Japanese Advance Into The Pacific Ocean

This book asserts that the albatross was the reason for the advance of the Japanese into the isolated islands in the Pacific after the abolition of the Japanese “closed-door” policy that had been in effect from the seventeenth century to the latter part of the nineteenth century. The birds’ plumage was of high quality and sold at quite a good price in Europe. The Japanese realized the advantage of this global trade, and their desire to capture albatross motivated them to advance into the Pacific. The exploration of the uninhabited islands had become a fast-moving trend, defined by the author as the “Bird Rush”. As a consequence, the advance into the Pacific by the Japanese resulted in the expansion of Japanese territory. The author has interpreted this Japanese movement into the Pacific by making use of the framework of three distinct shifts: in the aim of their actions from birds to guano / phosphate ore, in the agents of action from individual speculators to commercial capital and then to monopolistic capital, and from the sea near Japan to the wider Pacific. This concept can be termed “a view of history centered on the albatross”.

The story of Japanese involvement in WWII is one that includes a number of amazing events between 1939 and 1945. The Japanese went from fighting against just the Chinese to attempting to practically take on the entire world at the one time. Inside you will learn about... ✓ The Attack on Pearl Harbor ✓ The Pacific War Begins ✓ The Completion of the War Plan. ✓ Attacking Australia and Further Expansion ✓ Battle of the Coral Sea ✓ The Battle for the Solomon Islands ✓ The Bomb ✓ The Japanese Surrender And much more! This is a story of rapid expansion, an attempt at consolidation, and ultimately, retreat and massacre. It is a story of honor, of Allied unity, and eventual surrender. The role of Japan in the Pacific War is a part of WWII that cannot be forgotten.

Here in a single volume is one of the most authoritative, thoroughly documented accounts of the U.S. Navy’s war against Japan. This is the story of the achievements, defeats, and victories of both the American and the Japanese navies as they met and battled in the greatest naval war of all time. This dramatic narrative brings to life both the glorious and the infamous—the decisive encounters at Midway...Guadalcanal...the Philippine Sea...Leyte Gulf...Iwo Jima...Okinawa...and the other points in the Pacific where history was made from 1941 to 1945. The information for TRIUMPH IN THE PACIFIC was gathered by historians at the Naval Academy at Annapolis under the direction of E. B. Potter, the Academy’s Chairman of Naval History, and Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz who, as Commander in Chief Pacific Fleet and Pacific Ocean Areas, was a principal figure in the conflict. The book is marked by authenticity, conciseness, objectivity, and the accuracy of years of painstaking research and preparation.

Imperial Japan’s ambitious offensive at the beginning of WWII is captured in dramatic detail in this pictorial history featuring rare wartime photographs. The Japanese offensive in the Far East in 1941-1942 was extraordinary in its ambition, for their aim was to advance across the entire region. They clashed with an array of forces in a series of lightning campaigns that included famous episodes like the raid on Pearl Harbor and the conquest of Singapore. In this vivid photographic history, historian Philip Jowett covers the whole course of the offensive, portraying not only the Japanese military which achieved such incredible success but the armies they overwhelmed. In a sequence of over 200 wartime photographs—many of which have never been published before—Jowett covers the land, sea, and air fighting as the Japanese occupied so much of the region. Rare images of the Japanese forces as they prepared for war and then made seemingly unstoppable progress are matched with images of the armies they surprised and vanquished. Japan Triumphant captures the character of the war in the Far East, showing the appearance, equipment, and weaponry of the armies involved as well as the conditions in which they fought.

*Includes pictures *Includes accounts of the fighting *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading The waters of the Pacific Ocean - stretching deep blue under the tropical sun, or scourged by typhoons - provided World War II's most far-flung battlefield. Two of the world's premier mid 20th century maritime powers, the United States of American and the Empire of Japan, grappled for supremacy across that vast expanse. By the time the Battle of Midway was over in June 1942, the defeat was so devastating for Japan that it was actually kept secret from all but the highest echelons of the Japanese government. Along with the loss of hundreds of aircraft and over 3,000 men killed, the four Japanese aircraft carriers lost, when compared to America's one lost carrier, was critical considering America's huge shipbuilding superiority. The protagonists at Midway were putting into practice a newly emerging naval doctrine, one which ultimately meted out a terrible punishment to the side that miscalculated. Carrier versus carrier combat had come of age. From that point forward, it would be the Americans who operated aggressively across the Pacific. The Guadalcanal Campaign, which ran from August 1942 to February 1943, was a bitter and protracted struggle that also happened to be a strange and transitional confrontation quite unlike any other in the long Pacific War. In conjunction with the American victory at the Battle of Midway, Guadalcanal represented the crucial moment when the balance of power in the Pacific tipped in favor of the Allies, but the idea that Guadalcanal would be such a significant battle would have come as a surprise to military strategists and planners on both sides. By the spring of 1943, American military planners had begun to create a plan to dislodge Japan from east and southeast Asia. To do so, parts of the Philippines were considered main strategic points in the potential Allied attack in the Pacific. The end goal of the Allied plan was an invasion of the Japanese home islands, in which heavy aerial bombardment would precede a ground assault. In order for this to occur, Allied forces would have to occupy areas surrounding Japan, with China adding to Luzon (the largest island in the Philippines) and Formosa (a large island off the coast of China) to create a triangle from which they could launch their bombers. The Allied advance across the Pacific was based on this 1943 plan, with General MacArthur and his forces moving to the north through New Guinea, then Morotai Island, and then to Mindanao, which was the southernmost major island in the Philippines chain. At the same time, Admiral Chester Nimitz sent his fleet through the central Pacific, where they engaged Japanese forces at the Gilbert, Marshall, Marianas and Palau Islands en route to Mindanao. Meanwhile, when Admiral Nimitz was directed to capture an island in the Bonin group, Iwo Jima stood out for its importance in making progress against the mainland, with three airfields that would allow American air forces to attack the Japanese mainland. Near the end of 1944, as Allied forces were pushing across the Pacific and edging ever closer to Japan, plans were drawn up to invade the Ryuku islands, the most prominent of them being Okinawa. Military planners anticipated that an amphibious campaign would last a week, but instead of facing 60,000 Japanese defenders as estimated, there were closer to 120,000 on the island at the beginning of the campaign in April 1945. The Battle of Okinawa was the largest amphibious operation in the Pacific theater, and it would last nearly 3 months and wind up being the fiercest in the Pacific theater during the war, with nearly 60,000 American casualties and over 100,000 Japanese soldiers killed. In addition, the battle resulted in an estimated 40,000-150,000 Japanese civilian casualties.

For the United States, full involvement in World War II began and ended in the Pacific Ocean. Although the accepted grand strategy of the war was the defeat of Germany first, the sweep of Japanese victory in the weeks and months after Pearl Harbor impelled the United States to move as rapidly as it could to stem the enemy tide of conquest in the Pacific. Shocked as they were by the initial attack, the American people were also united in their determination to defeat Japan, and the Pacific war became peculiarly their own affair. In this great theater it was the United States that ran the war, and had the determining voice in answering questions of strategy and command as they arose. The natural environment made the prosecution of war in the Pacific of necessity an interservice effort, and any real account of it must, as this work does, take into full account the views and actions of the Navy as well as those of the Army and its Air Forces. These are the factors-a predominantly American theater of war covering nearly one-third the globe, and a joint conduct of war by land, sea, and air on the largest scale in American history-that make this volume on the Pacific war of particular significance today. It is the capstone of the eleven volumes published or being published in the Army's World War II series that deal with military operations in the Pacific area, and it is one that should command wide attention from the thoughtful public as well as the military reader in these days of global tension.

John Costello's The Pacific War has now established itself as the standard one-volume account of World War II in the Pacific. Never before have the separate stories of fighting in China, Malaya, Burma, the East Indies, the Phillipines, New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and the Aleutians been so brilliantly woven together to provide a clear account of one of the most massive movements of men and arms in history. The complex social, political, and economic causes that underlay the war are here carefully analyzed, impelling the reader to see it as the inevitable conclusion to a series of historical events. And the bloody fighting that indelibly recorded names like Midway and Iwo Jima in the annals of human conflict is described in detail, through its ominous conclusion in the mushroom clouds of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Examines the military campaigns of World War II in the Pacific, from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the fall of the Philippines to the United States attacks on Iwo Jima and Okinawa and the Japanese surrender.