1940-1960  

The decades of innovation of the 1920s and ’30s were heavily tested as the Marine Corps cooperated with the Navy in an island-hopping campaign against the Japanese Empire in the Pacific. Marines repeatedly demonstrated their mastery of amphibious warfare on Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. The combined Marine-Navy effort was largely instrumental in American’s victory in the Pacific War. With the emergence of the Cold War, Marines were then sent to fight in Korea—playing an instrumental role in the fighting at  Inchon and the Chosin Reservoir.