On December 7, 1941, Japan staged a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, severely damaging the US Pacific Fleet. When Germany and Italy declared war on the United States days later, America found itself in a global war. Japan launched a relentless assault that swept through the US territories of Guam, Wake Island, and the Philippines, as well as British-controlled Hong Kong, Malaya, and Burma. Yet, with much of the US fleet destroyed and a nation unprepared for war, America and its allies decided they needed to save Great Britain and defeat Germany first. The Japanese, meanwhile, sought to complete what they began at Pearl Harbor.
Throughout the winter and spring of 1942 the war news reaching the United States from the Pacific was grim. The Japanese amassed a vast new empire with a defensive perimeter that ranged from western Alaska to the Solomon Islands. In the southwest Pacific, Japan threatened American supply lines to Australia, complicating US plans to use Australia as a staging ground for offensive action.
But within months, the tide of battle started to turn as the United States and its allies in Australia and New Zealand first blunted Japan’s advance and then began a long counterattack across the Pacific. The amphibious invasion soon became the hallmark of the Allied counterattack. As they advanced westward toward Japan, Allied forces repeatedly bombed and stormed Japanese-held territory, targeting tiny islands as well as the jungles of New Guinea and the Philippines. The goal was to dislodge the enemy and to secure airfields and supply bases that could serve as the launching points for future attacks.
In August 1942, the United States mounted its first major amphibious landing in World War II at Guadalcanal, using innovative landing craft built by Higgins Industries in New Orleans. By seizing a strategic airfield site on the island, the United States halted Japanese efforts to disrupt supply routes to Australia and New Zealand. The invasion ignited a ferocious struggle marked by seven major naval battles, three major land battles, and almost continuous air combat as both sides sought to control Henderson Field, named after Loy Henderson, an aviator killed at the Battle of Midway. For six long months US forces fought to hold the island. In the end they prevailed, and the Allies took the first vital step in driving the Japanese back in the Pacific theater.
With Guadalcanal in American hands, Allied forces continued to close in on Rabaul in New Britain. As forces under the command of Admiral William F. “Bull” Halsey moved north through the Solomons, General Douglas MacArthur’s troops pushed west along the northern coast of Papua New Guinea, grinding out a hard-fought victory by March 1943. But rather than follow this success with a risky invasion of the heavily defended Rabaul, American military planners hatched an ingenious plan: Allied planes and ships would isolate and neutralize Rabaul from the air and sea while the bulk of MacArthur’s forces pushed westward to invade less-well-defended islands. This practice—skipping over heavily fortified islands in order to seize lightly defended locations that could support the next advance—became known as island hopping. As Japanese strongholds were isolated, defenders were left to weaken from starvation and disease. This new strategy turned the vast Pacific distances into an American ally, and the United States used it to leapfrog across the Pacific.
The American strategy in the Pacific had two components. The first goal was stopping the Japanese eastward and southern advances. Before and after the battle at Pearl Harbor, Japan was gaining control of lands in Asia and islands in the Pacific. After the Battle of Midway Island and the Battle of Guadalcanal, this goal was accomplished. Japan suffered significant losses in these battles, including losses of military equipment.
The second portion of the American strategy was to recapture the islands that Japan had taken. This strategy was called island hopping, as the Americans would recapture an island and then move or hop to another island. The United States began the long process of moving closer to Japan by recapturing islands one at a time, such as the Gilbert Islands, the Marshall Islands, Guam, and the Philippines. Once the Americans controlled Iwo Jima and Okinawa, the United States could begin to regularly bomb Japan and consider implementing a plan for the invasion of Japan.
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/battle-midway?gclid=Cj0KCQjwv73VBRCdARIsAOnG8u3M4Nu7SpbJVQrXNotFN6ghJR6CYGLU6hI0AN8tNI3hsTGl5GlG1K8aAkD5EALw_wcB
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/pacific-strategy-1941-1944
https://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1671.html
No comments:
Post a Comment