Pacific Chronology -notes by Mr. Rozell
By the late 1930s, the Japanese empire had extended its control throughout Southeast Asia and was looking for more resources to fuel its ambition of dominating this part of the world.
1) On Dec. 7th, 1941, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had plunged the US into a war that was inevitable.
2) The US declared war on Dec. 8th. The same day, the Japanese struck US bases in the Philippines, Wake Island, and Guam with devastating effect, and also began attacks on Thailand, Malaya, and Hong Kong.
3) On the 9th Japan invaded the Gilbert Islands. The US was up against a formidable adversary.
4) Within six months the Philippines had fallen. During the Bataan Death March, 76,000 exhausted Americans and Filipinos were forced to march 65 miles to their prison camps. Many stragglers were clubbed, shot, stabbed, bayoneted or beheaded and left were they lay.
5) In June 1942 the Japanese sent a strike force of over 150 vessels to attack the US base in the Midway Islands. The plan was to lure the remnants of the US Fleet at Pearl Harbor and annihilate it once and for all.
6) It was not to be. Navy cryptologists had broken the operational code of the Imperial Fleet, and the Japanese trap backfired. Admiral Yamamoto’s fleet limped back to Japan short 4 carriers, 322 planes, and 3500 men.
7) The American retreat was over. Now, much of the fighting would be done by crack divisions of combat marines, and the early conquests of the Japanese would be rolled back slowly, one by one.
8) The first US targets were the Japanese held Solomon Islands. From here, enemy bombers at Guadalcanal would be able to strike at American positions. It had to be taken, and both sides knew it.
9) On Aug. 7th 1942 the attack began. Guadalcanal and its airstrip, Henderson Field, would not be secured until Feb. 9th, 1943, six months later. 1,769 Americans fell to enemy fire; over 25,600 Japanese were killed.
10) Special mobile Marine combat units (the First Raider Battalion) helped to turn the tide at Guadalcanal and the Solomon Islands. 24 men fought with such valor that they actually had US Navy ships named for them.
11) In Nov. 1943 the US Marines began the costly assault in the Gilberts at Makin and Tarawa. 2 miles long and 900 yards wide, Betio Island airstrip was the main target. 10 tons of high explosives PER ACRE were landed that morning by Navy guns before the storming of the island began (and this was after heavy bombing by B-24 Liberators).
12) Unfortunately, the enemy was so well dug in and fortified that artillery fire had little effect, and ground troops took heavy losses. On Nov. 24, 17 Japanese survivors surrendered. 4700 of the enemy were killed, and 1027 Marines and 29 Naval officers and men had lost their lives. A painful lesson was learned regarding Japanese fortifications and their willingness to fight to the death.
13) In January 1944 US landings in the Admiralty and Marshall Islands began. In June, the Mariana Islands were struck as they contained key airbases at Saipan, Tinian, and Guam. 1300 miles from Tokyo, they would be within range of the new B-29 bombers headed for targets in Japan.
14) 20,000 Marines followed by reserves of Marine battalions and an Army division took three weeks to secure Saipan at a cost of 16,525 American casualties. 29,000 Japanese defenders were killed, with almost no prisoners being taken. To compound the horror, hundreds of civilians committed suicide by wading into the sea or jumping off cliffs, fearful of US soldiers and captivity.
15) At Guam, 100 miles to the south, the assault began on July 21, 1944. Although the island was officially under control after five days, the Japanese refused to recognize the inevitable, and it would be another two weeks before it was declared secure. Some small bands of Japanese held out in the hills for years after the battle, not even realizing that the war had ended.
16) On September 15, the 1st Marine Division and Army troops began the attack on Peleliu after three days of heavy bombardment by Navy gunships. Peleliu hosted a major Japanese airfield that was deemed a major threat to any US advance on the Philippines.
17) The island was heavily defended by Imperial troops dug into a network of pillboxes and 500 coral caverns and caves. The Japanese would now remain hidden and when overrun, pop up and shoot Americans from the rear. The conquest of this island and airstrip took over one month and killed 1529 Americans. Japanese dead numbered over 10,000.
18) By October 1944, the Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Douglas MacArthur had returned to the Philippines and the campaign to liberate it from Japanese control began. The battles here would last until June 30th, 1945.
19) The next two stepping-stones were Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Iwo Jima was 8 square miles of volcanic rock and lied 660 miles SE of Tokyo and could serve as a refueling stop for the B-29 and B-24s that would soon be flying out of the fields in the Marianas to bomb the Japanese mainland.
20) In late Nov. 1944 aerial bombardment of Iwo Jima began and continued for a record 74 straight days. The 21,000 Japanese defenders survived this with scores of underground fortresses connected by 16 miles of tunnels stocked with food, water, and ammunition. The surface was covered with concrete pillboxes and blockhouses housing some 800 gun positions.
21) On Feb. 19, 1945 the attack began as the landing ships dropped the Marines on the loose volcanic sand, which was nearly impossible to get traction in. Only a third of Iwo Jima had been taken when the US flag appeared over the peak of Mt. Suribachi on D-Day +4.
22) 27 Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded for individual acts of heroism under fire at Iwo Jima. The island was deemed secure on March 25, 25 days longer than planners had counted on. 6821 Americans and 19,000 Japanese died at Iwo Jima. Six days later, on Easter Sunday, the invasion of Okinawa began.
23) Okinawa had well over 100,000 defenders. It was the last stand, a mere 330 miles from Tokyo, and was big enough to support 800 heavy bombers. The Japanese defensive lines were tougher than those at Tarawa and Iwo. Organized resistance gradually fell apart and by June 22, 1945, 110,000 Japanese defenders were dead with 10,755 taken prisoner. For the Americans, victory had a price- 7613 killed or MIA, with over 55,000 other casualties.
24) In July 1945, from the Potsdam Conference in defeated Germany, President Truman warned the Japanese to surrender.
25) On August 6, 1945, a single bomb tumbled from a B-29 Superfortess flying from Tinian in the Mariana Islands. Hiroshima was devastated by the blast, thermal and radioactive effects that would lead later estimators to put the death toll at 140,000 Japanese.
26) With no answer to the call for surrender coming from the Japanese High Command, on August 9th the second (and last) bomb was deployed against Nagasaki in southeastern Japan. The death toll was at least 70,000.
27) That evening, the Japanese Emperor Hirohito spoke to his people and said, “The time has come when we must bear the unbearable.” It was the first time they had heard his voice.
28) On September 2nd, 1945, the Japanese delegation signed the terms of surrender aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. In Europe and the United States, it was exactly six years to the day that the bloodiest conflict in human history had begun. “It is my earnest hope,” said MacArthur “indeed the hope of all mankind, that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge from the blood and carnage of the past”. World War II had ended.
Sources: Time-Life Books History of the Second World War, New York: Prentice Hall, 1989.
Alexander, Col. Joseph H., Edson’s Raiders: The First Marine Raider Battalion in World War II. Privately published, 2000.
Copyright © 2001 by Matthew A Rozell. All rights reserved.
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