If a picture is worth a thousand words, a good animation is worth ten thousand. After reading book after book about World War II and finding only complicated maps with dotted lines and dashed lines crisscrossing the pages, we decided to depict the key battles using animation technology.

From a recent article in Armchair General Magazine: "You could read several books and never get the same comprehension of the overall battles as with these animations."

From Free Technology for Teachers blog: "One of my favorite US History resources.....my students absolutely loved the animations complete with their sound effects and marching visuals.'"

From Todd Bryda, Professor of History at Northwestern Connecticut Community College “In the constant battle to keep students interested in the past, History Animated gives teachers a precious resource to fight for the attention of the video game generation.  The maps are visually appealing and represent solid scholarship.  What separates the operators of this site from others isn’t just that they provide a quality product, but they are also open to suggestions, i.e. a compact disk without text for classroom use.  Well done James!”

While the animation helps readers view a broader picture of the battles showing the inter-relationships of the opponents in time and space more clearly, it is limited in the detail that can be shown. While accuracy has been attempted, at times the picture of the battles must be simplified to make the battle as clear as possible. We expect to continue developing new animations every few weeks until all of the key battles of the Pacific War have been animated.

We are not attempting to reinterpret history, but merely to depict it as the best military historians have written it.