
Pacific Theater
British General Orde Wingate’s Blurred Legacy
By Jon DiamondBritish General Orde Wingate is one of the more enigmatic World War II commanders encountered in a number of biographical and military historical accounts. Read more
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
British General Orde Wingate is one of the more enigmatic World War II commanders encountered in a number of biographical and military historical accounts. Read more
Pacific Theater
On September 2, 1945, Japanese representatives boarded the battleship USS Missouri, riding at anchor in Tokyo Bay, to sign an instrument of unconditional surrender. Read more
Pacific Theater
By Dick Camp (Colonel, USMC, Retired)
The war in the Pacific was a bloody, protracted struggle between the Empire of Japan and the United States and her allies. Read more
Pacific Theater
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
Noted chronicler of the Pacific Theater Eric Hammel recently spent three years sorting, scanning, cleaning, selecting, and captioning United States Marine Corps World War II photos for six pictorial books. Read more
Pacific Theater
Sergeant Larry Kirby will always remember the fighting on the morning of March 12, 1945, as his unit, Easy Company, 9th Marines, 3rd Marine Division, attempted to move against Hill 362C under the cover of darkness in northeastern Iwo Jima. Read more
Pacific Theater
On August 2, 1945, two weeks prior to Japan’s surrender, the highest ranking Japanese officer captured during the war in the Pacific was taken on the island of Morotai, Dutch New Guinea. Read more
Pacific Theater
Much of what we know today about World War II are the visual images—both still and moving—that combat photographers took to document all phases of this costly human tragedy. Read more
Pacific Theater
Lieutenant Commander John Benjamin Fellows, the skipper of the American Gleaves-class destroyer USS Gwin (DD-433), stood on the bridge trying to see into the predawn blackness. Read more
Pacific Theater
Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese caught the United States Army Air Forces units in the Philippines on the ground late on December 8. Read more
Pacific Theater
No foreign army in the 5,000-year history of Japan had ever successfully conquered Japanese territory. In late 1944, American war planners were about to challenge that statistic on the tiny Pacific island of Iwo Jima. Read more
Pacific Theater
The concept of a ship that could submerge beneath the water and then resurface dates back as far as the late 1400s, when Italian Renaissance artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci claimed to have found a method for a ship to remain submerged for a protracted period of time. Read more
Pacific Theater
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
Despite more than a decade of triumphs in Asia and the Pacific, by the spring of 1942 the Japanese military establishment was in a somber mood. Read more
Pacific Theater
The first recorded encounter between American forces and Koreans in the Central Pacific during World War II came at Tarawa Atoll in November 1943. Read more
Pacific Theater
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
Pacific Theater
By Colonel Dick Camp (USMC, Ret.)
In the summer of 1944, the 5th Amphibious Corps under Marine Lt. Gen. Holland M. Read more
Pacific Theater
The American military presence in China, which stretched back to the 1850s, came to an abrupt end in November 1941. Read more
Pacific Theater
It was the largest warship ever built up to that time. It carried larger guns than any warship before it. Read more
Pacific Theater
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