– Fighting between Allies and Japanese on islands, water, and air of the Pacific Ocean

• Allies used “island hopping” or fighting island by island to push closer to Japan

• Aircraft carriers (large ships that planes could takeoff of and land on) were very important

Pacific Theater

Major American Victories in the Pacific Theater of World War II:

• Battle of Coral Sea – saved Australia from Japanese invasion

• Battle of Midway – heavy damage to Japanese planes and aircraft carriers

• Battle of Guadalcanal – first offensive campaign using air, land, and sea forces against Japanese

• Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa

Battle of Iwo Jima U.S. against Japan

February-March 1945

M2A1 Flamethrower A battalion would assign one flamethrower per platoon with one reserve flamethrower in each group. Flamethrower operators were usually in more danger than regular troops as the short range of their weapon required close combat, and the visibility of the flames on the battlefield made them a prominent target for snipers.

Battle of Iwo Jima U.S. against Japan

February-March 1945

7,000 U.S. soldiers killed & 19,000 U.S. soldiers wounded 22,000 Japanese soldiers killed

Marine Corps War Memorial also called Iwo Jima Memorial

Arlington, Virginia

Marine Corps War Memorial also called Iwo Jima Memorial

Arlington, Virginia

Marine Corps War Memorial also called Iwo Jima Memorial

Arlington, Virginia

Battle of Okinawa April-June 1945

• Largest amphibious assault of the Pacific Theater in World War II

• Approx. 240,000 people died in the Battle of Okinawa (including soldiers and civilians)

• Once the U.S. controlled Okinawa, they had an ideal place for launching an invasion of mainland Japan

Battle of Okinawa April-June 1945

U.S. Marines in the Battle of Okinawa

Major Wartime Events (1945)

– V-E Day (May 8, 1945)

• Germany surrenders, ending war in European Theater

– U.S. drops atomic bombs on Japan (1945)

• Cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima are destroyed – Hiroshima: August 6

– Nagasaki: August 9

• Thousands are killed

• U.S. demands Japan surrender or face more bombings

– V-J Day (August 14, 1945)

• Japan surrenders, ending the war in the Pacific Theater

• WWII is over!

Truman’s Decision

• Harry Truman of Missouri became President when FDR died in April, 1945.

• He had a major decision to make in order to force Japanese surrender: ground invasion of Japan or use of atomic bombs, a new weapon secretly developed by the U.S. during WWII.

The Manhattan Project

• Beginning in 1939, the Manhattan Project’s scientists worked on producing the key materials for nuclear fission–uranium-235 and plutonium (Pu-239). They sent them to Los Alamos, New Mexico, where a team led by J. Robert Oppenheimer worked to turn these materials into a workable atomic bomb. Early on the morning of July 16, 1945, the Manhattan Project held its first successful test of an atomic device–a plutonium bomb–at the Trinity test site at Alamogordo, New Mexico.

Atomic Bombs: Overview

• On August 6, 1945, an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Japan’s Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s unconditional surrender in World War II in a radio address on August 15, citing the devastating power of “a new and most cruel bomb.

Hiroshima

• Hiroshima, a manufacturing center of some 350,000 people located about 500 miles from Tokyo, was selected as the first target. After arriving at the U.S. base on the Pacific island of Tinian, the more than 9,000-pound uranium-235 bomb was loaded aboard a modified B-29 bomber christened Enola Gay (after the mother of its pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets). The plane dropped the bomb–known as “Little Boy”–by parachute at 8:15 in the morning, and it exploded 2,000 feet above Hiroshima in a blast equal to 12-15,000 tons of TNT, destroying five square miles of the city. It caused an estimated 80,000 deaths.

Hiroshima – 8 months after

Nagasaki

• Hiroshima’s devastation failed to bring about immediate Japanese surrender, and on August 9 Major Charles Sweeney flew another B-29 bomber, Bockscar, from Tinian. Thick clouds over the primary target, the city of Kokura, drove Sweeney to a secondary target, Nagasaki, where the plutonium bomb “Fat Man” was dropped at 11:02 that morning. More powerful than the one used at Hiroshima, the bomb weighed nearly 10,000 pounds and was built to produce a 22-kiloton blast. The topography of Nagasaki, which was nestled in narrow valleys between mountains, reduced the bomb’s effect, limiting the destruction to 2.6 square miles. Approx. 40,000 died instantly.

Mushroom Cloud Over Nagasaki

Japanese Surrender

• At noon on August 15, 1945, Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s surrender in a radio broadcast. The news spread quickly, and “Victory in Japan” or “V-J Day” celebrations broke out across the United States and other Allied nations. The formal surrender agreement was signed on September 2, aboard the U.S. aircraft carrier Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay.

Japan’s Formal Surrender aboard the U.S.S. Missouri

Famous Images from V-J Day

This famous image from New York’s Times Square was published in Life magazine.

Famous Images from V-J Day

Dancing man in Sydney, Australia.

Aftermath of War

• US troops occupied Japan and set up an American-led government

– Reduced Japan’s military

– Introduced reforms

• France, Great Britain, and the US began arguing with the Soviet Union

– Armies from all four occupied Germany

– Disagreed about what to do with Germany