The Pacific's Strategic and Economic Importance

The Pacific Ocean's strategic weight was demonstrated with brutal clarity during the Second World War, when the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 brought the United States into the conflict, and the subsequent Battle of Midway in June 1942, in which the U.S. Navy sank four Japanese aircraft carriers, marked a decisive turning point in the Pacific theater. The Allied "island-hopping" campaign that followed, including the prolonged and costly Guadalcanal campaign in the Solomon Islands from August 1942 to February 1943, established the enduring military logic that control of scattered Pacific islands and their airfields could project power across vast oceanic distances.