FROM PEARL HARBOR TO GUADALCANAL

After the disaster in Hawaii, the US employed an island-hopping strategy in the Pacific, carefully choosing where to strike in order to suffocate Japan’s sprawling occupation of the theatre

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Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander-in-chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s (IJN) Combined Fleet, warned that a prolonged war against the United States would inevitably be lost. In the event, Japanese naval aircraft dealt a heavy blow against Pearl Harbor and other US military installations in Hawaii. Within hours, Japanese forces also struck at British Malaya, Wake Island, the Philippines and Midway atoll. Japanese forces subsequently advanced from victory to victory, as Wake and Hong Kong fell in December 1941. By the following spring Japanese troops had also conquered the British bastion of Singapore, the Dutch East Indies and the Philippines.