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Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, in the United States Territory of Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941.The base was attacked by 353 Japanese fighter planes, bombers, and torpedo planes in two waves, launched from six aircraft carriers. All eight U.S. Navy battleships were damaged, with four being sunk -
Battle of Java Sea
The Japanese forces gathered to strike at Java, and on February 27th, 1942, the main American-British-Dutch-Australian Command (ABDACOM) naval force, under Doorman, sailed northeast from Surabaya to intercept a convoy of the Eastern Invasion Force approaching from the Makassar Strait. The battle consisted of a series of attempts over a seven-hour period by Doorman's Combined Striking Force to reach and attack the invasion convoy. -
Loss of Philippines & Bataan Death March
Prisoners were stripped of their weapons and valuables, and told to march to Balanga, the capital of Bataan. Some were beaten, bayoneted, and mistreated. as the forcible transfer from Saisaih Pt. and Mariveles to Camp O'Donnell by the Imperial Japanese Army of 60,000–80,000 Filipino and American prisoners of war which began on April 9, 1942, after the three-month Battle of Bataan in the Philippines during World War II. -
Doolittle Raid
Also known as the Tokyo Raid, was an air raid by the United States on the Japanese capital Tokyo and other places on the island during World War II, the first air raid to strike the Japanese Home Islands. It demonstrated that Japan itself was vulnerable to American air attack, served as retaliation for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941 and provided an important boost to U.S. morale while damaging Japanese morale. -
Battle of Coral Sea
The Battle of the Coral Sea, fought during 4–8 May 1942, 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. The battle was the first action in which aircraft carriers engaged each other, as well as the first in which neither side's ships sighted or fired directly upon the other. -
Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway was a crucial and decisive naval battle in the Pacific Theatre of World War II. Between 4 and June 7, 1942, only six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea, the United States Navy under Admirals Chester Nimitz, Frank Jack Fletcher, and Raymond A. Spruance decisively defeated an attacking fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy. -
Guadalcanal
The World War II Battle of Guadalcanal 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. -
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. The strategy was employed by the United States in the Pacific War against the Empire of Japan during World War II. Island Hopping began from the Midway Islands and culminated in the defeat of all Japanese Island colonies. -
Battle of Leyte Gulf
It was fought in waters of the Leyte Gulf, near the Philippine islands of Leyte, Samar and Luzon, from 23–26 October 1944, between combined American and Australian forces and the Imperial Japanese Navy. 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
Was a major battle in which the United States Armed Forces landed and eventually captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. The American invasion, designated Operation Detachment, had the goal of capturing the entire island, including the three Japanese-controlled airfields, to provide a staging area for attacks on the Japanese main islands. -
Battle of Okinawa
Codenamed Operation Iceberg was fought on the Ryukyu Islands of Okinawa and included the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific War during World War II. The 82-day-long battle lasted from early April until mid-June 1945. After a long campaign of island hopping, the Allies were approaching Japan, and planned to use Okinawa, a large island only 340 mi away from mainland Japan, as a base for air operations on the planned invasion of Japanese mainland. -
Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima
On August 6, 1945, during World War II, an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. -
Atomic Bomb on Nagasaki
On Aug. 9, 1945, three days after the bombing of Hiroshima, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki. The dropping of the bomb occurred at noon, Japanese time. It described Nagasaki as “an important industrial and shipping area with a population of about 258,000” -
VJ Day
A name chosen for the day on which Japan surrendered, in effect ending World War II, and subsequent anniversaries of that event. The term has been applied to both of the days on which the initial announcement of Japan's surrender was made – well as to September 2, 1945, when the signing made it official
