The Strategic Situation in the Dutch East Indies and the Pacific - Part I
The attack on Pearl Habor by the Imperial Japanese Navy on December 7th 1941 marked the beginning of all-out war in the Pacific between Japan on one side and the United States, the United Kingdom and Commonwealth countries and the Netherlands on the other.
U.S. battleship burning after Pearl Harbor attack
The attack on Pearl Harbor was launched simultaneously with operations in the rest of the Pacific and the Dutch East Indies. On December 8th Hong Kong, the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies were attacked. American-held Wake Island was also assaulted and taken by December 23rd.
Japanese troops land in the Philippines on December 16th 1941
After two years of war in Europe, the British, Dutch, Australian and New Zealand forces in the Pacific and Southeast Asia were in no shape or numbers to resist the Japanese fighting forces and in the next six months Japan scored victory after victory in the Pacific theatre, conquering the Dutch East Indies, New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and defeating the Allied naval forces in the Battle of the Java Sea in early March 1942.
The sinking of the HMS Hermes in the spring of 1942 and IJN raids into the Indian Ocean seemed to pave the way for a Japanese attack on India itself, but the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy were beginning to feel the strain of their over-extended supply lines and the difficulty of maintaining a proper defence of the territories they had already conquered.
In mid-1942 the Allies, now joined by the United States, were slowly reorganising their defences of mainland Australia after the disastrous fall of the Philippines and the capture of 80,000 U.S. troops a few months before, when U.S. code-breakers learned of the Japanese intent to assault and capture Port Moresby in New Guinea. This strike would give Japan control of the waters north of Australia and open up for a direct assault. The U.S. Navy rushed to the area and in the Battle of the Coral Sea sunk the Japanese carrier IJN Shóhó and damaged the carrier IJN Shókaku, while loosing their own carrier USS Lexington.
USS Lexington burning at the Battle of the Coral Sea
Up next: Part II