Five Jap officers kill selves on Makin
Makin, Gilbert Islands – (Nov. 23, delayed)
Five Japanese officers disemboweled themselves with their samurai swords at a tank trap east of this shattered town today when their troops broke and fled before the tanks and bayonets of the Shamrock Battalion of New York’s Fighting 69th Regiment.
The “Fighting Irish” swept on past the abandoned tank trap and its dead defenders in pursuit of a beaten enemy, moving eastward through the tiny island at the rate of a mile an hour.
Jap snipers and suicide squads battled desperately from a maze of pillboxes and foxholes, but the suicide of the five officers showed that all organized resistance was ended.