US military rebuilds runway on site of ‘nightmare’ World War II battle

CNN —

A US Marine Corps aircraft has landed on a rebuilt runway on a World War II-era Japanese airfield on the Pacific island of Peleliu, site of one of the Marines’ bloodiest battles of the war and now a possible US basing option in a strategy to counter China.

The KC-130 Hercules transport aircraft touched down on the 6,000-foot runway on June 22 in what a Marine Corps press release called “a significant and triumphant return to this iconic World War II site.”

Marine engineers had been working on rebuilding the runway for months, clearing brush, removing trees and ensuring no unexploded ordnance remained from the World War II battle on the island, which is part of the island country of Palau.

More than 1,500 US troops and nearly 11,000 Japanese were killed on Peleliu between August and November of 1944, according to the US Naval History and Heritage Command, which noted that some Japanese troops hid in the island’s jungle and weren’t found until two years after World War II ended.

One US unit, the 1st Marine Regiment, suffered 70% casualties in six days of fighting on the island.

The Marines named the rebuilt landing strip the “Sledge” runway in honor of a veteran of the Peleliu battle, Pfc. Eugene Sledge, a mortarman on the island who wrote about it in a memoir “With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa,” and whose memories were portrayed in the HBO miniseries “The Pacific.”

Troops of the First Marine Division head toward beaches of Peleliu Island in 1944.

Sledge described Peleliu as “an alien, unearthly, surrealistic nightmare like the surface of another planet.”

Now the runway “bridges the past and the future, honoring WWII sacrifices while enhancing regional security and cooperation,” the Marine Corps