A map showing the main areas of the conflict and Allied landings in the Pacific, 1942 � 45.
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| Conflict | Pacific War | | Date | 7 December 1941 � 2 September 1945 | | Location | East Asia, South Asia, the Western Pacific Ocean, its islands and neighboring countries, and part of the Indian Ocean for a short time. | | Result | Decisive Allied victory
End of World War II.
* Fall of the Empire of Japan.
* Continuation of Chinese Civil War.
* Substantial weakening of European colonial powers, gradual decolonization of Asia (including the Indonesian National Revolution and the First Indochina War) | Major Allied combatants
United States
*Philippines Commonwealth of the Philippines
Republic of China
United Kingdom
*Malaysia British Malaya
*British Raj
Australia
Soviet Union
Netherlands
*Netherlands Dutch East Indies
New Zealand | Major Axis combatants
Empire of Japan
*Manchukuo
* Wang Jingwei regime
*Philippines Second Philippine Republic
Thailand
India Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind | US Chester W. Nimitz
US Douglas MacArthur
US George C. Marshall
US Ernest J. King
US Henry H. Arnold
US Alexander "Archie" Vandergrift
ROC Chiang Kai-shek
ROC Chen Cheng
ROC He Yingqin
ROC Sun Liren
UK Archibald Wavell
UK Louis Mountbatten
Australia Thomas Blamey
Soviet Union Aleksandr Vasilevsky
Netherlands Hein ter Poorten | Empire of Japan Kotohito Kan'in
Empire of Japan Hajime Sugiyama
Empire of Japan Hideki Tojo
Empire of Japan Isoroku Yamamoto
Empire of Japan Yoshijirō Umezu
Empire of Japan Osami Nagano
Empire of Japan Shigetarō Shimada
Empire of Japan Koshirō Oikawa
Thailand Plaek Pibulsonggram
Manchukuo Zhang Jinghui
India Subhas Chandra Bose | ≈4,000,000 military deaths (1937-45)
≈17,000,000 civilian deaths (1937-45) | | ≈2,000,000 Japanese military deaths (1937-45)
~960,000+ civilian casualties |
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The Pacific War, also sometimes called the Asia-Pacific War refers broadly to the parts of World War II that took place in the Pacific Ocean, its islands, and in the Far East. The term Pacific War is used to encompass the Pacific Ocean theatre, the South West Pacific theatre, the South-East Asian theatre and the Second Sino-Japanese War, also including the 1945 Soviet-Japanese conflict.
It is generally considered that the Pacific War began on 7/8 December 1941 with the Japanese invasion of Thailand for the invasion of British Malaya, and the attack on Pearl Harbor in the United States' Territory of Hawaii by the Empire of Japan. Some authors consider the conflict in Asia can be dated as far as 7 July 1937, beginning with the Second Sino-Japanese War between the Empire of Japan and the Republic of China, or possibly 19 September 1931, beginning with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. However, it is more widely accepted that the Pacific War itself started in early December 1941, with the Sino-Japanese War then becoming part of it as a theater of the greater World War II.
The Pacific War saw the Allied powers against the Empire of Japan, the latter briefly aided by Thailand and to lesser extent by its Axis allies Germany and Italy. The war culminated in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and other large aerial bombing attacks by the United States Army Air Forces, accompanied by the Soviet invasion of Manchuria on 8 August 1945, resulting in the surrender of Japan and the end of fighting during World War II on 15 August 1945. The formal and official surrender of Japan occurred aboard the battleship in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945.
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