In the winter and spring of 1942, the armed forces of Imperial Japan chalked up victory after victory in the Pacific. But in the latter part of 1942, Americans began to turn the war in the Pacific around in our favor.
After their devastating attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese dispatched their fleets and armies into that vast ocean, battling American forces and their allies and taking control of seas, straits, and islands. Within a few months, they had seized places like the Philippines, Burma, the Dutch East Indies, Malaya, Guam, and Wake Island, all in a quest for oil and other natural resources. It was the equivalent of the German blitzkrieg, or “lightning war,” only these assaults were launched across thousands of miles of water.
