I spent a few years on Kwaj and got to know some of the battles and the Jap bunkers they were entrenched in. It wasn’t an easy battle although some considered it lighter than others because of our overwhelming firepower.
One of the largest explosions ever seen came on the island of Roi, about 45 miles north of Kwaj, when a satchel charge was thrown into a torpedo bunker.
The diving on Kwaj was excellent since it is warm waters and there was lots to see from those battles.
Kwaj was a necessary stop in our efforts to push back the Jap out of the Pacific. It is fairly isolated being about 2,000 miles from Hawaii, Tokyo, and Sidney; smack dab in the middle of nowhere.
I can only imagine when a man like this asked, “What’s on this placed called Kwaj??”, and the answer was, “Well, you will be.” It would be like going to the moon. Kwaj is about 1.3 miles in total land area. You can practically throw a rock across the width of it. Roi was less than 1 square mile, and from those islands we launched the rest of the Pacific campaign.
WWII, when boys became men.
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/22/world/in-marshall-islands-friday-is-followed-by-sunday.html
Spent a few months there myself,,I was one of the survivors August 22,1993
As a former Marine Corps Combat Engineer, this made my hair stand on end and sent me off on a backstory research quest. A couple of hundred guys lost their lives in that incident.