{"id":160,"date":"2018-09-07T19:51:42","date_gmt":"2018-09-07T19:51:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/primary-sources\/?page_id=160"},"modified":"2018-10-30T23:28:52","modified_gmt":"2018-10-30T23:28:52","slug":"world-war-ii-in-the-pacific","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/primary-sources\/sources-and-more\/world-war-ii-in-the-pacific\/","title":{"rendered":"Island Hopping in the Pacific – WWII"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The old English proverb, \u201cnecessity is the mother of invention\u201d could easily be applied to the armed forces of the United States in the Pacific during WWII.\u00a0 This necessity was brought about due to the overarching American strategy of \u201cDefeat Hitler first\u201d.\u00a0 The reasons for this are complex and highly speculative.\u00a0 What we do know is that upwards of 60-70% of all wartime resources were allocated for Europe.<\/p>\n

Given these priorities, the United States Navy and Marines were compelled to invent a new type of warfare.\u00a0 A warfare that was dictated by the geography of the Pacific.\u00a0 By April of 1942, it was clear that the Japanese had successfully captured much of the key islands in the South Pacific.\u00a0 Army General Douglas MacArthur and Navy Admiral Chester Nimitz along with Admiral William \u201cBull\u201d Halsey devised a plan unique in the annuls of military history.\u00a0 They would orchestrate a series of complex maneuvers that has come to be known as \u201cisland hopping\u201d.<\/p>\n

The purpose of this plan was to attack islands that were not as strongly defended by the Japanese.\u00a0 Once under United States control, the island would be fortified and used as a staging area for the next attack.\u00a0 By skipping over heavily defended islands, allowing them to \u201cwither on the vine\u201d, the U.S. forces would be able to advance closer and closer to their ultimate objective.\u00a0 The home islands of Japan.<\/p>\n

While ultimately successful, this warfare was costly.\u00a0 Guerilla warfare was new to the men who fought in the Pacific.\u00a0 Their enemy, enamored with the Code of Bushido, was alien as well.\u00a0 This code encouraged fighting to the death and not taking prisoners.\u00a0 Another challenge was clearly the geography.\u00a0 Jungle fighting on hilly terrain coupled with heat and humidity lent itself to a host of issues.\u00a0 Diseases such as malaria, dysentery and skin funguses plagued soldiers throughout the Pacific.\"Japanese<\/p>\n

As the war progressed and the American military was able to advance across the Pacific, the fighting became more vicious.\u00a0 The penultimate battle of the war took place in February of 1945 on the island of Iwo Jima.\u00a0 What made this engagement so significant was it was the first time that the United States was fighting the Japanese on ancestral Japanese soil.\u00a0 All the other battles had been on islands that the Japanese had conquered.\u00a0 Not Iwo Jima.\u00a0 The ferocity by which the Japanese defended this island was unlike anything the United States military had seen.\u00a0 Over 23,000 Japanese soldiers were ensconced on the island prior to the invasion.\u00a0 Over 21,000 died in its defense.\u00a0 These numbers would be eclipsed several months later during the largest battle of the Pacific war.\u00a0 Okinawa was another ancestral Japanese island.\u00a0 The difference was the scale.\u00a0 Iwo Jima was a rocky outcropping with a volcanic mountain (Mt. Suribcahi) and no civilian population.\u00a0 Okinawa is a very large island with a sizable population.\u00a0 By the time the battle had ceased, over 100,000 Japanese soldiers and civilians were killed.<\/p>\n

The cost of the war, in terms of human life, weighed heavily President Harry Truman.\u00a0 When the casualty figures came in from the final two battles on Iwo Jima and Okinawa the president was stunned.\u00a0 Most historians point to these battles as the tipping point in convincing Truman to the wisdom of dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945.<\/p>\n