New Guinea
On August 2, 1945, two weeks prior to Japan’s surrender, the highest ranking Japanese officer captured during the war in the Pacific was taken on the island of Morotai, Dutch New Guinea. Read more
New Guinea
Today’s Navy SEALs (for Sea, Air, and Land special warfare experts) have a history shrouded in secrecy. Commissioned in 1962, they are the most elite shore-area Special Forces in the world, concentrating on very select and often-clandestine intelligence gathering and precision strike missions. Read more
New Guinea
In April 1944, General Douglas MacArthur’s Southwest Pacific forces took a giant 600-mile leap along the north coast of New Guinea with their landing at Hollandia. Read more
New Guinea
In November 1941, the U.S. Asiatic Fleet weighed anchor in Shanghai, China, for the last time. Alarmed by the growing hostility and aggressiveness of the Japanese, Admiral Thomas Hart ordered the outnumbered and outgunned American vessels moved to the relative safety of Manila Bay in the Philippines. Read more
New Guinea
During the 1920s, roughly two decades before the B-25 Mitchell bomber came into service, U.S. Army Air Service commander Brig. Read more
New Guinea
The Japanese attacked the Australians near the remote village of Kokoda in New Guinea in the middle of the night on July 29, 1942. Read more
New Guinea
Under a midnight moon, hundreds of soldiers crept forward into position along the riverbank. Fields of tall reeds helped conceal them from observation but could not muffle the sounds of weary men slipping in the mud. Read more
New Guinea
The deliberate crashing into enemy targets by Japanese aviators did not begin at the Battle of Santa Cruz Islands. Read more
New Guinea
Ask anyone who was there and they will tell you that Papua New Guinea, especially along the northern coast, was a tropical hell. Read more
New Guinea
When the four members of the Japanese surrender delegation climbed aboard the deck of PT-375 on September 8, 1945, the boat’s skipper, Lieutenant Henry “Hank” Blake, directed the men to an open area on the forward deck where the Japanese could be closely watched for any signs of treachery. Read more
New Guinea
On August 7, 1942, Petty Officer 1st Class Saburo Sakai was piloting his Mitsubishi A6M2 “Zero” fighter in the skies over Sealark Channel in the Solomon Islands. Read more
New Guinea
The small (population 12,000), central-Texas town of Fredericksburg, about an hour’s drive west of Austin and a little more than that northwest of San Antonio, may seem an odd location for the National Museum of the Pacific War until one realizes that Fredericksburg is the hometown of Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz––the Eisenhower of the Pacific Theater. Read more
New Guinea
A United States naval task force bearing the U.S. 1st Marine Division arrived off Guadalcanal, in the eastern Solomon Islands, on the morning of August 7, 1942, and launched the first American offensive operation of World War II. Read more
New Guinea
From an altitude of 30,000 feet, the swift Japanese reconnaissance aircraft flew high over Saipan and Tinian, photographing the brisk and extensive engineering effort under way on the American airfields far below. Read more
New Guinea
Donald R. Lobaugh was a juvenile delinquent, a kid sent to reform school when he was 16 years old. Read more
New Guinea
Since 1931, Japan’s army had asserted control over territory on the continent of Asia, brushing aside Chinese resistance, condemnation and political pressure from other nations, and most recently, the Allied military. Read more
New Guinea
Brave, urbane, and complex, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was Japan’s greatest naval strategist and the architect of one of the most stunning achievements in the history of modern warfare. Read more
New Guinea
The 13,000 ton Independence-class aircraft carrier USS Princeton, which was commissioned on February 25, 1943, quickly became known as the “Fighting Lady.” Read more
New Guinea
Just before dawn, the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise turned into the wind to launch her planes. Nervous and excited pilots roared into the darkness of the vast Pacific toward the unsuspecting Japanese. Read more
New Guinea
The Kokoda track campaign involved a trail that leada south along the western side of the Eora Creek Gorge and through the villages of Deniki and Isurava to a trail junction at Alola. Read more
