USA / Papua New Guinea: An exhausted American Naval pilot of the U.S. VF-17 unit rests beneath the squadron scoreboard of Japanese 'kills' during the Bougainville Campaign against Japanese forces. Bougainville Island, Papua New Guinea, February 1944

The Bougainville Campaign (Operation Cherry Blossom) was a series of land and naval battles of the Pacific campaign of World War II between Allied forces and the Empire of Japan. It was part of Operation Cartwheel, the Allied grand strategy in the South Pacific.

The campaign took place in the Northern Solomons in two phases: the first phase, in which American troops invaded and held the Perimeter around the beachhead, lasted from November 1943 through November 1944; the second phase, in which British Commonwealth troops attempted to mop up pockets of starving, isolated but still-determined Japanese, lasted from November 1944 until August 1945, when the last Japanese on the island surrendered.

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