Philippine Islands

7 December 1941-10 May 1942

Capture of the Philippine Islands was crucial to Japan's effort to control the Southwest Pacific, seize the resource-rich Dutch East Indies, and protect its Southeast Asia flank. Its strategy called for roughly simultaneous attacks on Malaya, Thailand, American-held Guam and Wake, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, and Hawaii. Although the aim of the air strike on Hawaii's Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 was to destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet in its home port, the others were meant to serve as preludes to full-scale invasion and occupation.

The well-coordinated Japanese campaign, spread across great reaches of the Pacific, progressed with astonishing rapidity. The small U.S. Army and Marine garrisons on Guam and Wake surrendered on 10 and 22 December, respectively, and the British forces in Hong Kong on 26 December. Singapore, the supposedly impregnable British bastion on the Malay Peninsula, capitulated on 15 February 1942. Following lightning amphibious landings in Thailand and Burma, Japanese forces pushed to the northwest, threatening India. Only in the Philippines did the combined U.S.-Filipino units mount a prolonged resistance, holding out with grim determination for five months.