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Shortly after the outbreak of World War II in the Pacific troops of the Imperial Japanese Army murdered 22 Australian Army nurses, 60 Australian and British soldiers, and crew members from the Vyner Brooke. The group were the only survivors from their steamship which had been sunk by Japanese bombers just after the defeat of Singapore.
1940 map of Nauru showing the extent of the phosphate mined lands. Mining operations on Nauru began in 1906, at which time it was part of the German colonial empire. The island had some of the world's largest and highest quality deposits of phosphate, a key component in fertiliser, making it a strategically important resource on which agriculture in Australia and New Zealand depended.
The Fleet at Flood Tide: The U.S. at Total War in the Pacific, 1944–1945. Random House Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0345548726. Morison, Samuel Eliot (2001) [1953]. New Guinea and the Marianas, March 1944–August 1944. History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. Vol. 8 (reissue ed.). Champaign: University of Illinois Press.
In Allied countries during the war, the "Pacific War" was not usually distinguished from World War II, or was known simply as the War against Japan. In the United States, the term Pacific theater was widely used. The US Armed Forces considered the China Burma India theater to be distinct from the Asiatic-Pacific theater during the conflict.
The command structures of the Pacific War varied, reflecting the different roles of various belligerent nations, and often involving different geographic scopes. These included the following: American commands: Pacific Ocean Areas; South West Pacific Area; British and Allied commands: GHQ India, commanding the British Army in India; Eastern Fleet
Tachibana, alongside 11 other Japanese personnel, were tried in August 1946 in relation to the execution of U.S. Navy airmen, and the cannibalism of at least one of them, during August 1944.
The Ocean Island massacre occurred on 20 August 1945 when between 150 and 200 civilians were killed in a mass execution by members of a Japanese naval garrison unit. The civilians, all originally inhabitants from other parts of the Gilbert Islands, had been brought to Ocean Island as slave labour.
The Struggle for Guadalcanal, August 1942 – February 1943, vol. 5 of History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0-316-58305-7. Murray, Williamson; Allan R. Millett (2001). A War To Be Won: Fighting the Second World War. United States of America: Belknap Press. ISBN 0-674-00680-1.