19. Operation Magic Carpet ended with troops still in the Pacific Theater
In April 1946, a convoy of 29 American troop ships, each carrying an average of 7,000 soldiers, sailors, and airmen, arrived on the west coast, having repatriated the troops from the often forgotten theater of World War II, the China-Burma-India (CBI) Theater. With its arrival, Operation Magic Carpet was officially declared by the Chief of Staff to be completed. Over the course of the next five months, troops continued to return to the United States from the Pacific, but it was at a rate which was a comparative trickle to that of the preceding winter. The last troops to return from the Pacific arrived in September of 1946, 127,300 veterans of the war against Japan.
Thus over the course of 18 months over 8 million American men and women which had been scattered all over the globe in May of 1945 were brought back to the United States and discharged from the service. They left behind, in North African deserts, Asian rice paddies, lonely Pacific islands and atolls, British fields, and the surroundings of French villages, tons upon tons of abandoned equipment and facilities. The cost of moving all of the material would have delayed the repatriation of the troops, and neither the public nor the troops would have tolerated such a delay.