If you ignore the tranny you can bombard if you take it out you cant.
As for your second question (with my limited experience) it seems that a sound US strategy is to build tons of subs and destroyers which forces Japan to counter thereby limiting land units for a china/india push. New Zealand/Queensland is a good place to stage them as the Carolines, DEI ,Philippines and Malaya are all in range. If you can pick off one of the islands with the US place as many units as you can spare into it on the UK/ANZAC turns (make it an airbase if not already)