ww 2 pacific

​End Game: World War II in the Pacific

​➔Flying Tigers, April 1941-July 1942

◆American pilots who volunteered to fight in the Chinese Air Force against the Japanese before Pearl Harbor

❏Pearl Harbor - The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii, just before 8:00 a.m. on Sunday, December 7, 1941. A total of 2,403 Americans were killed and 1,178 others were wounded

➔Japanese victories after Pearl Harbor

◆Conquered many South Pacific islands and large portions of the Asian continent

◆March 1942: Japanese forced General Douglas MacArthur off the Philippines: “I shall return”

●Left behind Americans and Filipinos who were captured as prisoners of war

➔Bataan Death March

◆90-mile march to a prisoner of war camp in the Philippines; 10,000+ died

◆Inhumane conditions on the march and at the camps

​●April 1942: Lt. Colonel James Doolittle led a bombing raid on Tokyo

●May 1942 Battle of Coral Sea

○Allied victory that stopped Japan’s southern progress and prevented Japan from invading Australia

●June 1942: Battle of Midway

○THE TURNING POINT in the Pacific war because after this, we were able to start moving in toward the Japanese islands by “island hopping”

○Admiral Chester Nimitz is credited for the US victory

●Navajo Code Talkers

○Many Navajo volunteered for the US Marines

○Used their unique language as an unbreakable "code" that contributed greatly to the U. S. intelligence effort

​●Island-Hopping Campaign

○Led by General Douglas MacArthur

○Strategy of moving closer to the Japanese main islands by avoiding islands that had already been captured by the Japanese

○Set up air strips on captured islands to aid in bombing Japanese supply lines

○Allowed the US to get closer to the Japanese main islands

●August 1942 Battle of Guadalcanal

○First American victory on land

●October 1944 Battle of Leyte Gulf

○Japanese began using kamikaze (suicide bomber) pilots

●March 1945 Battle of Iwo Jima

○From here, American bombers could actually reach the Japanese islands

●June 1945 Battle of Okinawa

○7,600 Americans and 110,000 Japanese died; fear of the human cost of invading Japan

​●April 12, 1945 Roosevelt died and Harry Truman became president, and Truman was told about the Manhattan Project

○July 16, 1945 - the first atomic bomb was tested and was more powerful than predicted

●Debate among Manhattan Project scientists about the atomic bomb

○Some said it was immoral to drop the bomb on Japan

○Others said it would shorten the war and save lives, as well as give the US an advantage over the Soviets after the war

●Truman decided to use the bomb

●August 6, 1945 Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima

○Almost every building collapsed, Japan did not surrender

●August 9, 1945 2nd atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki

○Killed 200,000; Emperor Hirohito horrified

●September 2, 1945 (V-J Day) Japan surrendered unconditionally

○WWII is over and the Allies win!!!

​●We do NOT go back to isolationism this time

●February 1945 the “Big Three” (Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin) meet at the Yalta Conference

○Allies agreed to divide Germany into four zones

○Stalin agreed to allow free elections in Poland and other Eastern European countries now occupied by the Soviet Army (really, Stalin wanted to make those countries communist)

●November 1945-October 1946 Nuremberg Trials

○Held to try Nazi leaders

○First time that a nation’s leaders were held legally responsible for wartime acts

●Occupation of Japan

○American forces led by General MacArthur occupied Japan for 6 years

○Japanese officials put on trial for war crimes

○Helped Japan set up a free-market economic system and a new democratic constitution