WIPED OUT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 May 1944, Page 4

WIPED OUT

JAPANESE ON WAKDE ISLAND AMERICAN CASUALTIES RELATIVELY LIGHT. MOSTLY CAUSED BY SNIPERS. .(Special Australian Correspondent.) (Received This Day. 12.35 p.m.) SYDNEY, This Day. The Japanese garrison trapped on Wakde Island, off the coast of Dutch New Guinea, were wiped out after grim fighting. No prisoners were taken. The enemy troops displayed amazing toughness and resiliency, despite the heaviest preliminary air and naval bombardment yet delivered in the South-West Pacific. The campaign in which Wakde Island was captured was the briefest in the series which have pushed the Japanese steadily west in Dutch New Guinea. American troops landed on the island on Thursday, and the' annihilation of the enemy was completed shortly before dusk on Friday, General MacArthur’s Headquarters reports. The Japanese casualties were 550 killed and the American casualties were 16 killed and 83 wounded, with two missing. A war correspondent who accompanied the Americans says the Japanese on Wakde Island fought as fanatically as in any of the earlier New Guinea campaigns. Elements of the Japanese 36th Division, which participated in the capture of Singapore, garrisoned the island. They were supplemented by members of a sharpshooter company. Most of the American casualties were inflicted by enemy snipers. In contrast with their earlier poor reputation as marksmen, the aim of the Japanese sharpshooters was unerring. Many of the rifles and grenades used by the enemy garrison were Australian, and they also used American machine-guns. Besides being perhaps the most spectacular of the recent operations in the South-West Pacific, Wake Island also proved one of the toughest.