Gilbert and Marshall Islands Campaign: The US Island-Hopping Advance in the Pacific
The Gilbert and Marshall Islands Campaign (November 1943 to February 1944), a key strategic step forward in WWII’s Pacific War, saw US forces launch multiple amphibious landings against Japanese-held islands and coral atolls in Micronesia. Victory came at a high price in casualties, but the campaign further secured the US’s supply lines in the South Seas and enclosed Japan within the western half of the Pacific. US forces could now launch attacks on Japan’s main naval base at Truk Atoll and begin to push Japan back to its home islands.
Coral Atolls & Pacific Archipelagoes
The Gilbert and Ellice Islands were a British colony (today they are the independent states of Kiribati and Tuvalu). They are composed of 16 atolls (Gilbert) and nine islands (Ellice). The Marshall Islands, consisting of 29 coral atolls, had been part of the German Empire until taken over by Japan as part of the peace settlement that formally ended the First World War (1914-18). During the Second World War (1939-45), Japan built military bases in both the Gilbert atolls and the Marshall Islands (but did not occupy the Ellice Islands located further south).
Seeking revenge for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, US bombers and naval ships had attacked these islands in February 1942, an operation known as the Marshalls–Gilberts Raids. The attacks had been part of a wider strategy to bomb Japanese bases across the Pacific. Japan’s massive expansion in the Pacific was then halted at the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942. US forces followed this up by inflicting a heavy defeat on the Imperial Japanese Navy at the Battle of Midway in June. Another important US victory was gained in the Guadalcanal Campaign in the Solomon Islands, fought between August 1942 and February 1943.
The US was now anxious to complete its domination of the Central Pacific, from Australia to the Midway Atoll, by launching an amphibious landing on the remaining Japanese territories held in this region: the Gilbert and Ellice Island group (Operation Galvanic) and the Marshall Islands (Operations Flintlock and Catchpole). If the US could grab these islands, the Japanese would be contained within the western half of the Pacific and US supply lines stretching back to Australia would be secured. The strategy has often been called ‘island-hopping,’ since US forces would first attack and capture one island group and then use that group as an air and naval base to attack another archipelago. If all went to plan, then, in this way, the US would capture the Gilbert Islands, the Marshall Islands, the Caroline Islands, the Mariana Islands, the outer Japanese islands, and then, the ultimate goal, the main islands of Japan.
Víly u potoka (Fairies by the Brook) (1895) by Maximilian Pirner (Czech, 1854 – 1924), oil on canvas, 99 x 61 cm (approximately 38.9 x 24 in), National Gallery Prague
