PERSPECTIVE ON WORLD WAR II : Sea Battles for the Ages : Don’t let the brave fighters of Midway, Coral Sea and Leyte Gulf go unhonored in the 50-year commemorations.

How grievous it is to realize that although our World War II victories in Europe have been memorialized by huge celebrations in Normandy for the French, English and Americans and at Stalingrad for the Russians, victory in the Pacific with its chain of heroic sea and land clashes will drift by unnoticed.

The reason for this discrepancy is twofold. The European battle sites had large areas of land with chapels, farms, towns and other infrastructures. They provided adequate space to convene a grand celebration.

In contrast, where would you have built the buildings to memorialize the three great naval battles, Coral Sea, Midway and Leyte Gulf? There was none. Brooding Guadalcanal had adequate space, but no infrastructure.

A second reason is that the Pacific war is not popular with military historians nor with the general public, and the details of its battles, which were of universal significance and changed the face and course of history, are barely known. Let me identify them.

From May 6 to 8, 1942, in the early days of the war when everything seemed to be hanging in the balance, the Japanese launched a major task force to sweep southward, capture a foothold at Port Moresby in New Guinea and from there invade Australia. Once they had a secure foothold they would expand eastward to take New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga and Samoa. The Allied lifeline for ships running from California to New Zealand and Australia would be cut and all lands in the area would fall to the Japanese.

We did not have an adequate force at sea to halt the Japanese thrust. But with what ships we could muster and with considerable help from the fact that our brilliant cryptographers had broken the Japanese code so that our admirals knew what the enemy’s plans were, we leaped into a turbulent battle in which we were outnumbered in ships and vastly outnumbered in troops. But because there were no other options, and with gallant help from what slim forces the Australians could provide, their troops and ships being engaged in the European struggle, we fought a monstrous three-day battle that has been accurately described in this manner: “Neither side won, but Japan lost.” We certainly could not claim victory, for one of our few carriers, the Yorktown, was sunk and another, the Lexington, was so badly wounded that it had to flee the fight. But the Japanese lost their huge carrier Shokaku and other smaller ships. Japan lost the battle because in the end, both sides knew that Japan was not going to capture Port Moresby, or New Caledonia, or Fiji, or Samoa. And any chance of landing an invasion force in Australia was doomed. The vital Pacific lifeline remained under our control.

Soon thereafter, from June 4 to 7, 1942, a huge Japanese task force bore down on Midway Island west of Hawaii with the purpose of establishing a foothold for an immediate invasion of the unprotected Hawaiian Islands, plus a later attack on our Pacific coastal cities. Tremendous consequences hung in the balance, and on the first day of battle Japan won every encounter, not because our men were inadequate but because our weapons failed to perform.

At nightfall the Japanese commanders were entitled to be jubilant. They had five aircraft carriers ready for the battle the next day, and we had none. They had scores of troop transports crammed with battle-hardened veterans. And they had highly trained aviators itching for aerial battle.

But on the second day a miracle happened. We had only our land-based dive bombers to rely on, and these heavy planes, loaded with old-fashioned bombs that did explode, hung aloft over the Japanese armada and methodically sank four aircraft carriers and wounded a fifth. They devastated the troop transports and made any probability of attacking either Hawaii or the West Coast remote or nonexistent.

The incredible affair at Midway is now seen by historians as one of the great naval battles of all time, the turning point in the Pacific war.

Much later, in October, 1944, at Leyte Gulf, where Gen. Douglas MacArthur had landed his ground forces to reconquer the Philippines, the growing strength of the American naval force met the sorely depleted Japanese remnant. We should have won easily, but the Japanese admirals executed a brilliant tactic whereby Adm. William Halsey was tricked into chasing after a ghost Japanese force far to the north. The largest naval battle in world history ensued, with MacArthur’s ground troops left undefended as two powerful Japanese task forces bore down upon them.

The Americans faced a disastrous loss when a squadron of our “baby flattops,” small aircraft carriers with little or no defensive armor, conducted themselves as if they were mighty battleships and so frightened the enemy that the Japanese fleet, on the doorstep of a notable victory, turned and fled.

These great battles certainly merit commemoration, but where would you mount the celebration?

I offer a surprising suggestion: the island of Kyushu in Japan.

The Japanese are people to whom history is almost sacred. They are fantastic warriors, and apart from the dawn attack on Pearl Harbor, they conducted themselves like a worthy adversary.

Why do I think they would have cooperated in a massive postwar celebration? In the years since the Japanese surrender in September, 1945, I have paid several visits to the revered battleground at Guadalcanal. At a hotel on my first visit, I found that hundreds of veterans, Americans and Japanese, were hungry to return to the sites where they fought. The hotel management, afraid that the juxtaposition of Japanese and American veterans might cause friction or worse, initiated the sensible policy of different visitation days for the Japanese and Americans. But both groups protested: “We want to be here when the other side is here, too. We want to compare notes.”

When I was in Australia two years ago, I met with officers of that country who were striving to initiate a joint American-Australian celebration to memorialize the battle of the Coral Sea, which had saved their country. Their man in charge told me: “The United States could show no interest whatever. Said the best they could do was send out one over-age and somewhat rusty cruiser.” He paused, stared at me and asked, “Don’t your people understand the significance of Coral Sea, Midway and Leyte Gulf?” I replied, “They’ve never heard of them, and those few who have don’t give a damn.”

As I remember those great ships relying on their radar to locate the enemy targets and watch the airplanes sweep through the skies, conducting their dogfights at 18,000 feet, and recall those incredible dive bombers on the second day of Midway, I mourn for all the men, Japanese and American alike, who died in secrecy and went to their watery graves unremembered and unhonored, and I am grievously wounded.