bigpigeon.us webpage WWII Japan > WWII Japan Overview, © 2024 by Robert A. Christiansen, updated by RAC 16 Feb 2024.
The WWII Japan module summarizes World War II in east and southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean area.
The WWII Japan module summarizes World War II in east and southeast Asia and 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 deadliest being at Pearl Harbor in the United States territory of Hawaii.
The War with Japan - a Brief Overview
Japan was at war long before the attacks of December 1941. Japan had invaded China in 1937, initiating the Second Sino-Japanese War, which continued from December 1941 to August 1945 in what became known as the China-Burma-India (CBI) Theater, and was a major part of the War with Japan.
|
For the 70 years before 1941, Japan expanded from the home islands, shown on the above map to a sizable empire. Japan hoped to expand further into China and into the resource-rich colonies of southeast Asia and the Netherlands Indies, but was constrained by opposition from the United States and the British Empire.
Despairing of a negotiated solution to its perceived grievances, Japan launched surprise 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, as shown on the accompanying map. |
In the Pacific Theater during the following three years, the Allies, led the United States, gradually forced the Japanese back to their home islands, the Dutch Indies, and the portions of mainland Asia still 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 the Soviet Union into the War with Japan.
The War with Japan ended in August 1945 with the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japanese cities and the entry of the Soviet Union into the War with Japan.
The War with Japan - a Longer Overview
Background: In WWII, the United States War and Navy Departments had not yet been combined into what is now the Department of Defense. The Air Force was part of the Army, while the Marine Corps was closely associated with the Navy.
For much of WWII, the Pacific Theater was divided into two commands for US military planning and operations.
|
From August 1942 to December 1943, most US combat in the War with Japan took place in the area shown on the following map.
|
The Southwest Pacific Area included the Philippine Islands, which had been lost in May 1942, and which MacArthur was determined to recapture.
|
In less than a year beginning in November 1943, the Central Pacific Campaign advanced US forces in a semicircular path, from the Gilbert Islands in the bottom right of the following map to the Palau Islands in the bottom left. There were four major operations, each consisting of multiple amphibious landings of Marine and Army combat troops, supported by the now-massive American battle fleet.
|
Except for Pearl Harbor, Midway, and the Aleutian Islands, major 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 on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. |
The final three United States campaigns in the WW II Pacific Theater, during the last year of WWII, were also the most costly in US lives lost in the War with Japan:
Sources for Big Pigeon's WWII Japan > WWII Japan Overview webpage:
- 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.
- https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/The_New_Guinea_Area_-_Allied_Advance_%28AMH-43%29.jpg
- 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 Philippine Islands map is courtesy of https://people.umass.edu/~chonal/framesetwq.htm
- 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.