WW2 in the pacific

Pre WWII Relations Japan & Allies

• WWI Japan was with the Allies (France, Britain, USA)

• 1919 wanted a “racial equality clause” in League of Nations

• 1923: Japan-British Alliance ended 

• 1924 USA bans immigration for Japanese to USA 

• Japan moves from democracy to militarism

• 1930s Right Wing

Japanese Expansion

• 1931 Japan invades Manchuria (China)

• 1937 Invade China and attack Capital city

• 1940 Japan takes Vietnam (French)

• Japan-USA war seems inevitable

Attack on Pearl Harbor

• USA decodes a message from Japan. An attack is coming.

• Japan’s gamble

• December 7, 1941 Japan attacks Pearl Harbor

• Send approx. 350 planes in two waves; the attack lasts 2 hours

• Americans are unprepared

• US Navy suffers severe damage

USA Enters WW2

• Dec. 8^th 1941: US president Roosevelt & gov’t declare War on Japan 

• Dec. 11^th Italy & Germany Declare war on US

• US declares war on Germany

Japanese Success

• 1942 for 6 months Japan takes over the Pacific

• Huge blow to Britain

POW (prisoners of war)

• Treatment of POW by the Japanese Army

• According to tradition: it was disgraceful to surrender

• POW were treated as slaves, starved, beaten, killed

Japanese Internment Camps

• 120,000 people of Japanese descent were forced to leave their home & live detention camps from 1942-1945

• US was worried they could be spies

Turning Point

• June 1942: Battle of Midway

• “Leap-Frogging Strategy”: Strongly defended Japanese islands where skipped

• The Bushido Code: loyalty to the Emperor Hirohito

American Victories

• June 1944: US control Marianas Islands

• Oct. 1944: Philippines are recaptured by US

• June 1945 Battle of Okinawa

The Atomic Bomb

• Manhattan project: for 6 years the Americans (support from Britain & Canada) worked to create a nuclear bomb

• 16^th July 1945: US successfully tests first bomb

• 26^th July 1945: US tells Japan to surrender of face “utter destruction”

• 6 August 1945: The US drops on atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima

• 9 August 1945: The US drops another bomb on Nagasaki

• Japan surrenders and ends WW2