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What Did The USA Do With The Thousands Of Islands Captured During WWII?
A new Pacific empire
After the Japanese officially surrendered to the United States in 1945, they left the Americans in possession of a vast new Pacific empire. For years, the United States had fought a bloody campaign from Hawai’i to Japan. Month after month, combined forces of the US military captured island after island, atoll after atoll, reef after reef. After capturing an island, the United States would fortify it and station men and supplies in preparation for the next leg of the campaign.
By the end, the United States was in possession of thousands of small islands spread across the entire Pacific Ocean. These islands, in turn, had thousands of disparate native peoples. All of them were now under the control of the United States military. Some of these islands are famous, like Peleliu, Wake Island, and Midway.
The new territory encompassed an area stretching over 3 million square miles. The Pacific territory was roughly the size of the entire continental United States and made up over 5% of the entire Pacific Ocean.
So what did the United States do with all of these islands? Did the United States keep its vast new possessions after the victory over the Japanese?
