Japan remained. The Americans, who regarded the Far Eastern
war as their special preserve, dealt capably with it. Before
the fighting in Europe had ended, they had begun to shift troops
to the Far East. But they had taken the offensive earlier and had
enjoyed a few successes. In China they had met with serious
reverses. Roosevelt foresaw that after the wrar China would play
an important part in wTorld affairs. He regarded China as a
fourth power. In order to feed the Chinese army by opening the
Burma Road, he had accepted a plan for Burma which the
British had put up as part of the defence of India. After some
fierce fighting Burma was effectively conquered. On 2 May Rangoon
fell. All the American advisers, weapons and dollars, however,
could not sort out Chiang Kai-Shek's muddled administration
in China. The Chinese army remained a hotch-potch oi
isolated gangs, although in territories under its control it helped
the air offensive which the huge B29 bombers unleashed on
Japan.
No unified command wras set up to handle Pacific operations.
Admiral Nimitz and General MacArthur presided over separate
campaigns. American organization and method were everywhere
admirable. Not only did they quickly make good the losses
at Pearl Harbour, they went on to launch twenty large air
craft carriers, which manoeuvred in close cooperation with
the battleships. Their bombers, the B2g's were perfectly adapted
for long range bombing; they could haul nine tons of bombs a
distance of 3500 miles. Men, arms, equipment and food sailed
at regular intervals 6,000 miles from the Pacific coast of the
United States. American strategists perfected a new landing technique
in which special troups, the marines, formed bridge-heads
under cover of aerial bombardment and fire from ships off
shore. The Japanese could not match American air and sea
power. The Japanese fighter planes were slower, their radar and
radio installations were less precise. They made up for some of
their disadvantage with fierce fighting. They fortified the least
atolls and defended them down to the last man. They flew the
Kamikaze suicide planes and crashed them into the bridges of
enemy ships.
The outcome of the Pacific war hinged on gigantic air and
sea battles, which the Japanese frequentlylost. The major battles
were fought in the Mariana Islands in June 1944, and at Leyte
Gulf in October, in both of which the Japanese lost aircraft
carriers and battleships. As the Americans increased their control
of the sea, they had more freedom of manoeuvre. They disregarded
some Japanese strongpoints, which could not be
reached bv supplies and became prisons for their inhabitants.
They landed on others and used them as bases for further advances.
Thus the Solomons, New Guinea, the Marianas, the
Palaus were successively captured or neutralized, and Mac-
Arthur, true to his promise, returned to the Philippines in
January 1945. While the Philippine archipelago was being
captured, the Americans made two more leaps forward to
Iwojima and then to Okinawa, where they were within range of
Hondo, the capital island of the Japanese archipelago.
Bv spring 1945, the Japanese were isolated from their empire.
Essential supplies were running short. Japan was shattered bybomb
attacks whose devastating effects were increased by gigantic
fires. She was on her last legs. By the end of the European
war most of her merchant fleet and navy had been lost. Without
iron ore, ships and plane manufacture was jeopardized, while
the remaining planes and ships had run short of fuel. Nevertheless
the Japanese fought so fiercely that the Americans hesitated
to land on Hondo. At Okinawa the Japanese lost 1 10,000 men:
only 7,500 were taken prisoners. The Americans reckoned a
million men would perish in a landing on Hondo. After this they
would still have to defeat the units scattered across the remains
o( the Japanese Empire. At the Yalta conference Roosevelt had
obtained a promise of cooperation from the Red Army in Manchuria,
which opened fighting on the eastern front on 9 August
with considerable success. But Truman had decided to explode
the first atomic bomb at Hiroshima three days earlier. On 9
August another, the last, wTas dropped on Nagasaki with the same
horrific results. The Emperor Hirohito broke his silence to order
the last indomitable soldiers to stop fighting. Many of them
committed harakiri. The Japanese surrender was signed on 2
September in Tokyo Bay aboard the Missouri, an American
battleship which had survived Pearl Harbour. The war was over.
The Allies had been completely victorious.