- Date:
- December 8, 1941 - September 2, 1945
- Location:
- Pacific Ocean
- Philippines
- Southeast Asia
- Participants:
- China
- Japan
- Russia
- United Kingdom
- United States
- Context:
- World War II
- On the Web:
- National Institute for Defense Studies - The Strategy of the Axis Powers in the Pacific War (Nov. 18, 2024)
In accordance with the decisions of November, Japan’s war against the Western Powers opened on December 7, 1941, with the surprise attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, by about 360 aircraft from the carriers of Vice Adm. Nagumo Chuichi’s strike force. The U.S. ships at Pearl Harbor included 70 combat vessels and 24 auxiliaries, most of them moored for the weekend; there were also about 300 U.S. Army, Navy, and Marine Corps planes present. All 8 U.S. battleships there were hit, 5 being sunk and 1 heavily damaged; 3 destroyers were sunk and 9 other ships sunk or severely damaged; 140 aircraft were destroyed and some 80 more damaged; and some 2,330 military personnel were killed and 1,145 wounded, besides about 100 civilian casualties. The Japanese, however, missed the Pacific Fleet’s three aircraft carriers (then at sea) and failed to damage shore installations, power plants, or oil-storage facilities. The attack instantly unified the American people and brought a vengeful United States into the war.
Initial Japanese conquests
On December 8 (Philippine time), 1941, Japanese bombers struck at Clark and Iba airfields, north of Manila. They caught most of the U.S. Army’s Far East air strength on the ground, destroying more than half its fighter and bomber planes. Other raids, two days later, knocked out more U.S. fighters and destroyed Cavite Naval Yard, south of Manila. Adm. Thomas C. Hart, commander of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, had sent part of his force south in November. With little air protection left, the remaining surface vessels in the Philippines were in grave danger, and Hart sent the rest of his larger ships to Java or to Australia in December. The remaining U.S. bombers, their position equally untenable, flew to Australia in mid-December. Only the ground forces, a few fighter planes, about 30 submarines, and a few small vessels remained to defend the Philippines.
Japanese forces began landing on Luzon on December 10, 1941. The bulk of one division landed at Lingayen Gulf on December 22, with a second large landing south of Manila two days later. As the Japanese converged on Manila, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commander of all U.S. and Filipino army forces in the Philippines, began executing plans to make a final stand on the Bataan Peninsula and Corregidor Island so as to deny the use of Manila Bay to the Japanese. A series of brilliant withdrawal actions brought his troops safely into Bataan, while the Japanese entered Manila unopposed on January 2, 1942.
A week later, the Japanese struck Bataan. After some initial success, they were stalled by disease and casualties, but they could be reinforced while the Americans could not. On March 11, 1942, under orders from U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, MacArthur left Corregidor for Australia, and Lieut. Gen. Jonathan M. Wainwright assumed command in the Philippines. The Bataan defenders, low on ammunition, food, and medicine, could not hold back a final Japanese offensive. Bataan fell on April 9 and the 76,000 Filipino and American defenders were subjected to a grueling 66-mile (106-km) ordeal that came to be known as the Bataan Death March. After an intensive aerial and artillery bombardment of Corregidor, the Japanese landed on that island in the night of May 5–6, and Wainwright surrendered on May 6. The southern Philippines, where the Japanese had already seized key ports and airfields, capitulated on May 9. Exact casualties during these Philippine operations are unknown. Both sides probably lost more men from sickness and disease than from battle, and thousands of Filipino and American soldiers died in Japanese captivity due to abuse and neglect. After the war, the atrocities committed during the Japanese conquest of the Philippines were judged to be war crimes, and Japanese commander Homma Masaharu was executed for his role in perpetuating them.
Before the start of the war the Japanese had occupied Hainan Island and bases in French Indochina. A Japanese air strike destroyed British air power at Hong Kong on December 8, 1941, and a ground attack pushed back the 12,600 British and 1,900 Canadian defenders. The Japanese had gained a foothold on the island by December 24 and forced a surrender the next day. To secure the flank of their drive southward they occupied Bangkok, Thailand, on December 9; Victoria Point, in southern Burma, on December 16; and Davao, in the southern Philippines, on December 20.
Japanese air strikes, which had supported landings in southern Thailand and in northern Malaya on December 8, continued while additional forces poured ashore on the following days. Air cover for the defenders—one Australian and two Indian divisions, all understrength—was inadequate, and naval support, lacking air protection, was of no avail. In an effort to cut the Japanese line of communications, the British battleship Prince of Wales and the battle cruiser Repulse sailed from Singapore, only to be sunk on December 10 by Japanese land-based aircraft. Closely supported by air and tank forces, two Japanese divisions drove down the Malay peninsula in a series of frontal attacks and flanking maneuvers. Despite the arrival of British reinforcements, the Japanese had occupied all of Malaya except Singapore Island by the end of January 1942.
On December 31, 1941, meanwhile, Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, conferring in Washington, had decided to establish a unified command in Southeast Asia and the Southwest Pacific. Named ABDACOM, after its American, British, Dutch, and Australian components, it was commanded by Gen. Sir Archibald P. Wavell, whose mission was to hold Malaya, Sumatra, Java, and the approaches to Australia. ABDACOM began operations on January 15, 1942, but the Japanese had already started moving toward the oil-rich Indies. They had occupied Sarawak on December 17, Brunei on January 6, and Tarakan, Jesselton (now Kota Kinabalu), and points on Celebes (Sulawesi) on January 11. They seized the ports of Balikpapan and Kendari on January 24. Amboina (now Ambon) fell to them on February 4, after a heroic four-day defense by Dutch and Australian troops. Despite opposition from an Allied naval force under Rear Adm. Karel Doorman, of the Royal Netherlands Navy, Japanese troop convoys passed through Makassar Strait to seize Makassar on February 8 and Banjarmasin, on the southwest coast of Borneo, on February 16.
Meanwhile other Japanese forces, pushing into Burma, captured Moulmein (Mawlamyine) on January 31, 1942, and pressed on toward Rangoon (Yangon) and Mandalay. In Malaya, the Japanese landed three divisions on Singapore Island on February 8–9 and forced Lieut. Gen. Arthur Percival to surrender his garrison (nearly 90,000 Indian, Australian, and British troops) a week later. On the eve of Singapore’s fall, Japanese paratroopers dropped on Palembang, Sumatra, on February 13, and an amphibious assault followed on February 16. The Japanese invaded Bali on February 18 and had secured Timor by February 24. Several efforts by Doorman to stem the Japanese tide had proved fruitless, and nothing now stood in the way of an invasion of Java, the only important island in the area still in Allied hands. As if to demonstrate their dominance of the theatre, on February 19 the Japanese launched a pair of air raids on Darwin, on the Australian mainland, killing hundreds and damaging military and civilian installations.
Wavell’s air and naval strength for the defense of Java were now all but gone. Bowing to the inevitable, he left for India and on February 25 ABDACOM ceased to exist. A final effort to deliver air reinforcements to the Dutch on Java failed, and the island’s fate was sealed on February 27 by the Japanese victory in the seven-hour Battle of the Java Sea, a bold but abortive effort by Doorman to halt the invasion fleet. A single Japanese destroyer was damaged while the Allies lost five irreplaceable warships. Doorman himself perished when his flagship, the HNLMS De Ruyter, was sunk by Japanese torpedoes. Landing at three points on Java in the night of February 28, the Japanese rapidly expanded their beachheads in the next few days, while their naval forces hunted down most of the remaining Allied ships. On March 9, 1942, Lieut. Gen. Hein ter Poorten was forced to surrender the island, with some 20,000 Dutch, British, Australian, and U.S. troops.
The Japanese experienced similar success in securing their eastern flank. Having bombed Wake Island on the first day of the Pacific War, they were beaten off in an attempted invasion on December 11. This rebuff marked the first significant tactical reversal for the Japanese navy, and the Battle of Wake Island would provide a morale boost for the American public. A much larger Japanese force of some 2,000 naval troops made a successful landing on December 23. Although the Wake garrison (500 Marines, sailors, and army radiomen, supplemented by roughly 450 civilian engineers) killed and wounded more than half the invaders, it was soon forced to surrender. Guam, which was also attacked by Japanese aircraft on December 8, 1941, was invaded at four different points by more than 5,000 Japanese troops on December 10 and quickly overwhelmed. After occupying Makin and Tarawa in the Gilberts in the first days of the war, the Japanese then turned toward the strategic base of Rabaul in New Britain. Invading before dawn on January 23, 1942, the Japanese force of 5,000 was too much for the 1,400 Australian defenders. A few days later, other Japanese troops seized Kavieng, New Ireland.