Island-hopping
Island hopping, also called leap-frogging, is a phrase that describes the strategy employed by the U.S. military in the Pacific Theater of World War II. "Island-hopping" bypassed and isolated heavily fortified Japanese positions and instead concentrated the limited Allied forces on strategically important islands that were less well defended but capable of supporting the a drive to mainland Japan.
This strategy was possible because the United States had submarine forces, which provided an effective blockade preventing the Japanese from moving troops from island to island. Thus troops on islands which had been bypassed were useless to the Japanese war effort and left to "wither on the vine." This caused some Japanese troops, cut off with communications, to become unaware that the war had ended after the Japanese surrender. This occurred most often in small islands of the Philippines and Guam. In some cases, these isolated troops continued to hold out for years after the end of the war.
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