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NCSCOS Goal 10

Japanese Victories

-Pearl Harbor

• Successful Japanese attack against America

-Victories in much of Pacific

• Japanese creating an empire in Asia and the Pacific

-MacArthur retreats from the Philippines

• Outnumbered by the Japanese

“Bataan Death March”

• Forced removal of American and Filipino civilians

• 10,000 of 76,000 die in March

• 15,000 more die in camp

• Japan violates Geneva Convention (rules of how to treat prisoners)

-MacArthur pledges to return

• “I shall return”

Americans and Filipino troops were backed up to the Bataan Peninsula

General Douglas

MacArthur pledges “I

shall return.”

He will, two years later.

The Bataan Death March

Beheadings, cut throats and being casually shot were the more common and merciful actions — compared to bayonet stabbings, rapes, guttings, numerous rifle butt beatings and a

deliberate refusal to allow the prisoners food or water while keeping them continually marching for nearly a

week (for the slowest survivors) in tropical heat. Falling down, unable to continue moving was tantamount to a death sentence, as was any degree of protest or expression of displeasure.

America Recovers-Bombing of Tokyo April 1942

• AKA Doolittle’s Raid

• Meant to strike back at Japan for Pearl Harbor

• Launch plane from aircraft carrier

-Coral Sea Battle

• Japanese try to take Australia

air power in the navy

• Fought by planes from carriers; Japanese were not successful

-Battle of Midway, 1942

• Allies knew Japan’s next target because had broken code

Adm. Chester Nimitz

inflicted great damage to much larger Japanese fleet

• Crippled the Japanese

-Japan never recovered its naval power

• Turning point of the war in the Pacific - Allies retaking land

American planes taking

off from aircraft

carrier. Some took off with

broom handles a painted

black as gun turrets to

conserve fuel.

The War at Sea:

The Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway

USS Yorktown Sinks

Island Hopping-as the U./S. built its naval and

air advantage the Japanese fortified every island

• Every island in the Pacific was crucial to both sides

- U.S. bypasses many islands and takes weaker ones for airfields

• U.S. wants to fortify islands and move closer to attack Japan

-Guadalcanal, 1942

• Japanese defeated in brutal fighting and conditions

-Philippines, 1944

• Battle of Leyte Gulf

• Allies retake, Japan on defense

                                              

Guadalcanal was America’s first land offensive of the war and its first taste of

jungle warfare.. The battle lasted nearly 6 months and the island became known as

the “Island of Death.”

“Hell was furry red spiders as big as your fist, giant lizards as long as your leg,

leeches falling from trees to suck blood, armies of white ants with bites of fire,

scurrying scorpions inflaming any flesh they touched, enormous rats and bats

everywhere, and rivers with waiting crocodiles. Hell was the sour, foul smell of the squishy jungle, humidity that rotted a

body with hours,…stinking wet heat of dripping rain forests that sapped the strength of a man. Hell was an enemy

hidden in the dark deep shadows, an enemy so fanatic that it used its own dead as

booby traps.” Ralph Martin

“People of the Philippines, I have returned.” General Douglas MacArthur

US troops led a raid on the Japanese prison camps in the Philippines to rescue

the POWs from Bataan.

High Costs

-Japanese defending with every man every man sacrifices himself for country

kamikaze attacks - suicide attack to crash bomb-laden planes into Allied ships

-Iwo Jima, 1945

6,000 Marines die

• Needed as a base from which to bomb Japan

• Only 200 Japanese survive

-Roosevelt dies

-Okinawa, 1945

higher death totals

• Last stop before Japan

• 7,600 US lives lost

• 110,000 Japanese lives lost

-warnings of what invasion would cost

Mount SuribachiOne US soldier called Iwo Jima

an “ugly, smelly glob of

cold lava squatting in a surly ocean.”

This island was the most heavily

defended spot on earth, with

more than 20,700

Japanese troops

entrenched in tunnels and

caves

Battle of Iwo Jima: Flag Raisers

Three of the Six died before the battle ever ended

Scenes from the

Battle of Okinawa

Manhattan Project

-about 600,000 people worked in the project

• Most did not know what the project was intended for (not even V.P. Truman)

-J. Robert Oppenheimer led the project at Los Alamos NM

-some scientists urged the gov’t not to use the weapon

-Truman made the decision to use the weapon on Japan

• Rather than risk millions of lives in a Japanese invasion

Ultimate Weapon

-Before atomic weapon was used, airdrops of leaflets urged Japanese to surrender

• Japan warned

-Japanese leaders refuse to unconditionally surrender

-August, 1945 the bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb over Hiroshima

• 43 seconds later, all buildings gone and 200,000 dead, still would not surrender

-another bomb dropped on Nagasaki

-Japanese surrender

-V-J Day (Victory over Japan)

• September, 1945, WWII officially over

Hiroshima After the Atomic Bomb

Rebuilding the World

-Yalta Conference, 1945 meeting of the Big Three

• Before the end of the war, Stalin wants to divide Germany into zones (4 zones to each ally)

-Creation of the United Nations

• Peacekeeping union created after V-E Day to prevent world wars

• Sets up 2 houses: General Assembly and Security Council

• Created at San Francisco Conference

-Potsdam Conference, July 1945

division of Germany

• 4 sections to be occupied by major Allied nations, Berlin also divided

-Nuremburg Trials

• German leaders tried for actions during the Holocaust

war crimes

several leaders executed

Occupation of Japan

-General Douglas MacArthur

• Leader of U.S. forces in Japan

-reformed Japan’s economy

• Japanese leaders put on trial and sentenced to death for actions

• Introduced free-market economy with remarkable recovery

-established democratic government

-guaranteed basic freedoms

• Even granted women’s suffrage

Constitution still exists as Japan’s government

• “MacArthur Constitution”

General Douglas MacArthur became the leader of the U.S. forces in Japan after WWII. His strategic placement will set him up for both success and

failure following WWII.