Pacific War

US landings in the Pacific, 1941�"1945

The Pacific War was the part of World War II — and preceding conflicts — that occurred in the Pacific Ocean, its islands, and in East Asia, between July 8, 1937, and August 14, 1945. The most decisive actions took place after the Empire of Japan attacked various countries, later known as the Allies (or Allied powers), on or after December 7, 1941.

While the term Taiheiyō Sensō ("Pacific War") is also used in the Japanese language, Japanese people also use the term Dai Tō-A Sensō ("Greater East Asia War").

Participants

The Allies included the Republic of China, the United States of America, the United Kingdom (and members of British Commonwealth countries controlled directly by the U.K., such as the Indian Empire), The Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. The Soviet Union fought a short, undeclared border conflict with Japan in 1939, then remained neutral until August 1945, when it joined the Allies and invaded Manchukuo.Free French soldiers and ships fought with the allied troops and ships in the pacific.

The Axis states which assisted Japan included the Japanese puppet states of Manchukuo and the so-called National Government of China (which controlled the coastal regions of China). Thailand also joined the Axis powers after its defeat and coercion by Japan. Some people from Korea and Taiwan, which were Japanese colonies at the time, served in the Japanese military. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were formal allies of Japan, although cooperation between them was limited. Some German and Italian naval vessels operated in the Pacific and the Indian Ocean between 1940 and 1945.

Allied Commands

Between 1942 and 1945, there were four main Allied theaters/commands in the war against Japan: China, the Pacific Ocean Areas, the South East Asia Command and the South West Pacific Area. US sources often refer to two major theaters within the Pacific War: the Pacific Theater and the South-East Asian Theater. However, for most of the war, the US military divided operational control of its forces between the commanders of the Pacific Ocean Areas, the South West Pacific Area, and the China Burma India Theater (CBI). (US forces in the CBI were technically under the operational command of either the Allied South East Asia Command or that of China's generalissimo, Chiang Kai Shek.) For brief periods in both 1939 and 1945, there was another theater: Mongolia and north-east China, where Soviet and Korean Liberation Army forces also engaged Japan.

Conflict between Japan and China

The roots of the war began in the late 19th century with China in political chaos and Japan rapidly modernizing. Over the course of the late 19th century and early 20th century, Japan intervened and finally annexed Korea and expanded its political and economic influence into China, particularly Manchuria. This expansion of power was aided by the fact that by the 1910s, China had fragmented into warlordism with only a weak and ineffective central government.

However, the situation of a weak China unable to resist Japanese demands appeared to be changing toward the end of the 1920s. In 1927, Chiang Kai-Shek and the National Revolutionary Army of the Kuomintang led the Northern Expedition. Chiang was able to defeat the warlords in southern and central China, and was in the process of securing the nominal allegiance of the warlords in northern China. Fearing that Zhang Xueliang (the warlord controlling Manchuria) was about to declare his allegiance for Chiang, the Japanese staged the Mukden Incident and set up the puppet state of Manchukuo. The nominal Emperor of this puppet state is better known as Henry Pu Yi of the Qing Dynasty.

There is no evidence that Japan ever intended to directly administer China or that Japan's actions in China were part of a program of world domination. Rather, Japan's goals in China (strongly influenced by 19th century European colonialism) were to maintain a secure supply of natural resources and to have friendly and pliable governments in China that would not act against Japanese interests. Although Japanese actions would not have seemed out of place among European colonial powers in the 19th century, by 1930, notions of Wilsonian self-determination meant that raw military force in support of colonialism was no longer seen as appropriate behavior by the international community.

Hence, Japanese actions in Manchuria were roundly criticized and led to Japan's withdrawal from the League of Nations. During the 1930s, China and Japan reached a stalemate with Chiang focusing his efforts at eliminating the Communists, whom he considered to be a more fundamental danger than the Japanese. The influence of Chinese nationalism on opinion both in the political elite and the general population rendered this strategy increasingly untenable.

Meanwhile, in Japan, a policy of assassination by secret societies and the effects of the Great Depression had caused the civilian government to lose control of the military. In addition, the military high command had limited control over the field armies who acted in their own interest, often in contradiction to the overall national interest. There was also an upsurge in Japanese nationalism and Anti-European feeling, including the development of a belief that Japanese policies in China could be justified by racial theories. One popular idea with similarities to the Identity movement was that Japan and not China was the true heir of classical Chinese civilization.

The Sino-Japanese War

See the full article on the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945)

In 1937, Chiang was kidnapped by Zhang Xueliang in the Xian Incident. As condition of his release, Chiang promised to unite with the Communists and fight the Japanese. In response to this, officers of the Japanese Kwantung Army, without the knowledge of their high command in Tokyo, manufactured the Battle of Lugou Bridge (also known as the "Marco Polo Bridge Incident") on July 8, 1937, which succeeded in provoking a conflict between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan, the Sino-Japanese War.

In 1939 Japanese forces tried to push into the Soviet Far East from Manchuria. They were soundly defeated in the Battle of Halhin Gol by a mixed Soviet and Mongolian force led by Georgy Zhukov. This stopped Japanese expansion to the North and Japan and the Soviet Union kept uneasy peace until 1945.

Japan's policies in the 1930s are remarkable for their disastrously self-defeating nature. Japan's grand strategy was based on the premise that it could not survive a war against the European powers without secure sources of natural resources, yet to secure those resources it decided to undertake the war that it knew it could not win in the first place. Moreover, Japanese actions such as its brutality in China, and its practice of first setting up, and then undermining puppet governments in China, were clearly antithetical to Japan's overall goals, and yet the country persisted in them anyway. Finally, this march to self-destruction is remarkable in that many individuals within the Japanese political and military elite realized these self-destructive consequences, but were unable to do anything about the situation. Also, there appears to have been no debate over policy alternatives which might have enabled Japan to further its goals in China.

In addition, throughout the 1930s Japan succeeded in alienating public opinion in the West, particularly the United States. During the early 1930s, public opinion in the United States had been moderately pro-Japanese; however, reports of Japanese brutality, such as the Nanjing Massacre, written by Protestant missionaries, novelists such as Pearl Buck, and reporters from western media such as Time magazine, caused American public opinion to swing against Japan, as did events such as the Panay incident.

War spreads in the East

By 1941, Japan was in a stalemate in China. Although Japan had occupied much of north and central China, the Kuomintang had retreated to the interior setting up a provisional capital at Chongqing while the Communist Party of China remained in control of base areas in Shaanxi. In addition, Japanese control of north and central China was somewhat tenuous, in that Japan was usually able to control railroads and the major cities, but did not have a major military or administrative presence in the vast Chinese countryside. The Japanese found that its aggression against the retreating and regrouping Chinese army was stalled by the mountainous terrain in southwestern China while the Communists organized widespread guerrilla and saboteur activities in eastern and central China behind the Japanese frontline.

Japan sponsored several puppet governments, one of which was headed by Wang Jingwei. However, its policies of brutality toward the Chinese population, of not yielding any real power to the governments, and of support to several competing governments failed to make any of them a popular alternative to Chiang's government. Japan was also unwilling to negotiate directly with Chiang, nor was it willing to attempt to create splits in united front against it, by offering concessions that would make it a more attractive alternative than Chiang's government to the former warlords in Chiang's government. Although Japan was deeply mired in a quagmire, Japan's reaction to its situation was to turn to increasingly more brutal and depraved actions in the hope that sheer terror, including massive use of chemical and biological weapons against civilians and use of living civilians for medical and chemical experiments, would break the will of the Chinese population.

This, however, only had the effect of turning world public opinion against it. In an effort to discourage Japan's war efforts in China, the United States, United Kingdom, and the government in exile of the Netherlands (still in control of the oil-rich Dutch East Indies) stopped trading oil and steel (both war staples) with Japan. Japan saw this as an act of aggression, as without these resources Japan's military machine would grind to a halt. On December 8, 1941, Japanese forces attacked the British crown colony of Hong Kong, the International Settlement in Shanghai, the Philippines, which was then a United States Commonwealth; Japan also used Vichy French bases in French Indochina to invade Thailand, then using the gained Thai territory to launch an an assault against Malaya. At the same time, technically on December 7 due to the difference in time zones, Japanese carrier-based planes launched a massive air attack on the American fleet at Pearl Harbor. More than 2,400 people were killed, 3 battleships and 2 destroyers were sunk, among many other losses. Although Japan knew that it could not win a sustained and prolonged war against the United States, it was the Japanese hope that, faced with this sudden and massive defeat, the United States would agree to a negotiated settlement that would allow Japan to have free reign in China. This calculated gamble did not pay off; the United States refused to negotiate.

The United States enters the war

USS Arizona burned for two days after being hit by a Japanese bomb in the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Until the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States had remained out of the Asian and European conflict. The America First Committee, 800,000 members strong, had until that day vehemently opposed any American intervention in the foreign conflict, even as America provided military aid to Britain and Soviet Union through the Lend-Lease program. Opposition to war in the United States vanished after the attack. Four days after Pearl Harbor, on December 11, Nazi Germany declared war on the United States, drawing America into a two-theater war. In 1941, Japan had only a fraction of the manufacturing capacity of the United States, and was therefore perceived as a lesser threat than Germany.

British, Indian and Dutch forces, already drained of personnel and matériel by two years of war with Nazi Germany, and heavily committed in the Middle East, North Africa and elsewhere, were unable to provide much more than token resistance to the battle-hardened Japanese. The Allies suffered many disastrous defeats in the first six months of the war. Two major British warships, HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales were sunk by a Japanese air attack off Malaya on December 10, 1941. The government of Thailand surrendered within 24 hours of Japanese aggression and formally allied itself with Japan on December 21, and allowed its military bases to be used as a launchpad against Singapore and Malaya. Hong Kong fell on December 25 and US bases on Guam and Wake Island were lost at around the same time.

Following the Declaration by the United Nations on January 1, 1942, the Allied governments appointed the British General Sir Archibald Wavell as supreme commander of all "American-British-Dutch-Australian" (ABDA) forces in South East Asia. This gave Wavell nominal control of a huge, but thinly-spread force, covering an area from Burma to the Dutch East Indies and the Philippines. Other areas, including India, Australia and Hawaii remained under separate, local commands. On January 15, Wavell moved to Bandung in Java to assume control of ABDA Command (ABDACOM).

Japanese Blitzkrieg

January saw the invasions of Burma, the Dutch East Indies, New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and the capture of Manila, Kuala Lumpur and Rabaul. After being driven out of Malaya, Allied forces in Singapore attempted to resist the Japanese during the Battle of Singapore, but surrendered to the Japanese on February 15 1942; about 130,000[1] Indian, Australian and British troops became prisoners of war. The pace of conquest was rapid: Bali and Timor also fell in February. The rapid collapse of Allied resistance had left the "ABDA area" split in two. Wavell resigned from ABDACOM on February 25, handing control of the ABDA Area to local commanders and returning to the post of Commander-in-Chief, India.

At the Battle of the Java Sea, in late February and early March, the Japanese Navy inflicted a resounding defeat on the main ABDA naval force, under Admiral Karel Doorman. Allied commanders in Java surrendered, but not before the Dutch KNIL forces inflicted heavy casualties on the Japanese attackers. Despite the hopelessness of their military situation and being outgunned on sea, in the air and on the ground, the Dutch forces supported by many Indonesians fought with extraordinary gallantry.

The British under intense pressure made a fighting retreat from Rangoon to the Indo-Burmese border. This cut the Burma Road which was the western Allies' supply line to the Chinese National army commanded by Chiang Kai-shek. Filipino and US forces put up a fierce resistance in the Philippines until May 8 1942 when more than 80,000 of them surrendered. By this time, General Douglas MacArthur, who had been appointed Supreme Allied Commander South West Pacific, had relocated his headquarters to Australia. The US Navy, under Admiral Chester Nimitz, had responsibility for the rest of the Pacific Ocean.

Meanwhile, Japanese aircraft had all but eliminated Allied air power in South-East Asia and were making attacks on northern Australia, beginning with a disproportionately large and psychologically devastating attack on the city of Darwin on February 19, which killed at least 243 people. Japanese air power had also driven the British fleet out of Ceylon. (Air attacks on the US mainland were insignificant, comprising balloon-based materials and a submarine-based seaplane fire-bombing a forest in Oregon, September 9 1942.)

The Allies re-group

In early 1942, the governments of smaller powers began to push for an inter-governmental Asia-Pacific war council, based in Washington D.C.. A council was established in London, with a subsidiary body in Washington. However the smaller powers continued to push for a US-based body. The Pacific War Council was formed in Washington on April 1, 1942, with a membership consisting of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, his key advisor Harry Hopkins, and representatives from Britain, China, Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Canada. Representatives from India and the Philippines were later added. The council never had any direct operational control and any decisions it made were referred to the US-British Combined Chiefs of Staff, which was also in Washington.

Allied resistance, at first symbolic, gradually began to stiffen. The Doolittle Raid in April 1942 was a token but morale-boosting air attack on Japan, and although the Allied navies were narrowly defeated in tactical terms at the Battle of the Coral Sea, it still managed to derail a Japanese naval attack on Port Moresby, New Guinea.

Japanese land forces continued to advance. A few Australian Militia (reserve) battalions, many of them very young and untrained, fought a stubborn rearguard action in New Guinea, against a Japanese advance along the Kokoda Track, towards Port Moresby, over the rugged Owen Stanley Ranges. The Militia, worn out and severely depleted by casualties, were relieved in late August by regular troops from the Second Australian Imperial Force, returning from action in the Middle East.

Midway: The Turning Point in 1942

The crucial Battle of Midway followed in June, 1942. Tokyo made the basic strategic mistake of trying to hold all the vast new territory they had just gained, even though they lacked the pilots, carriers, tankers and transport ships necessary to defend and sustain it. They decided on additional attacks in both the south and central Pacific. While Yamamoto had taken advantage of surprise in December, the American codebreakers now turned the tables. They discovered an attack was imminent against "MO"and Nimitz rushed the CV ‘'Lexington to join the CV Yorktown task force. The result was the indecisive Battle of Coral Sea, the first of the great carrier duels as the two fleets never came within sight. Industrial strength was already beginning to tell: the superior American repair system permitted Nimitz to recover faster and get maximum use out of his ships, and his pipeline of new warships, planes and pilots was much fuller than Yamamoto's.

In May US intelligence figured out that Yamamoto was planning a major attack on Midway Island. Yamamoto planned to trick Nimitz into splitting his fleet, gaining tactical advantage. Nimitz had only two carriers, the Enterprise and Hornet. Another carrier, the Saratoga was on the West Coast, under repair; by mistake it was delayed and arrived after the battle ended. Admiral King was finally rushing the carrier Wasp in from the Atlantic, but it also came too late. The Lexington had been sunk at Coral Sea, where the Yorktown was badly damaged. It needed three months' worth of repairs; the repairs were done in three days and the Yorktown steamed into battle with civilian work crews still aboard.

Yamamoto mistakenly assumed that Nimitz had only one or two carriers, not three, and thus Japan had numerical superiority in the air. He also assumed he had the advantage of surprise. To trick the Americans, Yamamoto split his fleet, with a large force sent north to attack the Aleutian Islands off Alaska. They were intended to decoy away American forces. Then Yamamoto planned to invade Midway and station more planes there. They and his combined fleet would then destroy Nimitz's remaining carriers once and for all. However, American codebreakers were able to trick Japan into revealing that Midway was the true target. Nagumo was again in tactical command, but he never fully understood Yamamoto's complex plan, nor the strategy that destruction of the American carriers had priority over capturing Midway. Nagumo's indecision in moving from one target to another, together with his ignorance of American forces, sloppy ship handling and careless safety procedures, negated the strength of his powerful fleet. At the decisive hour Nagumo had 272 planes, and the Americans had 348 (of which 115 were land-based.)

American reconnaissance planes identified the arrival of the Japanese fleet, exactly on schedule. However the American attacks were poorly coordinated. Land based planes failed to score a single hit; half were lost. At 0920 the Hornet's torpedo bombers attacked; Zero fighters shot down all 15. Fifteen minutes later the Enterprise's 15 torpedo bombers skimmed in over the water; 14 were shot down, as the Zero proved its superiority to the lumbering Devastator. Nagumo sensed he was about to score a victory even greater than his triumph at Pearl Harbor, but he had already made critical errors. His combat air patrol fighters were now all at low altitude; they could not protect against a high-level attack. His four carriers had maneuvered out of formation, making their anti-aircraft fire less concentrated. Most dangerous of all, he changed the rearming orders twice, wasting precious time and leaving all his flight decks simultaneously crowded with planes refueling and rearming. The gasoline and high explosive bombs were undefended for only a few minutes; he figured in five minutes his planes would be launched and the risk would pass.

Nagumo did not get the five minutes. Dive bombers from the Enterprise and Yorktown suddenly appeared at 10,000 feet, and the Zeroes at sea level were helpless. They zoomed down unerringly at the four carriers. Soryu, Kaga and Akagi burst into flames. Hiryu was spared, and it launched planes which heavily damaged the Yorktown (later sunk by submarine I-168), but a few hours later it followed the other three Japanese carriers. Yamamoto's four extra carriers, which were anyway too slow to keep up with the Combined Fleet, never got into action. He still had enormous superiority in terms of heavy guns, but that was irrelevant because the Americans now had air superiority (from land-based planes on Midway and from the two surviving carriers) and could refuse a surface gunfight. He therefore retreated and Spruance, always a cautious man, decided not to pursue. The tide had turned, and Japan's ultimate destruction was now inevitable.

Allies Take Initiative, 1942-43

Guadalcanal and New Guinea

The World War II Pacific Theater as it appeared in August, 1942.

In early September 1942, at Milne Bay, near the eastern tip of New Guinea, Japanese land forces suffered their first outright defeat since 1939. Japanese marines attacked a strategic Royal Australian Air Force base, defended mostly by the Australian Army, as well as some US forces. Simultaneously, US and Japanese forces were both attempting to occupy the island of Guadalcanal. Both sides poured resources into Guadalcanal over the following six months, in an escalating battle of attrition, with eventual victory going to the United States. From this time on the Japanese forces were decidedly on the defensive. The constant need to reinforce Guadalcanal weakened the Japanese effort in other theaters, leading to successful Australian-US counteroffensives in New Guinea, which culminated in the capture of the key bases of Buna and Gona in early 1943. In June, the Allies launched Operation Cartwheel, which initiated a strategy of isolating the major Japanese forward base, at Rabaul, and concentrated on cutting its lines of communication. This prepared the way for Nimitz's island-hopping campaign towards Japan.

No progress in CBI (China-Burma-India)

See main article China Burma India Theater of World War II

In late 1942 and during 1943, British, Indian and African forces were counter-attacking in Burma, albeit with limited success. In August 1943 the western Allies formed a new South East Asia Command (SEAC) to take over strategic responsibilities for the theater from general Wavell the Commander-in-Chief, India. The reorganization of the theater command took about two months and in October 1943 Winston Churchill appointed Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten as Supreme Allied Commander of the SEAC. Mountbatten got on well with the commander of the British forces in Burma, General William Slim, who directed the reconquest of Burma in the Burma Campaign. General Stilwell in the CBI under SEAC, supplied aid to the Chinese forces of Chiang Kai-shek and helped to coordinate the Chinese attacks on the Japanese which supported the British Fourteenth Army in Burma. Only in 1944 was Burma turned around. In China, Japan launched a masssive invasion across the mainland codenamed Operation Ichigo, This attack, the biggest in several years, gained much ground for Japan before stopped in Guangxi.

On November 22, 1943 U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and ROC leader Chiang Kai-Shek met in Cairo, Egypt, to discuss strategy to defeat Japan.

Battle of the Philippine Sea 1944

Midway was the last great naval battle for two years. Admiral Ernest J. King complained that the Pacific deserved 30% of Allied resources but was getting only 15%, used what he had to neutralize the Japanese forward bases at Rabaul and Truk. Marines overwhelmed the 4500-man garrison on Tarawa in November 1943 in a bloody operation that vindicated the Marine doctrine of amphibious landings, albeit with the proviso that more thorough bombardment, more careful planning regarding tides and landing craft schedules, and better overall coordination would be essential in the future. Overall the United States used the two years to turn its vast industrial potential into actual ships and planes and trained pilots. Japan, lacking both an industrial base and a technological strategy, deficient in doctrine and ignoring the need for a good pilot training program, was doomed to fall further and further behind. In strategic terms the US Navy began a long movement across the Pacific, seizing one island base after another. Not every Japanese stronghold had to be captured; some, like the big bases at Truk, Rabaul and Formosa were neutralized by air attack and then simply leapfrogged. The goal was to get close to Japan itself, then launch massive strategic air attacks and finally an invasion. The US Navy did not seek out the Japanese fleet for a decisive battle, as Mahanian doctrine would suggest; the enemy had to attack to stop the inexorable advance.

The climax of the carrier war came at the Battle of the Philippine Sea. Airfields on the island of Saipanwas the objective as 535 ships began landing 128,000 Army and Marine invaders on June 15, 1944. The achievement in planning such a complex logistical operation in just ninety days, and staging it 3,500 miles from Pearl Harbor was indicative of American logistic superiority. (The previous week an even bigger landing force hit the beaches of Normandy--by 1944 the Allies had resources to spare.)

Japan had to save Saipanit was about half the size of the American force, and included nine carriers with 473 planes, 18 battleships and cruisers, and 28 destroyers. Ozawa's pilots boasted of their fiery determination, but they had only a quarter as much training and experience as the Americans. They were outnumbered 2-1 and used inferior equipment. Ozawa had anti-aircraft guns but lacked proximity fuzes and good radar. With the odds stacked against him, Ozawa had to gamble on surprise and a trick strategy. His planes carried more gasoline because they were not weighted down with protective armor; they could attack at 300 miles, and could search a radius of 560 miles. (The high speed and maneuvering at the attack scene consumed gasoline rapidly, and accounts for the difference.) The heavier Hellcats could only attack to 200 miles, and only search to 325. Ozawa's plan therefore was to use his advantage in range by positioning his fleet 300 miles out, forcing the Americans to search over 150,000 square miles of ocean just to find him. The Japanese ships would stay beyond American range, but their planes would have enough range to strike the American fleet. They would hit the carriers, land at Guam to refuel, then hit the Yankees en route back to their carriers. Ozawa counted heavily on the 500 or so ground- based planes that had been flown ahead to Guam and other islands in the area. He hoped that a few "lucky" hits like those at Midway would do the job.

HIJMS Zuikaku and two destroyers under attack at battle of Philippine Sea

It would take more than random luck or superior ingenuity to sink the US Navy. Raymond A. Spruance was in overall command of the 5th Fleet. A brilliant long-range strategist, in battle he was highly cautious and inflexible once he had made up his mind. A battleship sailor, he still did not fully appreciate the power of his carriers. The Japanese plan would have failed if the much larger Yankee fleet had closed on Ozawa and attacked aggressively; Ozawa had the correct insight that the unaggressive Spruance would not attack. Admiral Marc Mitscher, in tactical command of the Task Force 58, with its 15 carriers, was aggressive but Spruance vetoed Mitscher's plan to hunt down Ozawa because Spruance's personal doctrine made it his first priority to protect the soldiers landing on Saipan. Spruance still did not understand the new carrier doctrine, and he did not realize that Ozawa was a Mahanian looking for a decisive battle that would destroy the American carriers.

The forces converged to the largest sea battle ever fought to date. Ozawa's strategy worked to perfectionone pilot dubbed it the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot." The few surviving attackers encountered massive antiaircraft fire with proximity fuzes. Over a period of eight hours one American warship was slightly damaged while one Japanese plane burst into flames every two minutes. On the second day scout planes finally located Ozawa's fleet at 275 miles; submarines sank two of its carriers. Mitscher launched 230 torpedo planes and dive bombers to attack immediately. He then discovered that the enemy was actually another 60 miles further offin four more months he would get one last chance to outsmart the Yankees.

Submarines strangle Japanese economy

It is an anomaly of popular images that the German U-boats, which were decisively defeated and failed their mission, have attracted far more attention than the American submarines that played a major role in destroying Japan. The "silent service" made up less than 2% of the US Navy, and yet it claimed a major share of the victory.The history is covered in Clay Blair, Silent Victory: The U. S. Submarine War Against Japan 2 vol (1975) and Theodore Roscoe, United States Submarine Operations in World War II (US Naval Institute, 1949). It strangled Japan by sinking its merchant marine, intercepting many troop transports and cutting off nearly all the oil imports that were essential to warfare. By early 1945 the oil tanks were dry. Submariners systematically repressed publicity, in order to encourage enemy overconfidence. Japan thought its defensive techniques sank 468 American subs; the true figure was only 42 (10 others went down in accidents). Submarines also rescued hundreds of downed fliers, like Avenger bomber pilot George H. W. Bush, who was fished out of the waters near Iwo Jima in September, 1944, by the USS Finback.

US submarines accounted for 56% of the Japanese merchantmen sunk; most of the rest were hit by planes at the end of the war, or were taken out by mines. Submariners claimed 28% of the Japanese warships that were destroyed. Furthermore they played important reconnaissance roles, as at Philippine Sea as well as Leyte Gulf when they gave accurate and timely warning of the approach of the Japanese fleet. To get into position to do that damage, the submarines had to operate from secure bases in Perth (Australia) and Pearl Harbor, and later Guam, which in turn had to be protected by the surface fleet. (Oddly. the Japanese never attacked the forward submarine base at Perth, Australia.) Therefore the submarines' performance cannot be judged in isolation--they could not have done much damage if they had to operate out of San Francisco.

The submarines did not adopt a defensive posture and wait for the enemy to attack. Within hours of Pearl Harbor Roosevelt ordered a new doctrine into effect: unrestricted submarine warfare against Japan. Sink without warning and without help to survivors any warship, commercial vessel or passenger ship located in 8 million square miles of ocean. The President thus completely reversed America's long-standing opposition to unrestricted submarine warfare. Woodrow Wilson had declared war on Germany in 1917 for following the doctrine Roosevelt now adopted. (Roosevelt had been Wilson's Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and knew more about unrestricted submarine warfare than anyone else in Washington.) As late as 1935 Roosevelt had signed treaties to outlaw unrestricted attacks on merchant ships. After Pearl Americans insisted this was to be a war to the death, with no holds barred, no quarter given. After the war, when moralistic doubts about Hiroshima and other raids on civilian targets were loudly voiced, no one ever criticized Roosevelt's submarine policy. The top German admirals, Erich Raeder and Karl Dönitz were charged at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials of violating international law through unrestricted submarine warfare; they were acquitted when they proved that the United States had done the same thing. (However, Raeder and Doenitz were convicted on other counts.)
By 1943 the Silent Service had learned how to use its 150 subs to maximum effect. The faulty torpedoes were fixed that fall; unaggressive commanders had been replaced; new teams had trained in wolf-pack attacks; effective shipboard radar was installed. Most important, ULTRA intercepts of radio messages told exactly where the Japanese convoys would be. Since Japan always emphasized offense over defense, its convoys were poorly organized and poorly defended. The number of U.S. submarines on war patrol at any one time increased from 13 in 1942, 18 in 1943, to 43 in late 1944. Half the kills came in 1944 when over 200 subs were operating. By 1945 hunting trailed off because so few targets dared move on the high seas. In all, subs destroyed 1,200 merchant ships. Most were small cargo carriers, but 124 were tankers bringing desperately needed oil from the East Indies. Another 320 were passenger ships and troop transports. At critical stages of the Guadalcanal, Saipan and Leyte campaigns, thousands of Japanese reinforcements were drowned before landing. The passenger ships sometimes carried Allied prisoners of war--thousands of whom were also drowned. Over 200 warships were sunk, ranging from many auxiliaries and destroyers to eight carriers and one battleship. Underwater warfare was especially dangerous; of the 16,000 Americans who went out on patrol, 3,500, or 22% never returned, the highest casualty percentage of any American force in World War II. For every 27 enemy ships that went down, one American sub and 67 sailors were lost. Theodore Roscoe, United States Submarine Operations in World War II (US Naval Institute, 1949); Arthur Hezlet, The Submarine and Sea Power (1967) 210-27

Japan failed badly in its own submarine warfare because of poor doctrine. The US had an unusually long supply-line between the West Coast and the battle fronts; cargo ships spent two months en-route, always prime targets. Japan refused to attack them because of blind obedience to a narrow version of Mahanian doctrine that said wars are won only by fleet battles, never by destroying commerce. This was a misreading of Mahan (who denigrated ordinary commerce, but did not reject attacks on vital military supply lines). Honoring its neutrality treaty with the Soviet Union, Japan ignored the Russian freighters that shipped millions of tons of war supplies from San Francisco to Vladivostok. In 1942 the Japanese fleet subs performed well, knocking out or damaging American warships. Carl Boyd, "The Japanese Submarine Force and the Legacy of Strategic and Operational Doctrine Developed Between the World Wars," in Larry Addington ed. Selected Papers from the Citadel Conference on War and Diplomacy: 1978 (Charleston, 1979) 27-40; Clark G. Reynolds, Command of the Sea: The History and Strategy of Maritime Empires (1974) 512.

By 1943, however, American sonar could spot Japanese submarines, and they were systematically hunted down. Tokyo still refused to try to cut the American supply lines, which would have forced the US to adopt a convoy system in the Pacific, which would reduced the flow of supplies by half. Japan's submarines were instead used to carry rice to island strongholds, like Truk and Rabaul, which had been cut off and were slowly starving.

The final stages of the war

Hard-fought battles at Tarawa, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and others resulted in horrific casualties on both sides, but finally produced a Japanese retreat. Faced with the loss of most of their experienced pilots, the Japanese resorted to kamikaze tactics in an attempt to create unacceptably high casualties for the Americans. Upwards of a third of the U.S. battle fleet was hit, and the US Navy recommended against an invasion of Japan in 1945. It proposed to starve the Japanese to death through a total blockade and destruction of the rice fields.

Towards the end of the war as the role of strategic bombing became more important, a new command for the U.S. Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific was created to oversee all US strategic bombing in the hemisphere, under USAAF General Curtis LeMay. Japanese industrial production plunged as nearly half of the built-up areas of 64 cities were totally destroyed by B-29 firebombing raids. On March 9-10 1945 alone, about 100,000 people were killed in a fire storm caused by an attack on Tokyo.

A mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 60,000 feet (18 km) into the air on the morning of August 9 1945.

US marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima

In August of 1945 the US attacked two cities with nuclear weapons; these were a well-kept secret until August 6, when Hiroshima was destroyed with a single atomic bomb, as was Nagasaki on August 9. More than 200,000 people died as a direct result of these two bombings. Precise figures are not available, but the firebombing and nuclear bombing campaign against Japan between March and August 1945 may have killed more than one million Japanese civilians. Official estimates from the United States Strategic Bombing Survey put the figures at 330,000 people killed, 476,000 injured, 8.5 million people made homeless and 2.5 million buildings destroyed.

On February 3 1945, the Soviet Union had agreed with Roosevelt to enter the Pacific conflict. It promised to act 90 days after the war ended in Europe, and did so exactly on schedule on August 9, by by launching Operation August Storm. A battle-hardened, one million-strong Soviet force, transferred from Europe attacked Japanese forces in Manchuria and quickly defeated their Kwantung Army (Guandong Army).

In Japan, August 14 is considered to be the day that the Pacific War ended. However, Imperial Japan actually surrendered on August 15 and this day became known in the English-speaking countries as "V-J Day" (Victory in Japan). [2] The formal Instrument of Surrender was signed on September 2, 1945, on the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. The surrender was accepted by General Douglas MacArthur as Supreme Allied Commander, with representatives of each Allied nation, from a Japanese delegation led by Mamoru Shigemitsu.

A separate surrender ceremony between Japan and China was held in Nanking on September 9, 1945

Douglas MacArthur signs the formal surrender of Japanese forces on the USS Missouri, September 2 1945

Following this period, MacArthur went to Tokyo to oversee the postwar development of the country. This period in Japanese history is known as the occupation.

References

Timeline

Second Sino-Japanese war
* 1937-1945

Japanese conquest of Southeast Asia and Pacific
* 1941-12-07 (12-08 Asian Time) Attack on Pearl Harbor
* 1941-12-08 Japanese Invasion of Thailand
* 1941-12-08 – 1941-12-25 Battle of Hong Kong
* 1941-12-08 – 1942-01-31 Battle of Malaya
* 1941-12-10 Sinking of HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse
* 1941-12-11 – 1941-12-24 Battle of Wake Island
* 1941-12-16 – 1942-04-01 Borneo campaign (1942)
* 1941-12-22 – 1942-05-06 Battle of the Philippines
* 1942-01-01 – 1945-10-25 Transport of POWs via Hell Ships
* 1942-01-11 – 1942-01-12 Battle of Tarakan
* 1942-01-23 Battle of Rabaul (1942)
* 1942-01-24 Naval Battle of Balikpapan
* 1942-01-25 Thailand declares war on the Allies
* 1942-01-30 – 1942-02-03 Battle of Ambon
* 1942-01-30 – 1942-02-15 Battle of Singapore
* 1942-02-02 Japanese invasion of Java
* 1942-02-04 Battle of Makassar Strait
* 1942-02-14 – 1942-02-15 Battle of Palembang
* 1942-02-19 Air raids on Darwin, Australia
* 1942-02-19 – 1942-02-20 Battle of Badung Strait
*1942-02-19 – 1943-02-10 Battle of Timor (1942-43)
* 1942-02-24 – 1942-03-08 Battle of Java
* 1942-02-27 – 1942-03-01 Battle of the Java Sea
* 1942-03-01 Battle of Sunda Strait
* 1942-03-31 – 1942-04-10 Indian Ocean raid
* 1942-04-09 Bataan Death March begins
* 1942-04-18 Doolittle Raid
* 1942-05-03 Japanese invasion of Tulagi
* 1942-05-04 – 1942-05-08 Battle of the Coral Sea
* 1942-05-31 – 1942-06-08 Attacks on Sydney Harbour area, Australia
* 1942-06-04 – 1942-06-06 Battle of Midway

Pacific War Campaign

Burma Campaign

New Guinea campaign
* 1942-01-23 Battle of Rabaul
* 1942-03-07 Japanese invasion of mainland New Guinea
* 1942-05-04 – 1942-05-08 Battle of the Coral Sea
* 1942-07-01 – 1943-01-31 Kokoda Track Campaign
* 1942-08-25 – 1942-09-05 Battle of Milne Bay
* 1942-11-19 – 1942-01-23 Battle of Buna-Gona
* 1943-03-02 – 1943-03-04 Battle of the Bismarck Sea
* 1943-09-04 – 1943-09-16 Battle of Lae
* 1943-11-05 Attack on Rabaul
* 1943-1945 Final stages of the New Guinea campaign

Aleutian Islands campaign
* 1942-06-06 – 1943-08-15 Battle of the Aleutian Islands
* 1943-03-26 Battle of the Komandorski Islands

Guadalcanal campaign
* 1942-08-07 – 1943-02-09 Battle of Guadalcanal
* 1942-08-09 Battle of Savo Island
* 1942-08-24 – 1942-08-25 Battle of the Eastern Solomons
* 1942-10-11 – 1942-10-12 Battle of Cape Esperance
* 1942-10-25 – 1942-10-27 Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands
* 1942-11-13 – 1942-11-15 Naval Battle of Guadalcanal
* 1942-11-30 Battle of Tassafaronga

Solomon Islands campaign
* 1943-01-29 – 1943-01-30 Battle of Rennell Island
* 1943-03-06 Battle of Blackett Strait
* 1943-06-10 – 1943-08-25 Battle of New Georgia
* 1943-07-06 Battle of Kula Gulf
* 1943-07-12 – 1943-07-13 Battle of Kolombangara
* 1943-08-06 – 1943-08-07 Battle of Vella Gulf
* 1943-08-17 – 1943-08-18 Battle off Horaniu
* 1943-10-07 Battle of Vella Lavella
* 1943-11-01 – 1944-11-01 Battle of Bougainville
* 1943-11-01 – 1943-11-02 Battle of Empress Augusta Bay
* 1943-11-26 Battle of Cape St. George

Gilbert Islands campaign
* 1943-11-20 – 1943-11-23 Battle of Tarawa
* 1943-11-20 – 1943-11-24 Battle of Makin

Marshall Islands campaign
* 1944-01-31 – 1944-02-07 Battle of Kwajalein
* 1944-02-16 – 1944-02-17 Attack on Truk
* 1944-02-16 – 1944-02-23 Battle of Eniwetok

Mariana Islands campaign
* 1944-06-15 – 1944-07-09 Battle of Saipan
* 1944-06-19 – 1944-06-20 Battle of the Philippine Sea
* 1944-07-21 – 1944-08-10 Battle of Guam
* 1944-07-24 – 1944-08-01 Battle of Tinian

Palau Islands campaign
* 1944-09-15 – 1944-11-25 Battle of Peleliu
* 1944-09-17 – 1944-09-30 Battle of Angaur

Philippines campaign
* 1944-10-20 – 1944-12-10 Battle of Leyte
* 1944-10-24 – 1944-10-25 Battle of Leyte Gulf
* 1944-11-11 – 1944-12-21 Battle of Ormoc Bay
* 1944-12-15 – 1945-07-04 Battle of Luzon
* 1945-01-09 Invasion of Lingayen Gulf
* 1945-02-27 – 1945-07-04 Southern Philippines campaign

Ryukyu Islands campaign
* 1945-02-16 – 1945-03-26 Battle of Iwo Jima
* 1945-04-01 – 1945-06-21 Battle of Okinawa
* 1945-04-07 Operation Ten-Go

Borneo campaign
* 1945-05-01 – 1945-05-25 Battle of Tarakan
* 1945-06-10 – 1945-06-15 Battle of Brunei
* 1945-06-10 – 1945-06-22 Battle of Labuan
* 1945-06-17 – 1945-08-15 Battle of North Borneo
* 1945-07-07 – 1945-07-21 Battle of Balikpapan

Japan campaign
* 1945-07-22 Battle of Tokyo Bay
* 1945-08-06 – 1945-08-09 Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

See also

*Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal
*Operation Downfall
*Pacific Theater of Operations
*Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945)
*South-East Asian Theater
*Timeline WW II - Pacific Theater
*Fire balloon
*Treaty of Peace with Japan

External links

* La politique de la sphère de coprospérité de la grande Asie orientale au Japon
* Pacific Combat Footage - Watch color footage of Pacific carrier operations
* Canada at the Pacific War - Canadians in Asia & the Pacific