'Leap-frogging'

The British forces, based in India, planned to retake Burma from the Japanese but that attack did not start until 1944. In the meantime, the United States' navy and marines planned their campaign against Japan at sea. General MacArthur would attack from the south-eastern Pacific and Admiral Nimitz from the east. Both attacks aimed for the Philippines, captured by the Japanese early in 1942. In between the Philippines and the US forces were hundreds of small islands and the Japanese were prepared to defend every one of them to the death.

The Americans decided that some of these islands would have to be leap-frogged and left alone while others would have to be captured. Those islands which were attacked were ferociously defended by the Japanese. Iwo Jima, for example, was a tiny island just to the north of the Marianas Islands. You could walk from one end of it to the other in less than an hour. It was defended by 22,000 Japanese troops. It took a month of bitter fighting for the Americans to capture it in March 1945. Just 200 Japanese defenders were taken prisoner; the other 21,800 fought to the death.

Neil Demarco: The era of the Second World War; Oxford University Press, 1993/2000, page 53