ABSTRACT
While Howorth was steaming from Seeadler Harbor to Humboldt Bay, U.S. forces invaded Morotai Island. The Morotai operation was a compromise reached during a summer conference at Pearl Harbor among President Franklin Roosevelt, Pacific Ocean Areas (North, Central, and South Pacific) commander Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, and SWPA commander General Douglas MacArthur. As the war developed, Nimitz and Admiral Ernest J. King, commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet, wanted to bypass the Philippines and invade the island of Formosa off the Chinese mainland, using it as a stepping-stone for the establishment of bases either on mainland China or in the Ryukyu Archipelago just south of Japan in preparation for the final invasion of the Japanese home islands. This was in keeping with the navy's War Plan Orange, refined during the 1930s. 1
