The Next Steps

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The Next Steps

• The Solomon Islands
• New Georgia
• Bougainville
• Tarawa
• Kwajalein

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After Guadalcanal

• Island Hopping continues
• Yamamotos Plane is shot down and he is killed by
  P-38
• Nest stop for the Navy and the Marines---New
  Georgia and the Solomon Islands
• By June of 43 the US began UNRESTRICTED
  SUB_WARFARE

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New Georgia

• Admiral Halsey landed troops on New Georgia,
  while Macarthur's troops moved to Nassau Bay, New
  Guinea.
• TOENAILS
• Japanese Pillboxes and Honeycombs
• Rough seas, shoals, resistance, bad execution

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• First Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, became
  the first black American infantry unit to engage
  in combat during the war

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• With the highest number of non-combatant U.S.
  casualties (jungle disease) in the island-hopping
  campaign, the New Georgia mission became a costly
  success

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Bougainville
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• November 1, 1943
• 60,000 elite Japanese troops
• Allies use the seas and the skies
• The Japanese responded with naval and air vessels
  from Rabaul

• November 5th, Admiral Halsey dispatched a carrier
  air strike against Rabaul, knocking down many
  Japanese planes and forcing the naval forces to
  flee to the open ocean

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Hill 700

• March 8, the inevitable massive Japanese attack
  began
• It was brutal
• "Pour it on as close to me as you can get."
• The battles on Hill 700 and Cannon Hill were at
  such short range that infantry weapons alone had
  to repulse the assault waves

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Bougainville

• Marines will face some of the fiercest Japanese
  resistance
• They will see the 1st of many BANZI CHARGES
• In the end the Japanese defenders will die as
  they see with HONOR

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Japanese Atrocities

• Just prior to Bougainville they execute 100 POWS
  on WAKE ISLAND
• They issue orders to kill and dispose of US POWS
• The SPIRIT WARRIORS
• WHITE DEVILS YELLOW DEVILS

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Tarawa and Makin, Gilbert IslandsNovember 1943
Rear Admiral Howard F. Kingman announced to the
landing troops "Gentlemen, we will not neutralize
Tarawa. We will not destroy it. We will
obliterate it!

• Rear Admiral Keiji Shibasaki
• A million men could not take Tarawa in a hundred
  years
• It would take 35,000 men 4 days to conquer
  Tarawa at the end of the battle, neither side
  would look at the war the same way.

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TAWARA

• 3 HOURS OF NAVAL BOMBARDMNENT
• 2nd Marine Division landed on Betio
• Betio was a fortress of unparalleled intricacy,
  with coconut log bunkers cemented with crushed
  coral and intersecting zones of fire

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• The battle end with a Banzi Charge than may have
  saved my US Marines than it killed
• Tarawa was truly the 1st sign of what was to face
  the Marines in the Pacific
• 1500 Americans and 4800 Japanese died on Tarawa.

• 1st hour the 1st wave suffered almost total
  casualties
• The battle for Tarawa would be won but the with a
  bloody cost
• By the 3rd day Shibasaki and his entire command
  staff committed suicide

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Results of Tarawa

• US MARINES GAINED A NEW UNDERSTANDING OF JAPANESE
  INTRENCHMENT
• PRACTICE PILL BOXES WERE BUILT FOR TRAINING
• DUKW UNITS AMTRACS WERE BETTER PREPARED FOR THE
  REEFS ROUGH WATERS

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Bismarck Archipelago15 December 1943-27 November
1944

• By close of 1943, the US, Australia, and New
  Zealand had stopped the Japanese juggernaut in
  the Pacific
• Before MacArthur could begin operations against
  the Philippines, he needed to capture the
  Bismarck Archipelago, a group of islands off the
  New Guinea coast

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Rabaul

• CARTWHEEL
• Weaken through attrition and starvation
• A VERY LONG CAMPIAGN
• IN THE END RABAUL FALLS TO us BOMBERS ON Feb. 20,
  1944
• Time to hop to the next island

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The Marshall Islands

• Kwajalien-largest coral atoll in the world
• Jan. 31st Feb. 3rd
• US launched a more successful twin assault on the
  main islands of Kwajalien in the south and
  Roi-Namur in the north
• Operation was a success almost to a man the
  Japanese defenders will fight to the death
• 1st time the United States penetrated the "outer
  ring" of the Japanese pacific sphere

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A Lesson Well Learned

• The battle represented the failure of the
  beach-line defense
• From this point on they will allow the landings
  and using their triangle method of cross fire
  will inflict mass casualties on the Marines in
  the Pacific

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B-29

• With the success of the island hopping campaign
  the 1st b-29 Superfotresses begin bombing raids
• 77 take off and from this point the islands that
  must be taken become clear
• In the path to Japan stands Saipan, Iwo Jima and
  Okinawa

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