“The war that begun with Pearl arbor rapidly escalated into scattered fighting across a region of the world far larger than all of Europe.- Out of Many”
Six months after the Pearl Harbor bombing, the U.S. worked to recover naval advantage in the central Pacific and began its mission to halt Japanese expansion. Yet, even after defeating Japan’s U.S. threat in the Midway Islands, the war in the Pacific had yet to be terminated, as Japan pulled back its offensive to concentrate on its remaining forces. Unfortunately, the U.S. command was divided between General Douglas MacArthur in the southwest Pacific and Admiral Chester Nimitz in the central Pacific, requiring a counterstrategy in order to retake islands closer to the homeland. Invasion of the islands would’ve be a foolish decision on America’s part, as demonstrated in the attack on Japan in the Guadalcanal, where American forces were soon deprived of proper nutrition and ammunition in their six-moth course. Furthermore, in order to gain control of the island territories, as the Japanese were widely spread out over the islands, the total and methodic evaluation of every Japanese held-landmass. Even island hopping, while an effective strategy of using limited Allied forces, time, and supply to capture the islands of strategic importance to island, left the U.S. impatient for a complete surrender from their Asian enemy. Japan assumed that the U.S. forces hoped to avoid high casualties and eventually wear down. Understandably, the German threat was a more prominent issue regarding U.S. warfare, steadily gaining new territories in central Europe, the Pacific, and Asia, and would completely consume attention of U.S. warfare. Not until Germany was defeated, that the U.S. truly focused on Japan, and responded to its rejection of surrender with atomic bombing on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, it seems that these dramatic events in WW2 wouldn’t have to have occurred if the U.S. had been more involved in the front confronting Japan, in order to pressure a preferably quicker and less fatal surrender.