History Channel has a great piece on that battle. Worst job to have: Flame Thrower! Didn't know that battle had the most CMH's. Also, as my father-in-law the Marine reminds me, the Marines controled the Pacific in WWII. They held off the Japs while da Army cruised around Europe.
My Gramps was in the Army during 1944 Pacific theater. So they were right with the Marines. Got drunk with him when I first enlisted talked about it the one and only time. He had it rough. He still stayed in for 29 years til retirement. And the kids now aday whine like little babies if the can't plug in their Xbox.
Ok, how do I tell a Marine he's wrong?
Well your father-in-law is partially right. The Marines did control the north and east parts of the Pacific theater. Also the Marines were the main element in the island hopping scheme. There were army units that fought alongside the Marines in a few of the campaigns. The most notable one that I know of is Peileilu. Army was also there on a neighboring island during the fight for Guadalcanal. However, the Marines made more beach landings than the Army (big ones that grabbed attention). There were several units of army paratroopers (not the right word but basically what they were) in the Pacific. As Mr. Finucane said, the Army was mainly in the south and west of the Pacific theater. MacArthur's big concern was winning back the Philippines. Also MacArthur thought the island hopping campaigns were nothing but a bunch of crap. He wanted all forces focused on the Philippines and China. Who knows who was right, but I think Nimitz was right in sticking with the island hopping. China would have taken too long to retake because they would have had to retake every part of that continent before turning their attention to Japan. Iwo Jima gave a much better landing point for damaged planes and for fighter bases. It was much closer than China and left fewer places for the Japanese to hide. We would have had to take Iwo and Okinawa anyways and taking all the major islands south of those two islands made sure the Japanese could not mess with our rear elements (i.e. hospital ships, supply routes, supply depots, etc).
The US controlled the seas by the time late 1943 early 1944 rolled around and they could resupply the islands easier than they could have troops in China.
One thing I forgot about going the China route instead of the island hopping route:
We most likely would have had to clear most of those islands anyways to create a viable resupply route to China. Also some of those islands served as temporary hospital points for the injured.