War in the Pacific National Park Service National Historical Park U.S
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War in the Pacific National Park Service National Historical Park U.S. Department of the Interior War in the Pacific Guam July 28, 1944: an amphibious tractor or duck loaded with Marines heads for the beach on Guam. A cruiser is visible close to shore. 1941 to 1945 ALL PHOTOS NATIONAL ARCHIVES UNLESS OTHERWISE CREDITED The Pacific Theater of World War II involved one-third of the Earth's surface but only Vus of its total land mass. It involved vast distances and new strate gy, tactics, equipment, and weapons of war. Moreover, it involved not just ^Japan and the United States but Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Canada, China, France, and the Soviet Union. Caught in the mid dle were the people of the Pacific islands, in whose homelands and waters the battles were fought. This chronology tracks significant aspects of the Pacific War as a framework for understanding the people and the events commemorated at War in the Pacific National Historical Park. Clark and Iba airfields in the Philippines; invade 18 April Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle leads 16 B-25 Japanese Gen. Yoshijiro Umezu signs document of sur Malaya and occupy Thailand; and seize the inter bombers from carrier Hornet to bomb targets in render aboard USS Missouri, September 2,1945. national settlement at Shanghai. Tokyo, Yokohama, Yokosuka, Kobe, and Nagoya. 10 December Japanese capture Guam and begin 7 May Gen. Jonathan Wainwright, MacArthur's Caroline, Mariana, and Philippine islands begins landings on northern Luzon. successor in the Philippines, surrenders Corregidor with army landings on Makin and Marine land 23 December Wake Island is surrendered to the and all U.S. troops under his command. ings on Tarawa, the keystones of Japanese de Japanese. 4-8 May Battle of the Coral Sea. This Japanese fenses in the Gilberts. 24 December Gen. Douglas MacArthur, command tactical victory but strategic defeat is the first 26 December General MacArthur's Southwest ing United States Army Forces in the Far East, naval battle in which all fighting is done by car Pacific offensive to secure the western Solomons, begins evacuation of Manila and withdraws to rier-based planes and the opposing ships never New Guinea, and the Philippines begins with Bataan. saw each other. Liie landings on New Britain, llie idrgesl island 26 December Hong Kong is lost to the Japanese. 3-6 June Battle of Midway. This American victory in the Bismarck Archipelago. deals the Japanese their first major naval defeat and proves the offensive power of aircraft carriers. President Franklin D. Roosevelt asks Congress to declare 1942 7 June Japanese occupy Attu and Kiska in the 1944 war on Japan, December 8, 1941. 2 January Japanese occupy Manila. Aleutian Islands. 31 January-4 February American forces capture 7 January Siege of Bataan begins. MacArthur, Roi-Namur and Kwajalein in the Marshalls. headquartered on Corregidor, proclaims the 29 February-7 March MacArthur surprises Japa Bataan Peninsula the center of American-Filipino nese by seizing the Admiralty Islands. 1941 resistance to the Japanese invasion of the Philip 15 June China-based B-29s make their first attack 7 December Without warning, Japanese planes pines. But its jungles, swamps, and mountains on Japanese homeland. U.S. forces invade bomb Pearl Harbor and Hickam and Wheeler make supply difficult, and the Bataan Defense Saipan. airfields on Oahu, and within 30 minutes de Force suffers shortages of food and medicines 17-19 June Battle of the Philippine Sea in which stroy the power of the U.S. Pacific battle fleet— throughout the three-month ordeal. U.S. carrier-based aircraft engage and inflict except for aircraft carriers Enterprise, Lexington, 1 February U.S. Navy launches air and surface crippling losses on Japanese carrier-based aircraft. and Saratoga, which are at sea. Japan declares attacks against Japanese bases in the Marshall 21 July U.S. forces invade Guam. war on the United States and Great Britain. The Islands. 24 July U.S. forces invade Tinian. Pacific war that the United States suddenly 15 February Singapore surrenders. 15 September U.S. forces invade Morotai and found itself embroiled in had begun many years 27-28 February Battle of Java Sea results in Peleliu. before the attack on Pearl Harbor when Japan, Names in red denote major battles or campaigns of the war in the Pacific 1941-1945. most severe U.S. naval losses since Pearl Harbor 20 October U.S. forces invade Leyte. lacking the raw materials for modern industrial 23-25 October Battle of Leyte Gulf, the last and and leads to the collapse of organized Allied 8-9 August Japanese navy sinks four Allied 2-3 March Battle of the Bismarck Sea. U.S. and ization, looked to mineral-rich Manchuria to greatest naval engagement of the war, results in military resistance in that area. cruisers in Battle of Savo Islands. Australian aircraft decimate a 16-ship Japanese supply them. Japanese attacks on China led to near destruction of the Japanese Navy. Japanese kamikaze pilots prepare for a mission, 1944. 24 August Battle of Eastern Solomons results in supply convoy bound for Lae and Salamaua, open warfare in July 1937. As a result of Japan's 24 November Air offensive against Japan begins sinking of one Japanese carrier by aircraft from New Guinea, demonstrating the effectiveness of involvement in China and the extension of Japan's with B-29 attacks on Tokyo from bases in the USS Enterprise and USS Saratoga. low-level bombing. "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" into Marianas. Indochina, the United States, Great Britain, and 12-15 November The decisive American victory 26 March An indecisive naval battle off the other countries froze Japanese assets and exports, in the naval battle of Guadalcanal prevents the Komandorski Islands prepares the way for recon- threatening Japan's industrial survival. This led Japanese from landing reinforcements and makes quest of the Western Aleutians. By mid-August to accelerated Japanese economic expansion possible the final conquest of Guadalcanal by Japanese troops have been driven out of both 1945 9 January-23 February Reconquest of northern into Southeast Asia and the Dutch East Indies, U.S. forces. Attu and Kiska. Philippines begins as U.S. forces invade Luzon bringing it into direct conflict with western 5 August Munda Airfield, New Georgia, is cap and occupy Manila. countries that also had economic interests in tured, providing Allied forces a base from which 19 February-17 March U.S. Marines invade and these areas. By 1941 Japan was committed to a to bomb Japanese air and naval facilities at 1943 conquer island of Iwo Jima after bitter fighting. policy of aggression to achieve its goals. Japan's 10 January U.S. troops begin final offensive to Rabaul. 9-10 March B-29 fire-bomb attack on Tokyo inability to come to diplomatic terms with the clear Guadalcanal. By February 9 organized Jap 25 August Americans overrun New Georgia, leaves much of the city in ashes and inaugurates United States, which it saw as its most formida anese resistance on the island is ended. The Solomon Islands, thus removing the Japanese a series of incendiary strikes against other Japa ble opponent, led to the Pearl Harbor attack. American victory opens the way for other Allied threat to forces on Guadalcanal. nese cities. gains in the Solomons. 20 November Admiral Nimitz's Central Pacific 8 December Congress declares war on Japan; 19 March-21 June Battle for the Ryukyu Islands, 22 January Papuan Campaign ends in the first offensive to reconquer the Marshall, Gilbert, Japanese bomb islands of Wake and Guam, and in which U.S. carrier-based planes make large Crew of carrier USS Bunker Hill battles fires resulting Japanese submarine 1-370 carrying Kaiten one-man decisive land defeat of the Japanese. from kamikaze attack during Okinawa campaign, suicide torpedoes enroute to attack U.S. fleet off Iwo scale attacks on Japanese ships and airfields in 1945. Jima, 1945. the Ryukyus. 1 April-21 June U.S. troops invade and capture 8 March Japanese land in New Guinea, occupying 22 July Papuan Campaign begins as Japanese Okinawa, main island of the Ryukyus. Japanese Lae and Salamaua and threatening Port Moresby, troops land at Gona and Buna, 100 miles east of military forces inflict heavy casualties on American last defensive post protecting Australia. Lae and Salamaua in northern New Guinea, and troops, but the island is finally secured. 17 March MacArthur, who had left the Philip begins an overland drive across the Owen Stanley 6 August Army Air Corps drops atomic bomb on pines six days before, arrives in Australia. Here Mountains to capture Port Moresby on the Hiroshima. A second atomic bomb is dropped on he utters the now-famous words, "I came through southern coast. In the months that follow, Aus Nagasaki three days later. and I shall return." tralian and U.S. forces frustrate every attempt to 14 August Japan accepts Allied unconditional 30 March MacArthur is designated Allied Supreme take the port and eventually drive the Japanese surrender terms. back to Gona and Buna. Commander, Southwest Pacific Areas (Australia, 2 September Japan signs formal terms of sur 7 August U.S. Marines invade Guadalcanal in most of the Indies, and the Philippines); Adm. render. Chester Nimitz is designated Commander in Chief, the Solomon Islands in the first American offen Pacific Ocean Area. sive of the war. Subsequent Japanese efforts to 9 April Bataan surrenders. The starving U.S. and drive the Americans off the island are consis U.S. Navy task group returns to anchorage for repairs Filipino survivors begin a 60-mile death march tently unsuccessful.