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Second Sino-Japanese War
This full-scale war between China and the Empire of Japan is often regarded as the beginning of World War II in Asia. The Second Sino-Japanese War was the largest Asian war in the 20th century, and it has been called "the Asian holocaust," due to the acts committed on Chinese citizens by Japanese soldiers, namely in Nanjing. After the Japanese attacks on Malaya and Pearl Harbor in 1941, the war merged with other conflicts which are generally considered the Pacific theatre of WW2 -
Rape of Nanjing
Over a period of six weeks, Imperial Japanese Army forces brutally murdered hundreds of thousands of people in the Chinese city of Nanjing. The event was known as the Rape of Nanjing, as tens of thousands of women and girls were sexually assaulted. -
Tripartite Pact
An agreement between Germany, Italy, and Japan. It created a defense alliance between the countries and was largely intended to deter the United States from entering the conflict. -
Japanese-Soviet Pact
A non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and the Empire of Japan signed on April 13, 1941, two years after the conclusion of the Soviet-Japanese Border War. The Soviets broke this agreement later in the war and joined the Allied invasion of Japan -
Pearl Harbour
A surprise attack carried out by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service against a US navy air base at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii. This event triggered the USA's participation in WW2 -
Unit 731
Unit 731 was a secret biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that engaged in lethal human experimentation and biological weapons manufacturing during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and World War II. The unit is estimated to have killed between 200,000 and 300,000 people. -
Battle of Iwo Jima
A major battle in which the United States Marine Corps landed on and eventually captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Imperial Japanese Army. The Japanese Army positions on the island were heavily fortified, with a dense network of bunkers, hidden artillery positions, and 18 km (11 mi) of tunnels. Of the 21,000 Japanese soldiers on Iwo Jima at the beginning of the battle, only 216 were taken prisoner. -
Battle of Okinawa
The initial invasion of Okinawa on 1 April 1945 was the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific Theater of World War II. The battle was the bloodiest in the Pacific, with around 50,000 Allied and 84,166–117,000 Japanese casualties -
Bombing of Hiroshima
American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion immediately killed an estimated 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. -
Bombing of Nagasaki
Three days after the bombing of Hiroshima, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. -
Instrument of Surrender
On September 2, 1945, Japanese representatives signed the official Instrument of Surrender, prepared by the War Department and approved by President Harry S. Truman.