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. Military 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 Japanese 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 2 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:
- Speeding Up the Attack: The Marshalls
- Stepping Stones to the Philippines
- Palau: The Fight for Bloody Nose Ridge
- MacArthur Returns to the Philippines
- Battle for the Marianas
- The War in the China-Burma-India Theater
- Bloody Iwo
- At Japan's Doorstep: Okinawa
- The Air War on Japan
- The Surrender and Occupation of Japan
- Shifting Tides in the Orient
- War in Korea