Island Hopping- War Strategy
Island hopping a war strategy in which troops will travel island to island to cross the ocean. Island hopping was used very much by the Americans in the Pacific Theater in World War II. The Pacific Theater refers to the war that the Americans were fighting in Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The main purpose of this tactic was to go from island to island and get closer to Japan. Each island was like a stepping stone picked for a certain reason to make the way to Japan. There were a variety of reasons that different islands were picked some of those include some islands were a place where supplies could be distributed and it offered a strategic value like an airfield. In addition to being able to move closer to Japan it also allowed the Japanese to move back. This created more air bases closer to Japan because the Americans were effective at moving the Japanese back more and more as they got closer to Japan. Slowly the Japanese were able to being to make progress in their strategy which made the island hopping a slower progress and it become more time consuming for the navy to move towards Japan. After the victory in Europe day the US had to make the decision of what to do in Japan. Since Island Hopping was becoming time consuming, it become one of the main reasons United States decided that they were going to use the atomic bombs on Japan.