Dog, Easy Summary and Analysis

In Dog, The Rim of Darkness, the author considers MacArthur's New Guinea campaign and the United State's general strategy toward the Pacific Theater. Throughout much of 1942, the United States was clearly losing the war. The public was largely ignorant of the geography of the Pacific Theater, and military planners were unprepared for the realities of island warfare. On the other hand, Japan was wholly given over to warfare and aggression. The Japanese attack found most of the world unprepared—even Australia and New Zealand were caught by surprise. There was a real possibility that Japan would invade and conquer Australia; to that end, they invaded through the Solomon Islands, capturing parts of New Guinea and New Britain (refer to map on p. 82). The American overarching response gave an outward arc of attack to Admiral Chester Nimitz and the...