Pacific Theater

Pacific Theater

Caught in the Chinese Conflict

On September 2, 1945, Japanese representatives boarded the battleship USS Missouri, riding at anchor in Tokyo Bay, to sign an instrument of unconditional surrender. Read more

Pacific Theater

U.S. Marine’s Legacy of Valor

By Dick Camp (Colonel, USMC, Retired)

The war in the Pacific was a bloody, protracted struggle between the Empire of Japan and the United States and her allies. Read more

Pacific Theater

The Setting Sun

Once again, the Japanese regarded an upcoming naval engagement as the “decisive battle,” but it had been two years since her aircraft carriers and battleships had emerged from their Inland Sea lairs to menace the United States Navy. Read more

Pacific Theater

Faces of War

Noted chronicler of the Pacific Theater Eric Hammel recently spent three years sorting, scanning, cleaning, selecting, and captioning United States Marine Corps World War II photos for six pictorial books. Read more

Pacific Theater

A Marine Scout’s War Journey

Sergeant Larry Kirby will always remember the fighting on the morning of March 12, 1945, as his unit, Easy Company, 9th Marines, 3rd Marine Division, attempted to move against Hill 362C under the cover of darkness in northeastern Iwo Jima. Read more

Pacific Theater

The 93rd Infantry Division: The African-American Soldiers in the Pacific

On August 2, 1945, two weeks prior to Japan’s surrender, the highest ranking Japanese officer captured during the war in the Pacific was taken on the island of Morotai, Dutch New Guinea. Read more

Pacific Theater

Combat Photographers: Shooting the War

Much of what we know today about World War II are the visual images—both still and moving—that combat photographers took to document all phases of this costly human tragedy. Read more

Pacific Theater

The Heroic Voyages of the USS Gwin

Lieutenant Commander John Benjamin Fellows, the skipper of the American Gleaves-class destroyer USS Gwin (DD-433), stood on the bridge trying to see into the predawn blackness. Read more

Pacific Theater

Back to Bataan

Troops of the Imperial Japanese Army soon followed. Hong Kong fell on Christmas Day. In China, Shanghai fell the first day. Read more

Pacific Theater

The Battle of Iwo Jima: Red Sun, Black Sand

No foreign army in the 5,000-year history of Japan had ever successfully conquered Japanese territory. In late 1944, American war planners were about to challenge that statistic on the tiny Pacific island of Iwo Jima. Read more

Pacific Theater

Evolution of the Submarine

The concept of a ship that could submerge beneath the water and then resurface dates back as far as the late 1400s, when Italian Renaissance artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci claimed to have found a method for a ship to remain submerged for a protracted period of time. Read more

Pacific Theater

Mogami: Japan’s Luckless Cruiser

She was the lead ship of her class, built under the 1930 London Naval Treaty, which imposed limits on cruiser, destroyer, and submarine tonnage for the United States, Great Britain, and Japan. Read more

Pacific Theater

Turning Point In The Pacific

Despite more than a decade of triumphs in Asia and the Pacific, by the spring of 1942 the Japanese military establishment was in a somber mood. Read more

Pacific Theater

Korea Under the Rising Sun

The first recorded encounter between American forces and Koreans in the Central Pacific during World War II came at Tarawa Atoll in November 1943. Read more

Pacific Theater

Iwo Jima: This Shall Not Be in Vain

Lieutenant General Holland M. Smith was 62 years of age. At a time in life when most men contemplate retirement, he was a very busy individual. Read more