Figure 1.--The Pacific War was not fought in China, but it was all about China, both the resources of China and the vast Chinese market. This photograph was taken by a Japanese soldier in China. Japan like Germany wanted an Empire. Their primary interested was China, but unable to completely defeat China, the Japanese militarists decided to attack the United States and Britain to obtain the Empire and resources needed to complete the conquest of China. A rational mind might have considerdd that if they could not defeat China, attacking Britain and the United States was not a wise decesion. But that was not the mind set of the Japanese military. They were aware that they were gambling, but they were willing to bet all their assumption that the United States even with its superior resources would not be willing to pay the cost in blood and treasure to wage a long, protracted war. And it looked like the Germans were about to defeat the Soviet Union.

The Asian War was fought in three operational areas which often overlapped. On the Asian continent, both in China and Southeast Asia, it was primaily a ground war. In the Pacific it was pimarily a naval war, although the outcome of the principal naval battles were determined largely by naval aciation. War plans in both America and Japan had conceived of a climatic fleet action, the outcome of which would be determined by big-gun battleships. Both navies were dominated by big-gun admirals. And the Japanese had the largest battleships which could outgun American battle ships limited by the Panama Canal. But this climatic action never came even though the Battle of Leyte Gulf was the greatest naval battle in history. Even the Pacific War required ground actions, as assult troops were needed to seize Japanese held islands . The Japanese believed that the Americans would not have the fortitude to persevere in attacks on their island fortresses. This proved to be one of many mistaken assessments. At considerable cost, the Home Islands were brought within range of air attack and invasion. Uttimately it war the air war that decisively determined the outcome of the War with the dropping of the two atmic bombs. Yet some historians believe that it was the Soviet offense in Manchuria that convinced the Japanese to surender. The Atomic Bombs providing an honorable excuse for the unthinkable act of surrender,

Ground Operations

The Japanese military during the 1930s gained almost complete control over the government. Civilian politicians attempting to resist the military were assassinated. The depression of the 1930s hit Japan hard. The militarists decided that the solution to the economic crisis was to carve out an empire in Manchuria, China, and southear Asia. This meant war. Japan withdrew from the League of Nations as a resulted of the criticism of her military operations in Manchuria and China (1933). Japan invaded China proper in July 1937, launching the Second Sino-Japanese War. The well equipped Japanese forces rapidly occupied almost the entire Chinese coast of China and ten moved up rivers and railroad lines into the interior. The Japanese in the process committed war atrocities on an unpresidented level against the Chinese civilian population. Despite the Japnese onslaught, the Chinese government never surrendered. America even before entering the war against Japan funelled supplies to the Chinese through Burma. A covert operation set up the Flying Tigers to provide the Chinese a creditavle air capability. Japan joined the Axis powers Germany and Italy which since 1939 had been at war with Britain. Hoping to avoid war in the Pacific, the United States and Britain responded to the Japanese actions with an oil boycott. The result was an oil shortage. The Japanese militarists were unwilling to change their policy. The only force standing between the Japanese and thecresources of Southeast Asia was the United States Pacific Fleet and the British garison at Singapore. A Japanese carrier taskforce on December 7, 1941, executed a surprise attack on the American Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. It was a brilliant tactical victory for Japan, but perhaps the greatest mistake in modern military history as it brought a suddenly united America into the War. The American carrier victory at Midway dealt a crippling blow to the Imperial Navy in June 1942. American shipyards were turning out the new Essex clss carriers that would engage the weakened Imperial Navy in 1943. These carriers in 1943 and 1944 destroyed the Iperial Fleet. With new island bases wresstle from the Japanese, the United States begins the stratehic bombardment of the Japanese mainland. The United States dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, and the Soviet Union entered the war against Japan on August 8. The success of the Soviet Army convinced evebn many hard-line military officers that defeat was inevitable. Emperor Hirohito on August 14 decided to surrender unconditionally. The formal surrender was held underneath the guns of the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

Naval Operations

It was the Japanese carrier attack on Pearl Harbor that brought America into World War II. Had the Japanese not attacked, it is unclear just when America would have entered the War. The Japanese Imperial Fleet was a superbly trained force with modern, well designed vessels. Many naval experts at the time did not fully appreciate the effectivness of the Imperial Navy. The lack of radar, however, proved a huge disadvantage. Allied radar and many other technical advances were the result of close cooperation between American and British scientists anf joint development projects that began even before America entered the War. There was no comparable Axis technical cooperation or even coordination of military campaigns. The Kriegsmarine had very effective radar on its surface ships like Bismarck yet advanced German technology like radar, jet engines, and other equipment was not provided to the Japanese until very late in the War, too late to be of any effective use to the Japanese war effort. While Pearl Harbor was a stunning tactical victory, it was a strategic blunder by the Japanese of incaluable proportions. The Japanese were able to seize much of Southeast Asia, but the stunning American carrier victory at Midway, significantly reduced the strike capability of the Imperial Navy. This provided the time for American industrial capacity to reated a naval force with which Japan's limited industrial capacity could not cope. While the German submarine campaign in the North Atlantic failed, the American submarine campaign in thePacific proved spectacularly successful. The Japanese merchant marine was almost completely destroying, cutting the country's war industries off from supplies and bringing the country close to starvation. Amercan industrial strength enabled America to build a naval force capable of leap froging from island to island. The Navy by 1944 had seized islands from which the Japanese Home Island could be bombed. The Navy also enabled the Army to retake tNe Guinea and the Phillipines and by 1945 Okinawa. Naval and Army forced were preparing for a full-scale amphibious invasion of the Home Islands when two atomic boms were dropped (August 1945) and Japan finally surrendered (September 1945).

Air Operations

Fighting in Asian began several years before the War in Europe. Japan invaded China proper from Manchuria which they had seized several years earlier (July 1937). Japan quickly overwealmed the small, poorly eqquipped Chinese Air Force. Foreign assistace could not make up for Japan's advanced aviation industry and well-trained, disciplined air force. Japan used its air superority to conduct terror bombing of undefended Chinese cities. Today Japan sees itself as a victim of bombing, often ignoring the extent to which the Japanese bombed civilian targes in China. America prepared to assist China with a volunteer group--the Flying Tigers. The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, however, before the Flying Tigers reached Chiina. The Asian fighting involved several different campaigns. The Sino-Japanese fighting expanded into the air opperations associated with the China-Burma-India (CBI) theater. Air operations were important in the CBI, but not central. Air operations were central in the Pacific campaign. The Japanese achieved a commanding superority in naval aviation. The Japanese carrier attack on Pearl Harbor was a stunning success. Americans were shocked with both the strength of the Japanese Navy and with the quality of Japanese aircraft. Despite the Japanese success, Pearl Harbor was also the major strategic blunder of the Axis duing World War II. The Axis as long as America was neutral, was the world's dominant military power. The attack instantly ended the American debate over foreign policy and changed the ballabce of power. Pearl Harbor also led to the mobilization of the huge American industrial potential, including the aviation industry. This was apotential the axis in general, and the Japanese in particulsr could not match. Pear Harnor led to land-based and naval air operations associated with the Pacific campaign. Both the CBI and Pacific campaigns had as a major objective to seize territory within range of Japan for bases a strategic bombing campaign. The Marianas Islands proved tp be the ideal location for the strageic bomber nases. This would lead to the dropping of the atomic bombs that would play a major role in ending the War. A short-lived campaign was the Soviet invasion of Manchuria at the end of the War. The Soviet invasion may have been even more important than the atomic bomb in ending the War. The air war in the Pacific began as in the European theater with mastery of the skies by the Japanese. The Chinese air force was vityually non-existant. The Japanese conducted terror bombing raid, first on Shanghai and then on other Chinese cities. Japanese aircraft, especially the Mitusubishi Zero, were so effective that they were able to achieve air superority during land and sea battles against Britain and America beginning with the attack on Pear Harbor. This continued throughout much of 1942 and only did the arrival of ne American aircraft in large numbers did the Allies begin to gain the upperhand in the sky. The seizure of the Marianas and the deployment of of the new long range B-29 bombers brought the Japanese homeland within range of strategic bombardment. The initial raids were inclonclusive. General Curtis LeMay devised a trategy of fire bombing which caused massive destruction in Japanese citis crammed with highly flameable wooden structures. When Japan refused to surender after the Yalta Conference, President Truman ordered the use of tha Atomic Bomb in August 1945. The Japanese surendered in September.

Created: 4:43 AM 8/3/2007
Last updated: 3:25 AM 7/23/2013