Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Mariana and Palau Islands campaign, also known as Campaign Plan Granite II, was an American offensive against Imperial Japanese forces in the Pacific between June and November 1944. It consisted of Operation Forager, which seized the Mariana Islands, and Operation Stalemate, which captured Palau. The campaign was commanded overall by Admiral Chester W. Nimitz.
The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot was the informal name given to the Battle of the Philippine Sea, fought on the 19th and the 20th of June 1944. It was triggered when the Imperial Japanese Navy's Combined Fleet sortied to attack U.S. forces supporting the landings on Saipan. Japanese naval aviation suffered heavy and irreplaceable losses to both carrier-borne and land-based aircraft.
The United States captured the Marianas to neutralize Japanese bases in the central Pacific, support the Allied drive to retake the Philippines, and gain airfields for strategic bombing of Japan. Airfields built on Saipan and Tinian became the launch platforms for B-29 bombing missions against the Japanese home islands, including the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Operation Wedlock was a deception campaign run before the Mariana landings. Starting in October 1943, a joint army and navy radio task force at Adak, Alaska broadcast fabricated traffic suggesting a force called the I Alaskan Corps was preparing to invade the Kurile island group. The signals were addressed to fictitious units, the IX Amphibious Force and the 9th US Fleet, to mislead Japanese planners.
Task Force 58 alone comprised 15 carriers, 7 battleships, 11 cruisers, 86 destroyers, and over 900 planes under Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher. The amphibious invasion force under Vice Admiral Richmond K. Turner included 56 attack transports, 84 landing craft, and over 127,000 troops.
The main Japanese garrison in the Palaus, located on Koror, was bypassed entirely by American forces rather than assaulted. It remained isolated until Japan's overall capitulation in August 1945, when it finally surrendered.