war in the pacific

War in the Pacific

• While Operation Barbarossa (the attempted conquest of the Soviet Union) was underway in the fall of 1941, the American fleet was anchored at Pearl Harbour, HI

• The Pacific fleet was there in case of war• Japanese-American relations were NOT good• Japan was intent upon conquering Asia – they

had already invaded Manchuria and Hong Kong

• Only obstacle? Pearl Harbour

• December 7, 1941:• Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto led a

surprise attack on the US Naval base at Pearl Harbour

• 2 hours of bombardment virtually destroyed the fleet

• Fighting in Asia vs. the Japanese was bitter – American, British, Australian, New Zealand and Cdn. troops

• Anyone taken POW was treated very poorly

• By 1944, the US had managed to re-take New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and the Philippines

• By 1945, the British had re-taken Burma• The Japanese navy had been virtually

destroyed• When the US invaded Okinawa in 1945, the

Japanese fought to the death and lost almost 100,000 soldiers

• “kamikaze” pilots began crashing into US ships

• Many American leaders felt that the Japanese were too proud to surrender peacefully and “unconditionally”

• They feared an invasion of Japan would cost too many American lives – 100,000+

• So…during the war, the Americans had been working on a secret weapon:

- the “Atomic Bomb”- part of the “Manhattan Project”

• Even the US Vice-President Harry Truman did not know about the project until after President Roosevelt’s death in 1945

• When Truman became President, he decided that the bomb would bring about the “absolute surrender” of Japan without an invasion

• August 6, 1945:• B-29 Bomber “Enola Gay” dropped “Little Boy”

on the city of Hiroshima – 70,000 dead and 61,000 injured

• August 9, 1945:• “Fatman” was dropped on the city of Nagasaki

and another 40,000+ were killed• Japanese Emperor Hirohito and Japan agreed

to surrender unconditionally• WWII had finally come to an end