WWII-Pacific Theater

Central Image:

During the bloody Battle for Iwo Jima, U.S. Marines from the 3rd Platoon, E Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Regiment of the 5th Division take the crest of Mount Suribachi, the island’s highest peak and most strategic position, and raise the U.S. flag. Marine photographer Louis Lowery was with them and recorded the event. American Marines, Sailors and Coast Guardsmen fighting for control of Suribachi’s slopes cheered the raising of the flag, and several hours later more Marines headed up to the crest with a larger flag. Joe Rosenthal, a photographer with the Associated Press, met them along the way and recorded the raising of the second flag along with a Marine still photographer and a motion-picture cameraman.

Upper Left:

Sailors working the16” guns on board a Navy Battleship. Nine 16 inch guns sat in three gun turrets; each barrel was capable of firing on its own. These guns could fire a shell that weighed 2700 pounds a distance of twenty-four miles.

Upper Right:

War came to the Philippines the same day it came to Hawaii and in the same manner – a surprise air attack. In the case of the Philippines, however, this initial strike was followed by a full-scale invasion of the main island of Luzon three days later. By early January, the American and Filipino defenders were forced to retreat to a slim defensive position on the island's western Bataan Peninsula.

The American and Filipino forces fought from an untenable position until formally surrendering to the Japanese on April 9. The Japanese immediately began to march some 76,000 prisoners (12,000 Americans and the remainder Filipinos) northward into captivity along a route of death, a 60-mile journey that became known as the Bataan Death March. Severe cruelty, disease, exposure to the blazing sun, lack of food, and lack of water took the lives of approximately 500 Americans along the way. Many prisoners were bayoneted, shot, beheaded or just left to die on the side of the road. The ordeal lasted five days for some and up to twelve days for others. Another 1500 U.S. soldiers died at the prisoner of war camp.

Right Center:

The B-25’s and their crews most important contribution to Allied victory was in the Southwest Pacific area, where the 5th Air Force used it with devastating effect in skip-bombing attacks on Japanese shipping and to drop fragmentation bombs by parachute on Japanese airfields.

The B-25 was a pleasant aircraft to fly and was easy to maintain. 

The B-25’s most spectacular exploit was its use in the April 18, 1942, bombing raid on Tokyo led by Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle. These planes were launched from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet, an unprecedented feat for medium bombers.

Lower Right:

Convinced that war was coming, the U.S. Navy realized that fighting in theaters halfway around the world would present new challenges in logistics and would require a vast infrastructure. Beginning in 1940 they began a program of building bases on far-flung Pacific island using civilian contractors. When the United States officially entered the war, the use of civilian labor had to stop. Under international law civilians were not permitted to resist enemy military attack. If they did they could be executed as guerrillas. On December 28, 1941, Rear Admiral Ben Moreell, Chief of the Bureau of Yards and Docks, requested specific authority to activate, organize, and man a unique, very special organization that would support the Navy and Marines in remote locations and defend themselves if attacked. These men would be part of a construction battalion better known as the SeaBees (CB’S).The first naval construction unit deployed from the United States and designated the First Construction Detachment. The 296 men arrived at Bora Bora on February 17, 1942.

The first recruits were the men who had helped to build Boulder Dam, the national highways, and New York's skyscrapers; who had worked in the mines and quarries and dug the subway tunnels; who had worked in shipyards and built docks and wharfs and even ocean liners and aircraft carriers. By the end of the war, 325,000 such men had enlisted in the Seabees.

Lower Middle:

The Japanese officially surrendered on board the U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945. Early Sunday morning on September 2, 1945, aboard the new 45,000-ton battleship U.S.S. Missouri and before representatives of nine Allied nations, the Japanese signed their surrender. At the ceremonies, General MacArthur stated that the Japanese and their conquerors did not meet "in a spirit of mistrust, malice or hatred but rather, it is for us, both victors and vanquished, to rise to that higher dignity which alone benefits the sacred purposes we are about to serve." Despite these words, none of the Japanese delegates were saluted by any of the high-ranking officers. Gen. Carl A. Spaatz later revealed that U.S. planes had been ready with bombs to halt any last-minute treacherous act on the part of the Japanese. Seeing a deck full of high Allied officers on the U.S.S. Missouri might have presented a tempting target for a final suicide attack.

Lower Left: Enola Gay

On Tinian Island in the northern Mariiana Islands, Atomic Bomb Pit 1 was utilized on the evening of August 5, 1945. A uranium atomic bomb named “Little Boy” was hauled to and placed on the hydraulic mount in the pit. The 9000 pound bomb was too large for conventional loading, hence the pit was created. The B-29 plane “Enola Gay” way towed over it and the bomb was winched into its belly. At 2:45am on August 6, 1945, “Enola Gay” took off from Tinian’s Runway Able, just to the south of the bomb pits, and by 8:16am the bomb had been detonated at an altitude of 1890 feet above the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

Left Middle: Battle of midway

Six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States defeated Japan in one of the most decisive naval battles of World War II. Thanks in part to major advances in code breaking, the United States was able to preempt and counter Japan’s planned ambush of its few remaining aircraft carriers, inflicting permanent damage on the Japanese Navy. An important turning point in the Pacific campaign, the victory allowed the United States and its allies to move into an offensive position.

Did you know? Six months before the Battle of Midway, the islands were attacked on December 7, 1941, less than two hours after Pearl Harbor.Two Imperial Japanese destroyers bombarded Sand Island of Midway Atoll. The Japanese successfully damaged the U.S. Marine base before being engaged by American shore batteries and forced to flee.