Its large airfield would allow Japanese airpower to project over the Coral Sea as far as northern Australia. As such, controlling the town of Port Moresby, on New Guinea’s southern shore, seemed a propitious. While an outright invasion of Australia seemed impractical, the need to firm up Japan’s new defensive perimeter, while simultaneously discomfiting the Allies, was certainly appealing. Meanwhile, in Japan, senior military leaders were already looking to future operations. President Roosevelt was willing to do whatever it took to secure this vital base. Shockingly, earlier in the year Australian Prime Minister John Curtin had turned not to Britain, but to America for military aid, knowing that Australia’s mother country was too stretched to offer effective assistance. The Australians, meanwhile, were facing their gravest crisis of the war, with the Japanese practically on their doorstep. Now, Japan was threatening it with outright invasion or (by moving down the line of the Solomon Islands towards Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa) by cutting off its supply lines to the United States. Australia figured prominently in Allied plans to retake the Indies. The latter, in particular, was a source of tremendous anxiety to the Americans. The Japanese held the initiative, and India and Australia both now seemed directly threatened. The tiny, besieged bastion of Corregidor had lasted just a month longer, falling on 6 May.Īll in all, the picture for the Allies was one of outright calamity. Meanwhile, in the Philippines, Bataan had fallen in April-the largest surrender in American history-sending 75,000 Filipino and American troops into Japanese captivity. During March, the Dutch had been overwhelmed in Sumatra and Java, with their vital oilfields falling into Japanese hands.īy May, British resistance in Burma had collapsed, and their forces were in the final stages of a humiliating rout back to the Indian frontier. The vital port of Rabaul, at the tip of New Britain, had been lost in February as well, giving the Japanese a crucial base near the Solomon Islands and New Guinea. The British had been crushed in Hong Kong, Malaya, and Borneo, ending with the humiliating surrender of Singapore in February. Practically the entire western Pacific basin was now under Japanese control. Official US Navy photograph courtesy of the US Navy Naval History and Heritage CommandĪt the beginning of May, 1942, the Japanese Empire was wrapping up the triumphant initial campaigns which had initiated its war in the Pacific. Top image: USS Yorktown (CV-5) conducts aircraft operations in the Pacific sometime before the battle.
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