The Pacific — 1943

In early 1943, Australian troops, fighting in dreadful conditions, extinguished the Japanese beachheads of Buna, Gona, and Sanananda Point on New Guinea. The Casablanca conference that January suggested that one-third of Allied resources should be deployed against Japan, but the British felt unable to agree to a fixed formula. The U.S. Joint Chiefs agreed a broad strategy, with MacArthur and Admiral William F. Halsey pushing on through the Solomons and along the New Guinea coast, while Nimitz “island hopped” across the central Pacific towards Japan.

An Australian forward post (above) near Sanananda, less than thirty yards from the Japanese. The robust and reliable .303 Bren was the light automatic weapon in British and Commonwealth infantry sections.

Australian infantry, assisted by a Stuart light tank, during the final assault on Buna.

The battle for Buna sorely tried the U.S. 32nd Infantry Division, which had not been trained for jungle warfare and was poorly equipped: it lost almost ninety per cent of its strength from battle casualties and sicknesses. But it was a disaster for the Japanese: this photograph shows Japanese bodies on the shoreline.

Japanese prisoners were very rare. These, both badly wounded, were taken when Gona fell.

After expelling the Japanese from southern New Guinea, the Australians moved northwards. In September 1943, the Japanese strongholds of Lae and Salamua were taken. Here U.S. paratroops jump into the Markham Valley in an effort to block the Japanese escape from Lae.

New Zealanders had already played a distinguished part in the war in the Western Desert, and added to these laurels in the Pacific. Here, New Zealand troops (in their distinctive "lemon-squeezer" hats) land from U.S. landing craft on Vella Lavella in the Solomons.

Rabual, on the island of New Britain, was a powerful Japanese air base. It was so heavily defended that a decision to capture it was reversed at the Quebec conference in August 1943, and it was so badly hammered from air and sea that the Japanese substantially scaled it down. Here a U.S. aircraft attacks with a white phosphorus incendiary bomb.

On November 1, 1943, the Americans landed on Bougainville, strategically placed between MacArthur’s and Nimitz’s areas of operations. The Japanese held a tiny part of the island to the very end of the war, but most of their positions had been taken in this sort of knock-down drag-out fighting: a flame thrower scorches a Japanese bunker while riflemen give covering fire.

Almost all Japanese preferred suicide to surrender. These infantrymen on Tarawa have shot themselves in the head, using a toe to pull the trigger.

This essence of the war at sea: a Japanese torpedo-bomber is hit by short-range fire from a U.S. carrier, December 4, 1943.

Guadalcanal

In mid-1942, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff authorized “Operation Watchtower,” an attack on Tulagi and Guadalcanal in the Solomon islands, where the Japanese had begun to construct an airfield. The initial American landing, carried out by the U.S. 1st Marine Division, was successful, but the Japanese reacted swiftly, and both sides reinforced, leading to vicious fighting on land, in the air and at sea. The Americans completed the unfinished airfield on Guadalcanal (Henderson Field), and its possession gave them a decisive edge. In mid-November, the three-day naval battle of Guadalcanal, a costly victory for the Americans, marked the climax of the struggle. Japanese survivors were evacuated in January 1943.

Above, U.S. Marines landing on Guadalcanal, August 7. Initial lack of opposition encouraged the original caption to describe a “successful attack against the occupying Japanese.”

In what became known as the Battle of the Tenaru River in late August, a 900-strong Japanese force was literally wiped out.

The Battle of Midway

The Battle of Midway was a major naval battle widely regarded as the most important of the Pacific Campaign of World War II. It took place between and June 4-7, 1942, approximately one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea and six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. The United States Navy decisively defeated an Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) attack against Midway Atoll, inflicting irreparable damage on the Japanese navy and seizing the strategic initiative. Above, U.S. Douglas Dauntless planes fly high above a burning Japanese carrier.

The Japanese operation, like the earlier attack on Pearl Harbor, aimed to eliminate the United States as a strategic Pacific power, thereby giving Japan a free hand in establishing its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. It was hoped another demoralizing defeat would force the U.S. to negotiate an end to the Pacific War on conditions favorable to Japan.

The Japanese plan was designed to lure the United States’ few remaining carriers into a trap. The Japanese also intended to occupy Midway Atoll as part of an overall plan to extend their defensive perimeter in response to the Doolittle Raid. This operation was considered preparatory for further attacks against Fiji and Samoa. The plan was handicapped by faulty Japanese assumptions of American reaction and poor initial dispositions.


The carrier U.S.S. Yorktown at Midway under air attack which damaged her badly, leaving her to be finished off by a submarine on June 7, 1942.


American codebreakers were able to determine the date and location of the attack, enabling the forewarned U.S. Navy to set up an ambush of its own. Four Japanese aircraft carriers and a heavy cruiser were sunk in exchange for one American aircraft carrier and a destroyer. The heavy losses, particularly the four fleet carriers and their aircrews, permanently weakened the Imperial Japanese Navy. Japan was unable to keep pace with American shipbuilding and pilot training programs in providing replacements.

The Battle for the Pacific

Japanese strategy in the Pacific was initially successful, and a shortlived ABDA (American-British-Dutch-Australian) Command collapsed before the Japanese advance. But although the Japanese won the battle of the Java Sea in February and hammered the British Admiral Somerville's Far Eastern Fleet on a raid into the Indian Ocean in April, they lost a carrier in the Coral Sea in May. The following month they lost four large carriers at Midway, and with them the prospect of maintaining the initiative in the central Pacific.

Above, the cruisers HMS Dorsetshire and Cornwall under air attack, April 5 — both were sunk. So great was the superiority shown by Japanese aircraft on the Indian Ocean raid that Somerville sent his elderly battleships to safety in the East African port of Mombasa.

The Battle of the Coral Sea was the first major naval action in which opposing warships did not sight one another. American aircraft sank the light carrier Shoho, but the USS Lexington — “Lady Lex” — was hit by bombs and torpedoes and sank after a huge internal explosion. Here members of her crew can be seen
jumping from the stricken vessel.

In May the Japanese attacked the island of Midway, then America's most westerly outpost, having first diverted part of the U.S. Pacific Fleet to the north. On June 4, Japanese aircraft attacked Midway, doing widespread damage and killing these servicemen (above).

Bataan

Although the Philippines had become an autonomous commonwealth in 1935, in 1941 the United States integrated its armed forces into the American military, and General Douglas MacArthur, military adviser to the Philippine government, was recalled to active duty and appointed Far East army commander. The northern Philippines were invaded in December 1941, and, profiting from air and sea superiority, the Japanese soon overran the islands, with the exception of the Bataan Peninsula on Luzon and the island fortress of Corregidor. After brave resistance Bataan fell on April 9, 1942, and Corregidor on May 6. MacArthur himself, on Roosevelt's order, was evacuated in a fast patrol boat. About 78,000 survivors of the fighting on Bataan (above) were herded on a 65-mile (105-km) "death march" on which many of them died from exhaustion or the brutal treatment of their guards.

American victims of the death march (above). In the controversial Far East war crimes trials the Japanese Lieutenant General Homma Masaharu was held responsible for the death march, whose excesses he blamed on officers under his command: he was executed on April 3, 1946.

The Japanese in Burma

The fall of Malaya and Singapore left the Japanese free to turn their attention to Burma, where the British were to wage their longest Second World War campaign. Yet it was certainly not an exclusively British campaign, for Indian and African troops, along with combatants from many of Burma's indigenous peoples, fought in it, and American aircraft and special forces played their own distinguished part. Invasion proper began on January 19, 1942, the Japanese cut the land route between India and China in April, and by May the surviving defenders, now commanded by Lieutenant General “Bill” Slim, had reached the borders of India after a gruelling retreat. The photograph above, which just predates the Japanese invasion, shows Indian troops, upon whom the defence of Burma largely depended, marching past a pagoda.

The British destroyed much equipment m order to prevent it from falling into Japanese hands. Here the task of demolition goes on.

Although photographs like this were useful for propaganda purposes, this shot of Japanese entry into the southern Burmese town of Tavoy makes the point that many Burmese regarded Japanese invasion as an opportunity to escape British rule.

Japanese Invasion of Singapore

After landing in Thailand and Malaya on December 8, 1941, the Japanese moved swiftly southwards and on January the causeway linking Singapore island with the mainland was blown by British engineers. On the night of February 8, the Japanese crossed the Johore Strait, and made good progress against a disorganized defense. Although Churchill had ordered that the battle should be fought “to the bitter end,” the loss of much of the city’s water supply persuaded Lieutenant General Arthur Percival to surrender. Churchill called the surrender, of some 85,000 men, “the worst disaster… in British military history.”

Singapore’s coast defense guns, like this one, became the topic of ill-informed postwar criticism. They were designed to engage warships, and so they naturally pointed out to sea — though some could also fire inland. From 1937, British planners recognized that the main threat to Singapore came from landings to it’s North.

Some women, children, and key specialists were evacuated. The decision as to whether wives and children should be evacuated was an agonizing one, and for many families this grim parting in Singapore’s bomb-ravaged docks was the last.

Surrender negotiations began at 11:30 on the morning of Sunday, February 15th, when a ceasefire was arranged. There was a surrender ceremony in the Ford factory at Bukit Timah that afternoon: the British delegation was kept waiting outside before it began.

Japan Advances in Southeast Asia

The raid on Pearl Harbor was part of a coordinated plan for attack on U.S., British and Dutch bases across a wide area. Japan's opponents were over-extended and ill-prepared, and the Japanese initially met with stunning success, snatching Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong from the British, taking the American commonwealth of the Philippines and swamping the Dutch East Indies.

Indian troops (above) manning a coast defense gun at Hong Kong. Both Hong Kong and Singapore were well-provided with guns to face a naval threat, but lacked the resources to deal with an invasion from inland.

Pearl Harbor

In mid 1941, America reacted to Japanese occupation of French Indo-China by freezing Japanese assets. In October Prince Konoye's moderate cabinet was replaced by a government headed by General Tojo, and, despite the recognition by several leading figures that she could not win a long war, Japan prepared a devastating strike. On December 7, carrier-borne aircraft struck the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Surprise was complete, although the Americans had received warnings which should have enabled them to meet the attack. American losses were heavy, but aircraft carriers were at sea and escaped the carnage.

Above, Battleship row at Pearl Harbor. From left to right are the USS West Virginia, Tennessee and Arizona. All three, along with the battleships California and Nevada eventually sank, but only Arizona and Oklahoma were total losses.

Anti-aircraft fire bursts among Japanese aircraft attacking the U.S. Pacific Fleet. The Japanese lost 29 aircraft.

Small craft rescue survivors from the battleship USS California, sunk by Japanese aircraft. The Americans suffered over 3,000 casualties in the attack.

Roosevelt denounced December 7 as “a date which will live in infamy,” and, here, grim-faced, signs a declaration of war against Japan. Some historians have suggested that the Japanese attack gave him a pretext for action he wished to take in any event, but the extant evidence does not prove his complicity in what may best be seen as “the ultimate intelligence blunder.”

Iwo Jima: The Cost, Part II

A view of the cemetery containing the dead of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th United States Marine Divisions on the island of Iwo Jima. Mount Suribachi is seen in the distance, looking from North to South. Following the war, families could have their loved one’s remains returned to the states for re-burial. All of the Marines buried here in this cemetery were removed and brought home before the island was turned back over to the Japanese government. However, many American remains are still on the island, buried within the underground tunnels and caves where they fell in mortal combat with the enemy.

Iwo Jima: The Cost, Part I

Four U.S. Marines carry a wounded comrade back to the relative safety of the rear area for medical treatment during the Battle for Iwo Jima.

Marines Take a Break on Iwo Jima

U.S. Marines are seen taking a meal break behind the wreckage of a downed Japanese aircraft during a lull in their fierce battle on Iwo Jima — February 1945.

The Marines’ Cost on Iwo Jima

The body of a dead United States Marine, killed during the vicious fighting on Iwo Jima, remains in a fighting position — note bullet hole in helmet. The American casualties for the battle were 6,821 dead and 19,189 wounded.

To the Shores of Iwo Jima — Part 2

To the Shores of Iwo Jima — Part 1

“To the Shores of Iwo Jima” is a 1945 Kodachrome color short war film produced by the United States Navy and United States Marine Corps. It documents the Battle of Iwo Jima, and was the first time that American audiences saw in color the footage of the famous flag raising on Iwo Jima.

The film follows the servicemen through the battle in rough chronological order, from the bombardment of the island by warships and carrier-based airplanes to the final breakdown of resistance — though, after it shows the taking of Suribachi, it then switches to the footage of the second flag raising.

The film ends by acknowledging the 4,000 men who died in the month-long battle, and tells the audience that their deaths weren't in vain, showing a bomber aircraft taking off from the island for a mission over Japan.

Four cameramen, including Bill Genaust, who shot the famous flag raising sequence, died bringing this footage to the public. Ten were wounded. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.

Beach Unloading — Iwo Jima

U.S. Marines unload equipment & supplies onto the sands of Iwo Jima from large Coast Guard & Navy landing craft shortly after troops gained a foothold on the strategically important island — February 19, 1945.

Assault Waves on Iwo Jima

On February 19, 1945, the large armada of U.S. Navy ships bringing American Marines & supplies toward the island beachheads of Iwo Jima is seen during the opening hours of the battle. This is the view looking East to West — Mt. Suribachi is seen at left.

Iwo Jima Blast

American Marines crouch for cover below a hillside while detonating a large explosive charge. It was intended to destroy part of the cave network connecting Japanese fortifications dug into the ground on the island of Iwo Jima — February 1945.

"Howlin' Mad" Smith — 1944

General Holland McTyeire "Howlin' Mad" Smith (April 20, 1882 – January 12, 1967) served several commands in the United States Marine Corps during World War II. He is sometimes called the "father" of modern U.S. amphibious warfare.

On the eve of World War II, General Smith directed extensive Army, Navy, and Marine amphibious training, which was a major factor in successful U.S. landings in both the Atlantic and Pacific. Later, he helped prepare U.S. Army and Canadian troops for the Kiska and Attu landings, then led the V Amphibious Corps in the assaults on the Gilberts, the Marshalls, and Saipan, and Tinian in the Marianas.

During the Marianas operation, besides the V Amphibious Corps, he commanded all Expeditionary Troops, including those which recaptured Guam. After that, he served as the first Commanding General of Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, and headed Task Force 56 (Expeditionary Troops) at Iwo Jima, which included all the assault troops in that battle.

A Dark Day at Pearl

Dense black smoke from the wreckage of U.S. warships damaged or sunk that morning is seen filling the sky in an ominous way following the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.