The Pacific War was fought between the Japanese Empire and the United States and their allies from 7 December 1941 to 15 August 1945. The war began with the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and simultaneous landings in Malaya, though its origins can be traced back much earlier. The war ended with the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Russian offensive in Manchuria, which, together with the submarine blockade, finally forced the Japanese to surrender.
The following pages contain information on many aspects of the Pacific War, including descriptions of ships, planes, installations, and commanders. Individual articles can be quickly located from the Index. Because this encyclopedia was originally developed as an online database to accompany a Pacific War computer war game, there is more than the usual emphasis on the technical, logistical and geographical aspects of the Pacific War. Geographical locations include most significant locales between 70E and 110W longitude and 55S and 65N latitude. An attempt has been made to provide comprehensive information on flag and general officers, with fewer entries for civilians or military persons of lesser rank.
Western personal names are given as Family, Given M.I. while Japanese and Chinese names are listed as Family Given, omitting the comma, which reflects Oriental usage. Thus, the principal antagonists at the Battle of Midway are listed as Fletcher, Frank Jack and Nagumo Chuichi.
Because most writings relevant to the Pacific War have used the Wade-Giles romanization of Chinese place names, which was in widespread use in the 1940s, these are used here in preference to the Hanyu Pinyin romanization that has been adopted more recently. However, the Hanyu Pinyin romanizations are given in the article on each such location.
Unless otherwise noted, all digital
maps are
generated from
the DTED Level 0 data published by the National
Geospatial-Intelligence
Agency or SRTM3 v.2 data from the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration. Both data sets are in the
public
domain. The digital
renderings
themselves are © 2006-2009 by Kent G. Budge. All other images
are
duly
credited and, to the best of my knowledge and belief, are in the public
domain unless otherwise noted. Where a image caption includes the
phrase "Fair use may apply," the image is both historically
unique and old enough that copyright has likely expired, but I claim
fair use if the image is in fact still under copyright.
We have adopted the convention, introduced by Willmott, of putting the names of Japanese land and air units in italics to distinguish them from Allied units. No such convention is felt necessary for ships, whose names are usually a clear indication of nationality.
Dates and units of measure are problematic when writing for an international audience. Dates are written out in full or abbreviated using the standard ISO format, year-mm-dd. Most lengths and weights are given in both English and metric units. Ship speeds are measured in knots. Other units are discussed under Logistics.
The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia © 2007, 2009 by Kent G. Budge. Index