V SHRINKING THE JAPANESE HORIZON

SHRINKING THE JAPANESE HORIZON

After nearly two years of warfare, American strength begins to make itself felt. While the shaded area of this map indicates the vast area still under Japanese control, the American flag is flying in many new places. The gains in New Guinea are particularly important. One year ago the Japanese were threatening Port Moresby and were barely stopped in the Owen Stanley mountains by American and Australian forces. At this date the danger to Port Moresby has been definitely removed and the Japanese have lost their two important bases of Lae and Salamaua. The Allies are moving northeast along the coast and are now within bombing range of Rabaul, the Japanese bastion on New Britain. In the Solomons the Americans have progressed from their hard won beachheads on Guadalcanal and Tulagi to Bougainville in the north. In the Gilbert Islands American fighting men have done something more than recapture enemy invaded territory. The Gilbert Islands had been strongly fortified by the Japanese who regarded it as one of the outer defenses of Truk, their most important base in the south Pacific. Its seizure by the Americans was a most important move in any plan of strategy that included either the taking or the neutralization of Truk. Chiefly responsible for American successes in the Pacific was a greatly strengthened navy. By November, 1943, the United States fleet had completely recovered from the Pearl Harbor disaster. Those battleships which had been resting on the mud of the harbor had been raised and modernized, and were now operating in both the Atlantic and Pacific. In addition new ships of all types were now going into action as the navy's prodigious building program began to show results.

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