World War 2
Across The Pacific
After the Allies clearing of Guadalcanal, their Pacific drive leapfrogged onwards towards Japan in a strategy dubbed 'island hopping'. One by one the island stepping stones across the ocean were seized by the Allied forces until Japan came within reach of American bombers. The final attacks on the Japanese home islands were to be launched from the Philippines through Okinawa, from the Marianas through Iwo Jima, and from the Aleutians.
The US Marine Corps, which was in the forefront of these amphibious operations, encountered fanatical resistance. On the Atoll of Tarawa, taken after bitter fighting in November 1943, only 146 Japanese surrendered out of a garrison of 5'000 men. In Feburary-March of 1945 the capture of Iwo Jima, an island a mere eight miles square, claimed nearly 7'000 American lives and left another 19'000 wounded.
In the Battle of Okinawa; which was codenamed Operation Iceberg. The initial invasion of Okinawa was on the 1st of April 1945; it was the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific of the whole war. American losses in the fight for Okinawa resulted in nearly 7'000 lives and some 20'000 left wounded. It was the scene of one of the grimmest battles of the Pacific war, in which 110'000 Japanese soldiers and 150'000 civilians died, many of which preferring suicide to capture.
The Pacific drive provoked a series of furious naval battles in which the Japanese Navy was compiled to defeat from ultimately the might of the American air power. By mid-1944 all 15 of the Japanese Air Craft Carriers brought into service since 1941 had been sunk of put out of use by the US Navy.