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History > WW2 (1939-1945) > USA, World
Timeline in articles, pictures and podcasts
India, Asia, Pacific
warning: graphic / distressing
The Last Kamikaze G 11 August 2015
The Last Kamikaze Video Guardian Features The Guardian 11 August 2015
The last kamikaze: 'I felt the blood was draining from my face'
‘It sounds strange, but we were congratulating each other for being selected’ for the special suicide attack unit.
‘When I knew we had lost the war ... the thought going through my mind was I had missed my chance to die ... and be remembered in infinite glory.’
Two Japanese veterans share memories of the second world war and the aftermath of the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima.
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3qoNE4XwhM
War And Conflict-Wwii
Pfc. Faris M. (Bob) Tuohy, 19 holding coffee cup &, along w. his fellow Marines, looking grimy & weary from 2 days & 2 nights of fighting on Eniwetok Atoll during WWII.
Location: Marshall Islands
Date taken: 1944
Photograph: Ray R. Platnick
Life Images http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=09888f22a734f933
Related
Battle of Eniwetok https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Eniwetok
Louis Silvie Zamperini 1917-2014
Capt. Louis Zamperini, right, and Capt. Fred Garrett at Hamilton Field, Calif., after their release from a Japanese prisoner of war camp in 1945.
Photograph: PCS/Associated Press
Louis Zamperini, Olympian and ‘Unbroken’ War Survivor, Dies at 97 By IRA BERKOW NYT JULY 3, 2014
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/04/
Olympic runner whose remarkable story of survival as a prisoner of war in World War II gained new attention in 2010 with the publication of a best-selling biography by Laura Hillenbrand
(...)
Ms. Hillenbrand’s book, “Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption” recounted in vivid detail how Mr. Zamperini — a track star at the University of Southern California and an airman during the war — crashed into the Pacific, was listed as dead and spent 47 days adrift in a life raft before his capture by the Japanese.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/04/
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/04/
Eric Sutherland Lomax 1919-2012
The experience of three and a half years of slave labour and torture as a prisoner of war of the Japanese, on the notorious Burma-Siam railway, dominated the rest of the life of Eric Lomax.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/oct/09/
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/oct/09/
165th infantry attacking Butaritari, Yellow Beach Two find it difficult to wade through coral-bottomed waters while dodging Japanese gunfire.
Location: Makin Atoll, Gilbert Islands
Date taken: November 20, 1943
Life Images http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=7342004b71c86934
USA
General Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964
second world war supreme allied commander
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/oct/29/
Hideki Tōjō 1884-1948
An undated photo of Prime Minister Hideki Tojo outside the Japanese Parliament in Tokyo.
Photograph: Charles Gorry/Associated Press
Where Did Hideki Tojo’s Body Go After His Execution? A Mystery Is Solved. The location of the remains of the wartime Japanese prime minister had been a puzzle. Now, documents reveal that U.S. forces secretly scattered his ashes into the Pacific Ocean. NYT June 16, 2021 Updated 7:58 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/16/
Tojo, appearing before the International Military Tribunal in Tokyo on Nov. 12, 1948, was sentenced to death by hanging for his war crimes.
Photograph: Charles Gorry/Associated Press
Where Did Hideki Tojo’s Body Go After His Execution? A Mystery Is Solved. The location of the remains of the wartime Japanese prime minister had been a puzzle. Now, documents reveal that U.S. forces secretly scattered his ashes into the Pacific Ocean. NYT June 16, 2021 Updated 7:58 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/16/
wartime Japanese prime minister
Under Tojo’s dictatorial rule, millions of civilians and prisoners of war suffered or died from experiments, starvation and forced labor.
After the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki forced Japan to declare defeat in 1945, Tojo attempted suicide at his home in Tokyo and was captured moments later.
He was nursed back to health by U.S. Army doctors.
Shortly after Tojo and the other convicted war criminals were hanged in December 1948, the American military began a tense mission to dispose of their ashes.
The effort was conducted behind locked doors and with armed guards, all to prevent the war criminals’ remains from being salvaged by supporters.
The documents provide a detailed account of the “execution and final disposition.”
The bodies were identified and fingerprinted before being placed in wooden coffins that were nailed shut and taken by cargo truck to Yokohama, 22 miles south of Tokyo.
There, they were cremated.
The documents said that “special precaution was taken to preclude overlooking even the smallest particle of remains.”
In one document, dated Dec. 23, 1948, and stamped “secret,” a U.S. Army major named Luther Frierson wrote, “I certify that I received the remains, supervised cremation, and personally scattered the ashes of the following executed war criminals at sea from an Eighth Army liaison plane.”
Major Frierson scattered the ashes “over a wide area” — approximately 30 miles of the Pacific Ocean east of Yokohama.
David L. Howell, a professor of Japanese history at Harvard University, said that by releasing the ashes into the ocean, U.S. forces had most likely contravened their own rules.
He cited a 1947 manual that said remains should be buried or given to the next of kin, when possible, after military executions.
He said it was “faulty logic” for the American authorities to believe that disposing of Tojo’s remains would prevent him from being deified by sympathizers and nationalists, many of whom continue to perceive Japan’s wartime efforts as mere acts of self-defense.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/16/
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/16/
International Military Tribunal for the Far East IMTFE
Tokyo Trials / Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal 1946-1948
Jap War Criminals Arraigned, Tokyo
Date taken: 1946
Photograph: Alfred Eisenstaedt
Life Images http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=f1bfe4a6feb8274e
Jap War Criminals Arraigned, Tokyo
Date taken: 1946
Photograph: Alfred Eisenstaedt
Life Images http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=5150bc4a0b3cabd0
Gen. Hideki Tojo (1884-1948)
Photograph: Bettmann/Getty Images
OPINION GUEST ESSAY 75 Years Later, Asia’s Wartime Memories Linger NYT December 21, 2023
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/21/
Seventy-five years ago, around the cold and bleak midnight of Dec. 22-23, 1948, seven convicted Japanese war criminals were marched toward the gallows.
Among these former top leaders were Gen. Hideki Tojo, a wartime prime minister found guilty for aggression at Pearl Harbor and for atrocities such as the Burma-Thailand death railway, and Gen. Iwane Matsui, the army commander at Nanjing, who was convicted of failing to prevent the slaughter and mass rape of Chinese there.
Tojo, Matsui and other condemned war criminals, dressed in U.S. Army work clothes as they received Buddhist last rites, defiantly yelled an imperial cry: “Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!”
Soon after midnight, the trap doors crashed open with a sound like a rifle volley.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/21/
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/21/
By the end of the war, which also ended Japan’s 35-year colonial rule of the Korean peninsula, more than 2 million Koreans were living in Japan.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/18/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/18/
2 September 1945
Japanese surrender ceremony on board the battleship USS Missouri (BB-63) in Tokyo Bay
日本の降伏
Japanese Sign Final Surrender 日本の降伏
News reel of the surrender ceremony on board the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945.
Background music is "With Honour Crowned".
YouTube > sget88 Aug 6, 2007 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcnH_kF1zXc
Mr. Desfor photographed the official Japanese surrender ceremony aboard the U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay on Sept. 2, 1945.
Max Desfor, 104, War Photographer at Midcentury, Is Dead Mr. Desfor’s photo of hundreds of Korean War refugees crawling across a damaged bridge in 1950 helped win him a Pulitzer Prize. By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS NYT FEB. 21, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/21/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5MMVd5XOK8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcnH_kF1zXc
Hiroshima and Nagasaki August 1945
Time Covers - The 40S TIME cover 08-20-1945 The Fall of Japan, re Japan's acceptance of unconditional surrender on August 14, 1945, ending WWII. (from TAC 1233-1)
Date taken: August 20, 1945
Life Images http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=f87800b8af46bd44
July 30, 1945
USS Indianapolis bombed
The USS Indianapolis is torpedoed by a Japanese submarine and sinks within minutes in shark-infested waters.
Only 317 of the 1,196 men on board survived.
However, the Indianapolis had already completed its major mission:
the delivery of key components of the atomic bomb that would be dropped a week later at Hiroshima to Tinian Island in the South Pacific. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/uss-indianapolis-bombed
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/22/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/20/world/asia/
http://www.npr.org/2015/07/26/
April 6, 1945
The Yamato battleship is sunk by American bomber and fighter planes
In early April 1945, the Pacific war was in its final, violent days.
American soldiers had slowly and bloodily fought their way, island by island, across the Pacific, while the Japanese were running out of kamikaze pilots and planes, and their navy had been half destroyed.
This is the setting for both a battle and a clash between two styles of warfare.
On one side, America is ready to attack Okinawa with 1,500 ships and 250,000 men.
On the other, Japan is led by an emperor who traces his line of succession back to the sun goddess and the Japanese military is possessed, Morris explains, by “the conviction that battles can be won by single, deadly blows, samurai style.”
Now the Yamato is sent on a suicide mission.
At 3 o’clock on the afternoon of April 6 it sets sail for Okinawa, where there is no plan but for the great ship to fire away at its enemies.
At 12:30 the following day, 386 American bomber and fighter planes begin their attack, joined by submarines, and three hours later the Yamato slowly capsizes.
This was the end of the era of battleships and great sea battles.
It was, Morris claims, “perhaps even the end of the imperial idea itself.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/11/
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/11/
night of August 1-2, 1945
Japan
B-29 missions against Toyama, Honshu
Aerial photo taken from American B-29 shows massive fire damage caused by night time incendiary bombing raid over city.
Location: Toyama, Honshu, Japan
Date taken: 1945
Life Images http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=e939926964f767ac
Despite a sophisticated alert system and a decade of air defense drills, the arrival just after midnight of a wave of B-29 bombers plunged Toyama into chaos.
Superfortresses — 173 of them — encountered only sparse antiaircraft fire as they released around 1,500 tons of incendiaries onto the city's center.
In a few short hours, Toyama was enveloped by a "sea of fire,"
(...)
Over 95% of the city was incinerated, leaving around 2,600 people dead.
(...)
Rather than a sideshow to the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, the incendiary destruction of cities was a fundamental facet of the war against Japan.
The atomic bombings evolved out of a fierce U.S. campaign to target and destroy entire cities, in hopes of forcing a Japanese surrender.
This was not how air power strategists had initially imagined the war against Japan.
The commitment at first was to the precision bombing of "war-making targets," such as airplane factories.
Planes, however, struggled to hit their targets, due in no small part to the jet streams they encountered while flying at high altitudes over Japan.
Eager to both justify the immense costs of the newly developed B-29 and play a central role in the defeat of Japan, U.S. Army Air Forces officials in Washington, D.C., were hungry for results.
Enter Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay, the commander of the 21st Bomber Command based on the Mariana Islands, who, in early 1945, ushered in a shift to nighttime incendiary area bombing — a doctrine that quickly moved to the center of the American air assault against Japan.
(...)
The scale of destruction wrought by this scorched-earth campaign remains underappreciated.
By the time of the assault on Toyama, incendiary raids had already destroyed significant portions of dozens of cities and wiped out over a quarter of Japan's housing.
Some Americans may be familiar with the firebombing of Tokyo on March 10, 1945, the most destructive incendiary air raid in history.
Overnight, B-29s burned down 16 square miles of the capital's main working-class neighborhood, claiming an estimated 100,000 lives.
Elated with the results, LeMay thereafter sent squadrons to burn down Osaka, Nagoya and other large cities in quick succession.
In just 10 days, the U.S. Army Air Forces reduced 32 square miles of urban fabric to ashes.
Further bombing of these major metropolises in April and May resulted in destruction that one staff officer described as "beyond our wildest hopes."
In what remains one of the most striking gaps in American public memory regarding the war with Japan, the AAF thereafter turned its sights on cities such as Toyama that were of minor or negligible importance to Japan's war machine.
Between June 17 and Aug. 14, one after another of Japan's smaller cities joined their larger cousins in fire and ruin.
In total, 8,000 sorties dropped roughly 54,000 tons of incendiary bombs on 66 cities, killing (by conservative estimates) about 180,000 people.
The attacks burned 76 square miles of urban Japan to the ground.
To bring home the extent of the destruction, one postwar report by a government magazine included a U.S. map showing dozens of American cities with comparable populations, asking the reader to imagine (as in the case of Toyama) the incineration of 96.5% of Chattanooga, Tenn.
Still, there were sensitivities to potential criticism from the American public, so AAF officials commonly used sanitizing language to mask the fact that they were targeting entire cities for destruction.
Press releases described attacks not on cities, but on "industrial urban areas."
Tactical reports set their sights not on densely populated neighborhoods, but on "worker housing."
In the privacy of briefing rooms, AAF officials made no bones about the fact that they were targeting residential areas and civilian populations.
Publicly, however, they went to great pains to cast Japanese cities as singularly military or industrial in composition.
Toyama is a case in point.
Although planners highlighted the city's industrial sites, maps distributed to flight crews led directly to the residential city center.
By dawn, Toyama's schools, shrines, hospitals, and neighborhoods lay in ruins.
Left unscathed were the war-related factories just outside the city.
Carl Spaatz, the commanding general of the newly christened U.S. Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific, handwrote an amendment to a press communique on the bombings of Toyama and three other small cities to emphasize that bombers struck "industrial areas" rather than the entirety of each city.
While the scale of Toyama's destruction was extraordinary, the planning and prosecution of this raid was business as usual.
In the parlance of American flight crews, the firebombing of this city was just another "milk run" — an act by then so commonplace it was akin to a local neighborhood delivery.
https://www.npr.org/2020/08/01/
https://www.npr.org/2020/08/01/
March 10, 1945
B-29 missions against Tokyo
Tokyo burns under B-29 firebomb assault, May 26, 1945 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Firebombing_of_Tokyo.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo Primary source > Library of Congress DIGITAL ID: (b&w film copy neg.) cph 3c11427
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3c11427
At Yalta, the Soviet Union also agreed to join the war against Japan as soon as Germany was defeated.
The United States and Britain, shaken by the suicidal defence of Pacific islands, feared that storming Japan would cost up to half a million allied casualties.
At that stage, nobody knew whether the new atomic bomb would work.
In the meantime, General Curtis LeMay stepped up his bombing attacks.
On the night of 9 March, he sent his Superfortress squadrons on a fire-bombing raid against Tokyo.
The mainly wooden houses blazed into an inferno.
It is estimated that 97,000 people died, 125,000 were injured and 1 million left homeless.
On 6 April, US forces landed on Okinawa to seize it as a springboard for the invasion of Japan itself.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/sep/10/
On March 10, 1945, flying in darkness at low altitudes, more than 300 B-29s dropped close to a quarter of a million incendiary bombs over Tokyo.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/09/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/09/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/sep/10/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/
April-June 1945 Pacific Battle of Okinawa
Ernie Pyle listening to a news report on war activities over the loudspeaker of a Navy transport carrying Marines to the invasion of Okinawa in 1945.
Credit Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
The Man Who Told America the Truth About D-Day NYT June 5, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/
On 6 April, US forces landed on Okinawa to seize it as a springboard for the invasion of Japan itself.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/sep/10/
The Battle of Okinawa was one of the bloodiest and costliest of World War II in the Pacific.
The United States needed a base to stage an invasion of mainland Japan.
The island of Okinawa was the crucial final stepping stone for the Americans.
For the Japanese, it would be the first time they met the enemy on home soil.
The battle lasted 82 days.
More than 12,000 Americans were killed or missing in action -- the highest number lost in a single battle in the Pacific war.
More than 70,000 Japanese soldiers and Okinawan conscripts were killed defending the island.
Civilians, caught in the crossfire, bore the highest toll -- perhaps as many as 100,000 to 150,000 Okinawan men, woman, and children lost their lives during the nearly three months of fighting.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/11/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/sep/10/
near the Japanese island of Kyushu
Lt. Cmdr. Joseph R. Carmichael Jr.
May 11, 1945
The Bunker Hill, an aircraft carrier with dozens of planes and vast stores of fuel and ammunition on its flight deck, was struck by two kamikaze planes in suicide attacks within minutes of each other.
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/
February-March 1945 Philippines The Battle for Manila
San Thomas Prison Liberation
Two emaciated American civilians, Lee Rogers (L) & John C. Todd, sit outside gym which had been used as a Japanese prison camp following their release by Allied forces liberating the city.
Location: Manila, Luzon, Philippines
Date taken: February 05, 1945
Photographer: Carl Mydans
Life Images
MacArthur's forces take back the city
San Thomas Prison Liberation
Manila was only one of the great cities of Southeast Asia overrun by the Japanesewar machine between July, 1941 and April, 1942.
But unlike Saigon, Hong Kong, Singapore, Djakarta and Rangoon -- which late in the war the Japanese surrendered to British forces without a fight -- Manila was the only city in which Japanese and Allied forces collided.
The results were unspeakable: an estimated 100,000 of its citizens died.
In the entire war, only the battles of Berlin and Stalingrad resulted in more casualties.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/macarthur/
16-26 February 1945
Pacific ocean
Battle for the Recapture of Corregidor
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/
1945
Pacific Ocean
Mogmog Island in the Ulithi Atoll, part of the Caroline Islands
Vast array of American warships just offshore of naval base on Mogmog Island in the Ulithi Atoll, part of the Caroline Islands.
Location: Caroline Islands
Date taken: 1945
Life Images http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=231a781adb859430
Ulithi was a major base for the U.S. Navy in World War II.
The Japanese had established a radio and weather station early in the war, and had used the lagoon as an anchorage occasionally, which resulted in strikes from US aircraft carriers early in 1944.
However, Ulithi was perfectly positioned to act as a staging area, being nearly equidistant from the Philippines, Formosa, and Okinawa.
On September 23, 1944, an army regiment landed unopposed (the Japanese having evacuated the atoll some months earlier), followed a few days later by a battalion of Seabees.
The survey ship USS Sumner (AGS-5) surveyed the lagoon and reported it capable of holding 700 vessels, and indeed just a few months later, 617 ships had gathered there for the Okinawa operation.
The huge anchorage capacity was greater than either Majuro or Pearl Harbor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulithi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulithi
Pacific ocean
US flag raised over Iwo Jima 23 February 1945
Joe Rosenthal’s original, uncropped image from Iwo Jima.
Photograph: Joe Rosenthal AP
Marines investigate claim of mistaken identity in Iwo Jima photograph Associated Press in Des Moines G Tuesday 3 May 2016 16.32 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/03/
Related
Marines of the 28th Regiment, 5th Division raise the U.S. flag atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima on Feb. 23, 1945.
After more than seven decades, Navy Corpsman John Bradley's name will be replaced in captions with the name of Pvt. 1st Class Harold Schultz.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/06/23/
Related
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/16/ http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/apr/28/alan-wood-iwo-jima-flag-photo
Flag raising on Iwo Jima. Joe Rosenthal, Associated Press. February 23, 1945. 80-G-413988. Pictures of World War II US National Archives http://www.archives.gov/research/ww2/photos/images/ww2-156.jpg http://www.archives.gov/research/ww2/photos/?template=print#iwo
Related http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5685028
The photograph, taken on Feb. 23, 1945, became the model for the Iwo Jima Memorial near Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
Joe Rosenthal, Associated Press.
Joe Rosenthal, Photographer at Iwo Jima, Dies August 21, 2006 NYT By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/21/business/media/22rosenthalcnd.html Related http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5685028
Put all your might into the Mighty 7th War Loan Collection: Ad*Access Company: F. & M. Schaefer Brewing Co. Product: 7th War Loan Publication: New Yorker Publication Type: Magazine
Military Item Number: W0250 Duke University http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/adaccess_W0250/
Large armada of US Navy ships bringing American Marines & supplies toward beachheads along island of Iwo Jima during opening hours of the battle to take the island from occupying Japanese forces.
Location: Mt Suribachi, Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands
Date taken: February 19, 1945
Life Images http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=ef8f537a9a2be101
Iwo Jima Action
American Marines crouch below hillside while detonating large explosive charge intended to destroy cave network connecting Japanese fortifications dug into the ground of Iwo Jima.
Location: Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands
Date taken: 1945
Photographer: W. Eugene Smith
Life Images http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=377b111e2396cff2
Dead Japanese soldier following battle for Iwo Jima during WWII.
Location: Volcano Islands
Date taken: February 1945
Photographer: W. Eugene Smith
Life Images http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=85635bd2747feb33
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/23/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7227947.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5270434.stm
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/ https://www.warnerbros.com/movies/letters-iwo-jima/ https://www.loc.gov/item/afc2001001.09749/ http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/21/business/media/22rosenthalcnd.html
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/16/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/feb/15/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/22/
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/nyregion/20iwo.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jun/20/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/dec/20/
20 October 1944 - 15 August 1945
Philippines Leyte Gulf
Hospital On Leyte Black-veiled Philippino women kneeling at benches before alter where priest conducts mass while badly burned American Army officer lies swathed in bandages as he convalesces on cot in Cens Cathedral turned into a makeshift Army hospital.
Location: Leyte, Philippines
Date taken: December 1944
Photographer: W. Eugene Smith
Life Images http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=91bfe450df41e89c
One of the most memorable images of World War II is that of MacArthur wading ashore at Leyte, making good on his pledge to return to and liberate his beloved Philippines.
But often lost in the story is the epic battle being waged around him, which included the greatest naval engagement in history and a long, difficult land campaign.
As both prongs of the Allied advance -- MacArthur's and Nimitz's -- gained speed in 1944, the Japanese grew determined to make a stand in the Philippines.
Most American war planners expected the greatest resistance in Luzon, where Japanese air bases in China, Formosa, Okinawa and Indochina could play a decisive role.
But the Japanese defense plan, code-named "Sho-1," called for a massive commitment at Leyte to cripple the American fleet and destroy the invading force.
The plan nearly worked. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/macarthur/maps/leyte01.html
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/03/04/
November 7 1944
Albacore submarine
According to Japanese records, the (U.S.) submarine, with a crew of 85 men on board, likely struck a mine just off the shore of Hokkaido on Nov. 7, 1944, the NHHC said.
https://www.npr.org/2023/02/19/
Albacore with Lieutenant Commander H.R. Rimmer in command, left Pearl Harbor on 24 October 1944, topped off with fuel at Midway on 28 October, and departed there for her eleventh patrol the same day, never to be heard from again.
Her area was northeast of Honshu and south of Hokkaido, and because of the danger of mine-able waters, she was ordered to stay outside of waters less than 100 fathoms deep.
She was to depart her area at sunset on 5 December 1944, and was expected at Midway about 12 December.
When she had not been seen nor heard from by 21 December despite the sharpest of lookouts for her, she was reported as presumed lost.
Enemy information available now indicates that Albacore perished by hitting a mine.
The explosion occurred on 7 November 1944, in latitude 41°-49'N, longitude 141°-11'E while Albacore was submerged, and was witnessed by an enemy patrol craft.
The craft reports having seen much heavy oil and bubbles, cork, bedding and various provisions after the explosion.
Prior to her loss, Albacore had been a very successful submarine, especially in her engagements with Japanese combat vessels.
Her record of enemy combatant ships sunk is the best of any United States submarine.
She sank a total of 13 ships, totaling 74,100 tons, and damaged five, for 29,400 tons, during her first ten patrols.
She began her series of patrols with one at Truk in September 1942, damaging two freighters and a tanker.
On her second patrol, near New Britain, Albacore sank a transport, and, on 18 December 1942. the Japanese light cruiser Tenryu.
Her third patrol was in the Bismarck Archipelago; Albacore sank an escort vessel and a destroyer.
The latter was Oshio sunk near the New Guinea coast on 20 February 1943.
During her fourth patrol, again in the Bismarck-Solomons-area, Albacore was able to inflict no damage on the enemy herself, but she sent contact reports which enabled Grayback to sink several enemy ships.
In her fifth patrol, Albacore covered the same area and damaged a transport.
She patrolled the Truk area on her sixth war run, sinking one freighter and damaging another.
Albacore's seventh and eighth war patrols were both in the area north of the Bismarck Archipelago during the period from mid-October 1943 to the end of February 1944.
In her seventh patrol she sank a freighter and in her eighth a transport.
In addition, during her eighth patrol on 14 January, Albacore sank the Japanese destroyer Sazami.
Albacore was ordered to patrol west of the Marianas and in the Palau area during the Allied invasion of these places in June 1944.
On 19 June she intercepted a Japanese task force proceeding from Tawi Tawi anchorage, in the Sulu Archipelago, toward Saipan to engage our surface forces in the first Battle of the Philippine Sea.
Albacore torpedoed and sank the aircraft carrier Taiho.
In addition, she sank a small freighter on this ninth patrol.
Albacore conducted her tenth patrol near the southern coast of Shikoku, Japan.
Here she sank a medium freighter, a medium tanker and a large patrol craft.
https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/
https://www.npr.org/2023/02/19/
June and November, 1944
Pacific Ocean
Mariana and Palau Islands campaign
Offensive launched by United States forces against Imperial Japanese forces in the Mariana Islands and Palau
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
July 21-August 8, 1944
Second Battle of Guam
American capture of the Japanese held island of Guam
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Saipan 15 June-9 July 1944
A member of a Marine patrol on Saipan found this family of Japs hiding in a hillside cave.
The mother, four children and a dog, took shelter from the fierce fighting in that area.
Cpl. Angus Robertson, June 21, 1944. 127-GR-113-83266. Pictures of World War II > Island Campaigns US National Archives http://www.archives.gov/research/ww2/photos/images/ww2-144.jpg http://www.archives.gov/research/ww2/photos/
D-Day for Saipan was June 15, 1944.
Twenty thousand Marines made it to shore by nightfall.
U.S. forces had come to understand that the enemy they faced did not believe in surrender.
Two days before the battle ended on July 9, in one of the Pacific war's most horrifying suicide charges, 3,000 Japanese soldiers and sailors attacked the U.S. Army's 27th Division using whatever weapons they had left -- grenades, rifles, mortars and even rocks, swords and rusty bayonets attached to bamboo sticks.
The Japanese preference for suicide over capture had been repeated throughout the war in the Pacific.
But it was civilian suicides that would forever mark the memories of American troops on Saipan. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/biography/pacific-koyu-shiroma/
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/
19-20 June 1944
Battle of the Philippine Sea (Marianas Turkey Shoot)
The Battle of the Philippine Sea (June 19–20, 1944) was a major naval battle of World War II that eliminated the Imperial Japanese Navy's ability to conduct large-scale carrier actions.
It took place during the United States amphibious invasion of the Mariana Islands during the Pacific War.
The battle was the last of five major "carrier-versus-carrier" engagements between American and Japanese naval forces, and pitted elements of the United States Navy's Fifth Fleet against ships and aircraft of the Imperial Japanese Navy's Mobile Fleet and nearby island garrisons.
This was the largest carrier-to-carrier battle in history, involving 24 aircraft carriers, deploying roughly 1,350 carrier-based aircraft.
The aerial part of the battle was nicknamed the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot by American aviators for the severely disproportional loss ratio inflicted upon Japanese aircraft by American pilots and anti-aircraft gunners.
During a debriefing after the first two air battles, a pilot from USS Lexington remarked "Why, hell, it was just like an old-time turkey shoot down home!"
The outcome is generally attributed to a wealth of highly trained American pilots with superior tactics and numerical superiority, and new anti-aircraft ship defensive technology (including the top-secret anti-aircraft proximity fuze), vs. the Japanese use of replacement pilots with not enough flight hours in training and little or no combat experience.
Also, the Japanese defensive plans were directly obtained by the Allies from the plane wreckage of the commander-in-chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy's Combined Fleet, Admiral Mineichi Koga, in March 1944. - Source: Wkipedia, February 19, 2023.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
7 March - 18 July 1944
South East Asia Northern Burma and north east India
Defence of Imphal and Kohima
The Battle of Kohima and Imphal was the bloodiest of World War II in India, and it cost Japan much of its best army in Burma.
(...)
The battlefields in what are now the Indian states of Nagaland and Manipur — some just a few miles from the border with Myanmar, which was then Burma — are also well preserved because of the region’s longtime isolation.
(...)
The battle began some two years after Japanese forces routed the British in Burma in 1942, which brought the Japanese Army to India’s eastern border.
Lt. Gen. Renya Mutaguchi persuaded his Japanese superiors to allow him to attack British forces at Imphal and Kohima in hopes of preventing a British counterattack.
But General Mutaguchi planned to push farther into India to destabilize the British Raj, which by then was already being convulsed by the independence movement led by Mahatma Gandhi.
General Mutaguchi brought a large number of Indian troops captured after the fall of Malaya and Singapore who agreed to join the Japanese in hopes of creating an independent India.
The British were led by Lt. Gen. William Slim, a brilliant tactician who re-formed and retrained the Eastern Army after its crushing defeat in Burma.
The British and Indian forces were supported by planes commanded by the United States Army Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell.
Once the Allies became certain that the Japanese planned to attack, General Slim withdrew his forces from western Burma and had them dig defensive positions in the hills around Imphal Valley, hoping to draw the Japanese into a battle far from their supply lines.
But none of the British commanders believed that the Japanese could cross the nearly impenetrable jungles around Kohima in force, so when a full division of nearly 15,000 Japanese troops came swarming out of the vegetation on April 4, the town was only lightly defended by some 1,500 British and Indian troops.
The Japanese encirclement meant that those troops were largely cut off from reinforcements and supplies, and a bitter battle eventually led the British and Indians to withdraw into a small enclosure next to a tennis court.
The Japanese, without air support or supplies, eventually became exhausted, and the Allied forces soon pushed them out of Kohima and the hills around Imphal.
On June 22, British and Indian forces finally cleared the last of the Japanese from the crucial road linking Imphal and Kohima, ending the siege.
The Japanese 15th Army, 85,000 strong for the invasion of India, was essentially destroyed, with 53,000 dead and missing.
Injuries and illnesses took many of the rest.
There were 16,500 British casualties.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/22/world/asia/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/22/world/asia/
The Battle of Eniwetok was a battle of the Pacific campaign of World War II, fought between 17 February 1944 and 23 February 1944, on Enewetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
The invasion of Eniwetok followed the American success in the Battle of Kwajalein to the southeast.
Capture of Eniwetok would provide an airfield and harbor to support attacks on the Mariana Islands to the northwest.
The operation was officially known as "Operation Catchpole", and was a three-phase operation involving the invasion of the three main islands in the Eniwetok Atoll.
Vice Admiral Raymond Spruance preceded the invasion with Operation Hailstone, a carrier strike against the Japanese base at Truk in the Caroline Islands.
This raid destroyed 39 warships and more than 200 planes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Eniwetok - June 19, 2021
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Eniwetok
Burma
Britain’s Fourteenth Army
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/jun/26/
In June 1942, Japan invaded and occupied Kiska and Attu, the westernmost islands of Alaska's Aleutian Chain, an archipelago of 69 islands stretching some 1,200 miles across the North Pacific Ocean toward Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula.
From a strategic perspective, Japan wanted to close what they perceived as America's back door to the Far East.
http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/02/21/
http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/02/21/
April 18, 1942
Doolittle raids
America’s first strike against the Japanese homeland in World War II
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/23/us/
On April 18, 1942, sixteen B25 bombers, with 80 volunteers commanded by Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle, took off from the aircraft carrier Hornet.
Their mission was to drop the first bombs on Tokyo, Nagoya and Yokohama.
All reached their targets successfully, with little Japanese response.
Then, low on fuel, fifteen of the planes crashed or were abandoned in China.
(The Japanese would eventually execute 250,000 Chinese for helping the American fliers escape.)
A sixteenth plane landed near Vladivostok.
Two of the Doolittle raiders came down in enemy territory and three crewmen were executed.
But 71 men eventually came home.
The raid caused minor damage, but the psychological effect, on both the Americans and the Japanese, was incalculable.
Still recovering militarily and emotionally from Pearl Harbor, America had, through a bold stroke by real heroes, brought the war home to Japan.
Film of the raid was widely distributed; 30 Seconds Over Tokyo (1943), was a bestseller. http://www.pbs.org/perilousfight/battlefield/doolittle_raid_midway/
The raid led by Colonel Doolittle inflicted relatively light damage on military and industrial targets, but it delivered a moral victory to Americans, disconsolate since the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor less than five months earlier, and it was a stunning psychological blow to the Japanese, who had been led to believe that their homeland was inviolable.
The raid became the basis for the 1944 movie “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo,” adapted from the book of the same title by Capt. Ted W. Lawson, a pilot who took part in the attack.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/31/us/
https://www.pbs.org/perilousfight/battlefield/
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/23/us/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/31/us/
https://www.nytimes.com/1943/04/21/
August 7, 1942 - February 9, 1943
Northeast of Australia Solomon Islands Guadalcanal
Guadalcanal Gruesome severed head of a napalmed Japanese soldier propped up below gun turret of a disabled Japanese tank.
Location: Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands
Date taken: February 1943
Photographer: Ralph Theodore Morse (USA, 1917-2015)
Life Images http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=3dec57e9e439ffb4
Bitter contest between the Japanese and the Americans that marked a turning point in the Pacific war.
The struggle on Guadalcanal was protracted, and the period from August 1942 to February 1943 saw some of the most bitter fighting of the war.
In all, there were some 50 actions involving warships or aircraft, 7 major naval battles, and 10 land engagements. http://www.pbs.org/thewar/detail_5210.htm
https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/
Tarawa Atoll Battle of Tarawa November 20 - November 23, 1943
Tarawa Raid And Landing
Photograph: John Florea
Undated
Life Images http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=ffe58804cd654fd7
Tarawa Raid And Landing
Undated
Photograph: John Florea
Life Images http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=f33b9706e8db266f
Credit: National archives
The Bloody, 76-Hour Battle on a Tiny Atoll That Helped End World War II The Battle of Tarawa, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, took a heavy toll on American forces and led to outrage at home. NYT Published Nov. 18, 2023 Updated Nov. 22, 2023
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/18/
US Marines dashing for cover while assaulting Japanese positions on Betio Island.
Location: Betio, Tarawa, Gilbert Islands
Date taken: November 21, 1943
Life Images http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=22a82f93f23885eb
US Marine preparing to throw a hand grenade while under fire on Betio Island during the invasion of Tarawa.
Location: Betio, Tarawa, Gilbert Islands
Date taken: November 20, 1943
Life Images http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=939bb2fa024c0e18
Credit: Frank Filan/Associated Press
The Bloody, 76-Hour Battle on a Tiny Atoll That Helped End World War II The Battle of Tarawa, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, took a heavy toll on American forces and led to outrage at home. NYT Published Nov. 18, 2023 Updated Nov. 22, 2023
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/18/
Credit: National archives
The Bloody, 76-Hour Battle on a Tiny Atoll That Helped End World War II The Battle of Tarawa, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, took a heavy toll on American forces and led to outrage at home. NYT Published Nov. 18, 2023 Updated Nov. 22, 2023
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/18/
Credit: National archives
The Bloody, 76-Hour Battle on a Tiny Atoll That Helped End World War II The Battle of Tarawa, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, took a heavy toll on American forces and led to outrage at home. NYT Published Nov. 18, 2023 Updated Nov. 22, 2023
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/18/
The Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony is occupied by Japanese forces.
The Tarawa Atoll sees some of the fiercest fighting in the Pacific between Japan and the Allied forces. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/country_profiles/2944816.stm
The bloody, 76-hour battle on a tiny atoll that helped end World War II
The Battle of Tarawa, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, took a heavy toll on American forces and led to outrage at home.
Over three days of intense fighting, thousands of soldiers perished on beaches and in the ocean for a prize — a strategic speck of coral sand and its critical air strip, in the middle of the Pacific — that would help decide the outcome of World War II.
Eighty years ago, the United States military attacked the island of Betio, part of the Tarawa atoll in what is today the archipelago nation of Kiribati, to wrest it from Japanese control.
At just 2.5 miles in length, Betio had little significance.
But its location would allow the United States to move northwest: first to the Marshall Islands, then to the Mariana Islands and eventually to Japan itself.
These were the “leapfrogging” tactics the Allies used in the Pacific to weaken Japan’s control of the region, as well as to establish bases to launch further attacks.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/18/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/18/
https://www.npr.org/2015/07/28/
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/
https://www.nytimes.com/1968/11/23/
https://www.nytimes.com/1963/11/21/
https://www.nytimes.com/1946/11/19/
https://www.nytimes.com/1945/03/24/
https://www.nytimes.com/1944/03/12/
https://www.nytimes.com/1943/12/18/
https://www.nytimes.com/1943/12/12/
https://www.nytimes.com/1943/12/07/
https://www.nytimes.com/1943/12/04/
https://www.nytimes.com/1943/12/01/
https://www.nytimes.com/1943/11/30/
https://www.nytimes.com/1943/11/29/
https://www.nytimes.com/1943/11/28/
https://www.nytimes.com/1943/11/27/
1942
Navajo code talkers
Samuel Billison 1926-2004
Chester Nez 1921-2014
For Mr. Nez and his fellows, World War II was quite literally a war of words.
Their work, and the safety of tens of thousands of American servicemen, depended crucially on the code that they had created during 13 fevered weeks in 1942, as the prospect of Allied victory in the Pacific seemed increasingly uncertain.
Members of other Native American tribes, including the Comanche, Choctaw and Winnebago, using codes based on their languages, were also recruited for the war effort, serving in Europe and North Africa.
But the Navajo, who served in the Pacific, furnished the war's single largest contingent of code talkers.
About 400 Navajos followed the original 29 to war;
(...)
Serving on the front lines in the Pacific's key battles, Mr. Nez and other members of the Marine Corps's 382nd Platoon — made up entirely of Navajos recruited for their fluency in the language — used the code to relay movements of American and enemy troops, casualty reports, coordinates of strategic targets and other vital intelligence to Marines in the field.
or other devices that could scramble voice communications that could be used on the front lines,” David A. Hatch, the National Security Agency's historian, said in an interview on Thursday.
“What the code talkers did was to provide absolute security for the information we transmitted on the radios, denying to the enemy vital information that we were picking up from their communications.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/06/
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/06/
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/dec/07/
Internment of American Civilians
https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/eyewitness/html.php?section=6
Bridge on River Kwai
The Japanese used Allied prisoners of war and laborers from Malaysia, India and Singapore beginning in June of 1942 to complete the strategic railway bridge linking Thailand and Burma, now known as Myanmar.
More than 300,000 prisoners and slave laborers worked on the 268-mile rail line.
An estimated 90,000 died from disease, malnutrition and ill treatment.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-11-19-mn-3584-story.html
1942
Philippines
Fall of Bataan - April 9, 1942
American troops surrender to Japanese forces - May 1942
https://www.archives.gov/research/military/ww2/photos
https://www.loc.gov/item/afc2001001.02940/
April 9, 1942
Philippines
The fall of Bataan
News of this atrocity sparked outrage in the US, as shown by this poster. The newspaper clipping shown refers to the Bataan Death March. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Anti-Japan2.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bataan_Death_March
Creator: Office for Emergency Management. Office of War Information. Domestic Operations Branch. Bureau of Special Services. (03/09/1943 - 09/15/1945) NARA ARC ID: 515483 / Local ID: 44-PA-1804 http://arcweb.archives.gov/arc/action/ExternalIdSearch?id=515483&jScript=true
The Bataan Death March from Bataan to Cabanatuan, the prison camp
as many as 11,000 soldiers died at the hands of the Japanese in the Philippines during the Bataan Death March in 1942 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/us/16brown.html
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/ https://www.archives.gov/research/military/ww2/photos https://www.loc.gov/item/afc2001001.02940/ https://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=124054&page=1
https://www.ina.fr/video/AFE98000046/
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/04/08/
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/07/19/
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/us/16brown.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/books/17garner.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/books/excerpt-tears-in-the-darkness.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/25/opinion/25norman.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/26/opinion/26kotler.html
Military operations in the Pacific > Timeline
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/
June 4-7 1942
Pacific ocean
USA, Japan
Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway is viewed as a turning point of the war in the Pacific because of the island's strategic importance.
Its location would allow an occupying Japanese force to launch attacks against Hawaii and the American fleet based there, as well as Alaska http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/94/9412/wwii.html
https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/7/
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/us/
https://www.theguardian.com/century/1940-1949/
15 February 1942
Singapore forced to surrender
British forces in Singapore surrender unconditionally to the Japanese seven days after enemy troops first stormed the island.
(...)
comes one week after Japanese forces invaded Singapore and only two weeks since their onslaught on the Malay Peninsula forced the British troops' withdrawal to the island. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/15/newsid_3529000/3529447.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/15/
at the end of 1941 (...) the Japanese launched their great assault across a front stretching from the Malayan peninsula to the central Pacific.
An all-conquering, lightning march down the Indochina peninsula brought 30,000 Japanese troops to the Strait of Johor, between Malaya and Singapore Island.
The British garrison numbered nearly 140,000 but was in total chaos, under‑equipped with no aircraft or tanks, demoralised and disorganised.
General Arthur Percival surrendered the island on 15 February 1942 – the greatest defeat in British military history.
The prisoners – British, Australian, Indian and Malayan - were initially force-marched to Changi, which rapidly became an overcrowded and insanitary concentration camp.
From there, many thousands went to Burma to work on the railway to Siam (now known as Thailand) in appalling conditions.
Brutal interrogations and gratuitous torture became routine. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/oct/09/eric-lomax
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/oct/09/
Pacific Campaign 1941-1945
By Lt. Victor Jorgensen, May 1945. Pvt. J.B. Slagle, USA, receives his daily dressing of wounds on board USS SOLACE enroute from Okinawa to Guam.
1999 digital print. General Records of the Department of the Navy, 1798-1947. (80-G-413963) http://www.archives.gov/press/press-kits/picturing-the-century-photos/pvt-j-b-slagle.jpg
Picturing the Century: One Hundred Years of Photography from the National Archives Eight Portfolios from Part II http://www.archives.gov/press/press-kits/1930-census-photos/photos-2.html
Torpedoed Japanese destroyer photographed through periscope of U.S.S. Wahoo or U.S.S. Nautilus, June 1942.
80-G-418331. Pictures of World War II > Navy & Naval Battles US National Archives http://www.archives.gov/research/ww2/photos/images/ww2-62.jpg http://www.archives.gov/research/ww2/photos/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/
South-East Asia Burma Campaign 1941/42-1945
Battle-weary soldier who is a member of Merrill's Marauders, pausing with a cigarette during Burma campaign in WWII.
Location: Myanmar
Date taken: 1944
Photograph: Bernard Hoffman
Life Images http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=496fa633d8db3f08
https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/
becomes major battleground during World War II
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-15519757
Japan
American POWs
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/13/
Japan
Kamikaze pilots
thousands of young Japanese men tasked to give their lives in last-ditch suicide missions near the end of World War II.
(...)
In dogfights, pilots were instructed to “aim to carve the enemy with our own propellers,”
(...)
The tactics hinged on the belief that Japanese airmen were more willing to die than their enemies.
The force of that conviction was put to the test in October 1944, when Japan’s Navy decided to gamble everything to stop an American attack on its forces in the Philippines, during what would become known as the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/
Japan aircraft
Zero — the agile Japanese fighter plane that dominated the Pacific skies in the war’s early years —
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/
USA > Japanese-Americans internment camps
USA > Pearl Harbor - 7 December 1941
1937
In the West, 1939 is considered the start of World War II.
But in Asia, China and Japan had been at war since 1937.
(...)
By 1940, after losing backing from the Soviets, China desperately needed more planes.
At the time, the U.S. was not officially part of World War II.
But President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was concerned about the prospect of Japan defeating China and turning its sights on the U.S.
Chennault traveled back to the U.S., pulling what strings he could to get planes.
With the help of T.V. Soong, a Chinese official who was also Chiang's brother-in-law, a deal was worked out to allow China to buy 100 American-made Curtiss P-40 fighter planes.
As for who would fly and maintain them, many of the pilots in China's existing air force were poorly trained.
So Chennault sent recruiters to U.S. military bases.
"He managed to get Roosevelt to allow some of our military pilots — that was the original AVG — to resign their commissions in the U.S. military and go to China as mercenaries, basically, because it was against the international rules for any American military person to be involved in the conflict over there," Jobe tells NPR.
This was mid-1941 — before Pearl Harbor and before the U.S. declared war on Japan.
https://www.npr.org/2021/12/19/
https://www.npr.org/2021/12/19/
Related > Anglonautes > History > 20th century > WW2 (1939-1945)
Tokyo, Japan > International Military Tribunal 1946-1948
USA > Japan > Hiroshima and Nagasaki - August 1945
USA > Pearl Harbor - 7 December 1941
Related > Anglonautes > History > 20th century > WW1, WW2
Timeline in articles, pictures, podcasts
Timeline in articles, pictures, podcasts
Related > Anglonautes > Vocapedia
conflicts, wars, climate, poverty > asylum seekers, displaced people,
intelligence, spies, surveillance
Related > Anglonautes > Arts > Photography
William Eugene Smith (USA, 1918-1978)
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