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
Colonel Merritt A. Edson, the 2nd Marine Division’s chief of staff, and Colonel David M. Shoup designed a simple plan to seize Betio—land along its northern beaches, drive straight across the narrow island, and kill the defenders. Read more
Pacific Theater
Stan Bowen spent the entire war in the U.S. Navy as a pharmacist’s mate, first in the operation at Tarawa, then Saipan and Tinian. Read more
Pacific Theater
As soon as one caveman threw a rock in anger at another, the human race took a giant step forward in warfare. Read more
Pacific Theater
Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber crews of the U.S. 11th Bombardment Group spent the first three months of 1943 organizing on Hawaiian airfields and flying practice and patrol missions around the islands. Read more
Pacific Theater
The most successful and popular patriotic show of World War II and one of the most unique productions in the history of entertainment was Irving Berlin’s This Is the Army, which originally began as a Broadway musical. Read more
Pacific Theater
As the months of 1945 passed at an agonizingly slow pace, Allied forces in the Pacific struggled unwaveringly toward Japan. Read more
Pacific Theater
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
Pacific Theater
“So this is the Eastern Fleet,” ran Vice Admiral Sir James Fownes Somerville’s signal. “Never mind. Many a good tune is played on an old fiddle.” Read more
Pacific Theater
Sunsets over Manila Bay are nothing less than spectacular. Once the sun dips below the horizon there is a lingering illumination known as “blue hour” as the sky gradually shifts from pale azure to deep indigo before fading completely into the black tropical night. Read more
Pacific Theater
On the morning of June 13, 1944, the brilliant new aircraft carrier Taiho weighed anchor and slowly moved out of Tawi-Tawi anchorage in the Sulu archipelago in the southwestern Philippines. Read more
Pacific Theater
On December 8, 1941, America was still shocked by news of war. President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared that the day before had been “a date which will live in infamy” because of the “unprovoked and dastardly attack” by Japan on Pearl Harbor. Read more
Pacific Theater
On the morning of November 6, 1942, a force of 267 Marines took its first steps into the jungle from a landing point at Aola Bay, roughly 30 miles east of the American perimeter on Guadalcanal. Read more
Pacific Theater
The Marines were tired, eager for a rest and the opportunity to get themselves and their equipment back into battle condition. Read more
Pacific Theater
At the beginning of World War II, the globe seemed huge—covered by thousands of miles of ocean and uninhabited land mass, but by the time it ended everything had been brought closer together, thanks largely to the four-engine transports of the United States Army Air Transport Command, particularly the Douglas C-54 Skymaster. Read more
Pacific Theater
Lieutenant Harold Gilson Payne, Jr., was one of the first Americans to die at Iwo Jima. He did not fall in the carnage of the Marine invasion that began on February 19, 1945. Read more
Pacific Theater
April 1, 1945, was Easter Sunday and April Fool’s Day. It was also the day the U.S. Army and Marine Corps launched Operation Iceberg, their massive amphibious assault on the Japanese island of Okinawa. Read more
Pacific Theater
Lieutenant John Bulkeley knew something was in the wind when General Douglas MacArthur invited him for an informal lunch at his headquarters on Topside, the highest elevation on the island fortress of Corregidor. Read more
Pacific Theater
Four Medals of Honor were awarded for acts of conspicuous gallantry during the invasion of Tarawa atoll in the Pacific during World War II. Read more
Pacific Theater
For the Allied tankers and infantrymen of the American, British, Canadian, and Free French armies battling German Panther and Tiger tanks in Normandy in the summer of 1944, the Sherman tank’s failures were glaringly evident as their own shells bounced off the hulls of the Nazi armor and they were themselves destroyed at a far greater range by the powerful German tanks. Read more
Pacific Theater
His name was Doris, but he was a powerfully built football fullback, a heavyweight boxer, and the first black American hero of World War II. Read more
