Military Institute, was graduated from Wake Forrest College in January 1943. After serving as a naval officer in World War II, he earned M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. A North Carolina native, Barrett is the author of several books, including Sherman’s March Through the Carolinas and The Civil War in North Carolina. In addition to the VMI, he has also taught at the University of Virginia, Washington and Lee University, and Tulane University. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow.