Pacific Theater

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

Doolittle’s Raiders: The Men Who Shaped the Pearl Harbor Payback

By Nathan N. Prefer

In the months that led up to Doolittle’s raiders assembling to strike back at Tokyo, President Franklin D. Read more

Pacific Theater

Eleanor Roosevelt and Admiral Halsey

By John Wukovits

Prim, proper, and lacking any trace of braggadocio, the first lady of the United States, Eleanor Roosevelt, preferred placid pastimes and exchanging letters with close friends. Read more

Pacific Theater

USS Sealion: the Only American Submarine to Sink an Enemy Battleship

By Chace V. Howland

“Thornton! Go let the captain know he’s needed in the conning tower.” Nineteen-year-old Quartermaster Third Class Ed Thornton from Three Notch, Alabama, scurried to the conning tower hatch and slid down the ladder into the control room. Read more

Pacific Theater

The Palawan Massacre: The Story from One of its Few Survivors

By Dick Camp, Col., USMC, Ret.

Superior Private Tomisaburo Sawa of the Imperial Japanese Army fixed the bayonet on his Type 99 Arisaka rifle and carefully checked to make sure the weapon was loaded. Read more

Pacific Theater

Why the U.S. Dropped the Atomic Bomb on Japan in WWII

By Robert A. Rosenthal

How did we get to dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima? Who was responsible? Where and when did it begin? Read more

Pacific Theater

The Makin Island Raid: What Really Happened to the Marines?

By Peter McQuarrie

In August 1942, the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion conducted the Makin Island raid in the Central Pacific. The purpose of the raid was to destroy Japanese installations on the island, gather intelligence, and to test the raiding tactics of the U.S. Read more

Pacific Theater

Sinking Japanese Submarine I-1

By Bruce Petty

Gordon Bridson was born in Wellington, New Zealand, in 1909, but shortly thereafter his family moved to Auckland, where he attended Auckland Grammar School. Read more

Pacific Theater

The Fight for Bougainville

By Michael E. Haskew

The bloody fight for Guadalcanal, where the string of Japanese conquests in the Pacific had finally run its course, was a turning point of World War II. Read more

Pacific Theater

Jimmy Doolittle: The Warrior from Shangri-La

By Michael D. Hull

Shortly after the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt remarked that he would like to bomb the enemy homeland in revenge as soon as possible. Read more

Pacific Theater

Recording the Pearl Harbor Attack

Written by: John Doe

Fort MacArthur in San Pedro, California was established by the U.S. Army in 1914 as a Coast Artillery installation to defend the harbors of Long Beach and Los Angeles. Read more

Pacific Theater

Marine Fight for Tinian

By Richard Camp (Colonel, USMC, ret.)

The island of Tinian is located in the Northern Marianas, three miles southwest of Saipan, 100 miles north of Guam, and 1,500 miles from mainland Japan. Read more

Pacific Theater

British Submarine Operations in the Pacific

By Arnold Blumberg

After the Royal Navy’s traumatic departure from the Pacific Ocean in early 1942, the 4th Submarine Flotilla and its depot ship, the HMS Adamant, operated with the Eastern Fleet based at Trincomalee––a large, natural harbor located on the coast of Sri Lanka in the heart of the Indian Ocean. Read more

Pacific Theater

The U.S. Navy’s Defective Mark 14 Torpedo

By Mark Carlson

Lieutenant Dan Daspit, captain of the U.S. submarine Tinosa could not believe his luck. Framed neatly in the periscope eyepiece was a sitting duck. Read more

Pacific Theater

General Harry Schmidt: World War II’s Quiet Marine

By Nathan N. Prefer

He organized, trained, and commanded the 4th Marine Division in the Marshall Islands and Saipan campaigns before taking command of the Fifth Amphibious Corps and leading it against Tinian and Iwo Jima. Read more

Pacific Theater

The Few, the Proud, the Black Marines in World War II

By Stephen D. Lutz

Prior to the summer of 1941, the United States Marine Corps did not want them. The Navy barely tolerated them in restricted capacities as cooks, waiters, servants for officers, and dockside stevedores. Read more

Pacific Theater

Desperate Los Baños Raid

By Christopher Miskimon

Henry Muller had an important job. He was the intelligence officer of the 11th Airborne Division, known in military parlance as the G-2. Read more

Pacific Theater

Battle of the Java Sea: Desperate Delaying Action

By David Lippman

The ships left just before sunset on February 26, 1942, passing out of a harbor jammed with wreckage, battered docks, fires, the stench of burning oil, and Dutch women, children, and old men—most of them relatives of the crews heading out—waving their men goodbye and good luck. Read more

Pacific Theater

WWII Pioneers of Skip Bombing

By Gene Eric Salecker

By September 1942, after numerous aerial strikes against the advancing Imperial Japanese Navy, the Battle of the Coral Sea in May, and numerous attacks against enemy convoys along the New Guinea coast in the summer of that year, Maj. Read more