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
He was a seagoing J.E.B. Stuart who hid beneath weather fronts to make his attacks, and he fought more naval engagements than John Paul Jones and David Farragut combined. Read more
Pacific Theater
The heated reaction by the Marines to the slaughter at the Goettge Patrol, answered in kind by the Japanese, led to some of the fiercest combat seen in the war. Read more
Pacific Theater
Although neither side was aware of it at the time, the battle for Okinawa would be the last major battle of World War II. Read more
Pacific Theater
In the distance, they could see the jagged flashes of lightning, an incoming squall in the dark. Just before the rain arrived, so did St. Read more
Pacific Theater
The strategic defeats suffered in the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway checked Japan’s advance in the Pacific. Read more
Pacific Theater
Gene Verge was born in Pasadena, California, in 1918. As a young man in 1941 he faced the probability of being drafted. Read more
Pacific Theater
Thailand was perhaps the least known, though surely more scenic and exotic, covert battleground of World War II. Read more
Pacific Theater
As the landing craft carrying the invading Allied ground forces of Operation Overlord motored toward the Normandy beaches on June 6, 1944, they were protected and supported by the largest aerial armada the world has ever seen. Read more
Pacific Theater
At 11:02 am on August 9, 1945, an American warplane dropped an atomic device nicknamed “Fat Man” onto the city of Nagasaki, Japan. Read more
Pacific Theater
On January 9, 1945, after almost three years, General Douglas MacArthur and the United States Army returned to the Philippine island of Luzon, landing at Lingayen Gulf on the northwest coast. Read more
Pacific Theater
Why was Myitkyina such an important objective in the reconquest of Burma in 1943 through 1944 for the Allies and especially among them, Lt. Read more
Pacific Theater
In the closing months of World War II, Staff Sergeant Henry E. “Red” Erwin, Sr., picked up a burning phosphorus flare inside the cramped fuselage of his Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber high over Japan. Read more
Pacific Theater
“Colonel, there’s about 3,000 Japs between you and me.” Sergeant Ralph Briggs telephoned the command post of the 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment at about 9:30 on the night of October 24, 1942, to report what he had just seen. Read more
Pacific Theater
Historical controversy has famously surrounded Admiral Richmond K. Turner. In his responsibility as Director of the War Plans Division, he was to inform Admiral Kimmel, Commander of the Pacific Fleet, of Japanese diplomatic threats alluding to military retribution for souring political relations. Read more
Pacific Theater
General Joseph W. “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell and his Sino-American Myitkyina Task Force (MTF), in a coup de main attack, seized the vital Japanese-controlled airfield just west of the town of Myitkyina on the great Irrawaddy River in northern Burma on May 17, 1944. Read more
Pacific Theater
President Franklin D. Roosevelt was disturbed in the autumn of 1938 by the Munich agreement, at which the rights of Czechoslovakia were signed away, and by reports of mounting air strength in Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Read more
Pacific Theater
While making business calls in Tampa, Florida, during the summer of 1980, I spotted a strange looking tracked contraption atop an overgrown pedestal in front of the U.S. Read more
Pacific Theater
Following their impressive string of victories in Malaya, Hong Kong, Burma, the Dutch East Indies, and the Philippines, it appeared that the Japanese were invincible in the early days of World War II. Read more
Pacific Theater
When the Boeing B-29 Superfortress crews poured out of the briefing at North Field, Tinian, on the afternoon of March 9, 1945, they were disgruntled. Read more
Pacific Theater
In director Howard Hawks’s 1941 film classic, Sergeant York, then-Corporal Alvin York, portrayed by Gary Cooper, single-handedly knocks out more than 30 German machine-gun nests and, with little assistance, captures 132 enemy soldiers. Read more
