NavWarMap No. 5. Southwest Pacific.

Description

This is a scarce, very large-format 1944 map of the southwestern Pacific Ocean region prepared by the U.S. Navy’s Educational Service Section.

Measuring more than three feet tall and nearly five feet wide and boasting stunning visuals, this map captures the drama of the ongoing Pacific War. It was intended for training naval personnel on the history of the conflict to that point and the geography of the region.

Orange arrows depict the Japanese advances of late 1941 and early 1942, including the Pearl Harbor attack and the invasion of the Philippines and Dutch East Indies. Blue arrows reflect the Allied (primarily American) counter-attacks through April 1944 (landings at Hollandia on New Guinea), set against striking three-dimensional depictions of the region’s topography. Text at top-right gives a brief history of the islands of the southwest Pacific while an inset section on the Solomon Islands provides an overview of the Solomon Islands Campaign with an oblique bird’s-eye view of the islands. At bottom-right is an anthropological overview of the Peoples of the Pacific, sounding dated to modern ears with its discussion of ‘racial types’ and purported physiognomic characteristics; surely, very few American sailors would have known much about this part of the world prior to the start of the war. At bottom-left is an inset demonstrating distances by air between various islands in the region, including the Allied staging grounds of Australia and New Zealand.

Context is Everything

The Southwest Pacific theater of the Second World War was one of the major areas of conflict, including some of the major land battles of the Pacific War, such as Guadalcanal and the Philippines, and critical naval engagements such as the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle of the war and perhaps in all history. The Allies were led by the United States and British forces (primarily Australia and New Zealand), battling the Empire of Japan. The theater encompassed a vast region including the Philippines, New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and parts of the Dutch East Indies. Following Japan’s rapid expansion across Southeast Asia and the Pacific in late 1941 and early 1942, the Allies sought to halt and reverse Japanese advances through a series of grueling campaigns fought in dense jungles, tropical islands, and vast stretches of ocean. General Douglas MacArthur, commanding the Allied Southwest Pacific Area, spearheaded the effort to recapture territory and ultimately return to the Philippines, following his famous pledge, “I shall return.”

The fighting in this theater was characterized by amphibious assaults, jungle warfare, and intense air and naval battles, often carried out under extreme climatic conditions (more Japanese troops died from starvation and disease than in battle). The “island-hopping” strategy – bypassing heavily fortified Japanese positions to seize strategically important islands – proved decisive in advancing Allied forces toward Japan. The Southwest Pacific campaign not only crippled Japan’s defensive perimeter but also demonstrated the growing coordination between Allied forces. By the time Japan surrendered in August 1945, the Allied victories in this theater had effectively dismantled Japan’s hold on its southern empire and paved the way for the postwar reorganization of the Pacific region.

Census

This map was produced by the U.S. Navy’s Bureau of Naval Personnel, printed by the Government Printing Office, and distributed by the Navy’s Educational Service Section in 1944. It is one of six ‘NavWar Maps,’ all of which are quite scarce now and generally in poor condition due to being folded for many years. The present map is independently cataloged among the holdings of roughly fifteen institutions in the OCLC and appears occasionally on the market. Some institutions also hold all six maps in the series and catalog them together (OCLC 53073135). For reasons that are unclear, some examples of NavWar Maps are printed as double-sided while others are only printed on one side.