War in the Pacific 1941-1945

Cooke, Tim. War in the Pacific 1941-1945. Part of the World War II: The Full Story series. 2015. 48p. ISBN 978-1-78121-231-8. Available at 940.42 WAR on the library shelves.

Beginning in the early 1930s, a militaristic government in Japan began expanding its borders, hoping to secure access to raw materials. The coast of China was occupied and Japanese armies pushed inland. The fear that the United States would enter the war grew until the Japanese decided to launch a pre-emptive attack with the goal of destroying the US navy in the Pacific.

At the same time, Japan prepared attacks against countries surrounding the South China Sea, including Burma, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines. On December 7, 1941, the US fleet was attacked at Pearl Harbor, and shortly thereafter the United States declared war against Japan. The Japanese attacks were successful, except that the US carrier fleet escaped destruction. Japan captured countries after countries, and established a series of bases for forward operations.

The United States pushed back against imperialist expansion and started a strategy of island hopping, moving from one set of islands to another to get closer to Japan. The Doolittle raid in 1942 shook the Japanese’s confidence, and the subsequent piecemeal destruction of the Japanese naval fleet put Japan on the defensive for the rest of the war.

The United States and Britain provided relief to Chinese nationalists by using the Burma road, which required defeating a Japanese army. The battle to reconquer the Philippines was difficult and bloodied. Island hopping hobbled Japanese defenses but demonstrated that an assault on the Japanese home islands would cost million of lives. The decision was reached to drop two atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which brought a swift end to a war that had lasted nearly four years.

Other books in this series include Life in the War, Home Front, and North Africa and Europe 1940-1945.