Pacific Theater

The Pacific Theater during World War II is generally regarded as the area of military confrontation between the Allied powers and Imperial Japan. The Pacific Theater consists of the entire operational expanse of the war from the Aleutian Islands in the north to Australia in the south, including island chains such as the Solomons, Gilberts, Marshalls, and Marianas. The China-Burma-India (CBI) Theater is also considered a major component of the Pacific Theater.

Pacific Theater

Evans Carlson & America’s First Special Operations Team

By Duane Schultz

Major Evans Carlson stood on a rickety platform built from wooden crates, the kind their rations came in. Read more

Pacific Theater

World War 2 Casualties & Caring for the Wounded

By Jon Diamond

The U.S. military employed an organized system for the treatment of soldiers severely wounded while fighting in the Pacific, including their evacuation stateside if needed. Read more

Two mother ships—the control aircraft—flank the drone after the pilot has bailed out. Note the bright wings of the drone, which were painted yellow to make the craft more visible to the mother ship.

Pacific Theater

Operation Aphrodite: Drones versus V2 Rockets

by William Scheck

In 1944, air traffic over southern Britain was almost at the New York City rush- hour level. On any given early morning, heavily laden B-17s and B-24s would be circling, laboriously assembling into formation for runs to targets in France and Germany. Read more

Pacific Theater

The Heroic Voyages of the USS Gwin

By Michael Fellows

Lieutenant Commander John Benjamin Fellows, the skipper of the American Gleaves-class destroyer USS Gwin (DD-433), stood on the bridge trying to see into the predawn blackness. Read more

Pacific Theater

Iwo Jima: This Shall Not Be in Vain

By Al Hemingway

Lieutenant General Holland M. Smith was 62 years of age. At a time in life when most men contemplate retirement, he was a very busy individual. Read more

Weary of fighting, a Japanese soldier raises his hands in surrender at Roi-Namur as a companion begins climbing out of a hole near the center of this photograph. These are two of only a handful of Japanese troops that survived the fighting on Roi-Namur, choosing surrender rather than suicide. A wary Marine covers the prisoner with his rifle, taking no chances.

Pacific Theater

4th Marine Division in the Marshall Islands: First Time Under Fire

By Cleve C. Barkley

As 1943 drew to a close, Admiral Chester Nimitz’s Central Pacific campaign was gaining momentum. His forces had taken the Gilbert Islands that November and now targeted the Marshall Islands as the next step on the long road to Tokyo. Read more

Their noses packed with blazing .50-caliber machine guns and their bomb bay doors open, North American B-25 Mitchell medium bombers streak toward a Japanese target in the South Pacific in this painting by Jack Fellows. Aircraft of the 38th Bomb Group participated in numerous raids such as this, including an attack on Kavieng, New Ireland, on February 15, 1944.

Pacific Theater

Flight Out of Hell: The Harrowing Bombing Mission to Kavieng

By Steven D. Smith

In the predawn darkness of Dobodura, New Guinea, 2nd Lt. William J. Smith of the U.S. Army Air Corps was roughly awakened by a noncom announcing that it was time to get dressed and get to the mess tent for breakfast. Read more

Pacific Theater

The Los Banos Raid: WWII’s Finest Allied Mission?

By Donald J. Roberts II

As the nine C-47s flew closer to the drop zone, the lead plane descended to an altitude of four hundred feet. Read more

American Marines armed with a Browning .30-caliber water-cooled machine gun and other light weapons pose during efforts to evacuate former Japanese Army personnel after their surrender in China following World War II.

Pacific Theater

Caught in the Chinese Conflict

By Eric Niderost

On September 2, 1945, Japanese representatives boarded the battleship USS Missouri, riding at anchor in Tokyo Bay, to sign an instrument of unconditional surrender. Read more

Pacific Theater

Profiles: ROTC Success

By Bruce Petty

More than 16 million Americans served in the U.S. military during World War II, but as fluid as the situation was in the Pacific, and considering the priority given to the European Theater, it is difficult to obtain an accurate count of how many served in the Pacific at any one time during World War II. Read more

For landings to be successful, the attackers had to know a great deal. Only men on the spot could stealthily observe conditions, and they had to be highly trained.

Pacific Theater

SEALs: the Birth of the Navy’s ‘Special Warfare’ Force

By Bud Hyland

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

In this painting by artist John Hamilton, the Japanese cruisers Mogami and Mikuma writhe under heavy American air attack on the last day of the Battle of Midway. Mikuma was sunk, but the seriously damaged Mogami managed to limp away to safety.

Pacific Theater

Mogami: Japan’s Luckless Cruiser

By David H. Lippman

She was the lead ship of her class, built under the 1930 London Naval Treaty, which imposed limits on cruiser, destroyer, and submarine tonnage for the United States, Great Britain, and Japan. Read more

Pacific Theater

What Made the B-25 Mitchell Bomber so Legendary

By Michael D. Hull

Little more than four months after the disastrous attack on Pearl Harbor, America went on the offensive against Japan with one of the boldest and best remembered bomber raids of World War II. Read more

Pacific Theater

The Story of Ruby Boye, Australia’s Only Female Coastwatcher

By Patrick J. Chaisson

For Australian coastwatcher Ruby Boye, an Allied agent stationed on the South Pacific island of Vanikoro, it started much like any other morning. Read more

Pacific Theater

USS Franklin and Father O’Callahan

By Michael D. Hull

On March 3, 1945, the 27,100-ton aircraft carrier USS Franklin churned out of Pearl Harbor and headed westward for the war zone. Read more

Pacific Theater

Marine Lieutenant Jack Power: WWII Medal of Honor Recipient

By Michael D. Hull

Outside City Hall in Worcester, Mass., stands a soldier who has been on guard duty since 1947. Read more

Pacific Theater

General Douglas MacArthur’s Navy

By Glenn Barnett

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

U.S. Navy Helldiver aircraft attack the Japanese battleship Musashi in the Sibuyan Sea during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Painting by Sam L. Massette.

Pacific Theater

Battle of Sibuyan Sea

By John Wukovits

In warfare, desperate times call for desperate measures, and in the fall of 1944 the empire of Japan found itself in precisely that predicament. Read more

Despite its tragic end, the USS Tang officially sank 31 vessels for a combined total of 227,800 tons.

Pacific Theater

Famous Navy Ships: The USS Tang

By Flint Whitlock

During World War II, the United States employed 288 submarines, the vast majority of which raided Japanese shipping in the Pacific, thus preventing the enemy’s vital supplies and reinforcements from reaching the far-flung island battlefields. Read more

Japanese pilots smile as they listen to a comrade recount his experiences of aerial combat over Wake Island.

Pacific Theater

Wake Island Survivor

By Eric Niderost

The siege of Wake Island lasted a relatively short time, from December 8 to December 23, 1941, yet it looms large in the annals of the Second World War. Read more

Pacific Theater

From Around the Network

Harald “Land Waster” Hardradi

Drawing Fire: The Combat Art of a Pawnee Indian, Artist, and Thunderbird in World War II

A Time for Heroes

A Pyrrhic Parachute Victory in Crete