One of the largest aspects of the campaign was called island-hopping. Rather than trying to take every single fortified island, the commanders in the Pacific identified each step that was necessary and bypassed some very heavily fortified bases knowing that they could control shipping lanes and other avenues of approach and basically starve out those garrisons rather than taking them on with costly invasions.
In doing so, they also moved to position themselves for the final assault on the home islands as well as putting themselves into a position to bomb the Japanese mainland with bases in places like Saipan and Iwo Jima.
The campaigns to take these islands tended to be very bloody frontal assaults on the beaches as the Japanese had become experts at fortifying the rugged coral islands and the fighting to take them was intense and very costly.
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