The ghosts of World War II’s Pacific theater rest deep beneath the clear blue Micronesian Sea.
For 70 years, the remains of a deadly American attack on Japan’s forces have been growing layers of coral and barnacles and been inhabited by schools of sea life on the seabed of Truk Lagoon‚ a 40-mile-wide atoll of paradisiacal islands in the Federated States of Micronesia.
In over two days in February 1944, a massive offensive by the U.S. Navy downed more than 50 Japanese ships and 270 planes. They sank to the bottom of the ocean, forming an epic seafloor graveyard of cars, tanks, fighter aircraft, and hulking ships—along with the remains of thousands of Japanese sailors and pilots.