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
In 1942, Brisbane was the third largest city in Australia and the state capital of Queensland. To many, however, it was more like a big country town than a city, its 340,000 inhabitants living in a quiet, conservative, and isolated atmosphere. Read more
Pacific Theater
Charles D. Mott was a U.S. Navy dive-bomber pilot when he joined the American Volunteer Group (AVG), the small band of Americans who flew under the leadership of General Claire Lee Chennault and became known to history as the Flying Tigers. Read more
Pacific Theater
Everyone has seen the now famous photograph of the three firefighters hoisting Old Glory over the ruins of the World Trade Center. Read more
Pacific Theater
Private First Class Frank Rinaldi cautiously made his way through the dense foliage. He and other soldiers were on patrol when they heard the unmistakable sound of Japanese voices, and they inched their way forward to investigate. Read more
Pacific Theater
In truth, it really was not a combat operation. For every airplane lost to enemy action, a hundred were destroyed in accidents. Read more
Pacific Theater
When Private Clarence Garrett of the 28th Regiment, 5th Division, United States Marine Corps, clung to the loose black volcanic sand on the sloping beach of Iwo Jima on Feburary 19, 1945, he probably had no idea that his photograph was being taken. Read more
Pacific Theater
On the morning of February 23, 1945, on the tiny Pacific island of Iwo Jima, a 40-man patrol gathered at the 5th Marine Division headquarters for their final briefing with battalion commander Lt. Read more
Pacific Theater
The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was America’s first strategic intelligence organization. President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized its establishment on June 13, 1942, six months after World War II began, to collect and analyze strategic intelligence and to conduct special services, including subversion, sabotage, and psychological warfare. Read more
Pacific Theater
It will not come as a surprise to American readers that when the Japanese emperor delivered his surrender message on August 15, 1945, Allied forces led by the United States had thoroughly defeated Japan’s naval and air power in the Pacific. Read more
Pacific Theater
The Japanese looked unstoppable. Two divisions of the 15th Army had crossed from Thailand into Burma in mid-January 1942, bent on capturing Rangoon before the British could land reinforcements and block the seizing of the Burma Road. Read more
Pacific Theater
Very few among the throngs of visitors to Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu are aware of an anomaly, but it definitely exists in the case of the USS Utah. Read more
Pacific Theater
On the humid morning of August 19, 1942, infantrymen from Company A, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines carefully eyed the landscape for any signs of Japanese soldiers as they slowly made their way through the thick jungle on the island of Guadalcanal, located in the Solomon Islands. Read more
Pacific Theater
In the 1960s the John Birch Society was well known to most Americans as a right-wing political organization noted for its anti-communism and conspiracy theories. Read more
Pacific Theater
American soldiers of Japanese ancestry made remarkable contributions to the Allied victory during World War II. Read more
Pacific Theater
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
Through the first half of World War II, Allied shipping losses to German U-boats climbed steadily from over 400,000 tons in the last four months of 1939 to more than two million tons each in 1940 and 1941, before reaching a staggering 6,266,215 tons in 1942 following the entry of the United States into the war. Read more
Pacific Theater
Japanese military successes in 1941 and 1942 shocked the West. Behind those successes lay a logistics effort not often appreciated, that of shipping. Read more
Pacific Theater
When Howard Brooks joined the United States Navy in 1939, the 20-year-old farm boy from Tennessee had no idea that he was going to experience one of the most harrowing adventures of World War II. Read more
Pacific Theater
On Saturday, May 5, 1945, three days before the end of World War II in Europe and just three months before the Japanese surrendered, spinning shards of metal ripped into the tall pine trees, burrowing holes into bark and tearing needles from branches outside the tiny logging community of Bly, Oregon. Read more
Pacific Theater
As he read the decrypt of the radiogram from Admiral Harold Stark, Chief of Naval Operations, several things bothered Admiral Thomas C. Read more
