Word: beaching
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Just after sunset, by the light of a young moon, the helpless Americans were led from their barracks. . . . When they reached the beach, their hands and feet were tied, they were blindfolded and finally ordered to face the ocean. Japanese soldiers, three platoons strong, stood six paces to the rear with rifles and machine guns. . . . Then the command was given that ended the lives of 96 Americans...
...planners expected the Japanese to defend the home islands by tactics similar to those used at Okinawa: no defense on the beach, retreat to strong positions, last-ditch defenses. The Japanese, however, still tried desperately to find a means to stop massed amphibious assaults at the water's edge. When the Marines were fighting on Iwo Jima, the high command pressed for development of an anti-landing craft weapon suitable for cheap, quick mass production. The fukuryus were the result...
...fukuryus fitted into a formidable system of invasion beach defenses: farthest out from the beaches a row of anchored mines, to be released by a trip wire; next, three staggered rows of fukuryus, one man every 65 feet, armed with mines and charges; nearest the beach, in three feet of water, masses of beach mines...
Soon Sailor Slobodkin (self-described as "a fat, soft guy with glasses") found himself loading cargo, eating slop and doing soogie moogie (scrubbing paint work) with a crew as oddly assorted as flotsam & jetsam on a beach. There was a union-conscious Portuguese named Perry. "His cross eyes seemed to set the motive for all his movement-when he'd sit down, he'd cross his legs, cross his arms . . . . I never saw him standing with his legs straight...
...notably Lloyd C. Douglas' The Robe; Kathleen Winsor's Forever Amber; Samuel Shellabarger's Captain from Castile; Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. Conspicuously missing from the lists at year's end were war novels of this and previous years, though Peter Bowman's Beach Red (TIME, Dec. 10) was the Book-of-the-Month Club's December choice...