WW 2 PACIFIC WAR ROAD TO VICTORY

WORLD WAR  2 PACIFIC WAR 
ROAD TO VICTORY


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The seizure of Mono Island in the Treasury group, Central Solomons, on October 27, was typical of the amphibious campaigns which were moving the Allies step by step toward their final goal. Backed by long planning, the Mono victory was small in size, big in import, a demonstration that when Japanese forces are small and ill-prepared, the Allies could move with the same terrorizing speed as the Japanese once did. The landing was made in daylight after a terrific bombardment by United States destroyers. Within fourteen hours the Allied forces—Americans and New Zealanders—had killed or captured the majority of the 200 to 300 Japanese. When the action ended the Rising Sun had slid back again in the long ebb toward Tokio. In this picture, New Zealanders, forming the second wave, come in as fog begins to veil the shores of Mono
 
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 Yhe Gilbert Islands are small dots in the midst of a vast sea, 2,400 miles southwest of Hawaii, 3,000 miles southeast of Tokio

 Toward them, on the morning of November 20, moved the mightiest naval force ever assembled in the Pacific. In that force were battleships which had been torn apart by the Japanese bombs in the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor two years ago; now the battleships were better than ever, for they not only had been repaired, but modernized as well. In the armada were more aircraft carriers than ever had sailed together on any sea, most of them built since Pearl Harbor. The fleet was a symbol of reborn American naval power. From landing ships men poured out onto the beaches of three of the Gilbert Atolls—men of the 2nd Marine Division, veterans of Guadalcanal and men of New York's old Fighting 69th of World War I fame, now seeing service in this war for the first time as members of the 27th Division. Some 4,000 Japanese were guarding the three islands—Tarawa, Makin and Abemama—but within four days Admiral Nimitz was able to announce that the Gilbert Islands had been conquered. Most of the enemy defenders had been killed; a few remained to be hunted down. American losses on Tarawa, where the Marines landed were heavy. Of two battalions—2,000 to 3,000 men —only a few hundred escaped death or injury. The rapidity of the victory was almost startling. It took American troops three weeks to conquer half as many Japanese on Attu in the Aleutians. In this picture direct hits by the 5-inch guns of the destroyer force off Tarawa set off the oil dumps on the Japanese-held island, causing this heavy cloud of black smoke. In the foreground Marines take cover amid wrecked Japanese equipment.T