The Central Pacific Campaign
Adm. Isoruku Yamamoto, the architect of the Japanese triumph at Pearl Harbor, warned his superiors early in the war that if the conflict lasted more than a year he would not be able to guarantee success against the United States. In 1943, his worst nightmare was realized as America’s industrial might began to show itself in the Pacific. By that time, the U.S. 5th Fleet was operating with six heavy Essex class aircraft carriers, thirteen smaller carriers, twelve battleships, and large numbers of cruisers, destroyers, and support ships. Commanding this armada was the hero of Midway, Vadm. Raymond Spruance. The spearhead of the fleet was its four Fast Carrier Task Groups, each with four aircraft carriers and an escort of supporting surface ships. The ground combat element was the V Amphibious Corps, commanded by Maj. Gen. Holland M. Smith, affectionately known as “Howlin’ Mad” by the Marines under him. Having anticipated the coming battles in the Pacific for more than a decade, the Marines were ready with the equipment and tactics for an island-hopping campaign against defended beaches.
After considerable debate between Army and Navy planners, the Joint Chiefs decided that priority in the Pacific would go to a Navy and Marine Corps drive directly at Japan, while MacArthur’s Army forces would continue their advance through New Guinea toward the Philippines. Step one of the Central Pacific campaign would be the coral atoll of Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands.
The main objective at Tarawa was the tiny two-mile-long island of Betio, the only fortified position on the atoll and site of an airfield. On November 21, 1943, five thousand Marines of the 2nd Marine Division made a difficult landing on the lagoon side of the island across a wide expanse of shallow reef. In three days of savage fighting more than one thousand Marines were killed attacking strongly fortified positions that had proven impervious to inaccurate naval and air bombardment. Bunkers with six-foot-thick roofs made of logs, sand, and corrugated iron had to be assaulted by individual squads with rifles, hand grenades, and satchel charges. Valuable lessons were learned at Tarawa that would benefit upcoming operations, including the necessity of longer and more accurate pre-assault fire support.
As U.S. forces captured the Marshall Islands in February 1944, the Japanese were forced to a new inner perimeter stretching from the Mariana Islands to the Palaus and western New Guinea. The garrisons east of this line were given the suicidal mission of sacrificing themselves to make the U.S. advance as slow and costly as possible. The assaults on Saipan and Peleliu were accordingly contested to almost the last man. D-Day on Saipan was June 15, 1944, nine days after the invasion of France. Marine and Army units sustained more than sixteen thousand casualties overcoming the thirty-two thousand defenders. The attack on Peleliu in September proved to be the costliest amphibious operation in history, with forty percent casualties.350
In conjunction with these land operations the Pacific Fleet fought a series of important naval engagements that further reduced Japanese military strength in the Pacific. In one two-day period U.S. carrier aircraft and submarines inflicted a crippling blow to Japanese naval air power, destroying three hundred aircraft and three carriers in the Philippine Sea. These operations in the Central Pacific in 1944 brought the war ever closer to mainland Japan. Air bases in the Marianas enabled long-range bombers to reach Tokyo, while new naval bases prepared the way for the long-awaited U.S. return to the Philippines.