I don't have relatives who served in the Pacific, but I do have one who served in the ETO (my grandfather, who was a tailgunner in a B-17), so that could be one reason for being more interested in that theatre.
But I think the main reason is the crappy pacing of the PTO story. Compare it to the ETO: Most of the main actors are at war within days of the attack on Poland. The baddies keep winning, and the good guys are in a precarious state for years until the baddies overextend themselves and lose decisive battles, which turns the tables and leads to their total defeat. You can't write that stuff.
In the PTO, a state of war exists between the major players (not counting China) for all of 6 months until the bad guys suffer a resounding defeat at Midway, after which they mostly get their butts kicked for the next 3 years. And it doesn't end in total defeat - Japanese units are still in China, and Hirohito doesn't commit sepuku in a bunker below Tokyo, his empire and ideology completely destroyed, because no foreign armies have set foot in Japan, and Japan is still capable of resistance.
That's not to belittle the tremendous sacrifice that won those battles - I'm just saying that from a dramatic standpoint, the PTO is less interesting.
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