ABSTRACT
This chapter charts the origins of the devastating conflict in the Pacific. The Pacific War fundamentally changed the course of history. In modern times, no single theater of war has extended across a larger area, nor covered a greater range of ethnicities. The imperial age in Asia came to an end, and a new era of American hegemony over regional military, political, and economic affairs began. The war began on 7 December 1941 with a dramatic Japanese air raid on the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet, stationed at Pearl Harbor, Hawai’i, and the opening moves of a full-scale Japanese offensive against Western colonial territory in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Japan’s attack on Western colonies in Asia plunged the Pacific into the Second World War, a conflict that had already killed millions of people.
