Note 2 — Chapter I · The Strategic Plan

Behind the decision to go into Leyte lay a series of strategically significant victories, which had followed a staggering initial reverse. American prewar plans for the Pacific had originally been based on the assumption that only the United States and Japan would be at war and that the U.S. Pacific Fleet would be in existence.2 But the destruction of the fleet at Pearl Harbor and the entrance of Germany and Italy into the war nullified these plans. The strategy of the Joint Chiefs of Staff3 in early 1942, therefore, was concerned chiefly with trying to limit the rapid advance of the Japanese and with keeping the line of communications to Australia open. The Pacific Theater was divided into command areas—the Southwest Pacific Area, with General Douglas MacArthur as Supreme Commander (he referred to himself, however, as Commander in Chief), and the Pacific Ocean Area (which included the Central Pacific), with Admiral Chester W. Nimitz as Commander in Chief.4