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Pearl Harbor
Just before 8 on the morning of December 7, 1941, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii. The Japanese managed to 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. -
Executive Order 9066
Ten weeks after the Japanese bombed pearl harbor, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive order 9066, authorizing the removal of any or all people from military areas "as deemed necessary or desirable." -
Manhatten Project
At the time World War II broke out in Europe, America's scientific community was fighting to catch up to German advances in the development of atomic power. In December 1942, the U.S. government authorized a top-secret program of neclear testing and development, codenamed "The Manhatten Prject." Its goal was the development of the world's first atomic bomb. -
Death at Bataan
Japanese foreces defeated a combined U.S. and Filipino army in the battle of Bataan, in the philippines. They then forced more than 70,000 captured soldiers to march more than 60 miles north in brutally hot weather to a captured U.S. army base. Along the way, the marchers were starved, deprived of sleep, and beaten. -
The Kamikaze
Kamikazes and the creed that went with the Kamikazes in World War two is usually associated with those Japanese pilots who flew into American warships in an effort to sink them. -
Battle of Iwo Jima
30,000 marines began their assault on Iwo Jima, a small island in southern Japan some 600 mile south of Tokyo. The Battle of Iwo Jima would produce one of the highest casualty rates of World War II. -
Atomic bomb was dropped
The dropping of the bomb on Japan ended World War two. The atomic bomb was created in the south western desert of the United States under top secret conditions. The army estimated that it would have cost between 500,000 to 1,000,000 soldiers lives to mount a successful full scale invasion of Japan. -
The Atomic Bomb
In early August 1945, U.S. forces dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing more than 100,000 people and exposing tens of thousands more to deadly radiation. -
Japans surrender
On August 15, Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's surrender, citing the devastation power of "a new and most crual bomb."
