The reason was partly priority—the Roosevelt administration held fast to its “Germany first” strategy. But it was also geography. The distance from San Francisco to MacArthur’s headquarters in Australia was more than twice as far as from New York to England. And, whereas the Atlantic supply lines connected large, long-established ports such as New York and Liverpool, the Pacific lines had to rely on hastily developed ports, some built from scratch, including on far-flung Pacific locales such as Guadalcanal, Tutuila, Kwajalein, and Manus.
