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The Pacific War, sometimes called the Asia–Pacific War or the Pacific Theater, [48] was the theater of World War II that was fought in eastern Asia, the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean, and Oceania.
- Allied victory
The Battle of Okinawa (Japanese: 沖縄戦, Hepburn: Okinawa-sen), codenamed Operation Iceberg, [24]: 17 was a major battle of the Pacific War fought on the island of Okinawa by United States Army and United States Marine Corps forces against the Imperial Japanese Army.
- Overview
- Japan’s strategy in the Pacific and Southeast Asia
Pacific War, major theatre of World War II that covered a large portion of the Pacific Ocean, East Asia, and Southeast Asia, with significant engagements occurring as far south as northern Australia and as far north as the Aleutian Islands.
The Japanese war plan, aimed at the American, British, and Dutch possessions in the Pacific and in Southeast Asia, was of a rather makeshift character. The first draft, submitted by the chiefs of the Army and Navy General Staff, was accepted by Imperial General Headquarters early in September 1941. The lateness of the draft was due largely to the long indecision about going to war with such powerful countries, but partly to the complicated system of command. The Army and Navy each had its own Supreme Command, and both of them, under the constitution of 1889, had become virtually independent of the civil government. Cooperation in planning and in execution took place only at top levels. Even when Imperial General Headquarters was established under the nominal command of Emperor Hirohito (the constitutional supreme commander), the separate command system was rigidly followed.
Since 1907, when Japanese military planners first defined hypothetical enemies, Russia, the United States, and France fell into this category. From the geostrategic standpoint, the Army would have the major role in a war against Russia, the Navy in one against the United States. Except for a few occasional revisions, the gist of this war plan remained nearly unchanged until 1936, when France was removed from the list of hypothetical enemies and China and Great Britain were included. Until 1941, however, the basic assumption was that Japan would be fighting only a single enemy, not two or three enemies simultaneously. In the event of war with the United States, the plan called for the Japanese Navy to destroy the enemy’s Far Eastern fleet at the outset of hostilities, to occupy Luzon and Guam in cooperation with the Army, and then to intercept and destroy the main enemy fleet when it sailed to Far Eastern waters. The assumption here was that the main U.S. fleet would have to come to the Western Pacific sooner or later to challenge the Japanese aggression, in which case it would be intercepted on its way by Japanese submarines and land-based air forces and then destroyed once and for all by Japan’s main fleet in a concentrated attack (as the Russian main fleet had been destroyed in the Battle of Tsushima in 1905).
As late as 1939 the Japanese Navy was still a firm believer in gun power. It was assumed that decisive battles would be fought mainly by the big guns of the battleships, supplemented by light cruiser and destroyer attacks and by air attacks from carriers. The Navy had been armed and trained accordingly. Japanese naval policy had also long considered a strength equivalent to 70 percent of the total strength of the U.S. Navy as a prerequisite for victory over the United States—on the assumption that 30 percent of the main U.S. fleet would be destroyed before reaching Far Eastern waters. It was for this strategic reason that the Japanese Navy had made strenuous efforts to build up its auxiliary strength while its battleships were limited to 60 percent of the U.S. strength by the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and that Japan in 1934 gave notice of withdrawal from that treaty as from 1936. As early as 1934, two monster battleships, to be equipped with 18-inch (46-cm) guns, had already been planned despite the limitations of the treaty, though actual construction began only afterward. In 1940, simultaneous efforts were made to strengthen air and submarine forces.
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Meanwhile the Army had been deeply engaged in the protracted war in China, in which the main body of the Navy’s land-based air force and a small portion of its surface force had also taken part. The land-based air force’s operations in China not only gave it valuable experience but also prompted a rapid increase of its strength: the Zero fighter made its debut there, as did Japan’s twin-engined bomber. As 1940 drew to its close, however, the war in China had turned into a stalemate, and Japan had already committed itself to the Axis and antagonized the West. It was at this stage that the Army and the Navy began to plan war against the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Battle of Saipan. Marines take cover behind an M4 Sherman tank while clearing Japanese forces in northern Saipan, 8 July 1944. The Battle of Saipan was an amphibious assault launched by the United States against the Empire of Japan during the Pacific campaign of World War II between 15 June and 9 July 1944.
Aug 18, 2024 · On July 16, 1945, in a desert area at Alamogordo, New Mexico, an implosion device was set off. It generated explosive power equivalent to between 15,000 and 20,000 tons of TNT. The burst was visible from 50 miles (80 km) away, and it shattered a window 125 miles (200 km) distant.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
May 26, 2024 · May 26, 2024. In the darkest days of World War II, as the Japanese juggernaut swept across the Pacific, a desperate struggle unfolded in the dense jungles of New Guinea. Along a narrow, 96-kilometer track winding through the rugged Owen Stanley Mountains, Australian soldiers fought to halt the Japanese march toward Port Moresby.
Explore a timeline of the Pacific theater, from the invasion of Saipan in the Mariana Islands of the Central Pacific to the formal Japanese surrender on the U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
