On December 7, 1941, nearly four hundred Japanese warplanes had executed a sneak attack on the United States Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. Within two months of the attack, the Empire of Japan had quickly, efficiently, and mercilessly extended its power in the Pacific over an area vaster than any other in human history. Japan's sphere of influence covered several time zones and tens of thousands of square miles, which included hundreds of islands, massive and minuscule, that floated in the azure seas between the warring nations.

For its part, the United States was at a staggering disadvantage. Focused on defeating the Axis powers, the Army and Navy commanders decided that the only recourse was to quickly stem Japan's assault from the Pacific and then turn their attention to Europe. The key to victory in the South Pacific was its islands.

The logistics of an island-by-island offensive were overwhelming. To achieve victory, the Americans would have to move westward in a deadly game of operational hopscotch, nautical mile by nautical mile. The Army Air Corps (there was no Air Force yet) would have to fly reconnaissance sorties to get information about the island in question; photographs would have to be taken, and a relatively accurate assessment would be pieced together from these photos, old maps, and the recollections of displaced islanders. Then the marines would have to initiate a series of amphibious assaults, followed by sufficient Army troops to secure the island in order to bring in medical staff, equipment, and enough supplies to sustain the captured island. The island would then serve as a rearguard base for the next operation, stretching ever westward to Tokyo and the eventual victory over Japan. This sequence would have to be repeated over and over if U.S. forces were to succeed.

A key tactical solution came from the engineering division of the Navy. The Navy recruited America's most experienced builders and engineers, and sent them overseas to build whatever was needed. These new divisions could bulldoze palm trees and move hills; they could backhoe raw coral into ravines; they could turn muddy troughs into passable roads; they could tractor and pave airstrips in the jungle; they could build anything anywhere. These units would be known as the Navy's construction battalions-or, in the nickname derived from their initials, as the Seabees.

The first Seabees were ready to set sail as early as January 27, 1942. Known as the Bobcats, the First Construction Battalion built a fueling base in Bora-Bora, some two thousand miles south of Hawaii, in order to defend and keep open the sea lanes to Australia. Within a few months, they had built an airfield, a seaplane base, twelve miles of road, two radio stations, a pier, and a dry dock. According to an Army officer, the Bobcats "smelled like goats, lived like dogs, and worked like horses." The fueling station at Bora-Bora was key to the first strategic naval victory over Japan at the Battle of the Coral Sea in early May of 1942.

By then, the Seabees had established a base in the New Hebrides, an island chain several hundred miles west of Bora-Bora, with two main islands, Efate and Espíritu Santo. The larger island, Espíritu Santo, was quickly transformed by the Seabees of the Third Construction Battalion into one of the most tactically crucial bases on the planet (and, not coincidentally, the "site" of the action in South Pacific). They were soon joined by other Seabee divisions, each with thirty officers and a thousand men, as well as medical officers, nurses, supply officers, cooks, and a chaplain. In addition to building an airstrip, the Seabees were able to construct-often with the damnedest forms of ingenuity-drainage pipes, supply depots, immense fuel-supply tanks, washing machines, ice-cream freezers.

The bases at Espíritu Santo were essential to the support of one of the most important incursions of World War II: the invasion of an island called Guadalcanal. Guadalcanal had been seized by the Japanese in May and it represented their southernmost presence in the Solomon Islands, an island chain of critical importance to the Allies' supply and communications routes. It became apparent that the Japanese were building an airstrip at Lunga Point, on Guadalcanal. This would be disastrous to any Allied presence in the area. The marines landed successfully on Guadalcanal on August 7, 1942, and after intense resistance they were able to take command of the Japanese airstrip the next day. Within weeks, two companies of the Sixth Construction Battalion had moved from Espíritu Santo onto Guadalcanal and made the airstrip operational. Dubbed Henderson Field, it would prove to be one of the most essential airfields in the South Pacific.

The Japanese sent ships and troops to take back control of the island. The next six months saw some of the most grueling, protracted fighting of the entire war. It was not until February of 1943 that the Japanese abandoned the island; the Americans had lost nearly fifteen hundred men, while Japanese losses totaled twenty thousand. Soon after the conquest of Guadalcanal, one morning Sea-bee Maintenance Unit 571 invited everyone to the movies that night. There was one small problem: there was no movie theater on the island. The unit quickly went to work. "The difficult we do immediately. The impossible takes a little longer," ran a newly adopted Seabee motto. By 7:30 p.m., there was an outdoor theater, gently sloped to allow every member of the rank and file to view the brand-new movie screen.

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