History
Further information: Admiralty Islands campaign#Securing Seeadler HarbourOn February 29, 1944, General Douglas MacArthur led Operation Brewer to take the islands from the Japanese who had occupied them beginning in 1942. The islands were secured by the Americans on March 19, 1944, who then built a large base at Seeadler Harbor including wharves and an airbase. This base served as a staging area for further World War II operations in New Guinea and the Philippines.
USS Mount Hood exploded accidentally while moored in Seeadler Harbor on 10 November 1944. The ship was carrying ammunition and the tremendous explosion caused 432 fatalities, 371 wounded, damage to surrounding ships and base from debris and sinking or severely damaging 22 smaller craft.
The wrecks of the U.S. Navy's Large Auxiliary Floating Dry Docks, AFDB-2 and AFDB-4, and an Imperial Japanese ship amongst others are located within the harbor.
Read more about this topic: Seeadler Harbor
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“Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.”
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“Certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment’s comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed.”
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“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
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