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The amphtrac is a boat with tank tracks that was originally used to rescue people from Florida swamps, but was later used by the navy in their island hopping campaign -
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A few hours after attacking Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, Japanese forces began an attack on American airfields in the Philippines. They landed troops two days later, and American/Filipino forces were outnumbered by a lot so they retreated to the Bataan Peninsula.
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Japan developed a plan for making two attacks at once, believing that they could get away with it because their operations were supposedly secret. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the Japanese, American codebreakers had cracked the Japanese navy's code, and were alerted of the surprise attack two months before the troops clashed, which allowed the US time to prepare.
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At the same time that Admiral Nimitz's people were island hopping, General MacArthur was also island hopping, but hopping onto different islands, beginning with Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands in August, 1942. In 1944, the campaign ended when MacArthur had captured enough islands to surround the region's Japanese base.
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American and Filipino troops in the Bataan Peninsula surrendered and were forced to march 65 miles to a Japanese prison camp after three months of disease ridden starvation while holding the peninsula. 10,000 out of 78,000 troops died during the 13 day march. -
Roosevelt wanted to bomb Tokyo to "raise the morale of the American people," but Japanese ships wouldn't let carriers get past, so someone suggested that they use long range B-25 bombers instead of the usual short range ones. Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle was put in charge of the mission. -
By decoding a message sent by Admiral Yamamoto, US troops were alerted of a plan to attack Midway. They prepared for the attack, and on June 4, 1942, the Japanese aircraft was launched against Midway and flew straight into an ambush.
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The US navy troops under Admiral Nimitz began island hopping to inconspicuously get closer and closer to Japan.
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The US' enormous invasion force, which included at least 700 ships, each carrying at least 160,000 troops, began arriving at Leyte Gulf in the Philippines. They had been sent there to take back the Philippines from Japan.
