Arms to save lives requested
Forrestal describes fighting on Iwo
GUAM (UP) – Secretary of the Navy James E. Forrestal appealed to the American people at home today for more and more munitions to save the lives of their men fighting on the far-flung battlefronts of the world.
Just back from a tour of the American beachhead on bloody Iwo, where he saw the Stars and Stripes raised triumphantly, Mr. Forrestal made his appeal in a radio broadcast from Adm. Chester W. Nimitz’s Advanced Pacific Fleet Headquarters.
The Marines are fighting valiantly on Iwo and have exacted a four-to-one toll in death from the Japs, he said, but they need an increasing flow of munitions to maintain their fighting edge.
Bombed for 70 days
Mr. Forrestal explained how the tiny island, only 750 miles from Tokyo, was bombed for 70 successive days, shelled for three straight days by battleships, cruisers and destroyers, and hit intermittently by carrier planes.
The Secretary said:
Let me stress here that the tremendous storm of metal thrown on Iwo Jima sharpens again the necessity for the continued output of munitions in our plants at home.
Only because of that rain of metal could the island be reduced at all. Because of it, our ratio of losses is far less than it otherwise would have been.
As Fleet Adm. Nimitz has said, it is our policy in the Pacific to have an unstoppable edge of power in these attacks. A steamroller, as he puts it. That steamroller saves us many lives.
It will take the output, however, of many factories and hard work by all hands in these factories for months to come, if we are to keep that edge of power.
Describes scene
Mr. Forrestal said he was halfway to shore with Lt. Gen. Holland Smith when the Marines reached the top of Mt. Suribachi – a volcano with sides so precipitous they seemed almost vertical.