Jon Diamond

After the Pearl Harbor attack, the Japanese quickly captured Hong Kong, Guam, Wake Island, the Gilbert Islands and Rabaul. Japanese conquests of Malaya and Singapore, the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies and Burma followed into the spring of 1942. The Japanese juggernaut continued southwards with bases established at Salamaua and Lae in Northwest New Guinea followed by landings at Buna, Gona, and Sanananda along Papua’s northern coast as a prelude to capture Port Moresby over the Owen Stanley Range to threaten Australia.Despite a strategic American naval victory at the Battle of the Coral Sea and the sinking of four Japanese aircraft carriers at the Battle of Midway, the Allied situation remained desperate. Japanese naval troops invaded Tulagi Island and nearby islets off the coast of Florida Island on 3–4 May 1942 to construct a seaplane and naval base. Japan’s goal of advancing through the southern Solomon Islands and beyond to New Caledonia, Fiji, and Samoa was to create a defensive buffer against an attack by a slowly-recovering American Navy and further isolate the Antipodes. In July 1942, Allied coast watchers and reconnaissance aircraft observed the construction of an airfield on Guadalcanal 20 miles to the south of Tulagi and Florida Islands.On 23 July 1942, American military leaders prioritized securing the South Pacific’s lines of communication and halting the Japanese advance. The American invasion of Guadalcanal and Tulagi became operational entailing hellacious land, air and sea battles from 7 August 1942 to 3 February 1943. Guadalcanal became the essential struggle between Allied and Japanese forces, with the victor to eventually control the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific. The events of the campaign are expertly described here with contemporary images and detailed text.

The campaign for Iwo Jima (Operation Detachment) from 19 February–26 March 1945 pitted the USMC Fifth Amphibious Corps (VAC) and the USN’s Fifth Fleet against the IJA 109th Division and assorted IJN ground troops under the command of Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi. After neutralizing Japanese air assets on Iwo Jima, the objective was to seize Iwo Jima’s two completed airfields in the southern and central sectors and make them operational after the heavy pre- and post-invasion aerial, naval and Marine artillery bombardment. USAAF 7th Fighter Command would then have this Volcano Island as a base from which to escort the four-engine B-29 heavy bombers on their Japanese Home Islands’ raids from their Mariana Islands bases and to provide emergency airfields for battle-damaged or low-on-fuel Superfortresses on their return flight that otherwise would have crashed in the sea. The combined American force numbered over 100,000 troops against 20,933 Japanese soldiers and sailors. Kuribayashi’s defences were so well fortified with caves, tunnels and daunting terrain that the VAC lost 6,821 KIA and 19,217 wounded compared to approximately 18,000 Japanese troops KIA or MIA with only 216 prisoners taken. In a ‘mopping up’ phase to clear the remaining Japanese hidden in the island’s caves, the Army’s 147th IR, 37th Division captured an additional 867 prisoners. This epic USMC campaign resulted in an unprecedented ratio of three American casualties for every two Japanese soldiers. In all, 2,251 emergency B-29 landings were made saving the lives of almost 25,000 aircrew members. The flagraisings atop Mount Suribachi on 23 February 1945 galvanized American morale at home.