Pacific War Fifth and Thirteenth Air Forces to attack targets throughout the Philippines and the South China Sea. The Battle of Iwo Jima ("Operation Detachment") in February 1945 was one of the bloodiest battles fought by the Americans in the Pacific War. Iwo Jima is an 8 sq mile (21 km) island situated halfway between Tokyo and the Mariana Islands. Holland Smith, the commander of the invasion force, aimed to capture the island and prevent its use as an early-warning station against air raids on the Japanese Home Islands, and to use it as an emergency landing field. Lt. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi,
Island in the Centre during the imminent war of the Pacific, he starts an affair with Eurasian Victoria Viera, a brusque, direct girl who sells sports equipment. As the Japanese plan to take Singapore, he is enlisted by the Japanese intelligence owing to his superior knowledge of the region. Parts of the novel are written in the form of diaries kept by Nakajima, as he attempts to learn the English language. Island in the Centre Island in the Centre is a 1995 novel by Eurasian Singaporean writer Rex Shelley, which tells the story of a Japanese, Nakajima Tomio, working in Malaya from the 1920s