Talk:South West Pacific theatre of World War II

An Explanation

By way of explanation, I created this article (like the parallel Pacific Ocean Theater of World War II) because the South West Pacific Area (command) article deals with a Allied formation/organisation. That arrangement was inadequate for the many links pointing to it, because it didn't deal with the the Japanese/Axis side of the story. This article is intended to deal with the various campaigns and battles, including the Axis side of them. Grant65 | Talk 08:27, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I support these two articles as a means of organizing links to naval engagements of the dual allied advances across the Pacific. This article contains links to Douglas MacArthur's path through New Guinea and the Philippines while the Pacific Ocean Theater contains links to Chester Nimitz's trail through the South Pacific, Gilberts, Marshalls, Marianas, Volcano Islands, and Okinawa. This separation would better follow the respective command areas and lines of advance if the Guadalcanal campaign and subsequent Solomon Islands campaign links were moved here from the Pacific Ocean Theater article. Although the Solomons lie very close to the area boundary, they were clearly an exposed flank of MacArthur's advance. I intend to move those links if no one objects. Thewellman (talk) 02:16, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Germany

The Kriegsmarine saw some action in the region. Of note is the tale of U-862, as well as the German auxiliary cruiser Komet and other vessels. Notwithstanding that they were almost certainly resupplied by Japan, it would be interesting to learn if any actual joint operations did occur. knoodelhed 21:38, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Needed: Japanese occupation of the Philippines (1941-1945)

Hi. The Military history of the Philippines during World War II article is very sketchy and on its page there is a red link for an article about the Japanese occupation of the Philippines (1941-1945) a very important subject that is still needed as there are already articles about: the Japanese occupation of Burma; Japanese occupation of Hong Kong; Japanese occupation of Indonesia; Japanese occupation of Malaya, North Borneo and Sarawak and Japanese occupation of Singapore, so this gap is glaring. Anyone with and interest or expertise in this topic is welcome to start writing it. Thank you, IZAK (talk) 11:48, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

The Southwest Pacific Theater

In the United States, Canada, and other countries, this is universally' called either the "Southwest Pacific Theater of World War II" or the "Southwest Pacific Theater of Operations in World War II"
Furthermore, the Supreme Commander of this Theater was General Douglas MacArthur of the United States. Thus, the American name for it must take precidence.
Let me be clear: General MacArthur was the Supreme Commander of all U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Army Air Corps, Australian Army, Royal Australian Air Force, Royal Australian Navy, Dutch Navy, Dutch Air Force, Filipino Army, and anyone else who was fighting against the Japanese Empire in this area. The participation of the Australians was completely voluntarily, since in early 1942, the Australian Parliament selected MacArthur as their supreme military commander - recognizing that Australia had no one with close to MacArthur's military education and experience: a U.S. Military Academy Graduate, a combat officer in France during World War I, a former Chief-of-Staff of the U.S. Army, and the Commander-in-Chief of the Filipino Army.
The Seventh Fleet of the U.S. Navy was under his overall command, and it acquired the nickname of "MacArthur's Navy".
For the rest of the area of the War in the Pacific, the Supreme Commander was Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz of the U.S. Navy. Admiral Nimitz was the Supreme Commander of all U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Army, U.S. Army Air Corps, New Zealand Army, Royal New Zealand Air Force, Royal New Zealand Navy, Canadian, British, and anyone else who was fighting the Japanese in his area.
Their roles were the same as that of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was the Supreme Commander of all U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Army Air Corps, British Army, Royal Air Force, Royal Navy, Royal Marines, Canadian, French, New Zealander, Royal Australian Air Force, Brazilian, South African, Polish, or any other forces in the European Theater (or in the Mediterranean Theater when he was in charge of that one). DAW 98.67.111.148 (talk) 23:31, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't see the issue as so critical. Many American military writers and scholars use the current spelling of this article when referring to the area. For instance, U.S. Army Brigadier General (Ret.) William T. Ruder of the 542nd Parachute Infantry Regiment writes "South West Pacific Theatre". Others use a hyphen between south and west. All sorts of combinations of hyphen, no hyphen, lower-case 'w', capital 'W', -re ending and -er ending can be found, all from reliable sources; American sources. As long as the reader can get here every time they are searching for the topic, I don't have a problem. Binksternet (talk) 02:26, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

I see this issue has come up before... I've another compliant: the geographic direction is southwest, not south west, so it should correctly be southwest. TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 17:29, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Why is Guadalcanal here?

Guadalcanal was a Nimitz operation conducted in the South Pacific Area. The boundaries were shifted to make it so. Is there a reason for it to be here? JMOprof (talk) 17:45, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Guadalcanal Campaign moved in whole to the Pacific Theater of Operations page, which is a redirect of the South Pacific Area page. JMOprof (talk) 15:07, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

There was some overlap between the two. At times, ships and aircraft from MacArthur's command did participate in the Guadalcanal campaign, even though it was under overall command of the South Pacific Area under Nimitz. Cla68 (talk) 22:37, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Don't know about the ships, but here's a quote from Neptune's Inferno: "Though MacArthur had been written out of the invasion plan itself, he would still be relied upon to furnish air support to Navy forces with his long-range bombers, useful for both search and attack." It's on my "electronic page" 42. Hyperwar has a neat quote: "When General MacArthur's area boundary was shifted westward of Guadalcanal on 1 August 1942, his pain was eased by telling him that the boundary shift was made so that COMSOPAC would be required to furnish garrison forces for the Solomons." JMOprof (talk) 01:21, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Reverted your good idea

Copied from my talk page:

You are absolutely right the commands did not spring from nowhere; however, your addition was in error, specifically in MacArthur being in command of ABDA. That was under British command (Wavell) with ANZAC hurriedly put together on the other side of Mac's dissolving Philippine command to organize defense of Australia/New Zealand and the line of supply. The origin of SWPA & POA lies in the Arcadia Conference decision that the Pacific, excluding India and the IO, was a U.S. responsibility and U.S. JCS was working the division:

Creation of SWPA and POA

While the President and the Prime Minister were reaching agreement on the worldwide division of strategic responsibility, the JCS were considering the subdivision of the Pacific theater, which they assumed would become a responsibility of the United States. (p. 168 Matloff, United States Army In World War II—The War Department: Strategic Planning For Coalition Warfare 1941-1942)

So, essentially those three commands, including the South East Asia Command (which U.S. writers tend to ignore and even officially call the China Burma India Theater) stretching from Africa to California did come into being at the stroke of a decision just as did the dissolution of ABDA/ANZAC—but not out of nowhere. This is the part you probably want to work with in clearing up that origin. Palmeira (talk) 14:55, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

ABDACOM Area

As you are not objecting to all the changes I made in that edit why revert all of it?

The change I made did not say that "MacArthur was in command of ABDA" what it said was "US General Douglas MacArthur had been in command of the American forces in a theatre". -- PBS (talk) 15:06, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

What makes you think that American-British-Dutch-Australian Command was on the "other side of Mac's dissolving Philippine command" (doesn't the name give a clue) see the map to the right. That MacArthur's Philippines command was part of ABDA Command under Wavell is well known and documented see for example:

• Rogers, Paul P. (1990), The Good Years: MacArthur and Sutherland (illustrated ed.), Greenwood Publishing Group, pp. 151–152, ISBN 9780275929183

-- PBS (talk) 15:38, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

ABDA, under Wavell, "comprehended the Philippines, the Netherlands Indies, Malaya, and Burma" (that chapter also demonstrates known weaknesses in that command) while MacArthur was isolated in the Philippines. ABDA commanded the rest, but indeed just "comprehended the Philippines" in the sense of being isolated from but aware of that mess. The Japanese blockade was pretty complete and the idea ABDA would be a blockade running source quickly dissolved in its own disaster of Singapore and the Dutch Indies. Effectively, ABDA was neither in command of MacArthur's Philippine efforts (Wavell was not in command of those) nor able to supply them. In reality ABDA/Philippines were fighting their own wars after a very brief few weeks when the idea of a Malay Barrier survived and was thought might serve to support the Philippines. ANZAC was quickly formed to shore up Australian fears particularly concerning their east coast and supply lines to the U.S. If you review what you stated and I reverted, one would conclude Mac was in command of "American forces in a theatre", i.e., ABDA, when he was only in command of those in the Philippines. Both U.S. Army and Navy forces in ABDA were entirely separate from MacArthur's command. As I said, good idea, just needs some work and clarification of a complex evolution during one of the most spectacular military collapses in history. Palmeira (talk) 16:07, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Of course it was a mess! That tends to happen during a rapid theatre wide defeat, but some useful things did come out of the experiments in command and control, such as the C-in-C reporting to a new joint Allied committee (Combined Chiefs of Staffs) which was the model for all such Supreme Allied Commands for the rest of the war. So I will revert to my version add command of the Philippines, and you can copy edit as you see fit. -- PBS (talk) 16:24, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

03 1905 APR 1942 message from COMINCH (Commander-in-Chief, United States Fleet, King) to CINCPAC (Commander-in-Chief, US Pacific Fleet, Nimitz) designating Nimitz Commander-in-Chief Pacific Ocean Area (first of four part message).

Looks good. The lesson you mention was more general than Pacific. That whole discussion about unity of command worldwide fell out in a peculiar way for the Indo-Pacific stemming from the top level Europe/Germany first decision, generally but not completely supported in the U.S., and then the decision the Pacific was a U.S. sphere. The discussions on just how to divide things are fairly interesting. All this led me to thinking (maybe you'd be interested in tackling it) that all the command articles are weak, sometimes repetitive with disconnects on the "how" they came about part. They were the "effective this date" kind of thing as a result of heads of government/Combined Chiefs/national chiefs decisions, but there were lots of kinks in the detail. A top level article on that background linked to/from each regional command might make sense. Then a clean up of all pieces, i.e., this article and South West Pacific Area (command) where the information depends on entry point. By the way, the piddly little details of setting up such a command come through in the source for the message image that I uploaded a while back. The message was the start but weeks of questions on specifics followed before the effective implementation. Matches my experience in such things in modern times! Palmeira (talk) 14:27, 9 June 2013 (UTC)