The War in the Pacific By The Numbers

A truly massive conflict

Grant Piper
War Stories
Published in
5 min readNov 30, 2021

--

Allied advances through the Pacific (Public domain)

When Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor in 1941 they could not have known that they were kicking off the largest conflict in human history. The Pacific War or the Pacific Theater of World War II was the largest conflict ever fought in terms of area, miles traveled, and territory covered. The fight between the Empire of Japan and the United States of America played out over an area that makes up one-third of the entire planet.

Japan was much closer to all of the areas of concern in the Far East than the United States. The Japanese intimately knew the vastness of the Pacific and were counting on that as a point in their favor.

The Japanese hoped that the vast distances, tiny islands, and large logistical challenges that face the United States would dissuade them from fully committing to such a war. It did not.

Instead, the largest war in history erupted over an area that is hard for people to comprehend.

Vast distances

Plane takes off from the USS Hornet (National Archives)

The distance between Hawai’i and Tokyo is 4,000 miles over open water. The distance between Tokyo and the…

--

--

Grant Piper
War Stories

Professional writer. Amateur historian. Husband, father, Christian.