The Commanders of the Pacific War

The war against Japan was fought across the vast Pacific, over distances of thousands of miles. Winning it took fleets, armies and air forces working together, and a handful of American commanders shaped the whole campaign, from the disaster of Pearl Harbor to the surrender in Tokyo Bay.¹

For the war these commanders fought, from Pearl Harbor to the surrender in Tokyo Bay, see our guide to the Pacific War, 1941 to 1945.

How we chose these commanders

This guide covers the three American officers who held the largest commands against Japan and who each have a full profile on Echoes of Battle: the admiral who ran the Pacific Fleet, the general who commanded the Southwest Pacific Area, and the best known of the fleet commanders who served under Nimitz. It is not a complete roll of honor. Raymond Spruance led the carrier task force that won at Midway, while Frank Jack Fletcher held overall tactical command there.²

Chester Nimitz. The calm Fleet Admiral who commanded the Pacific Fleet, won the turning point at Midway, and directed the island-hopping drive on Japan.

Born in Fredericksburg, Texas, on 24 February 1885, Nimitz graduated seventh in his Naval Academy class of 1905 and was chief of the Bureau of Navigation when Japan struck Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt chose him over 28 flag officers who were all senior to him, and on 31 December 1941 he took command of the Pacific Fleet aboard the submarine Grayling. In 1942 he also became Commander in Chief, Pacific Ocean Areas. Promoted to the new five-star rank of Fleet Admiral in December 1944, he signed Japan's surrender for the United States aboard USS Missouri on 2 September 1945 and then served as Chief of Naval Operations from 1945 to 1947.³

Midway, in early June 1942, was his great gamble. Codebreakers at Pearl Harbor gave him the likely date of the attack and the Japanese order of battle, and he placed his carriers to ambush the enemy striking force. Japan lost four carriers, a cruiser and about 3,057 men; the United States lost the carrier Yorktown, a destroyer and about 362 men. Britannica lists the Gilberts, the Marshalls, the Marianas, Iwo Jima and Okinawa among the later campaigns fought under his direction.⁴

Douglas MacArthur. The general who was driven from the Philippines, vowed to return, and more than two years later waded ashore on Leyte.⁵

Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, on 26 January 1880, MacArthur graduated first in the West Point class of 1903, served with distinction in France in World War I and was Army Chief of Staff from 1930 to 1935. In July 1941 Roosevelt recalled him to active duty to command US Army Forces in the Far East. On 8 December 1941, hours after Pearl Harbor, Japanese aircraft destroyed about half of his B-17 bombers on the ground at Clark Field near Manila. As the PBS documentary on his life points out, the commanders caught unprepared at Pearl Harbor were removed; MacArthur was not.⁶

Ordered out by Roosevelt, he slipped away from Corregidor by PT boat on 11 March 1942 and, after reaching Australia, promised the Filipinos: “I shall return.” He received the Medal of Honor for the defense of the islands, where the last American and Filipino troops on Corregidor surrendered on 6 May. From 18 April 1942 he commanded the Southwest Pacific Area, fought the hard Papuan campaign and then leapfrogged along the New Guinea coast, isolating strongholds such as Rabaul instead of storming them. He waded ashore on Leyte on 20 October 1944, was made a five-star General of the Army that December, landed on Luzon on 9 January 1945 and presided over Japan's surrender on 2 September 1945.⁷

William Halsey. The aggressive “Bull,” who rallied the fleet in 1942 and led the Third Fleet in the great battles of 1944 and 1945.⁸

Born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, on 30 October 1882, Halsey graduated from the Naval Academy in 1904 and earned his pilot's wings in 1935, at the age of 52. In early 1942 he led the Navy's first offensive air strikes of the war, against the Marshall and Gilbert Islands, and then escorted the carrier Hornet, whose 16 B-25 bombers under Jimmy Doolittle struck Tokyo on 18 April 1942 in the Doolittle Raid. A skin illness kept him ashore during Midway. Sent to the South Pacific in October 1942 to save the faltering campaign for Guadalcanal, he fought the Japanese fleet off the Santa Cruz Islands on 26 October and defeated it off Guadalcanal on 12 to 15 November; within three months Japan had abandoned the island.⁹

With MacArthur he agreed to isolate the Japanese base at Rabaul rather than invade it. In command of the Third Fleet from 1944, he went after Admiral Ozawa's carriers at Leyte Gulf and sank all four, but they were a decoy, and his departure left the landing area exposed to a Japanese surface force that was turned back off Samar. On 18 December 1944 his fleet ran into Typhoon Cobra, which sank three destroyers, destroyed 146 aircraft and killed 790 sailors, and in June 1945 he met a second typhoon. He was nonetheless promoted to Fleet Admiral in December 1945, retired in 1947 and died in 1959.¹⁰

Why was command in the Pacific divided?

Because the Army and Navy could not agree on a single commander. The Navy, which saw the Pacific as its own province, would not entrust its fleet to MacArthur or any other Army officer, so in March 1942 the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with Roosevelt's approval, split the theater between MacArthur's Southwest Pacific Area and Nimitz's Pacific Ocean Areas.¹¹

MacArthur's area took in Australia, the Philippines, New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, the Solomons and most of the Netherlands Indies. Nimitz commanded the rest of the ocean, with the South Pacific delegated to an admiral of his choosing, from October 1942 Halsey. Both men answered to the Joint Chiefs in Washington. The official Army historian Louis Morton concluded that the arrangement produced two separate area commands rather than a unified one. The rivalry resurfaced in 1944, when MacArthur persuaded Roosevelt to liberate the Philippines over the objections of Admiral Ernest King, who wanted to bypass them.¹²

Two roads to Tokyo

The Pacific War was won along two main lines of advance: Nimitz's fleet and Marines driving across the central Pacific through Midway, the Marianas and Iwo Jima, and MacArthur's army coming up from the southwest through New Guinea and the Philippines, with Halsey's fast carriers ranging ahead. Together they closed on Japan and ended the war in 1945. Not every Japanese soldier accepted the end: on the Philippine island of Lubang, Hiroo Onoda held out in the hills until March 1974. See where they fought among the greatest battles in American history.¹³

Who was the best American commander of the Pacific War?

There is no agreed answer, but Nimitz has the strongest case. He ran the naval war from the wreck of Pearl Harbor to the surrender in Tokyo Bay, won the decisive battle at Midway and built a team of aggressive subordinates. MacArthur's record mixes bold maneuver with costly misjudgments, and Halsey's fighting spirit was shadowed by Leyte Gulf and two typhoons.¹⁴

The museum in Nimitz's hometown calls him “the right man for the job,” the leader who restored the morale of a shattered fleet. MacArthur divides historians more sharply. The naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison wrote of the Leyte landing that “he was more than a general; he was a symbol,” while Max Hastings, as quoted by the National WWII Museum, judged that MacArthur ran the Philippine campaign in a way that served his own ambitions better than his country's purposes. Writing for EBSCO, John C. Fredriksen calls Halsey one of the most colorful and effective naval commanders of the twentieth century, while judging his individualistic style ill-suited to the complexity of modern fleet operations. Our readers can cast their own vote below.¹⁵

How are the Pacific War commanders remembered?

Mainly through museums and graves. Nimitz's hometown of Fredericksburg, Texas, is home to the National Museum of the Pacific War, and he chose burial at Golden Gate National Cemetery near San Francisco, beside Raymond Spruance and other comrades. MacArthur lies in the MacArthur Memorial in Norfolk, Virginia, and Halsey is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.¹⁶

Nimitz turned down a museum in his own honor and agreed only to one that remembered all the people who served with him; it is now a Texas Historical Commission property run by the Admiral Nimitz Foundation. The MacArthur Memorial stands in the city where his mother grew up and reports more than 4.5 million visitors since his burial there in April 1964.¹⁷