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Japan invadeds parts of China 1931-32. Troops from both sides fight each other at the Marco Polo Bridge near Peking/Beijing. The US stopped trading oil with Japan in an attempt to stop this.
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Visit the Page The bombing of the US navy base and the events that lead up to it.
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The Nazi Germans invad Poland; Britain and France declare war on Germany.
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The Japanese invade French Indochina in order to stop all imports to China. Because of this, the US also embargoed all oil exports to Japan. The Panama Canal was also closed.
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USSR and Japan sign a neutrality pact so Japan can keep invading China and destroy the US fleet with no interferences.
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Japanese bombers head to Oahu Is, Hawaii for their surprise attack, where Pearl Harbor is located. Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku had planned this very carefully.
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President Franklin Delano Roosevelt tries for the last time to make peace with the Emperor of Japan, but there is no reply. US intellegence believes there will be an attack
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The Japanese navy fleet, under the command of Admiral Nagumo Chuichi, surprise attack Pearl Harbor, destroying many ships and aircraft, and killing 2000 people
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Congress declares war on Japan, with only one dissenting vote. This means war on Germany and Italy, too.
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Admiral Chester W. Nimintz is appointed the commander of the US Navy after Admiral Husband E. Kimmel was fired because of the attack.
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Being hit by Japanese torpedoes, it sunk and was never recomissioned. Some parts of it were salvaged, while a memorial was built on top of the rest to commemorate all 1000+ sailors that died on the ship.
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Colonel Paul Tibbets drops a uranium atomic bomb, nicknamed "Little Boy" on the Japanese city Hiroshima.
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Adolf Hitler commits suicide, leaving Karl Doenitz to be dictator. Doenitz tries to negotiate conditional surrender, but ends up having Colonel General Alfred Jodl to surrender unconditioally on May 7.
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Another plutonium bomb (Fat Man) is dropped on Nagasaki, after there is no response of surrender from Japan. The original targets were Kokura, Kyoto and Niigata.
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Japan surrenders after atomic bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, ending the war. Japan formally surrendered on August 15 though.
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A memorial was erected above the battleship USS Utah in 1950. The exact date is unknown. The USS Oklahoma was also raised, but it was too damaged, so put back intot the water.
