Concept
Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign
Related concepts (15)
Battle of Makin
The Battle of Makin was an engagement of the Pacific campaign of World War II, fought from 20 to 24 November 1943 on Makin Atoll in the Gilbert Islands. On 10 December 1941, three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, 300 Japanese troops plus laborers of the Gilberts Invasion Special Landing Force had arrived off Makin Atoll and occupied it without resistance.
Betio
Betio is the largest township of Kiribati's capital city, South Tarawa, and the country's main port. The settlement is located on a separate islet at the extreme southwest of the atoll. Betio Post Office opened on 5 April 1957 and closed in 1964. In 1967, the Marine Training Centre was created by Hamburg Süd. John Hilary Smith, governor of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands created the Betio Town Council in 1972.
Butaritari
Butaritari is an atoll in the Pacific Ocean island nation of Kiribati. The atoll is roughly four-sided. The south and southeast portion of the atoll comprises a nearly continuous islet. The atoll reef is continuous but almost without islets along the north side. Bikati and Bikatieta islets occupy a corner of the reef at the extreme northwest tip of the atoll. Small islets are found on reef sections between channels on the west side. The lagoon of Butaritari is deep and can accommodate large ships, though the entrance passages are relatively narrow.
Pacific Ocean theater of World War II
The Pacific Ocean theater of World War II was a major theater of the Pacific War, the war between the Allies and the Empire of Japan. It was defined by the Allied powers' Pacific Ocean Area command, which included most of the Pacific Ocean and its islands, while mainland Asia was excluded, as were the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, Borneo, Australia, most of the Territory of New Guinea, and the western part of the Solomon Islands. It officially came into existence on March 30, 1942, when US Admiral Chester Nimitz was appointed Supreme Allied Commander Pacific Ocean Areas.
Battle of Tarawa
The Battle of Tarawa was fought on 20–23 November 1943 between the United States and Japan at the Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands, and was part of Operation Galvanic, the U.S. invasion of the Gilberts. Nearly 6,400 Japanese, Koreans, and Americans died in the fighting, mostly on and around the small island of Betio, in the extreme southwest of Tarawa Atoll. The Battle of Tarawa was the first American offensive in the critical Central Pacific region.
Enewetak Atoll
Enewetak Atoll (ɛˈniːwəˌtɔːk,_ˌɛnɪˈwiːtɔːk; also spelled Eniwetok Atoll or sometimes Eniewetok; Ānewetak, yan&yweytak, or Āne-wātak, yan&y-waytak; known to the Japanese as Brown Atoll or Brown Island; ブラウン環礁) is a large coral atoll of 40 islands in the Pacific Ocean and with its 296 people (as of 2021) forms a legislative district of the Ralik Chain of the Marshall Islands. With a land area total less than , it is no higher than and surrounds a deep central lagoon, in circumference.
Tarawa
Tarawa is an atoll and the capital of the Republic of Kiribati, in the Micronesia region of the central Pacific Ocean. It comprises North Tarawa, which has 6,629 inhabitants and much in common with other more remote islands of the Gilberts group, and South Tarawa, which has 56,388 inhabitants , half of the country's total population. The atoll was the site of the Battle of Tarawa during World War II. Tarawa is an old Gilbertese form for Te Rawa, meaning "The Passage" (of the Lagoon), named for the unusual large ship channel to the lagoon.
Gilbert Islands
The Gilbert Islands (Tungaru; formerly Kingsmill or King's-Mill Islands) are a chain of sixteen atolls and coral islands in the Pacific Ocean, about halfway between Papua New Guinea and Hawaii. They constitute the main part of the nation of Kiribati (the name of which is a rendering of “Gilberts” in the phonology of the indigenous Gilbertese). The atolls and islands of the Gilbert Islands are arranged in an approximate north-to-south line. The northernmost island in the group, Makin, it is approximately from southernmost, Arorae, as the crow flies.
Pacific War
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 to 1931 with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.
Battle of the Coral Sea
The Battle of the Coral Sea, from 4 to 8 May 1942, was a major naval battle between the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) and naval and air forces of the United States and Australia. Taking place in the Pacific Theatre of World War II, the battle was the first naval action in which the opposing fleets neither sighted nor fired upon one another, attacking over the horizon from aircraft carriers instead. To strengthen their defensive position in the South Pacific, the Japanese decided to invade and occupy Port Moresby (in New Guinea) and Tulagi (in the southeastern Solomon Islands).