World War II in the Central Pacific
Publication Year: 2013
Published by: University of North Texas Press
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Title Page, Copyright, Dedication
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List of illustrations and maps
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No book is possible alone. As this book began life as a dissertation, my first thanks have to go to Dr. Williamson Murray, Dr. John Gooch, Dr. Holger Afflerbach, and Dr. Robert Foley who guided me through the research and writing. Without their honest criticism and willingness to share their years of experience, I never would have gotten past the first chapter. ...
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From the distance of seventy years, it is tempting to look back on World War II and proclaim that the Allied victory was inevitable. In the Pacific theater, historians gifted with perfect hindsight point to Japan’s lack of natural resources, its inferior industrial capacity and the suicidal Bushido code, as factors that combined to make that nation’s defeat a certainty. ...
Chapter 1. Guadalcanal: The Ad Hoc Operation
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No one predicted that the first ground offensive of either theater of the war would occur on an unknown speck of an island in the Southwest Pacific. After all, announced Allied strategy specified the defeat of Germany was the first priority. In the Pacific, the military expected only limited offensive efforts for at least the first years of the war. ...
Chapter 2. The Gilberts: Parallel Operations (A Tale of Three Smiths)
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As the Americans prepared the Gilbert Islands assault, Guadalcanal’s lessons were foremost in the planners’ minds. Although American forces were ultimately victorious, many felt that inadequate training and poor intelligence had caused a needless waste of lives. To a large degree planners took the lessons learned on Guadalcanal ...
Chapter 3. The Marshalls: The Perfect Operation
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With victories on Guadalcanal and the Gilberts, the Americans not only succeeded in wresting valuable territory from the Japanese, they also verified the basic soundness of U. S. amphibious doctrine and equipment. However, both operations also revealed a distressing number of weaknesses. ...
Chapter 4. Saipan: Smith Versus Smith
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After the relative ease of the Marshall operations, army and marine leaders believed they had mastered the technical details of amphibious landing operations. Armed with battle-tested equipment and battle-hardened troops, they collectively believed they were ready to tackle the key strategic element laid out in the 1943 Cairo Conference— ...
Chapter 5. Okinawa: The Final Victory
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After the victory at Saipan, American forces continued their steady progress across the Pacific, tightening the noose around the Japanese homeland. By early April 1945, U.S. forces were poised to launch the largest amphibious operation of the war, aimed, for the first time, directly at one of the Japanese prefectures—Okinawa. ...
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In August 1942, all that stood between the Japanese and total domination of the Western Pacific was a near-starving, pitifully small band of marines, lining a few miserable ridges on Guadalcanal. Supporting them was a naval force that was nearly wrecked at Pearl Harbor and further depleted by a disastrous engagement off Savo Island. ...
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Page Count: 336
Illustrations: 35 b&w illus. 5 maps.
Publication Year: 2013