hold the line against Japan. In the summer of 1942, the Americans stopped the Japanese advance at Midway and at Guadalcanal, and in 1943 they took the offensive.
The vast natural resources and tremendous productive power of America were pitted against the meagre resources and relatively feeble productive power of Japan, already weary from four years of war and needing far more time to benefit from the rich territories conquered in Southeast Asia. The United States, while making a major contribution to the war in Europe, could still spare enough to win control of the skies and seas in the Pacific. Her ships, submarines, and planes drove the Japanese navy back to its home waters and virtually destroyed it; they cut the life-line of Japan to Southeast Asia, and eventually to China; and they isolated the islands of the Pacific, both from one another and from the home base in Japan, so that these enemy outposts could be attacked singly and their garrisons destroyed piecemeal.
The Japanese fought with a fanaticism born of long indoctrination. Taught to believe that surrender would mean disgrace for their families, and torture and death for themselves at the hands of the enemy, the soldiers in the field usually fought on doggedly to the last man. Even civilians commonly chose death rather than surrender. But the Japanese were to learn that blind fanaticism was not enough in the face of superior weapons in the hands of a determined foe. The Americans broke through the island barriers of the central Pacific; they knifed their way along the New Guinea coast and recaptured the Philippines; and they established them-