Japanese Offensives Early on Sunday morning, Dec. 7, 1941, the First Air Fleet surprised the bulk of the United States Pacific Fleet at anchor in Pearl Harbor and inflicted such damage as to put it out of action as an effective major force for some time. Simultaneously, 2 destroyers attacked the American base at Midway [...]

Capture of Luzon General MacArthur’s plan was to make his principal defense on Luzon, the largest and most important island of the group. All but three Philippine Reserve divisions and some miscellaneous troops were concentrated there. Except for 16 heavy bombers and a squadron of Navy patrol bombers, which were in Mindanao, the entire air [...]

Capture of the Southern Philippines The operations that took place on the southern islands concurrently with those on Luzon were comparatively small. The principal objective of the Japanese in this area was to seize bases for the support of the coming invasion of the Netherlands East Indies. They were content to capture initially the most [...]

Establishment of the Defensive Perimeter The Bismarck Archipelago, northeastern New Guinea, and Bougainville and Buka in the Solomon Islands were all mandated to Australia after World War I. The rest of the Solomon Islands constituted a British protectorate, and Papua (southeastern New Guinea) was an Australian territory. Dominating the northern shores of the Coral Sea, [...]