While serving with a Marine rifle company as a platoon corpsman, he took part in the assault on Iwo Jima in 1945, one of the most bitterly fought battles of the Pacific War's island-hopping campaign.

This prepared the way for Nimitz's island-hopping campaign towards Japan.

So significant had been the role of PT boats in the island-hopping campaigns that they were slated to take part in supporting the initial landings in the Philippine Islands.

By late spring of 1944, the island-hopping campaigns of the war had made household words out of the names of previously little-known islands in the Central and South Pacific.

In 1922, as director of the Navy's War Plans Division, Williams urged the island-hopping campaign through Micronesia that later became the basis of American strategy.

He spent the remainder of the war in China and Burma and also covered General Douglas MacArthur's island-hopping campaign.

Ellis' prophetic study helped establish his reputation as one of the forefront of naval theorists and strategist of the era in amphibious warfare, foreseeing the imminent attack from Japan leading to the island-hopping campaigns in Central Pacific.

Their countless efforts have contributed to the success of the joint-Marines/Army maritime landing forces assigned under the Navy fleet commanders during the island-hopping campaigns of the numerous atolls in the Pacific.

However, Pohnpei was bypassed by the US Navy during the island-hopping amphibious campaigns of 1943-1945.

Thence, after completing a round trip to Hawaii and back, she departed San Pedro on 13 January 1944 to begin supporting the Navy's series of island-hopping campaigns.