Largest land operation in WWII in the Pacific Theatre?

I am presently reading a book by John Masters called the "The Road Past Mandalay" in which he states that Burma was the largest land operation in the Pacific theatre.

I'm not too sure, I would of guessed New Guinea or the Phillipines or Okinawa?

Can someone clarlfy this for me?

Thanks,

KTK

 

I dunno Bud, Burma is actually attached to a big ol' chunk of land called 'CHINA' and comprises a total land mass bigger than New Guinea. The Phillipines are really a series of smaller islands and Okinawa is not that big; I think it's actually smaller than Rhode Island.

 

I thought Burma was part of, you know, the China-Burma-India(CBI) Theater of Operations.

But considering the Burma campaign lasted almost the entire war(January, 1942 - July, 1945), as opposed to the much shorter Philippines, Solomons, Okinawan, etc. campaigns, I think it would be safe to say that it was the largest and longest of any of the Western Allied campaigns on that side of the globe. Well, with the exception of the Chinese Campaign.

 

Yes Ken I agree with Takao the Burma campaign did last the longest in Asian part of ww2 (1941/45) and the British 14th Army fought a four year battle against the Japanese and were short of equipment due to the European theatre taking centre stage (they were called the forgotten army) the Chinese also had there own war with Japan which started in 1936 and stayed in the fight till 1945 but I dont think it involed the amount of men and machines as the Burma Campaign did, you could also expand this to the struggle our Australian friends had in New Guinea (the battle of Buna-Gona & Kokoda) the ratio of casulaties from this Campaign were higher then Guadalcanal.

 

Hi Takao, I believed that he only saw the war in 2 spheres, Europe which included Africa and the Pacific which included Burma. Although I have read a book about Orde Wingate and a little on the India/Burma front I never gave it much thought, I always thought it to be a pretty small operation but I may of been wrong.

The funny thing is that I have been to Mandalay, even when you travel to places there is lots you don't learn.

KTK

 

It may depend on what side of the "pond" you come from. The US did not consider Burma to be part of the PTO.

 

Any campaign in Asia is going to become the largest land campaign in that hemisphere simply by default. Each area of operations had it's own command structure and were operated differently, thus I don't think we can simply lump them all together and call that one theater.

 

Largest in what sense?
The Soviet campaign in Manchuria was fairly significant in terms of forces and territory.
How about campaigns that the Chinese were involved in?

 

lwd has a point. I don't think anything, on that side of the globe, will top the Soviet "August Storm" is size and scope.

The only possible "larger" campaign would have been the invasion of Japan itself, but, that never happened.

 

Yes you cant link these theatres together, the Russian v Japan, China v Japan, Japan v USA (PACIFIC) Japan v British & Empire were all different in there own right, I think Ken is just applying the Japanese v British and Commonwealth forces fighting in Burma-India from 1941 to 1942. I allmost forgot the Dutch East Indes, it gets confusing at times, I must be getting old.

 

China wasn't?! I'd say that was the biggest land operation......

 

Aside from Manchuria in the waning days of the war, I would say that the campaigns in Burma and China were the largest land battles.

 

I'd be inclined to break the war into two theatres myself. I tend to think of the ETO as the war against Germany. And while the Soviet campaign was pretty much completely separate from the US campaign they're both clearly a part of the larger war against Germany. Likewise I think of the PTO as the war against Japan. And so I really do tend to think of the North African and Mediterranean operations as part of the ETO and the Chinese and Burmese campaigns as part of the PTO.

I may be the odd Yank in that respect. But then I'd also be inclined to say WWII really started with Japan's invasion of China. The whole Polish start date seems oddly Eurocentric to me. In general, I'd say the entire stretch of the war on the East Asian mainland is pretty neglected by Western scholars.

You say to-mah-to, I say to-may-to. Clearly we're going to need separate message boards after we call this whole thing off.

 

Yes it seems like from 1920 till the end of the Korean war that some sort of conflict was happening, either in East Asia or Eastern Europe, the Spanish Civil War or the Chaco War, the world has never learnt, I think the reason people count 1939 as the start of the whole thing is Hitler and the way it all kicked off globally from then on.

 

I think it's quite reasonable to start the count with the Japanese attack on China in 37 though. There was continuous fighting on that front right up to the end of 45. While international involvement was slower to build it was coming. Look at the occupation of French Indochina or the "American Volenteer groupd". The other conflicts you mention were over before they could be assumed into WWII. Other reasonable start dates are present depending on just how you want to define it.

 

Did Russia and Japan ever make peace with each other after [FONT=&quot]Nomonhan in 1939, or was the same situation we now have between North and South Korea,
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I don't think they were ever officially at war. It was an "incident" neither saw the need to elevate it beyond that.

 

Well, the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact, most commonly known as Japanese-Soviet Non-aggression Pact between the Soviets and Japanese was signed on April 13, 1941, two years after the limited brief and un-official "Soviet-Japanese Border War" of 1939. So yes yan taylor, an official peace was attained between the two powers after the string of incidents along the Manchurian border.

source: wiki et al