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NCSCOS Goal 10
Japanese Victories
-Pearl Harbor
• Successful Japanese attack against
America
Americans and
Filipino troops
were backed up
to the Bataan
Peninsula
-Victories in much of Pacific
• Japanese creating an empire in Asia
and the Pacific
-MacArthur retreats from the Philippines
• Outnumbered by the Japanese
“Bataan Death March”
• Forced removal of American and
Filipino civilians
• 10,000 of 76,000 die in March
• 15,000 more die in camp
• Japan violates Geneva Convention (rules
of how to treat prisoners)
-MacArthur pledges to return
• “I shall return”
General Douglas
MacArthur pledges
“I shall return.”
He will, two years
later.
The Bataan Death March
Beheadings, cut throats and being
casually shot were the more common
and merciful actions — compared to
bayonet stabbings, rapes, guttings,
numerous rifle butt beatings and a
deliberate refusal to allow the
prisoners food or water while keeping
them continually marching for nearly a
week (for the slowest survivors) in
tropical heat. Falling down, unable to
continue moving was tantamount to a
death sentence, as was any degree of
protest or expression of displeasure.
American planes
taking off from
aircraft carrier.
Some took off with
broom handles a
painted black as gun
turrets to conserve
fuel.
America Recovers
-Bombing of Tokyo April 1942
• AKA Doolittle’s Raid
• Meant to strike back at Japan for Pearl
Harbor
• Launch plane from aircraft carrier
-Coral Sea Battle
• Japanese try to take Australia
air power in the navy
• Fought by planes from carriers;
Japanese were not successful
-Battle of Midway, 1942
• Allies knew Japan’s next target because
had broken code
Adm. Chester Nimitz
inflicted great damage to much larger
Japanese fleet
• Crippled the Japanese
-Japan never recovered its naval power
• Turning point of the war in the Pacific Allies retaking land
The War at Sea:
The Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway
USS Yorktown Sinks
Island Hopping
-as the U./S. built its naval and air
advantage the Japanese fortified
every island
• Every island in the Pacific was
crucial to both sides
- U.S. bypasses many islands and
takes weaker ones for airfields
• U.S. wants to fortify islands and
move closer to attack Japan
-Guadalcanal, 1942
• Japanese defeated in brutal
fighting and conditions
-Philippines, 1944
• Battle of Leyte Gulf
• Allies retake, Japan on defense
“People of the Philippines, I have returned.” General
Douglas MacArthur
Guadalcanal was America’s first land offensive of the war
and its first taste of jungle warfare.. The battle lasted nearly
6 months and the island became known as the “Island of
Death.”
“Hell was furry red spiders as big as your fist, giant lizards as
long as your leg, leeches falling from trees to suck blood,
armies of white ants with bites of fire, scurrying scorpions
inflaming any flesh they touched, enormous rats and bats
everywhere, and rivers with waiting crocodiles. Hell was the
sour, foul smell of the squishy jungle, humidity that rotted
a body with hours,…stinking wet heat of dripping rain
forests that sapped the strength of a man. Hell was an
enemy hidden in the dark deep shadows, an enemy so
fanatic that it used its own dead as booby traps.” Ralph
Martin
US troops led a raid on the Japanese prison camps in the
Philippines to rescue the POWs from Bataan.
Mount Suribachi
One US soldier
called Iwo Jima an
“ugly, smelly glob of
cold lava squatting
in a surly ocean.”
This island was the
most heavily
defended spot on
earth, with more
than 20,700
Japanese troops
entrenched in
tunnels and caves
High Costs
-Japanese defending with every man
every man sacrifices himself for
country
kamikaze attacks - suicide attack to
crash bomb-laden planes into Allied
ships
-Iwo Jima, 1945
6,000 Marines die
• Needed as a base from which to bomb
Japan
• Only 200 Japanese survive
-Roosevelt dies
-Okinawa, 1945
higher death totals
• Last stop before Japan
• 7,600 US lives lost
• 110,000 Japanese lives lost
-warnings of what invasion would cost
Battle of Iwo Jima:
Flag Raisers
Three of the Six died before the battle ever ended
Scenes from the
Battle of Okinawa
Manhattan Project
-about 600,000 people worked in
the project
• Most did not know what the
project was intended for (not
even V.P. Truman)
-J. Robert Oppenheimer led the
project at Los Alamos NM
-some scientists urged the gov’t
not to use the weapon
-Truman made the decision to
use the weapon on Japan
• Rather than risk millions of
lives in a Japanese invasion
Ultimate Weapon
-Before atomic weapon was used,
airdrops of leaflets urged
Japanese to surrender
• Japan warned
-Japanese leaders refuse to
unconditionally surrender
-August, 1945 the bomber Enola Gay
dropped an atomic bomb over
Hiroshima
• 43 seconds later, all buildings gone
and 200,000 dead, still would not
surrender
-another bomb dropped on Nagasaki
-Japanese surrender
-V-J Day (Victory over Japan)
• September, 1945, WWII officially
over
Hiroshima After the
Atomic Bomb
Rebuilding the World
-Yalta Conference, 1945 meeting of the Big
Three
• Before the end of the war, Stalin wants to
divide Germany into zones (4 zones to each
ally)
-Creation of the United Nations
• Peacekeeping union created after V-E Day
to prevent world wars
• Sets up 2 houses: General Assembly and
Security Council
• Created at San Francisco Conference
-Potsdam Conference, July 1945
division of Germany
• 4 sections to be occupied by major Allied
nations, Berlin also divided
-Nuremburg Trials
• German leaders tried for actions during the
Holocaust
war crimes
several leaders executed
Occupation of Japan
-General Douglas MacArthur
• Leader of U.S. forces in Japan
-reformed Japan’s economy
• Japanese leaders put on trial and
sentenced to death for actions
• Introduced free-market economy
with remarkable recovery
-established democratic government
-guaranteed basic freedoms
• Even granted women’s suffrage
Constitution still exists as Japan’s
government
• “MacArthur Constitution”
General Douglas MacArthur became the leader of
the U.S. forces in Japan after WWII. His strategic
placement will set him up for both success and
failure following WWII.