The Pacific War in Color episode 2

The Pacific War in Color episode 2: six months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the shockwaves of war have flooded into every corner of the Pacific, from Alaska to parts of China to New Guinea. U.S. soldiers head into unfamiliar worlds thousands of miles from home, encountering steamy island jungles, bitter arctic cold, and an unrelenting enemy.

Through rare personal films and color combat footage, witness early Allied victories–in the Coral Sea, Guadalcanal, and at Midway–that turned the tide of the war.

The Pacific War in Color episode 2 – Shockwaves

The Pacific War was unlike any military conflict before it in terms of its scale, scope, and savagery. Witness the massive attacks on Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima and Nagasaki that bookended the war, along with the ferocious battles in between–ones waged on tiny islands and remote atolls and fought by soldiers, Marines, airmen and sailors. With color combat footage and accounts from those who experienced the fight firsthand, we reveal the brutal reality of life on the frontline during the battle for the Pacific.

The Battle of the Coral Sea, fought from 4–8 May 1942, was a major naval battle between the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) and naval and air forces from the United States and Australia, taking place in the Pacific Theatre of World War II. The battle is historically significant as the first action in which aircraft carriers engaged each other, as well as the first in which the opposing ships neither sighted nor fired directly upon one another.

In an attempt to strengthen their defensive position in the South Pacific, the Japanese decided to invade and occupy Port Moresby (in New Guinea) and Tulagi (in the southeastern Solomon Islands). The plan to accomplish this was called Operation Mo, and involved several major units of Japan’s Combined Fleet. These included two fleet carriers and a light carrier to provide air cover for the invasion forces. It was under the overall command of Japanese Admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue.