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Example research essay topic: World War Ii War In The Pacific - 1,828 words

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... has Asia and that Britain would declare war the next day. Roosevelt responded that he would go before Congress the following day to ask for a declaration of war against Japan. Churchill wrote: "To have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy.

Now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! ... Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder (Friedrich 44). The bombing rallied the United States behind the President in declaring war on Japan.

On December 11, Germany and Italy declared war on the U. S. , bringing about a global conflict. Aside from the destruction of the American military installation and troops stationed at Pearl Harbor, the bombing also served Japans interests by establishing the nation as a military threat to the strategic positioning of U. S. military interests in the pacific. It also served notice that Japan intended to reign supreme in the Pacific.

There are also those theories that suggest that the Japanese government found it expedient to provoke the United States into a situation in which it would be fighting a war in very separate and distant locations, thus lessening the overall strength and ability for effective retaliation. On January 23, 1942, Japanese forces seized Rabaul in the Solomons and fortified it extensively. The site provided excellent harbor and numerous positions for airfields. The devastating enemy carrier and plane losses of the Battle of Midway (June, 1942) had caused the cancellation for the invasion of Midway, New Caledonia, Fiji, and Samoa, but plans to construct a major seaplane base at Tulagi went forward. The location offered on of the best anchorages in the South Pacific and it was strategically located: 560 miles from the New Hebrides, 800 miles from New Caledonia, and 1, 000 miles from Fiji. The outposts at Tulagi and Guadalcanal were the forward evidences of a sizeable Japanese force in the region, beginning with Lieutenant General Haruyoshi Hyakutake's Seventeenth Army, headquartered at Rabaul (Clancey USMC/USMC-C-Guadalcanal.

html). In August, 1942, the invasion by American Marines of Guadalcanal, a relatively unknown island in the Solomons, began turning the tide of World War II in the Pacific and is remembered as the first major American offensive of the Pacific war. Until then, the Japanese had been invincible, inflicting setback after setback on the Allies. In the ensuing sea battle following the Marine landing, fifty ships sank to the floor of Iron Bottom Sound. For six months, the campaign saw more sustained violence -- by sea, land and air -- than any other in World War II (Frank PG). A soldier from New Zealand and survivor of the battle describes it: A vicious struggle followed.

No quarter was asked or given as Marines and Japanese fought face-to-face in the swirling gunsmoke, lunging, stabbing, and smashing with bayonets and rifle butts. Horrible cries rose above the general tumult as cold steel tore through flesh and entrails and men died in agony (Stevenson 50). That same veteran also described Guadalcanal as a high stakes poker game. Japan had made an initial wager by appropriating the island and constructing an airstrip.

The Americans called and raised the bet when they seized it. The pot grew steadily as the two sides battled on land, on sea, and in the air to put more troops ashore to inflict heavy casualties on each other (Stevenson 52). While the Japanese regrouped, we waited. Tension from the endless vigil and dysentery from the meager diet were becoming endemic. Each dusk brought clouds of malarial mosquitoes...

Morale was at its lowest (Stevenson 52). Ultimately, the men on Guadalcanal were not fighting for God, country, or Moms apple pie. They were determined to survive. Heroics born of desperation marked the battle that history books describe as having been won by privates, non-commissioned officers and junior officers, not by generals sitting around a polished table.

Each time these men were nearly driven off the Canal, they found an even-greater depth of courage and fortitude. Guadalcanal was a battle that the Americans should have lost, but no one told the fighting men (Owens PG). Regardless of such statements of the heroic nature of the battle, the fact remains that Guadalcanal serves as an example of the ways in which the Japanese determination to serve as the fundamental rulers of the various nations, regions, and islands throughout Asia was destined to fail. The same plagues (such as jungle rot), illnesses, lack of nutritional and medicinal supplies besieged Japanese troops as much as any others. It appeared that the tide of the war was turning drastically although it had not yet become fully or decisively turned against the Japanese. Nonetheless, the original goals and objectives of the Japanese in their attempt to master the fate of their neighboring countries were beginning to lose momentum and strength.

The victory at Guadalcanal marked a crucial turning point in the Pacific War. No longer were the Japanese on the offensive. Some of the Japanese militarys best infantrymen, pilots, and seamen had been beaten in hand-to-hand combat by the Americans and the Allies. Of course, history shows that there were still years of fierce fighting ahead, but there was now no question of its outcome. As the war in the Pacific accelerated, the original issues of expansionism and economic embargo became moot points. The war was raging and tens of thousands of lives were being destroyed.

The American seventh fleet invaded the Philippine island of Leyte under the command of Thomas C. Kinkaid. In many ways, the battle of the Leyte Gulf served as the turning point in the naval war between Japan and the United States. The importance of the victory revolved around more that military superiority or the control of a strategic vantage point. The Battle of Leyte Gulf deserves remembrance as the greatest naval action in history, "the last significant sortie of the Imperial Japanese Navy, " and a pivotal point, because although by October of 1944 the eventual defeat of Japan was widely seen as inevitable, "an American defeat would have been a disaster of great magnitude" (Cutler PG).

Leyte Gulf was the largest naval battle ever to take place. It involved over 244 ships and more men than ever before. It conclusively eliminated the Imperial Japanese Navy from being any type of truly effective weapon in what little time was left in the war in the Pacific. The engagement between the Japanese and the Americans in the Philippines was the terrifying sea combat that nearly prevented General Douglas MacArthur from fulfilling his famous promise of "I shall return. " A decoy fleet under the command of Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa lured Admiral William Halsey's task force away from the focus of battle, leaving unprotected the troops covering MacArthur's beachhead.

The Japanese couldn't capitalize on this opportunity, however, partly because the beachhead ships put up an outstanding fight. And yet, the battle was also a painful series of mistakes and miscalculations on both sides of the engagement. For example, the Japanese strategists effectively destroyed the meticulous timing of the Japanese attack, just as American strategists sent the Americans into a duel of ship against ship with ammunition designed for battle between ship and shore. Ultimately, the Americans lost six warships at Leyte Gulf, while the Japanese lost 26 warships. Although the Americans held a definite advantage in terms of the number of ships they were able to deploy at Leyte, the Japanese had an advantage that almost equaled the Americans numbers their experienced group of heavy cruisers that constituted some of the fastest striking power in either navy (Cutler 26). It was the last major naval action during the war.

On November 7 th, Japanese troops on the island were completely isolated. By mid-December, Japanese resistance ended. Because the Japanese navy had been fundamentally destroyed in Leyte Gulf, Japan could no longer import essential items such as grain, coal, and oil. From November of 1944, the only real form of attack on U.

S. naval ships were the famed Kamikaze attacks that did prove to be very effective. The importance of the victories over the Japanese at both Leyte Gulf and Guadalcanal revolved around much more than military superiority or the control of a strategic vantage point. They were both examples of warfare that demonstrated the determination of the forces fighting against the Japanese in the Pacific, as well as the dogged nature of the average Japanese fighter.

To a great degree, both Leyte and Guadalcanal were emblematic of the final years of the war in the Pacific and certainly served as examples of the problems the Japanese Empire was faced with as the war moved closer to its horrifying end in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And yet, despite the fact that the battles (especially Guadalcanal) have served as the bases for legendary depictions of American and its allies bravery in the face of terrifying odds, it must not be forgotten that both engagements were brutal bloodbaths. Therefore the economic power and influence Japan sought unsuccessfully to gain by force of arms in World War II has since been acquired peacefully. Although the past few years have brought the serious underlying weaknesses in the Japanese economy to the forefront of the worlds collective consciousness, the fact remains that Japan's economic strength vis-a-vis both its Asia-Pacific neighbors and the United States at least until the next century were gained without military force.

Modern wars now center around technology, economic prosperity and cooperation, as well as ideological issues. Perhaps... war always has centered on those issues. Bibliography: WORKS CITED Clancey, Patrick. The marine campaign for Guadalcanal, Marine Corps Historical Center, (web) Cockburn, Alexander. Beat the devil, The Nation, 12 - 23 - 91, v 253 n 22, pp. 802 (2).

Cutler, Thomas J. The Battle of Leyte Gulf, (New York: HarperCollins, 1994). Fallows, James. The mind of Japan, U. S.

News & World Report, 12 - 2 - 91, v 111 n 23, pp. 32 (7). Frank, Richard B. Guadalcanal, (Cahners Publishing Company, 1990). Friedrich, Otto.

Day of infamy, Time, 12 - 02 - 91, v 138 n 22, pp. 30 (14). Ikuhito, Hata. Going to war: who delayed the final note? The Journal of American-East Asian Relations, 09 - 94, v 3 n 3, pp. 229 (19).

Owens, William J. Green hell: The battle for Guadalcanal, (Bend, OR: Hellgate Press, 1999). Paige, Harry W. Pearl Harbor is history, around us is living history, National Catholic Reporter, 02 - 26 - 99, v 35 i 17, pp. 2. Snyder, Louis L. Readers Digest illustrated story of World War II, (New York: Readers Digest Association Publishing, 1969).

Stevenson, Nikolai. Four months on the front line; a former Marine recalls the grim defense of Guadalcanal in 1942, American Heritage, 10 - 85, v 36, pp. 49 (7).


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Research essay sample on World War Ii War In The Pacific

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