World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF THE PACIFIC: The Island Road

The basic course of U.S. strategy in the war against Japan was changed last week. Outwardly, it had already changed to some extent because of the worsening situation in China, marked by General Stilwell’s recall. But the U.S. joint Chiefs of Staff had long known the sad truth about China’s military plight and had discounted its effects. What really and radically changed the picture was the Second Battle of the Philippine Sea.

This was no Tsushima (which decided a war), but neither was it a Jutland (in which the victors lost more than the vanquished and failed to realize they had won). There was no precedent for this battle, unexampled in the vastness of the area over which it was fought, in the number and air strength and gun power of the ships engaged. The Japanese main fleet was “defeated and routed”: perhaps only 10% was sunk, but 30 to 40% was so damaged that it would not be able to fight again for months.

The victory, decisive although not yet final, gave the U.S. fleet control of the westernmost reaches of the Pacific. For how long? U.S. naval officers, wizards in ship repair, were confident that the Japs could not patch up their battered craft in less than three months. It would take them longer if Jap dockyards could be bombed. And U.S. planners, in Washington and Pearl Harbor, would know how to use those months.

China no longer beckoned Admiral Nimitz to her shores, so the Navy must win footholds among the islands closer to Japan than Samar or Saipan, the present limits of the power drive and 1,500 miles from the goal. Available sites for the next invasion on the direct route to Tokyo: Formosa, the Ryukyus, the Bonins.

From these footholds, Japan must be bombed. A sideswipe at the China coast might yield another “island” (an isolated beachhead would do) to rivet down the U.S. iron collar around Japan’s jugular.

In one action-filled week, the mainland of Asia from Burma to Kweilin, from Singapore to Shanghai, had become a military backwater. The roads to Japan lay clearly outlined, to war planners and laymen alike: through the islands. And the perspective was shortening.