World War II - Peleliu, Palau
Following the capture of Guam in the Mariana Islands, the U.S Navy's next target was to capture an airfield on Peleliu in the remote Palau Islands. Above, a Navy ship crossed the Equator on its way to Peleliu.
And that called for some naked hijinks for sailors "crossing the line" for the first time.
Of the 14,000 Japanese defenders, only 400 were captured, including the ones above. Japanese prisoners were stripped naked to ensure that they weren't hiding weapons. The other 13,600 Japanese troops were killed or committed suicide rather than surrender.
American losses were also heavy. Nearly 1800 Marines and soldiers were killed. The consensus later was that taking the island was a mistake, due to the high casualty rate and the island's negligible strategic value.
9 comments:
Thanks for posting these,. The first two GIFs depict the Line Crossing ceremony in which "Pollywogs" become "Shellbacks." In the first GIF, the man on the left is holding a flail (called a shillelagh, although it is far from a true shillelagh) made of wet canvas firehose. The Pollywogs will have to crawl through double line of Shellbacks weilding these. In the days of all-male ships, out on the open ocean, the line crossing ceremony could get pretty strenuous. It is now very, very tame compared to what we see here. Dee Exx
My uncle was involved in a Crossing Ceremony and he said it got VERY raw.
War is hell.
interesting
"Shellback" is crossing equator.
"Golden Dragon" is crossing of International dateline.
Palau is above Equator, but not that far.
Could have been either initiation, featuring a "clothed seawater baptism."
I made the first two gifs from a Critical Past video depicting the crossing of the Equator of the ship LST-554 on its way to Peleliu. They didn't say where the ship was coming from, but it could have been part of the fleet in the Solomon Islands south of the Equator.
Seeing the file was labeled "crossing the line" it had to be, International Date Line.
With ship lines, Sheets, and such, the Equator is never referred to as a Line.
Would love to have seen the film, as how much (of the initiation, wink) showed
Paul, the text on the Critical Past site specifically said that LST-554 was crossing the Equator. The Equator may not normally be referred to as a Line, but the ceremony of crossing the Equator in a ship has been called "crossing the line" for centuries. One of thousands of examples: when Charles Darwin crossed the Equator on the ship Beagle in 1832, Darwin wrote on Feb. 16: "In the evening the ceremonies for crossing the line commenced." Darwin then described how he was blindfolded, his face was lathered with pitch and paint that was then scraped off with a rough iron hoop, and he was ducked into a tub of water.
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