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

The Guadalcanal Mafia

By Alan Rems

Undertaken in haste and with slim resources, the Guadalcanal Campaign (Operation Watchtower) was America’s first offensive of World War II and it presented a unique set of challenges. Read more

A pair of Douglas SBD Dauntless dive-bombers depart a carrier in the Pacific as they embark on a mission in late July 1944.

Pacific Theater

Scout Squadron 6 During the Pearl Harbor Attack

By Richard L. Hayes

Many people have heard of the six American Curtiss P-40 Tomahawk fighters that actually got off the ground and contested the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. Read more

Soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 27th Infantry Division move forward on Saipan in the summer of 1944. The U.S. forces tasked with capturing the Japanese island and its airfields would be the first to face a gyokusai (”smash the jewel”) suicide attack—not just the frenzied charge that accompanied the Japanese battle cry “Tennōheika banzai!” (long live His Majesty the Emperor). In a July 7 attack seeking to fight until their own forces were annihilated, as many as 4,000 Japanese soldiers died, while American forces suffered 1,000 casualties, including some 400 killed.

Pacific Theater

‘Annihilation Attack’ on Saipan

By Richard M. Ingleby

Captain Lawrence Rulison, the commander of K Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines, listened as his battalion commander, Lt. 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

Pacific Theater

A Good Samaritan

By Jon Diamond

The iconic photograph the Blinded Soldier, New Guinea taken on Christmas Day 1942, reveals a wounded and barefoot Australian soldier, Private George “Dick” Whittington of the 2/10th Battalion, being led down a path through a surrounding field of tall kunai grass to an Allied field hospital at Dobodura in Papua, the eastern third of the world’s second largest island, New Guinea. 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

Pacific Theater

The FCC’s RID and Japan’s Surrender

By Susan L. Brinson

George Sterling received a teletype message from the War Department just after 5:15 am on August 15, 1945. Read more

Pacific Theater

The First Victory

By David H. Lippman

Both sides needed reinforcements.For the Japanese and the Americans in October 1942, the battle for Guadalcanal was turning into a bottomless pit, demanding more and more scarce resources—in the air and at sea and, most importantly, on the ground. Read more

Pacific Theater

Boyd Wagner: Early American Ace

By Sam McGowan

Common wisdom has long held that Japanese pilots and aircraft, particularly their fighters, were superior to the American, Australian, and British counterparts they faced in combat in the Philippines and Southeast Asia in the opening months of U.S. 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

Gauntlet of Steel at Okinawa

By John Wukovits

Edward T. Higgins had witnessed few spectacles to match the one that unfolded all about him in the waters surrounding Okinawa, an island 400 miles southwest of the Japanese Home Island of Kyushu. Read more

Fire from the guns of the Australian cruiser HMAS Perth splits the darkness in the opening moments of the Battle of Sunda Strait on February 25, 1942. The Australian vessel and the American cruiser Houston were lost in action against the Japanese.

Pacific Theater

Heroic Fight Against Long Odds

By John Wukovits

The haggard American sailors aboard the limping cruiser hoped that the journey upon which they had just embarked was the long-expected voyage back to the United States. Read more

A Fu-Go bomb snagged on a tree in Kansas, February 23, 1945. Approximately 9,000 balloons were launched, but only about 900 made it across the Pacific; several landed in the Midwest.

Pacific Theater

The Deadly Balloon Bombs of Imperial Japan

By 1944, the Japanese still had no long-range bombers to match the Boeing B-29 Superfortress. And a great many of Dai Nippon’s warplanes and aircraft carriers were lying at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. 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

U.S. Navy Lieutenant Alex Vraciu holds up six fingers signifying the number of Japanese aircraft that fell to his guns during an eight-minute span on a single mission.

Pacific Theater

The Setting Sun

By David H. Lippmann

Once again, the Japanese regarded an upcoming naval engagement as the “decisive battle,” but it had been two years since her aircraft carriers and battleships had emerged from their Inland Sea lairs to menace the United States Navy. Read more

Pacific Theater

The Costly Kyushu Invasion of Operation Olympic?

By Sam McGowan

During the more than half a century since the end of World War II, there has been much speculation about what would have happened if President Harry Truman had not dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the invasion of Japan had actually taken place. Read more

Pacific Theater

Unnecessary Hell: The Battle of Peleliu

By Eric Niderost

In the predawn hours of September 15, 1944, the official start of the two-month Battle of Peleliu, a powerful fleet of U.S. Read more

On September 12, 1943, at Vella Lave, New Caledonia, Major John Burden and Nisei soldiers of the 25th Division Language Section, attached to G2 (Military Intelligence), interrogate a Japanese prisoner of war in a temporary stockade.

Pacific Theater

Speaking the Enemy’s Language

By Dr. Carl H. Marcoux

American soldiers of Japanese ancestry made remarkable contributions to the Allied victory during World War II. Read more

Under attack five days after Pearl Harbor, shore installations and U.S. Navy barges at Cavite in the Philippines burn furiously following a Japanese air raid.

Pacific Theater

A Suicide Mission From the President?

By Ron Gilliam

As he read the decrypt of the radiogram from Admiral Harold Stark, Chief of Naval Operations, several things bothered Admiral Thomas C. Read more

In a photo taken from another B-29 in formation, this heavy bomber disgorges incendiary bombs from the skies above Formosa. The largest B-29 raid of the war to date took place on October 14, 1944. The target was the repair and supply facilities at Okayama on the island.

Pacific Theater

B-29 Superfortress: The Plane That Bombed Japan Into Submission

By Sam McGowan

As the Japanese delegation stood on the deck of the battleship USS Missouri on September 2, 1945, preparing to sign the documents that ended World War II, a large formation of Boeing B-29 Superfortress heavy bombers swooped low over Tokyo Bay as a reminder of the terrible destruction that had befallen their nation and turned Japan’s cities into ruins. Read more

Pacific Theater

From Around the Network

Last Man In Hell: A Navy Beachmaster on Omaha Beach

The Athens War Museum

Battle of Manila Bay

Vanguard of Elephants on the Hydaspes River