MacArthur’s SWPA forces had advanced about 350 miles, securing only one-third of New Guinea’s long north coast. At this rate, it might take him three more years to navigate the world’s second-largest island and put himself in a position to return to the Philippines, an objective that was not only a strategic aim for MacArthur but something of a personal obsession. In the meantime, Nimitz’s forces, by seizing the Gilberts and the Marshalls, had leaped some 2,000 miles forward in the general direction of the Japanese home islands, outshining the less glamorous, plodding SWPA advance. At this
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