Pacific Theater
The Buna Front: A Ghastly Nightmare
By Jon DiamondAsk anyone who was there and they will tell you that Papua New Guinea, especially along the northern coast, was a tropical hell. Read more
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
“Butch” O’Hare: the Original Top Gun
By Patrick ReynoldsEdward Henry “Butch” O’Hare rocketed to fame in February 1942 by singlehandedly taking on eight Japanese torpedo bombers bent on destroying the aircraft carrier USS Lexington and shooting down several of them. Read more
Pacific Theater
The Greatest Disaster
By David H. LippmanAmid rain, lightning, and dark, the British admiral and American general picked their way through choppy seas to the transport USS McCawley, off the coast of Guadalcanal. Read more
Pacific Theater
JFK’s First Brush with Death
By John DomagalskiActivity at Japanese air bases in the northern Solomon Islands reached a fever pitch as the South Pacific sun rose on the morning of April 7, 1943. Read more
Pacific Theater
Steel Typhoon at Okinawa
By Blaine TaylorAs one island or island group in the Pacific was fought over by American and Japanese forces, it became clear that Japan’s days as a combatant in World War II were numbered. Read more
Pacific Theater
Deadly Dash Forward
By Gene Eric SaleckerBy the time the attack on Pearl Harbor plunged the United States into World War II, Japan had been preparing for an all-out offensive in the Pacific for months. Read more
Pacific Theater
Bomber Command Pathfinder
By Bruce PettyAlan George was born in 1918 and was fourth-generation New Zealander. His great grandparents arrived in New Plymouth in 1841 from Cornwall, England, aboard the 506-ton ship Oriental. Read more
Pacific Theater
Last Letter Home
By Phil ScearceOn December 1, 1942, Lance Corporal Kiyoshi Koto wrote his last letter home. By that time, his unit’s command structure was decimated and the battle strength of his army and its supporting navy was ravaged. Read more
Pacific Theater
Rising Sun, Descending Darkness
By William Strook“Finally at Corregidor there was only a little crowd of American soldiers and Filipino soldiers and American nurses at the beaches, with nothing at their backs but the waters of the Pacific, and the flag came down. Read more
Pacific Theater
Hellish Battle in a Tropical Paradise
By Nathan N. Prefer“But here are men who fought in gallant actions, as gallant AS ever hero’s fought,” wrote the poet Lord Byron (1788-1824). Read more
Pacific Theater
How Capitalism Won WWII: This Is Capitalism and Expert Rob Citino Explain
By Nicholas Varangis“We won because we smothered the enemy in an avalanche of production, the like of which he had never seen, nor dreamed possible.” Read more
Pacific Theater
USS Lexington: A Lady to the End
By Michael D. HullResponding to a November 27, 1941, war warning message from Admiral Harold R. “Betty” Stark, chief of naval operations, America’s prized handful of aircraft carriers were fortuitously absent from Pearl Harbor when Japanese planes savaged the Pacific Fleet on Sunday, December 7. Read more
Pacific Theater
The Last Fighter Pilot: An Account of the Final Combat Mission of World War Two
Guest Post By History on the NetThe following is an account of Captain Jerry Yellin, who flew the last combat mission of WWII on the morning of August 15, 1945, out of Iwo Jima. Read more
Pacific Theater
When Japan Invaded America
By Stephen D. LutzAlaska’s Aleutian Island chain consists of 69 measurable islands. Just as many more exist, too small to measure as an island. Read more
Pacific Theater
The USS Laffey Survived Waves of Kamikazes Off Okinawa
By John WukovitsTwo warships have been named in honor of Seaman Bartlett Laffey, a Civil War Medal of Honor recipient. Read more
Pacific Theater
The Nevada and I Survived the War
By Charles T. SeheI am of Polish, Irish, and American Indian descent and grew up in the small (population 3,800) northern Illinois town of Geneva. Read more
Pacific Theater
The Men Against the Bomb
By Andrew J. RotterThe men and women who imagined and then built the atomic bomb thought they were doing something different from what makers of “conventional” weapons did. Read more
Pacific Theater
LIFE Photographer Ralph Morse’s War
By Susan ZimmermanIn an age before television and instant communications, Americans wanted to see what was going on in the world’s “deadliest conflict in human history,” and LIFE magazine was making a name for itself as THE war magazine during World War II. Read more
Pacific Theater
Iwo Jima: Primary Objective of the South Pacific
By Mike HaskewIn early 1945, the island of Iwo Jima in the Volcanoes Group, only 660 miles from the Japanese capital of Tokyo, became the focus of the American drive across the Pacific Ocean during World War II. Read more
Pacific Theater
The Amazing Voyages of the USS O’Brien
By Eric NiderostAt exactly three o’clock in the afternoon on February 25, 1944, a crowd gathered at the Boston Navy Yard for the commissioning ceremony of the USS O’Brien (DD725), a destroyer of the Sumner class. Read more
