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Show Ernie Pyle With the Navy: Dry, Brown Okinawa Like Indiana in Late Summer Natives Live Poorly, However; Cultivate Small Farm Tracts By Ernie Pyle OKINAWA. Since this island is the closest to Japan we've landed on and since we seem to feel this really is Japan, rather than just some far outpost, I'll try to describe to you what it looks like. a Actually it doesn't look a great deal different from most of America. Amer-ica. Infactitlooks much more like America than v ' v?V anything the ma- 't4l rines have seen ''v--ij tor tne last three ?''-) years. w '-' The climate is LN ' -v '-$vl t temperate rather :; than tropical, and K.-Zr fi so is the vegeta- K'-if &: tion. There are tropical-like trees Ernie Pyle on and near the beaches I think they're Pandanus bushes. But there are also many trees of the fir family with horizontal horizon-tal limbs. The country over which my regiment regi-ment passed during the first two days was cultivated. It rose gradually gradu-ally from the sea and was all formed into small fields. It didn't look at all unlike Indiana in late summer when things have started to turn dry and brown, except ex-cept that the fields were much smaller. The wheat, which looks just like ours, is dead ripe in the fields now. The marines are cutting it with little sickles. In other fields are cane and sweet potatoes. Each field has a ditch around its edge, and dividing the fields are little lit-tle ridges about two feet wide. On top of the ridges are paths where" the people walk. All through the country are little dirt lanes and now and then a fairly decent gravel road. As you get inland, the country becomes be-comes rougher. In the hills there ' is less cultivation and more trees. It is really a pretty country. We had read about what a worthless place Okinawa was. but I think most j of us have been surprised about how pretty it is. Poverty and Filth Continue Together " Okinawa civilians we bring in are pitiful. The only ones left seem to be real old or real young. And they all are very, very poor. They're not very clean. And their homes are utterly filthy. Over and over you hear marines say, 'This could be a nice country if the people weren't so dirty." Obviously their living standard is low. Yet I've never understood why poverty and filth need to be synonymous. synony-mous. A person doesn't have to be well off to get clean. But apparently appar-ently he has to be well off to want to keep clean. We've found it that way clear around the world. The people here dress as we see Japanese Japa-nese dressed in pictures: women in kimonos and old men In skin-tight pants. Some wear a loose, knee-length knee-length garment that shows their skinny legs. The kids are cute as kids are all over the world. I've noticed marines ma-rines reaching out and tousling their hair as they marched pait them. We're rounding up all the civilians and putting them in camps. They are puzzled by it all. Most of the farm families must have got out when our heavy bombardments bom-bardments started. Lots ' of farm houses have either been demolished or burned to the ground before we came. Often, in passing a wrecked farmhouse, you smell the sickening odor of death inside. Eut there are always people who won't leave no matter what. We couldn't help feeling sorry for the Okinawans we picked up in the first few days. We found two who spoke a little English, They had once lived In Hawaii. One was an old man who had a son (Hawaiian-Japanese) somewhere in the American army! They were all shocked from the bombardment and yet I think rather stupid too, so that when they talked they didn't make much sense. I don't believe they had any idea of what- it was all about. As one marine officer said, "The poor devils. dev-ils. I'll bet they think this Is the end of the world." They were obviously scared to death. On Love-Day the marines found many of them hiding from us In caves. They found two old women, wom-en, 75 or more, In a cave, caring for a paralyzed girl. She wasn't wounded, just paralyzed from nat-j nat-j ural causes. One of the old ladies had a small, dirty sack with some i money in it. When the marines i found her she cried and tried to give them the money hoping I suppose that she could buy herself off from being executed. After all the propaganda they've been fed about our tortures, it's going go-ing to be a befuddled bunch of Okinawans Oki-nawans when they discover we brought right along with us, as part of the Intricate invasion plan, enough supplies to feed them, too! During our first afternoon on Okinawa Oki-nawa my group of marines went about a mile and a half inland. Our vehicles were not ashore yet, so we had to pack on our backs everything we had. Personally, I was overladen as usual. I had two canteens, a musette mu-sette bag, a blanket rolled up in a poncho, three rubber life preservers, preserv-ers, a shovel, and assorted knives, first aid kits, etc. Furthermore, I had on two pairs of pants, was carrying car-rying two jackets, and it was hotter than hell. Anyhow, we finally got where we were going. We stopped on a hillside, hill-side, threw down our gear, connected connect-ed our phones to wires on the ground, and were ready for business.. busi-ness.. That is, the others were. Me, I lay down on the grass and rested for an hour. Finds Nice Spot To Go to Sleep After that we began getting ready for the night. We figured the Japs would bomb us all night, that their artillery would soon start up from the hills, and that when It got dark, some slinky infiltrators would start infiltration. J So we dug foxholes. The slope was so steep I chose a nice depression depres-sion at the foot of a small embankment embank-ment that didn't require much digging. dig-ging. Now we come to the life preservers. preserv-ers. You may have wondered why I was carrying three lifebelts on dry land. Well, I knew what I was doing do-ing all right. I just blew up my three life, preservers, pre-servers, spread them in the foxhole and I had the nicest Improvised Simmons Sim-mons you ever saw. We finally got onto that trick after a few invasions in Europe and I slept all last summer sum-mer in France comfortably on three blown-up preservers. Everybody who wasn't on guard at the edge of our little camp, or who wasn't standing duty at the field telephones went to bed, for in Jap country you don't move around at night unless you have to. Going to bed was merely a figure of speech for everybody except me. I seemed to be the only one who had brought a blanket and I definitely def-initely was the only one who had nice soft life preservers to sleep on. The others slept on the, ground in their foxholes with their ponchos wrapped around them. A poncho Is wind and waterproof, but it has no warmth. In fact, it seems to draw all the warmth out of your body and transmit it into the air. The day had been hot, but the night got mighty cold. And a very heavy dew came gradually, soaking everything. All the others practically practi-cally froze and got very little sleep. But for once in my life, I was warm as a bug. But I didn't sleep too much. There's always a flaw somewhere. My flaw was the mosquitoes. I've never been so tortured by mosquitoes mosqui-toes as that first night on Okinawa. They were persistent. They were tenacious. And they were the noisiest noisi-est mosquitoes I've ever associated with. They were so noisy that when I pulled the blanket over the side, of my face and covered my ears tight I could still hear them. I doused my face twice with the mosquito repellant which the marines ma-rines had issued, but it did no good whatever. It was 11 o'clock before I finally got asleep. At 2 a. m. I awakened and knew something was wrong. What was wrong was my face. My upper lip was swollen so that I thought I had a pigeon egg under it. My hose was so swollen the skin was stretched tight over it. And my left eye was nearly shut Those mosquitoes really put a scare Into me. For they say Okinawa Oki-nawa is malarial and I certainly got enough mosquito venom that night to malariaize half of California. So bright and early, I started taking atabrine for the first time In my life. |