*The bombing of Pearl Harbor was the first of several attacks on the United States by the Empire of Japan.  They attacked airbases on Wake Island and on Guam and in the Philippines.  Although the commander of the Philippines, Douglas MacArthur, had heard of the attack on Pearl Harbor, he did not prepare for an attack in the Philippines.  On 12 December, the Japanese landed on Luzon, the main island of the Philippines, and moved towards the capital, Manila.  MacArthur withdrew his troops to the Bataan Peninsula which he hoped would prove more defensible.  In March, at the President’s orders, MacArthur fled to Australia, but he made a promise:  ‘People of the Philippines, I shall return.”

*The Japanese surrounded the American forces, and starvation forced them to surrender.  The Japanese, who followed bushido, the code of the warrior, considered anyone who surrendered a coward, and unworthy of decent treatment.  A good warrior fought to the death, or committed seppuku, also known as hari-kari, a form of ritual suicide.  The 76,000 Americans and Filipinos who surrendered were forced to march in small groups 60 miles to a railroad junction, where they were sent on to a prisoner of war camp.  Along the way the starving, dehydrated prisoners were guarded constantly and pushed along as fast or faster than they could march.  If any fell down, stopped for water, or acted disrespectfully towards the captors, they would be beheaded on the spot with one of the swords that were part of the Japanese uniform.  Of 75,000 prisoners, 10,000 died on what has come to be called the Bataan Death March.

*Between these invasions and the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Americans were terrified of a Japanese invasion of America.  Lights were shut off at night to foil air attacks.  Fearing sabotage and espionage, the US government interned about 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry, even citizens, in interment camps in remote areas away from the coast.  They stayed there until 1945, except for those of draft age who were citizens, who served in the US Army in Europe while their families were held in these prison camps.  As concentration camps go, they were not bad, but many Japanese resented the loss of their freedom and this infringement on their rights.  The Supreme Court said it was legal because it persecuted the Japanese for their nationality and not their race, but many people felt it was done for racist reasons.  In 1988 the US government paid each survivor $20,000 tax-free and apologised.

*Beginning in 1941, the Japanese also seized British Singapore, Hong Kong, and Malaya, the Dutch East Indies (already invaded to get resources America would no longer sell them), and invaded Burma, India, and China, which officially declared war on the Axis on 9 December.  The Japanese also threatened Australia, and the Aussies considered plans that would give up most of the country and make a last, desperate defence in the populous South-East.

*The war between the US and Japan was initially a war of sea and air power.  Japan’s main goal was to sink America’s aircraft carriers, but the Lexington, the Saratoga, the Yorktown, the Hornet, and the Enterprise were not in Pearl Harbor on the 7th.  The Japanese advance on Australia was stopped at the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942.  The battle was a draw, but that was enough to save Australia.  It was also a naval battle fought primarily by aircraft.  The opposing fleets were about 70 miles apart, and could not even see each other.

*The Japanese attacks on America reached their furthest point and were stopped at the Battle of Midway on 4 June 1942.  During this battle, American warplanes surprised the Japanese while they were refueling their own planes on the carrier decks.  This meant all the planes were in the open, unable to move, and tied to fuel pumps.  When hit, they exploded into terrible fires.  The Japanese lost four heavy carriers, 250 planes, and most of their best pilots.  Afterwards, Japan was almost entirely on the defensive.  America moved on to another victory at Guadalcanal, and then began a new strategy.

*America’s main strategy in 1943 and 1944 was called island-hopping.  Americans would attack and seize Japanese-held islands they thought they could take or that were important, and left others behind, using the navy and tactics much like the German wolf packs to prevent them from being re-supplied.  Each time the US took another island, it created another base on which to store supplies and from which to launch future attacks.

*These campaigns were horrible for both sides.  The Japanese would not surrender.  Of 31,629 Japanese on Saipan, approximately 29,500 died. Only 2,100 prisoners survived, many of these only because they were too wounded to take their own lives or they ran out of the means with which to kill themselves before being over-run.  Even civilians gave their lives for the Emperor, refusing to surrender, in part because they assumed Americans would treat them as badly as they would have treated Americans.  In the case of Japanese soldiers that might be true—Americans often shot them rather than take them prisoner.  Civilians, though, were treated fairly, but most did not know this.  On Saipan, civilians killed themselves by holding on to hand grenades or by jumping off cliffs to their deaths, even mothers holding infant children.  Supposedly there were so many bodies off the coast of Saipan after its capture that the Navy had a hard time navigating the waters.

*After capturing the Mariana Islands, the US was close enough to Japan to begin bombing her.  The US bombed every major city and industrial area flat, both to destroy Japan’s industry and to terrify her people.  Whereas the US did not use firebombs in Europe, they did in Japan, creating terrible firestorms, killing 100,000 people in one night in Tokyo, on just one of many occasions.

*By the end of the war, the Japanese economy was so badly injured that Japanese school children made huge balloons out of paper and glue, which the military then tied to bombs, and cast into the air, hoping they might fly across the ocean and all on the US.  Besides starting one forest fire on the Pacific Coast, these did no harm.

*In October 1944 Americans invaded the Philippines.  MacArthur landed on the beach and announced for the benefit of the news cameras, ‘People of the Philippines, I have returned.’

*As part of the reconquest of the Philippines, the Americans faced a new weapon, the kamikaze.  More than any other Japanese soldier, these suicide pilots were ready to die for the Emperor by diving bomb-laden planes into American ships.  Despite this, the Americans won the battle.  Of 80,000 Japanese in the Philippines, 1,000 were captured, and the rest would die bravely fighting on into 1945.

*As Americans got closer to the Home Islands, the Japanese resistance grew stronger.  In the Battle of Iwo Jima in February 1945, Americans won 27 Medals of Honor, the most in any campaign.  Of 25,000 Japanese on the island, 216 were take prisoner, and it took 110,000 men to beat them.  When the island was taken, the Marines raised the flag on the peak of Mount Suribachi.

*The last island before hitting Japan itself was Okinawa.  It was defended by 100,000 troops who swore to defend it to the death.  The US gathered 1,300 warships and 180,000 combat troops, making the invasion second only to that at Normandy.  2,000 kamikaze attacks were made on American ships.  The battle lasted from April to June 1945, and 50,000 Americans were killed or wounded and only 7,200 of 100,000 Japanese surrendered.

*The home islands were next.  The problem was that the Japanese fought so hard, and were willing to die to the last man.  Military experts said it would probably take at least three million men just to start the invasion and that one third of them would be killed and wounded.

*Fortunately, America had an alternative.  In 1939, FDR had gotten a letter from Albert Einstein, telling him about the possibility of a new kind of bomb of terrible power powered by splitting the atom.  Eisenhower said he thought the Germans were building one, and that the US needed to, too.  Furthermore, Einstein would help get physicists to work on the project.  Roosevelt agreed, and under top secret security, scientists worked on the Manhattan Project, trying to make an atomic bomb.  There were four major sites for this.  The first research and tests were done at the University of Chicago.  Once they knew a bomb could be made, they needed fuel.  Plutonium was refined at Hanford, Washington, and uranium in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.  The bombs were assembled in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and tested nearby at Alamogordo.  This was the most powerful bomb ever built.  The qestion was:  should it be used on Japan?

*In April, 1945, just over a month after winning his fourth presidential election, FDR had died of a brain hemorrhage while on vacation at Warm Springs, Georgia, and Harry Truman became president.  The atom bomb was a surprise to him, and he only knew it as a powerful weapon.  Under the advice of experts, he chose to use it for three main reasons:
 1.  To end the war with as few American casulaties as possible.  The invasion of Japan was expected to cost one million killed and wounded.
 2.  To end the war quickly before the USSR could get involved and end up sharing Japan with the US.
 3.  To test the bomb on a real target.

*On 6 August 1945, the Enola Gay dropped a uranium bomb on Hiroshima, killing about 80,000 Japanese and later infecting many with radiation sickness.

*On 9 August, another plane dropped the plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, killing 39,000.

*On 14 August, Japan surrendered on the one condition that they could keep their emperor, the next day Americans celebrated V-J Day, and on 2 September, 1945 the Japanese formally signed the surrender agreement, ending the Second World War.

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