Pacific War

The Pacific War was a theatre of World War II including East Asia, Southeast Asia and Oceania, separate from World War II in Europe.

Western accounts generally consider the war to have started with the Pearl Harbor attack of December 1941. Chinese accounts date it from Japan's invasion of the Chinese heartland in July 1937 (see World War II in China) or even their expansion into Manchuria in 1931. The war ended with Japanese surrender in August 1945; an important factor was that the first, and so far the only, atomic bombs used in warfare were detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

To a great extent the 1937-1945 Second Sino-Japanese War was part of the Pacific Theatre, the overall war of many nations against Imperial Japan. In some ways, though, it was unique; it started before the more general war, was a land and air war rather than largely naval and island-hopping, and was fought almost entirely by the Chinese themselves without much involvement of their allies. Also, all its battlegrounds and memorials are in China. Wikivoyage therefore has a separate World War II in China article.