Capture of Kwajalein, in the Marshall Islands, completed on Feb 5th 1944, involved plenty of Japanese pill-box cracking, a grim operation with a technique of its own and described here by Howard Handleman, who was the Daily Express correspondent in that area of the Pacific during WWII.

While leaning on the side of a concrete pill-box in which Private First Class John Garrison had just bayoneted a lone Jap, I had a close up view of the technique of pill-box busting. The Americans were cleaning up on this Japanese held island in the Pacific. The Jap pill-boxes were close together. Old fashioned they were, with gun slots facing the Pacific Ocean, and foot thick reinforced steel doors, which did not crack all that easily.

Pill-box cracking was a job for all kinds of specialists, riflemen, grenade throwers, flamethrowers, tanks and engineers with “satchel charges” filled with T.N.T. Our men moved slowly from pill-box to pill-box, sweating in the sun, as they lugged heavy equipment. A sergeant with camouflage and war-paint sweating off his face, reported:

"Two pill-boxes cleared, three full of Japs, That’s what is holding us up." He sent a runner back for the tanks, and it was comforting to see them. Tank No. 13, with a pretty girl and the words "Miss Friday" painted on the side, rumbled through the jungle with a 37-mm gun moving from the turret. The tank blasted two heavy explosive shells into a pill-box at less than 15 yards, crumbling the concrete. A flamethrower began jetting two sheets of solid flame into the box. A great cloud of black smoke poured out.

A squad moved to the next box, hopping forward with the movement of men in fear of being shot. I ducked forward with them. The next few minutes gave a blue-print of anti-pill-box technique. Staff-Sergeant Jack Martin and another rifleman ran close to the pill-box and poured a stream of rifle bullets at it to keep the Japs under cover, while Private Edgar Johnson moved up with a flamethrower. The riflemen ran back as the flamethrower moved into position all alone before the pill-box. Johnson squirted the sheet of flame directly at the door, another obliquely at the door, and a third at the concrete wall. The fuel consumed, he dropped back a few paces to refill. Asked if he got his Japs, he said, coolly enough, “I think so, sir, but I wouldn’t want to say.”

Flamethrowers were used by American Marines to destroy this Japanese strongpoint on Namur, one of the islands of the Kwajalein atoll. Dynamite, bayonets, bombs and shells all featured in the clearing of the enemy.


Then the soldiers moved forward to the next box, which was the toughest of all. Tank No. 13 threw a few 37s at the box. The flamethrowers were refuelling, so they were not used. The riflemen shot lots of rounds. A machine-gun, newly arrived, covered the slot of the pill-box with steady fire. Grenades were thrown. No. 13 continued to fire its vicious 37-mm. gun. Finally an engineer with spectacles trudged up with T.N.T. wrapped in gun sacking, and bound with wire. This is the "satchel charge." under fire and machine-gun cover, Corporal Chester Gibson crouched low, and moved as close as he possibly could to the box.

The sergeant shouted: "Everybody down" and everyone hugged the earth as Gibson threw the charge at the box and grabbed the earth himself. The charge which blew up the pill-box stunned everyone in a wide radius as the ground shook, and ears tingled. It sounds easy, believe me it is not.