The Turn Of The Tide In The Pacific War

Midway through 1942, Japanese and Allied forces found themselves fighting on two fronts—in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. These concurrent campaigns, conducted between July 1942 and February 1943, proved a critical turning point in the war being waged in the Pacific, as the advantage definitively shifted from the Japanese to the Americans. Key to this shift was the Allies seizing of the strategic initiative—a concept that Sean Judge examines in this book, particularly in the context of the Pacific War. The concept of strategic initiative, in this analysis, helps to explain why and how contending powers design campaigns and use military forces to alter the trajectory of war. Judge identifies five factors that come into play in capturing and maintaining the initiative: resources, intelligence, strategic acumen, combat effectiveness, and chance, all of which are affected by political will. His book uses the dual campaigns in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands as a case study in strategic initiative by reconstructing the organizations, decisions, and events that influenced the shift of initiative from one adversary to the other. Perhaps the most critical factor in this case is strategic acumen, without which the other advantages are easily squandered. Specifically, Judge details how General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz, in designing and executing these campaigns, provided the strategic leadership essential to reversing the tide of war—whose outcome, Judge contends, was not as inevitable as conventional wisdom tells us. The strategic initiative, once passed to American and Allied forces in the Pacific, would never be relinquished. In its explanation of how and why this happened, The Turn of the Tide in the Pacific War holds important lessons for students of military history and for future strategic leaders.

"Military historians and military professionals often refer to strategic initiative and most assume a common understanding of the term. Yet the term has not been carefully defined or closely studied. This dissertation aims to fill the void by crafting a definition for the concept and examining the role and influence of shifting strategic initiative in the Pacific War between mid 1942 and early 1943. Strategic initiative grants the combatant possessing it greater influence over the course of the war and therefore provides the possessor with more options in waging the war. The underlying elements that influence possession of this initiative include resources, intelligence, strategic acumen, combat effectiveness, chance, and political will. The study contains several descriptive chapters. The first examines the organization of the Japanese and the American high commands and their decision-making bodies. These organizations had many similarities, but significant differences as well. The Japanese army and navy did not create joint organizations in the same manner as the Americans, who created the Joint Chiefs of Staff organization based upon a British Imperial General Staff model. The two combatants also differed in their approach to intelligence organizations and emphasis. They both leveraged similar types of intelligence, but the Japanese created a system designed to gather tactical intelligence for battlefield success. The Americans and Allies created and grew more joint and combined organizations that helped better integrate their intelligence and improved their estimates. The heart of the study examines the course of the war and shifting strategic initiative in the Pacific War during 1942 and 1943. The Japanese attacked and seized the strategic initiative in December 1941 with advantages in nearly all the underlying elements. Six months later the Americans won an important victory at the Battle of Midway, which altered the naval balance and allowed them to vie for the strategic initiative. Over the following eight months and through two symbiotic campaigns on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands and on Papua, New Guinea, the Allies gained the strategic initiative. The Allies did so predominantly through the exploitation of advantages in intelligence, strategic acumen, and combat effectiveness. The Americans and Allies thus took control of the war before they held the preponderance of resources with which they closed out the last two years of the war."--Abstract.

A New York Times Bestseller "A beautiful blend of history and prose and proves again Mr. Toll’s mastery of the naval-war narrative." —Wall Street Journal This masterful history encompasses the heart of the Pacific War—the period between mid-1942 and mid-1944—when parallel Allied counteroffensives north and south of the equator washed over Japan's far-flung island empire like a "conquering tide," concluding with Japan's irreversible strategic defeat in the Marianas. It was the largest, bloodiest, most costly, most technically innovative and logistically complicated amphibious war in history, and it fostered bitter interservice rivalries, leaving wounds that even victory could not heal. Often overlooked, these are the years and fights that decided the Pacific War. Ian W. Toll's battle scenes—in the air, at sea, and in the jungles—are simply riveting. He also takes the reader into the wartime councils in Washington and Tokyo where politics and strategy often collided, and into the struggle to mobilize wartime production, which was the secret of Allied victory. Brilliantly researched, the narrative is propelled and colored by firsthand accounts—letters, diaries, debriefings, and memoirs—that are the raw material of the telling details, shrewd judgment, and penetrating insight of this magisterial history. This volume—continuing the "marvelously readable dramatic narrative" (San Francisco Chronicle) of Pacific Crucible—marks the second installment of the Pacific War Trilogy, which will stand as the first history of the entire Pacific War to be published in at least twenty-five years.

"A detailed study of three major naval operations of World War II. These three, initiated by imperial Japan, took place in the Pacific and resulted in the battles of the Coral Sea, Midway/Aleutians, and the Philippine Sea. All the cases provide ample background on the geographic and strategic context of the operations, as well as an account of the unfolding of the action utilizing much primary source material in, especially, American and Japanese archives"--Provided by publisher.

Presents an account of the Allied effort to reclaim thousands of Japanese-occupied islands, detailing the campaign's technical innovations, logistic complications, and human and economic costs.

Fully revised and restructured, the sixth edition of World War II: A Global History offers students a concise and yet thorough textbook that examines history’s bloodiest conflict. The chapters alternate between chronological chapters on Europe and Asia-Pacific and thematic chapters on innovations, home fronts, brutal regimes, and logistics. This textbook includes the following features: A lively narrative of facts, events, people, and ideas that incorporates thoughtful analysis New material and restructured content on global factors that affected the causes, conduct, and consequences of World War II Balanced pace that does not bog readers down in too many details yet gives them sufficient depth and breadth for context Chapters, sections, and sidebars arranged in ways that can complement lectures and assignments Fifty new photographs that illustrate the human condition and weaponry during World War II. Global in focus, by blending both geographic and thematic chapters to ensure readers gain a comprehensive understanding of impact of the war worldwide, this is the perfect volume for all students of the biggest global conflict of the twentieth century.