Pacific War has part(s) Pacific Ocean theatre of World War II
The Pacific War, sometimes called the Asia–Pacific War, was the theater of World War II that was fought in eastern Asia, the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean, and Oceania. It was geographically the largest theater of the war, including the vast Pacific Ocean theater, the South West Pacific theater, the Second Sino-Japanese War, and the Soviet–Japanese War.
The Second Sino-Japanese War between the Empire of Japan and the Republic of China had been in progress since 7 July 1937, with hostilities dating back as far as 19 September 1931 with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. However, it is more widely accepted that the Pacific War itself began on 7 December (8 December Japanese time) 1941, when the Japanese simultaneously attacked the United States military bases in Hawaii, Wake Island, Guam, and the Philippines and invaded Thailand and the British colonies of Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong.The Pacific War saw the Allies pitted against Japan, the latter aided by Thailand and to a lesser extent by the Axis allies, Germany and Italy. Fighting consisted of some of the largest naval battles in history, and incredibly fierce battles and war crimes across Asia and the Pacific Islands, resulting in immense loss of human life. The war culminated in massive Allied air raids over Japan, including the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, accompanied by the Soviet Union's declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria and other territories on 9 August 1945, causing the Japanese to announce an intent to surrender on 15 August 1945.
The formal surrender of Japan ceremony took place aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945. After the war, Japan was occupied by the Allies, lost its former possessions in Asia and the Pacific to the US, China, and the European empires, and had its sovereignty limited to the four main home islands and other minor islands as determined by the Allies. Japan's Shinto Emperor relinquished much of his authority and his divine status through the Shinto Directive in order to pave the way for extensive cultural and political reforms. The Chinese Civil War continued until the Chinese Communist Party victory in 1949.Theaters
Between 1942 and 1945, there were four main areas of conflict in the Pacific War: China, the Central Pacific, South-East Asia and the South West Pacific. US sources refer to two theaters within the Pacific War: the Pacific theater and the China Burma India Theater (CBI). However these were not operational commands.
In the Pacific, the Allies divided operational control of their forces between two supreme commands, known as Pacific Ocean Areas and Southwest Pacific Area. In 1945, for a brief period just before the Japanese surrender, the Soviet Union and Mongolia engaged Japanese forces in Manchuria and northeast China.
The Imperial Japanese Navy did not integrate its units into permanent theater commands. The Imperial Japanese Army, which had already created the Kwantung Army to oversee its occupation of Manchukuo and the China Expeditionary Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War, created the Southern Expeditionary Army Group at the outset of its conquests of South East Asia. This headquarters controlled the bulk of the Japanese Army formations which opposed the Western Allies in the Pacific and South East Asia.
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