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
“There’s no greater feeling in the world than seeing Old Glory in a winning position.” Twenty-one-year-old U.S. Navy Ensign Joseph Bale watched the American flag raising on Iwo Jima’s Mount Suribachi from aboard the attack transport USS Dickens County Texas. Read more
Pacific Theater
The ferocious battle for the island of Saipan in the Marianas was won by U.S. Marines and U.S. Read more
Pacific Theater
In 1941, the Philippine Islands, 7,000 in number, an American-controlled mandate, formed a natural barrier between Japan and the rich resources of East and Southeast Asia. Read more
Pacific Theater
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
Pacific Theater
With such award-winning films as Stagecoach, Young Mr. Lincoln, Drums Along the Mohawk, The Grapes of Wrath, The Long Voyage Home, and How Green Was My Valley behind him, John Ford was one of Hollywood’s most respected directors by the time World War II broke out in 1939. Read more
Pacific Theater
Early in the 20th century, the population of New Zealand was just under a million. According to official sources, 20 percent of New Zealand’s eligible manpower served in uniform during World War I. Read more
Pacific Theater
World War II made a disparate trio of allies —British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Soviet Marshal Joseph Stalin, and American President Franklin D. Read more
Pacific Theater
Norvald Flaaten never expected he would appear in a movie when he signed up with the Canadian Army during World War II, but the subject of the movie and what he had to do was too good to pass up. Read more
Pacific Theater
George Sterling received a teletype message from the War Department just after 5:15 am on August 15, 1945. Read more
Pacific Theater
Lieutenant Commander Stephen L. Johnson had a problem on his hands; a very large problem. His Balao-class submarine, the Segundo, had just picked up a large radar contact on the surface about 100 miles off Honshu, one of Japan’s home islands, heading south toward Tokyo. Read more
Pacific Theater
Most people think that World War II broke out on September 1, 1939, when the Wehrmacht crossed the German-Polish border. Read more
Pacific Theater
The year 1942 was one of crisis for the Allied cause in the Pacific. Until May, almost everything had gone in favor of Imperial Japan. Read more
Pacific Theater
The Fletcher-class destroyer was one of the finest, most versatile warships of World War II. More than 170 of them were built, a figure that far exceeds the total of any other type of warship of the era. Read more
Pacific Theater
American General George S. Patton, Jr., and German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel both demonstrated the masterful employment of armored forces in many World War II military campaigns. Read more
Pacific Theater
Six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Combined Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy, sought to extend Japan’s defensive perimeter in the central Pacific with the seizure of Midway atoll, about 1,300 miles west of Hawaii. Read more
Pacific Theater
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
The summer of 1942 had brought uplifting news for the United States in the Pacific Theater. After a numbing series of setbacks, including the December 1941 surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent fall of Guam and the Philippines, the nation’s Navy had husbanded its depleted forces and, with the crucial aid of naval intelligence, halted the Japanese in the May 1942 Battle of the Coral Sea and the June Battle of Midway. Read more
Pacific Theater
Hours after Japanese planes bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Japanese troops landed in northern Malaya and began moving south toward Singapore. Read more
Pacific Theater
The origins of the Matilda Tank or “I” Tank date back to 1934, when Maj. Gen. Percy C.S. Read more
Pacific Theater
“Japan cannot defeat America; therefore, Japan should not go to war with America.” Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy, spoke those words to a group of school children as his government contemplated just that. Read more
