- 71 - Pacific War - Pacific Military Conference, MacArthur vs King, March 28 - April 4, 1943

Last time we spoke about the battle of Komandorski islands. Admirals Kinkaid and McMorris began a naval blockade of Attu and Kiska putting the IJN in a terrible bind. They could either give up the Aleutians, or they would have to reinforce them, either of which came at huge costs. Admiral Hosogaya had no choice but to try and breach the allied blockade to get the much needed reinforcements to the frozen islands. Hosogaya’s fleet was superior in numbers and firepower to that of McMorris when they fatefully met in the frigid northern seas. Yet by a stroke of luck, a single man fired a High Explosive shell during the heat of battle causing Hosogaya to make a terrible blunder. Under the impression allied airpower was about to attack them, Hosogaya backed off, losing the chance to claim a major victory. And today we are going to venture, behind the desk so to speak.  This episode is the Pacific Military Conference: MacArthur vs King Welcome to the Pacific War Podcast Week by Week, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945.  Now before we jump into the real war of the Pacific, General Douglas MacArthur vs Admiral Ernest King, I first want to jump over the good old CBI theater. Interesting to mention I recently did a livestream, gaming with a friend of mine, answering some audience questions from you dear old audience members and others from my Youtube channel and Fall and Rise of China Podcast. One guy asked me “how important was the CBI theater?” and it really got me thinking on the spot. Honestly when Americans talk about the Pacific War, two things immediately come to mind, naval battles and island warfare. China gets overshadowed despite literally being the lionshare of fighting against the Japanese, I mean hell they kept like 30+ divisions in China out of 50 or so. But even more than that you hardly hear about Burma or India, they are always the quote en quote benchwarmers compared to lets say your Guadalcanal’s or Iwo Jima’s. As I said to the audience member on the livestream, its hard to quantify something, but honestly tossing %’s around you could argue the CBI was a hard 50-60% of the war effort, because it did the most important thing necessary to win a way, it drained Japan of men/resources. So lets jump into it a bit shall we? So the last time we were talking about the disastrous First Arakan Campaign. The British launched their offensive and saw heavy resistance at Rathedaung and Donbaik. General Irwin continuously made blunders. When Wavell made an inspection of the battlefields later on he commented how Irwin’s forces had “fought in penny packets”. Basically what he was getting out with this little jab, was unlike conventional battles, take for example the famous battle of Alamein. Instead this offensive consisted of hundreds of chance encounters, dozens of disparate set piece clashes, hand-to-hand conflicts, frontal attacks, ambushes, desperate defenses, bombing raids, all of which had been minutely chronicled, but the details of them were quite the mystery. General Slim when asked described it all ‘as an epic that ran across great stretches of wild country; one day its focal point was a hill named on no map; next a miserable unpronounceable village a hundred miles away. Columns, brigades, divisions, marched and counter-marched, me