PHG Blog

Greetings PHG Fans! For those of you interested in the military history of Saipan, check out this talk I gave on WW2TV, regarding the fight for the island in June 1944. I offered my perspective from that of the Japanese defenders on Saipan, specifically the 43rd Infantry Division under Lt. Gen. Saito Yoshitsugu. Having lived in the Marianas, and visited quite a few battlefields and historic sites throughout the islands, I was more than excited to examine the Battle of Saipan

During our time living on Guam, we were just down the road from the final battlefield in Yigo, where the South Pacific Memorial Peace Park now stands. Near here, General Obata Hideyoshi killed himself, shortly after organized resistance in the battle ended.

Last year I presented an analysis of the Battle of Leyte Gulf for WW2TV, speficially from the perspective of Admiral Kurita Takeo. This is my favorite story of the Second World War, and Kurita is my favorite Japanese admiral to talk about.

Here, the last Japanese organized resistance on Guam ended on August 10, 1944; at the site you can find a small remembrance chapel, a peace memorial, and several monuments and markers that commemorate both the people who took part in the battle of Guam, and those who came later to remember them.

Perhaps best known for his 'sleeping giant' comment issued immediately following the attack on Pearl Harbor, he has been somewhat sanitized in recent scholarship as an anti-war figure (he was not). Yamamoto was fated to preside over a series of quick victories in the early days of the Pacific War, only to be caught up in his own complicated plans at Midway.

On 27 August 1944, Stingray made a secret drop near here of 15 Filipino guerrillas (trained in Brisbane by the Allies) and six tons of supplies.

From 17-18 February 1944, the US Navy's Task Force 58 engaged Imperial Japanese Army and Navy units and destroyed most of the infrastructure, ships, and weapons located there.

It was here, on 15 February 1942, that the British General Sir Arthur Percival surrendered Singapore to the Japanese under General Yamashita Tomoyuki.

The American reconquest of the Philippines ended only after the Japanese surrendered on 15 August of that year; the strategy of fighting a delaying retreat action across the entirety of Luzon resulted in an estimated 8,500 American, Filipino and Mexican deaths and an astonishing 192,000 Japanese killed.

Tropes and banners and slogans aside: could we do it again? Do we have the infrastructure, the know-how, frankly, the patriotism to rebuild a shattered fleet and take it to the enemy? Could we bring a broken DDG or LCS up from the mud and have it fighting in six months?

My favorite bit, however, was in the basement; the only First World War German tank in existence, Mephisto. This is an A7V tank, one of 20 produced by Germany during the Great War. It was brought to Australia in 1919, and has been in the Queensland Museum's ever since.

Greetings Pacific History Guide fans, today I'm happy to unveil our newest location, the beautiful state of Hawai'i . The Hawaiian Islands are comprised of 137 volcanic islands stretching across 1,520 miles of ocean in two separate groups, the Windward Islands in the southeast and the Leeward in the northwest. The state of Hawaii includes both island groups, but for the sake of simplicity, nearly all state maps (and this guide) capture the Windward Islands only; these include

Greetings Pacific History guide fans! This week we're marking the 81st anniversary of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, which reached its climax on this day with the Battles of Surigao Strait, Samar, and Cape Engano. Taken as a whole, the battle is a complex, multi-faceted series of events that reaches from Brunei to the Philippine Sea, from the tip of Luzon right down to the Sulu Sea. Described as the largest sea battle in history, the Battle for Leyte Gulf featured the first U.S. a

Seems crazy but nearly a year ago now we did a little Second World War history tour around Guam as a family and with the kids' friends. ...

You often hear the word 'roads' in reference to coastal cities, seaports, or bodies of water. Some of the more famous examples include...

On the 15th August 1945, the people of Japan dutifully turned to their radios. It had been announced the day before via all NHK stations...

The second and last use of atomic weapons in combat took place on this day, August 9 1945. A B-29 named 'Bockscar' took off from Tinian...

Greetings everybody, I recently had the pleasure of returning to WW2TV for a talk on the Battle of Guam in 1941, when the Americans lost...

Hiratsuka suffered greatly as a result of all this. On July 16, 1945, 138 B-29's dropped 1,173 tons of incendiary bombs (447,716 in total). Only 5% of the bombs targeted the naval arsenal or aircraft plant, the rest were dropped on the civilian populatio

On this day July 12 1918, the Imperial Japanese Navy battleship Kawachi 河内 exploded and sank in Tokuyama Bay with the loss of more than...