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Show wailfflDoiniail- The "road back" for If Americans, in world war II, : began at Guadalcanal in August of 1942-thirty-three : years ago this month. JAPAN HAD struck treacherously, without a : Klaration of war, on Dec. 7, ':!, at Pearl Harbor, 'recking much of the main Pacific fleet there, the Japanese military :3amroller, with overwhelm-s overwhelm-s i spirit, training and power . hut not always numbers) P an moved southward much f V wher west and engulfed ; tenon, British and Dutch possessions. V The defense of Bataan lasted last-ed about six months; the U.S. stronghold in the Philippines was the last to surrender. Up to that time the Japanese were everywhere victorious. BUT DAYS after Bataan fell with the surrender of tens of thousands of Americans, the U.S. Navy managed a standoff in the Battle of Coral Sea thousands of miles to the east. Nest month, June of 1942, by rushing everything it had to Midway, with the advantage advan-tage of reading secret Japanese codes and knowing a massive attack was coming, the U.S. Navy stunned the Japanese with its great victory vic-tory at Midway. Four Jap carriers were sunk, three in two hours, in that great American triumph. IT WASN'T until August, two months later, that U.S. Marines went ashore on Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands, to begin the effort to rollback the Japanese advance. ad-vance. The Japs were building an airfield at Guadalcanal and, 'when the Marines seized it, made an all-out effort to retake re-take the airfield and island. THAT TERRIBLE campaign, cam-paign, for both sides, lasted almost six months. The Navy suffered several bitter defeats; dozens of major engagements en-gagements were actually fought drinking the campaign. cam-paign. In the end, the Marines and U.S. Army infantry held on, and finally won the struggle. From that day onward, the Allied comeback accelerated until, in October of 1944, General Douglas MacArthur led U.S. troops back ashore in the Philippines and eleven months later received aboard the battleship Missouri in Tokyo harbor the Japanese delegation which signed the surrender. |