It was the biggest, bloodiest, most expensive military conflict in history. It ended as it began, with a shocking rain of fire from the sky. Millitary deaths exceeded 2,000,000; civilian casualties were more than five times higher. Though similar numbers were being simultaneously racked up in Europe, the Pacific War was in many ways much more complicated and difficult, as its theater of engagement encompassed over 100,000 square miles of open sea dotted with hundreds of contested islands. After early Japenese victories that rivaled the German's "blitzkrieg" in their scope, the Allies thundered back with an overwhelming response fueled by the full force of America's massive industrial might.
Using footage from both sides of the conflict, Volume 1 of War in the Pacific (aka Crusade in the Pacific) traces the geo-political and economic roots of the war with Japan, documenting the early Japanese triumphs and the initial Allied efforts to reclaim territory taken by the military forces of the "Rising Sun" at the beginning of the war.
Narrated by Westbrook Van Voorhis
Includes the following segments:
- The Pacific in Eruption
- Awakening in the Pacific
- The Rise of the Japanese Empire
- America Goes to War in the Pacific
- The U.S. and the Philippines
- The Navy Holds - 1942
- Guadalcanal: America's First Offensive
- War in the North: The Aleutians
- Attack in the Central Pacific: Makin and Tarawa
- The War at Sea
- The Road Back: New Guinea
- Up the Solomons Ladder: Bouganville