_____________________________________________________________________(Wayne, NJ: SquareOne Publishing Group, Inc., 1985)_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________(David M. Glantz. American bases in Guam, Wake Island, and the Philippines were also attacked.The United States wasn't the only country to be attacked. Just click on the battle map you want to see. The movies we make and the stories we tell are almost invariably about D-Day, the Holocaust, and the Americans thwarting Nazis. The Pacific War was the largest naval conflict in history. Traditionally, it’s said that the Pacific War ended when America dropped nuclear bombs upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki.It’s a convenient explanation. University Press of Kansas, 1999)______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ By the end of the Pacific War, the Japanese would sustain the second most casualties, with over one million soldiers killed or missing.The Pacific Theater of World War II was, as one historian And as the hundreds of thousands of American men who had just enlisted were about to learn, it was going to be more brutal than anything they would see in Europe.That's in part because the Japanese didn’t fight by the same rules used in Europe. It was geographically the largest theater of the war, including the vast Pacific Ocean theater, the South West Pacific theater, the South-East Asian theater, the Second Sino-Japanese War, and the Soviet–Japanese War. Southwest Pacific Theater of Operations, 26 July 1942 (p.38) Map 7.
The fighting in the Pacific Theater was wrought with the same hatred, nationalism, and war criminality that raged across Europe. "Swarms of big flies hovered about them Men struggled and fought and bled in an environment so degrading I believed we had been flung into hell’s own cesspool.
The battles fought in the Pacific War are thus vastly overshadowed.But the Pacific Theater of World War II was, in its own right, a stage for a number of brutal battles too. The Battles of World War II: The Pacific Theater From left, U.S.S. Okinawa was considered the final frontier in the Pacific Theater before storming the Japanese mainland. Iwo Jima. Japanese machine gun fire from the right flank also makes it more difficult for them. US Marine Corps/Frederic Lewis/Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesAn American ship launches rockets at Okinawa before the US invasion. If the nuclear bomb ended the war, then we could justify the hundreds of thousands of innocent deaths they caused. Central Pacific 7 Dec 41 - 6 Dec 43. Aleutian Islands 3 Jun 42 - 24 Aug 43. Okinawan civilians leave their hiding spot in a hillside cave under a Marine's assurance that they will not be harmed. Okinawa. Some American prisoners-of-war were subjected to horrific experiments as well.One group of soldiers who crash-landed onto Kyushu Island in 1945 were carried off by a group of Japanese soldiers who told them that they would treat their injuries. The Pacific Ocean theater, during World War II, was a major theater of the war between the Allies and the Empire of Japan. The Japanese occupied the Gilbert Islands just three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor.Two U.S. soldiers plant an American flag attached to a boat hook on the beach at Guam. Site Map. Every conceivable type of naval activity was represented: carrier aviation battles, surface engagements, bitterly fought night-fights, the largest amphibious landings of the entire war, and the stealthy, brutal battles waged by and against submarines.I have compiled information on a number of the more important (and, I think, interesting) battles of the war, including a synopsis, tabular displays of the forces involved, and in some cases ship movement track charts.