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Pearl Harbor
Just before 8 a.m. hundreds of Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii. The barrage lasted just two hours, but it was devastating: The Japanese managed to destroy nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight enormous battleships, and almost 200 airplanes. More than 2,000 Americans soldiers and sailors died in the attack, and another 1,000 were wounded. -
Battle of Java Sea
Japanese forces were taking control of the Dutch East Indies and British Borneo. The Japanese caused major damage to the Allied Navies. They also conquered British-controlled Burma as well as many positions in the South Pacific. In this way, they gained control of rich oil reserves. These defeats led to Japanese occupation of the entire Netherlands East Indies. -
Loss of Phillippines & Bataan Death March
General Douglas MacArthur led the defense of the Phillipines. He commanded a small force of Americans, plus a number of poorly trained and equipped Filipino soldiers. MacArthur used skillful leadership to retreat to the Bataan Peninsula but was ordered to leave and 10,000 Americans and 60,000 Filipino troops surrendered. For five days and nights the Japanese forced the already starving and sick soldiers to march through the steaming forests of Bataan.Thousands of soldiers perished. -
Doolittle Raid
This was the first U.S. air raid to strike the Japanese home islands during WW2. The airplanes had been launched from an aircraft carrier several hundred miles off the coast of Japan. This raid did little damage to the Japanese targets. This did give the American people something to celebrate and it angered Japan's leaders. This clouded their judgment and lead to major military mistakes by Japan. -
Battle of Coral Sea
This battle took place as Japanese forces were preparing to invade the British controlled Port Moresby on the island of New Guinea. To prevent this, U.S. CHester Nimitz sent two aircraft carriers on the attack. The American and Japanese navies suffered major damage. American navy lost an aircraft carrier and several dozen aircraft. For the first time, the Japanese advance had been halted. -
Island Hopping Strategy
sland Hopping” is the phrase given to the strategy employed by the United States to gain military bases and secure the many small islands in the Pacific. The attack was lead by General Douglas MacArthur, Commander of the Allied forces in the South west Pacific, and Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander-in-chief of the Pacific fleet. The US troops targeted the islands that were not as strongly defended by the Japanese. They took control of those islands, and quickly constructed landing strips. -
Battle of Midway
The Japanese planned to attack Midway Island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. American Naval intelligence officers had broken a Japanese code and learned about the plans for attacking Midway. Admiral Nimitz placed three available aircraft carriers carefully to stop a Japanese landing and to avoid contact with a larger fleet. His plan worked perfectly and Americans fought off the Japanese air raid. American bombs severly damaged three of Japanese carriers. Japanese destroyed the USS Yorktown. -
Guadalcanal
This was the first major offensive and a decisive victory for the Allies in the Pacific theater. With Japanese troops stationed in this section of the Solomon Islands, U.S. marines launched a surprise attack in August 1942 and took control of an air base under construction. Reinforcements were funneled to the island as a series of land and sea clashes unfolded, and both sides endured heavy losses to their warship contingents. -
Battle of Leyte Gulf
The Japanese sought to converge three naval forces on Leyte Gulf, and successfully diverted the U.S. Third Fleet with a decoy. At the Suriago Strait, the U.S. Seventh Fleet destroyed one of the Japanese forces and forced a second one to withdraw. The third successfully traversed the San Bernadino Straight but also withdrew before attacking the Allied forces at Leyte. With much of its surface fleet destroyed in the battle, Japan was hamstrung in its ability to move resources from Southeast Asia. -
Battle of Iwo Jima
Following elaborate preparatory air and naval bombardment, three U.S. marine divisions landed on the island in February 1945. Iwo Jima was defended by roughly 23,000 Japanese army and navy troops, who fought from an elaborate network of caves, dugouts, tunnels and underground installations.A merican losses included 5,900 dead and 17,400 wounded. Despite the difficulty of the conditions, the marines wiped out the defending forces after a month of fighting. -
Battle of Okinawa
ast and biggest of the Pacific island battles of World War II, the Okinawa campaign (April 1—June 22, 1945) involved the 287,000 troops of the U.S. Tenth Army against 130,000 soldiers of the Japanese Thirty-second Army. At stake were air bases vital to the projected invasion of Japan. By the end of the 82-day campaign, Japan had lost more than 77,000 soldiers and the Allies had suffered more than 65,000 casualties—including 14,000 dead. -
Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima
On August 6, 1945, the American bomber Enola Gay dropped a five-ton bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. A blast equivalent to the power of 15,000 tons of TNT reduced four square miles of the city to ruins and immediately killed 80,000 people. Tens of thousands more died in the following weeks from wounds and radiation poisoning. -
Atomic Bomb on Nagasaki
The United States had already planned to drop their second atom bomb, nicknamed “Fat Man,” on August 11 in the event of such recalcitrance, but bad weather expected for that day pushed the date up to August 9th. So at 1:56 a.m., a specially adapted B-29 bomber, called “Bock’s Car,” after its usual commander, Frederick Bock, took off from Tinian Island under the command of Maj. Charles W. Sweeney. -
V-J Day
On August 14, 1945, it was announced that Japan had surrendered unconditionally to the Allies, effectively ending World War II. Since then, both August 14 and August 15 have been known as “Victoryover Japan Day,” or simply “V-J Day.” The term has also been used for September 2, 1945, when Japan’s formal surrender took place aboard the U.S.S. Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay.
