bigpigeon.us webpage WW II - Japan, updated by RAC 20 Sep 2020.     Many webpages are incomplete.

​Links to all of Big Pigeon's WW II - Japan webpages: 
WW II - Japan overview

The WW II - Japan webarea summarizes World War II in east and southeast Asia and in the Pacific Ocean area. The War with Japan began in December 1941 with multiple Japanese aerial attacks on United States and British military facilities, the most deadly being at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
Japan was at war long before the attacks of December 1941. Japan had invaded China in 1937, initiating the Second Sino-Japanese War, which from December 1941 to August 1945 continued in what became known as the China-Burma-India (CBI) Theater, and was a major part of the War with Japan.

​The majority of deaths in the War with Japan occurred in the CBI Theater among Chinese civilians and troops. Since most United States involvement in the War with Japan was in the Pacific Theater, I give the CBI Theater short shrift.
Japanese Home Islands
Japanese Home Islands
By late 1941, Japan was a nation that over the past 70 years had already expanded from the home islands shown on the above map to a sizeable empire. Japan hoped to expand further into China and into the resource-rich colonies of southeast Asia, but was constrained by opposition from the United States and England.

Despairing of a negotiated solution to its perceived grievances, Japan launched suprise attacks on December 7/8 against the United States and the British Empire in the Pacific area and in east and southeast Asia. For the next five months, the Japanese military was wildly successful. ​

During the following three years, the Allies, and especially the United States, gradually forced the Japanese back to their home islands and the portions of China held by Japan.

The War with Japan ended in August 1945 with the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japanese cities and the entry of Russia into the War with Japan.
The Japanese War
The Japanese War
The Southwest Pacific (McArthur) and the South, Central and North Pacific (Nimitz)

In WW II, the US Army and the US Navy had not yet been combined into what is now the Department of Defense. Accordingly, for much of WW II, the Pacific Ocean was divided into two areas.
  • Army - The Southwest Pacific Area.
  • Navy - The Pacific Ocean Areas, sometimes called the Pacific Theater.
Each area command contained a mixture of army, navy, army air force, marine, and coast guard units, although Army units dominated in the Southwest Pacific and Navy units in the South and Central Pacific.

Until 1947, the Air Force was part of the Army. The Marine Corps was closely associated with the Navy.
The Pacific Areas
The Pacific Areas
The Southwest Pacific Area commander, General Douglas MacArthur, set up his initial headquarters in Australia. MacArthur's jurisdiction extended to the Philippine Islands, which had been lost in May 1942, and which MacArthur was determined to recapture. Southwest Pacific ground combat began on the island of New Guinea.
The Southwest Pacific Theater
South & Southwest Pacific Battle Sites - Aug '42 - Sep '44
The Pacific Ocean Areas were commanded by Admiral Chester Nimitz from Pearl Harbor in Hawaii Territory, and was divided into three theaters:
  • The Central Pacific Theater. 
  • The North Pacific Theater, with headquarters near Anchorage, Alaska Territory.
  • The South Pacific Theater, including the Solomon Islands, with headquarters and supporting bases in New Caledonia and the New Hebrides.
Central Pacific Battle Sites - Nov '43 - Nov '44
Central Pacific Battle Sites - Nov '43 - Nov '44
 Except for Pearl Harbor, Midway, and the Aleutian Islands, most Pacific Theater combat before February 1945 took place in areas shown on the accompanying map,  thousands of miles west and south of Pearl Harbor.

Contained within this map are the areas shown in the previous two maps.

​For scale, note the superimposed outline of the continental United States. The red line shows the movement of General MacArthur's headquarters from Brisbane, Australia back to Manila, Philippines. 
The Southwest Pacific
The Pacific Ocean Near Australia
The final three United States campaigns in the WW II Pacific Theater were also the most costly in lives lost:
  • The recapture of the Philippines, October 1944 - August 1945 (a US Army operation on the ground).
  • Iwo Jima, February - March 1945 (a US Marine Corps operation).
  • Okinawa, April - June 1945 (four Army divisions and two Marine divisions fought; heavy Navy losses due to Japanese kamikaze aircraft).
Iwo Jima and Okinawa
Iwo Jima and Okinawa
Sources for the WW II -  Japan webpage:
  • The webpage header photo, Imperial Japanese Navy Battleship Hiei, is courtesy of clickorlando.com. The Hiei was the first Japanese battleship sunk in WW II, on 14 Nov 1942 during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal.
  • The Japanese Home Islands map is courtesy of nationalgeographic.org.
  • The Pacific Areas map courtesy of https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-P-Papua/index.html.
  • The Central Pacific Battle Sites map is excerpted from the Scene of Battle map found in the Marines in the Central Solomons volume of the United States Marine Corps Operations in WW II.
  • The Iwo Jima and Okinawa map is courtesy of https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USMC/USMC-M-IwoJima/index.html.
  • The timeline at http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/pacificwar/timeline.htm is informative.​
WW II - Japan - They served and survived:

At the end of each webpage outlining a battle or campaign, I list the dead with Pottawattamie County, Iowa connections. Here I list some with a family or neighborhood connection who served in the War with Japan and survived. 
  • Lloyd Joyce of Garden City, Kansas, my son-in-law's father, served with the 112th Cavalry Regiment. His unit first saw combat during the December 1943 landing at Aware on the south coast of New Britain. Lloyd's unit later fought in northern New Guinea and on Leyte and Luzon in the Philippines. Lloyd suffered a serious shrapnel wound on Leyte but after hospitalization returned to his unit on Luzon.​ ​