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Pearl Harbor
Japanese airplanes made a surprise attack on the US Navy in Pearl Harbor. They destroyed many ships and killed many soldiers. This attack forced the U.S. into WWII. Pearl Harbor is located in Hawaii on the island of O'ahu. Hawaii is located in the Pacific Ocean between California and Japan. During the time of World War II, Hawaii was not a state, but a US territory. -
Pearl Harbor
The Empire of Japan was trying to take over much of Asia and was worried about the US Navy in Hawaii. They decided to strike in order to prevent the United States from attacking them. -
Battle of Java Sea
In this battle, Japan caused much damage to the allied navies. The United States Navy remained potent. At Oahu, five American battleships lay sunk or aground, but the port facilities at Pearl Harbor remained in good condition, and the aircraft carriers of the Pacific Fleet had avoided damage. Three battleships escaped with only light damage, with a fourth undergoing regular maintenance in the Puget Sound. Three fast carriers, twelve heavy cruisers, eight light cruisers, and fifty destroyers rem -
Loss of Philippines and Bataan Death March
After bombing Pearl Harbor, Japan quickly began to take over much of Southeast Asia. As the Japanese troops approached the Philippines, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur moved the U.S. forces from the city of Manila to the Bataan Peninsula.The Japanese did not give the prisoners food or water for three days. As the soldiers became weaker and weaker many of them started to fall behind the group. Those that fell behind were beaten and killed by the Japanese. Sometimes exhausted prisoners were driven -
Doolittle Raid
It was the first U.S. air raid to strike the Japanese home islands during WWII. The mission is notable in that it was the only operation in which U.S. Army Air Forces bombers were launched from an aircraft carrier into combat. -
Island Hopping Strategy
Island hopping is the crossing of an ocean by a series of shorter journeys between islands, as opposed to a single journey directly to the destination. In military strategy, it is the method of conquering islands in a steady sequence, usually with a defined endpoint. -
Battle of Coral Sea
It was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II between the Imperial Japanese Navy and naval and air forces from the United States and Australia. It was the first time two aircraft carriers engaged eachother. It was between Australia and New Guinea. -
Battle of Midway
Located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean between North America and Asia. The Japanese formulated a plan to sneak up on the U.S. forces. They hoped to trap a number of the U.S. aircraft carriers in a bad situation where they could destroy them. However, American code breakers had intercepted a number of Japanese transmissions. The Americans knew the Japanese plans and prepared their own trap for the Japanese. -
Guadalcanal
The battle began on August 7, 1942 when marines invaded the island. They first took the smaller islands of Florida and Tulagi just to the north of Guadalcanal. Then they landed on Guadalcanal. The marines had taken the Japanese forces by surprise and soon had control of the air base. in the middle of November, the Japanese launched a major attack involving over 10,000 soldiers. The fighting was fierce, but the Japanese were unable to advance. They were forced to retreat. From that point the ba -
Battle of Leyte Gulf
The Battle of Leyte Gulf, formerly known as the Second Battle of the Philippine Sea, is generally considered to be the largest naval battle of World War II. It was fought in waters of the Leyte Gulf, near the Philippine islands of Leyte, Samar and Luzon. On 20 October, United States troops invaded the island of Leyte as part of a strategy aimed at isolating Japan from the countries it had occupied in Southeast Asia, and in particular depriving its forces and industry of vital oil supplies. -
Battle of Iwo Jima
The Battle of Iwo Jima took place during World War II between the United States and Japan. It was the first major battle of World War II to take place on Japanese homeland. The island of Iwo Jima was a strategic location because the US needed a place for fighter planes and bombers to land and take off when attacking Japan. On the first day of the battle 30,000 US marines landed on the shores of Iwo Jima. The first soldiers that landed weren't attacked by the Japanese. They thought that the bombi -
Battle of Okinawa
The biggest of the Pacific island battles of World War II, the Okinawa campaign 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. -
Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima
In August 1945, during the final stage of the Second World War, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The two bombings, which killed at least 129,000 people, remain the only use of nuclear weapons for warfare in history. -
Bombing of Nagasaki
A second atom bomb is dropped on Japan by the United States, at Nagasaki, resulting finally in Japan’s unconditional surrender. The devastation wrought at Hiroshima was not sufficient to convince the Japanese War Council to accept the Potsdam Conference’s demand for unconditional surrender. The United States had already planned to drop their second atom bomb, nicknamed “Fat Man,” on August 11 in the event of such an occurrence -
VJ Day
news of the surrender was announced to the world. This sparked spontaneous celebrations over the final ending of World War II. On September 2, 1945, a formal surrender ceremony was held in Tokyo Bay aboard the USS Missouri. At the time, President Truman declared September 2 to be VJ Day.
