After eight months of desperate fighting, it was time for America to counterattack in the Pacific. The first landing of American forces on a Japanese held island occurred on August 7, 1942. Following six months of grueling combat on Guadalcanal, the United States began to fight its way back across the vast Pacific Ocean. Bougainville, Tarawa, Saipan - exotic names seldom heard in America before the war, yet, they would become forever etched in the minds of those who grimly fought for those islands.

• Guadalcanal
• Bougainville
• Tarawa
• Cape Gloucester
• Kwajalein
• Eniwetok
• Saipan

 

America's island hoppng counterattack in the Pacific had driven the Japanese back. The pivotal battles for Guam, Iwo Jima and Okinawa would draw the Japanese forces into open combat with the Americans. In these bloody battles of attrition, the Japanese Empire's power in the Pacific would be irrevocably broken. This is the story of mistakes, heroism and sacrifice that were America's final offensives of World War II. These are the final battles that sounded the death knell of the Empire of the Rising Sun.

• Guam
• Tinian
• Peleliu
• Iwo Jima
• Okinawa