As the United States began its campaign against numerous Japanese-held islands in the Pacific, Japanese tactics required them to develop new weapons and strategies. One of the most crucial to the island assaults was a new group of amphibious gunboats that could deliver heavy fire close in to shore as American forces landed. These gunboats were also to prove important in the interdiction of inter-island barge traffic and, late in the war, the kamikaze threat. Several variations of these gunboats were developed, based on the troop carrying LCI(L). They included three conversions of the LCI(L), with various combinations of guns, rockets and mortars, and a fourth gunboat, the LCS(L), based on the same hull but designed as a weapons platform from the beginning. By the end of the war the amphibious gunboats had proven their worth.

The thesis of this research is that the U.S. Army aviation engineer units played a crucial role in the success of General Douglas MacArthur’s island hopping campaign in the Southwest Pacific Theater at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels. Allied victory depended on seizing lightly defended enemy territory and neutralizing enemy strongpoints from Australia to the Philippines through the following pattern: conduct air and naval bombardment, land the assault forces, defeat any Japanese units in the area, and construct airfields and base facilities. This research demonstrates that aviation engineer units rapidly constructed these airbases and provided the necessary facilities for land-based aircraft so that carrier-based aircraft could focus on protecting the navy’s fleet.

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Covers the Western impact on the Far East and the Eastern response in the 19th and 20th centuries. This edition includes new chapters on Communist China, Japan since the Occupation, and Taiwan and Korea since 1945.