Battles in the Pacific
Island Hopping:
About mid-1943, the Allies command in the Pacific began Operation Cartwheel which was made to isolate the Japanese base at Rabaul on New Britain. The main points of Cartwheel involved Allied forces under General Douglas MacArthur pushing across northeastern New Guinea, while naval forces secure the Solomon Islands to the east. RAther than dealing with Japanese troops stationed in spots, these operations were designed to cut them off and let them "whither on the vine." This approach of bypassing Japanese strong points, such as Truk, was forced on a large scale as the Allies devise their strategy for moving across the central Pacific. Known as "island hopping," US forces moved from island to island, using each as a base for capturing the next. As the island hopping campaign began, MacArthur continued his push in New Guinea while other Allied troops were stuck with clearing the Japanese from the Aleutian islands.
Island Hopping doesn't refer to a single battle, but a strategy employed by the Americans as they pushed closer to Japan. The Japanese fortified every island possible between the United States and Japan and fought to the death to hold each island. Taking every island one by one would greatly slow the U.S. forces approach toward Japan and cost untold lives.
Rather than taking every island in between our strongholds and Japan, the United States decided they would invade and take over an island, skipping one and hitting the next. And while this left a nest of Japanese between American strongholds, the Japanese troops were without incoming supplies and effectively removed from the war. This strategy allow the United States to move across the Pacific more quickly and saved lives.
Battle of the Philippines
The Battle of the Philippines 1944–1945 was the American and Filipino campaign to defeat and get rid of the Japanese troops occupying the Philippines, during WWII. The Japanese had overrun all of the Philippines during the first half of 1942. The Liberation of the Philippines began with attacks on the eastern Philippine island of Leyte on October 20, 1944, and hostilities in a small part of the Philippines continued through the end of the war in August 1945. The next island attacked was Mindoro, then Luzon, and finished with the Palawan Island
http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/worldwarii/a/wwiipacishop.htm
http://library.thinkquest.org/18106/hopping.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_the_Philippines_during_World_War_II
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippines_Campaign_(1944%E2%80%931945)
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