Off the Mariana Islands, Central Pacific · June 12, 1944 On this date in 1944 in the Marianas, U.S. carrier aircraft began attacking Japanese defenses on Saipan, Tinian, and Guam in preparation for the three-week battle on Saipan. On July 9 U.S. Marines declared Saipan secured, calling the battle for the island “the decisive battle of…
SWPA HQ, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia · April 26, 1943 By January 1943, as the six-month campaign for Guadalcanal in the Southwest Pacific Solomon Islands was winding down (the Japanese abandoned the island on February 7), it became clear that the Allies lacked sufficient resources to swiftly dislodge the Japanese from heavily fortified Rabaul, 650 miles away. Rabaul,…
Aboard Admiral Spruance’s Flagship USS Indianapolis · April 1, 1945 For weeks the largest Allied fleet since D‑Day—nearly 1,500 U.S. and British vessels—fired 2.3 million shells onto Okinawa, the largest island in the Rykuyu archipelago and a little more than 300 miles from Kyūshū and Shikoku, the southernmost Japanese home islands. Kyūshū and Shikoku were home to many…
U.S. Navy Offshore Okinawa, Ryukyu Islands · March 26, 1945 Late in 1944 Rear Admiral Takajiro Ohnishi, commander of the First Air Fleet in Japanese-held Manila, championed a special attack force (tokubetsu kogeki tai, abbreviated as tokkotai) that would inflict maximum damage on Allied naval vessels squeezing the island empire: Japan’s food supply and fuel reserves…
Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands · March 14, 1945 On this date in 1945 the U.S. flag was raised over the 10‑sq‑mile island of Iwo Jima in a formal flag-raising ceremony. The battle for the barren Japanese-held island lying some 760 miles southeast of Tokyo was the most bitterly contested of the war. Its capture was a…
Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands · February 9, 1943 On this date in 1943 Guadalcanal, the largest of the nearly one thousand islands in the Solomons, was declared secure. U.S. Marines had landed on the previously obscure island beginning on August 7, 1942, in the first major offensive by Allied forces against Japan. Operation Watchtower, as the air-sea-land…
Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia · January 23, 1942 On this date in 1942, over a month after Pearl Harbor, 20,000 Japanese Marines quickly overran the Australian garrison at Rabaul, New Britain, the largest island in the Bismarck Archipelago (labeled “Niu Briten” on map below). Rabaul’s capture was important because of its proximity to the Caroline…
Washington, D.C. · January 9, 1941 On this date in 1941 in Washington, D.C., the U.S. State Department advised American citizens to leave Japan. Two summers earlier the State Department had informed Japan that it would not renew the 1911 Treaty of Commerce and Navigation between the two countries, leaving the U.S. free in January…
Saipan Island, Northern Marianas · January 7, 1945 In early October 1944 the U.S. high command decided that, after securing the Philippine island of Leyte (done before the end of December), Gen. Douglas MacArthur was to liberate neighboring Luzon Island, while Fleet Adm. Chester Nimitz, from his station in the Central Pacific, would attack the…
This limited collector’s DVD edition includes a bonus 7th disc entitled “War on the Home Front.”
The Pacific is an epic 10-part miniseries that delivers a realistic portrait of WWII’s Pacific Theatre as seen through the intertwined odysseys of three U.S. Marines – Robert Leckie, John Basilone and Eugene Sledge. The extraordinary experiences of these men and their fellow Marines take them from the first clash with the Japanese in the haunted jungles of Guadalcanal, through the impenetrable rain firests of Cape Gloucester, across the blasted coral strongholds of Peleliu, up the black sand terraces of Iwo Jima, through the killing fields of Okinawa, to the triumphant, yet uneasy, return home after V-J Day. The viewer will be immersed in combat through the intimate perspective of this diverse, relatable group of men pushed to the limit in battle both physically and psychologically against a relentless enemy unlike any encountered before.
War on the Home Front: While the Marines were battling the Japanese in the Pacific theater, a different kind of war was being waged on the U.S. home front. Patriotism was soaring and the mood back in the states was one of a collective spirit, a great coming together was underway. From the perspectives of surviving veterans and family members, this featurette takes an in-depth look at life on the home front during the Pacific theater of World War II.