Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
OKINAWA (by Navy radio) – We camped one night on a little hillside that led up to a bluff overlooking a small river. The bluff dropped straight down for a long way. Up there on top of the bluff it was just like a little park.
The bluff was terraced, although it wasn’t farmed. The grass on it was soft and green. And those small, straight-limbed pine trees were dotted all over it.
Looking down from the bluff, the river made a tum and across it was an old stone bridge. At the end of the bridge was a village – or what had been a village.
It was not just a jumble of ashes and sagging matched roofs from our bombardment. In every direction, little valleys led away from the turn in the river.
It was as pretty and gentle a sight as you ever saw. It had the softness of antiquity about it and Japanese prints. And the sad, uncanny silence that follows the bedlam of war.
A bright sun made the morning hot and a refreshing little breeze sang through the pine trees. There wasn’t a shot nor a warlike sound within hearing. I sat on the bluff for a long time, just looking. It all seemed so quiet and peaceful. I noticed a lot of the Marines sitting and just looking too.
Looks like home
You could come from a dozen different parts of America and still find scenery on Okinawa that looked like your country at home.
Southern boys say the reddish clay and the pine trees remind them of Georgia. Westerners see California in the green rolling hills, partly wooded, paryly patchworked wirth little green fields. And the farmed plains look like our Midwest.
Okinawa is one of the few places I’ve been in this war where our troops don’t gripe about what an awful place it is. In fact, most of the boys say they would like Okinawa if it weren’t at war with us and if the people weren’t so dirty.
The countryside itself is neat and the little farms are well kept. So far, the Okinawa climate is superb and the vistas undeniably pretty. The worst crosses to bear are the mosquitoes, fleas and the sight of the pathetic people.
Fine group of poor roads
Most of the roads on Okinawa are narrow dirt trails for small horse-drawn carts. Then there are several wider gravel roads. One man aptly described it as “an excellent network of poor roads.”
Our heavy traffic of course has played hob with the roads. Already they are tire-deep in dust and troops on the road have mask-like faces, caked with dust.
Bulldozers and scrapers are at work constantly.
I’ve mentioned before about our fear of snakes before we got here. All the booklets and literature given us ahead of time about Okinawa dwelt at length on snakes. They told us there were three kinds of poisonous adders, all three being fatal. The booklets warned us not to wander off the main roads, not to stop under the trees or snakes would drop on us (as if you could fight a war without getting off the roads!). In some of the troop briefings, they had the Marines more scared of snakes than Japs.
Few snakes seen
Well, I’ve kept a close watch and made a lot of inquiries. And the result is that in the central part of Okinawa where we’ve been there are just practically no snakes at all.
Our troops have walked, poked, sprawled and slept on nearly every square yard of the ground. And in my regiment, for one, they have seen only two snakes.
One was found dead. The other was killed by a battalion surgeon, coiled into a gallon glass jar, and sent to the regimental command post as a souvenir. It was a vicious rattler, a type called habu.
Those are the only snakes I’ve heard of. There was a rumor that in one battalion they have caught and made pets of a couple of snakes, but I don’t believe it.
The local people sav the island was very snaky up until the middle 30s when they imported some mongooses which killed most of the snakes. But we haven’t seen any mongooses so we don’t know whether the story is true or not.
Correspondent John Lardner says his only explanation is that St. Patrick came through here once as a tourist and took all the snakes with him.