Pacific Theater Timeline

  • Pearl Harbor

    Pearl Harbor
    Pearl Habor had an emormous emotional impact. For the Japanese, it provided a major boost to national pride adn encouraged them to continue their assult. For Americans, it inspired a firm resolve to fight. Some Japanese leaders seemed to sense the dual danger of Japanese confidence adn American anger.hundreds of Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii. The barrage lasted just two hours, but it was devastating: The Japanese managed to destroy
  • Pearl Harbor

    Pearl Harbor
    destroy nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight enormous battleships, and almost 200 airplanes. More than 2,000 Americans soldiers and sailors died in the attack, and another 1,000 were wounded.The day after the assault, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan; Congress approved his declaration with just one dissenting vote. Three days later, Japanese allies Germany and Italy declared war on US. After two year US join WW2.
  • Battle of Java Sea

    Battle of Java Sea
    The Battle of the Java Sea was a decisive naval battle of the Pacific campaign of World War II. Allied navies suffered a disastrous defeat at the hand of the Imperial Japanese Navy, on 27 February 1942, and in secondary actions over successive days. The American-British-Dutch-Australian Command (ABDACOM) Strike Force commander—Rear-Admiral Karel Doorman—was killed. The aftermath of the battle included several smaller actions around Java, including the smaller but also significant Battle of
  • Battle of Java Sea

    Battle of Java Sea
    Sunda Strait. These defeats led to Japanese occupation of the entire Netherlands East Indies.The battle was the largest surface ship engagement since the Battle of Jutland in 1916.
  • Loss of Philippines & Bataan Death March

    Loss of Philippines & Bataan Death March
    This was 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.About 2,500–10,000 Filipino and 100–650 American prisoners of war died before they could reach their destination. The reported death tolls vary, especially amongst Filipino POWs, because historians cannot determine how many
  • Loss of Philippines and Bataan Death March

    Loss of Philippines and Bataan Death March
    prisoners blended in with the civilian population and escaped. The march went from Mariveles, Bataan, to San Fernando, Pampanga. From San Fernando, survivors were loaded to a box train and were brought to Camp O'Donnell in Capas, Tarlac.The 60 mi (97 km) march was characterized by occasional severe physical abuse and resulted in some fatalities inflicted upon prisoners and civilians alike by the Japanese Army. It was later judged by an Allied military commission to be a Japanese war crime.
  • Doolittle Raid

    Doolittle Raid
    Sixteen U.S. Army Air Forces B-25B Mitchell medium bombers were launched without fighter escort from the U.S. Navy's aircraft carrier USS Hornet deep in the Western Pacific Ocean, each with a crew of five men. The plan called for them to bomb military targets in Japan, and to continue westward to land in China—landing a medium bomber on Hornet was impossible. Fifteen of the aircraft reached China, and the other one landed in the Soviet Union. All but three of the crew survived, but all lost
  • Doolittle Raid

    Doolittle Raid
    was an air raid by the United States on the Japanese capital Tokyo and other places on Honshu 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 7 December 1941, and provided an important boost to U.S. morale while damaging Japanese morale.The raid was planned and led by Lieutenant Colonel James "Jimmy" Doolittle, U.S. Army Air
  • Battle of Coral Sea

    Battle of Coral Sea
    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. In an attempt to strengthen their defensive positioning for their empire in the South Pacific, Japanese forces decided to invade and occupy Port Moresby in New Guinea
  • Battle of Coral Sea

    Battle of Coral Sea
    and Tulagi in the southeastern Solomon Islands. The plan to accomplish this, called Operation MO, involved several major units of Japan's Combined Fleet, including two fleet carriers and a light carrier to provide air cover for the invasion fleets, under the overall command of Japanese Admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue. The US learned of the Japanese plan through signals intelligence and sent two United States Navy carrier task forces and a joint Australian-American cruiser force, under the overallcomman
  • Battle of Midway

    Battle of Midway
    was a crucial and decisive naval battle in the Pacific Theatre of World War II. 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 under Admirals Isoroku Yamamoto, Chuichi Nagumo, and Nobutake Kondo near Midway Atoll, inflicting devastating damage on the Japanese fleet that proved irreparable. Military historian John Keegan called it "the most stunning and decisive blow in the
  • Battle of Midway

    Battle of Midway
    history of naval warfare. The Japanese plan was to lure the United States' aircraft carriers into a trap.[12] The Japanese also intended to occupy Midway as part of an overall plan to extend their defensive perimeter in response to the Doolittle air raid on Tokyo. This operation was also considered preparatory for further attacks against Fiji, Samoa, and Hawaii itself.
  • Guadalcanal

    Guadalcanal
    (indigenous name: Isatabu) is the principal island in Guadalcanal Province of the nation of Solomon Islands in the South-Western Pacific. It was discovered by the Spanish expedition of Álvaro de Mendaña in 1568. The name comes from Guadalcanal, a village in the province of Seville, in Andalusia, Spain, birthplace of Pedro de Ortega Valencia, a member of Mendaña's At the end of the war, Honiara, on the north coast of Guadalcanal, became the new capital of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate
  • Island Hopping Strategy

    Island Hopping Strategy
    is the phrase given to the strategy employed by the United States to gain military bases and secure the many small islands in the Pacific. The attack was lead by General Douglas MacArthur, Commander of the Allied forces in the South west Pacific, and Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander-in-chief of the Pacific fleet. The US troops targeted the islands that were not as strongly defended by the Japanese. They took control of those islands, and quickly constructed landing strips and small military
  • Battle of Leyte Gulf

    Battle of Leyte Gulf
    The majority of its surviving heavy ships, deprived of fuel, remained in their bases for the rest of the Pacific War. The battle consisted of four separate engagements between the opposing forces: the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea, the Battle of Surigao Strait, the Battle of Cape Engaño and the Battle off Samar, as well as other actions.It was the first battle in which Japanese aircraft carried out organized kamikaze attacks.By the time of the battle, Japan had fewer aircraft than the Allied
  • Battle of Leyte Gulf

    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 and, by some criteria, possibly the largest naval battle in history.fought between combined American and Australian forces and the Imperial Japanese Navy.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

    Battle of Iwo Jima
    The American amphibious invasion of Iwo Jima during World War II stemmed from the need for a base near the Japanese coast. Following elaborate preparatory air and naval bombardment, three U.S. marine divisions landed on the island in February 1945. Iwo Jima was defended by roughly 23,000 Japanese army and navy troops, who fought from an elaborate network of caves, dugouts, tunnels and underground installations. Despite the difficulty of the conditions, the marines wiped out the defending forces
  • Battle of Okinawa

    Battle of Okinawa
    Last and biggest of the Pacific island battles of World War II, the Okinawa campaign (April 1—June 22, 1945) 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—including 14,000 dead.
  • Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima

    Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima
    On this day in 1945, at 8:16 a.m. Japanese time, an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, drops the world’s first atom bomb, over the city of Hiroshima. Approximately 80,000 people are killed as a direct result of the blast, and another 35,000 are injured. At least another 60,000 would be dead by the end of the year from the effects of fallout.
  • Atomic Bomb on Nagasaki

    Atomic Bomb on Nagasaki
    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. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Japan’s Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s unconditional surrender in World War II in a radio address on August 15, citing devistation
  • VJ Day

    VJ Day
    it was announced that Japan had surrendered unconditionally to the Allies, effectively ending World War II. Since then, both August 14 and August 15 have been known as “Victoryover Japan Day,” or simply “V-J Day.” The term has also been used for September 2, 1945, when Japan’s formal surrender took place aboard the U.S.S. Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay. Coming several months after the surrender of Nazi Germany, Japan’s capitulation in the Pacific brought six years of hostilities to a final