End of WWII in the Pacific

Semester 2Week 5

Iwo Jima Iwo Jima was perfectly located, roughly

halfway between the Marianas & Japan At its S’rn tip was Mt. Suribachi, a

dormant volcano, the terrain was rugged, with rocky cliffs & dozens of caves

Japanese had built a vast network of caves & concrete bunkers connected by miles of tunnels

2/19/1945 60,000 U.S. Marines landed on Iwo Jima

Inch by inch, the marines crawled inland, using flamethrowers and explosives to attack the Japanese bunkers

7000 marines were killed before the island was capture

Okinawa 4/1/1945, U.S. troops landed on

Okinawa, the Japanese troops took up positions in the island’s rugged mountains

To dig the Japanese out of their caves & bunkers, the U.S. had to fight their way up steep slopes against constant machine gun & artillery fire

6/22/1945, Okinawa captured More than 12,000 American

soldiers, sailors, and marines died during the fighting

The Bombing of Tokyo Gen. Curtis LeMay - commander of the

B-29s based in the Marianas, ordered them to drop bombs filled with napalm (a kind of a jellied gasoline)

The bombs were designed not only to explode but also to start fires

The Tokyo firebombing killed over 80,000 people & destroyed more than 250,000 buildings

7/1945, Japan’s six most important industrial cities had been firebombed, destroying almost ½ of their total urban area

Manhattan Project The U.S. program to build an atomic

bomb was code-named the Manhattan Project and was headed by Gen. Leslie R. Groves

The project’s 1st breakthrough came in 1942, when physicists Leo Szilard & Enrico Fermi, built the world’s 1st nuclear reactor at the U. of Chicago

Groves organized a team of engineers & scientists to build an atomic bomb at a secret laboratory in Los Alamos, NM

J. Robert Oppenheimer led the team 7/16/1945, the world’s first atomic

bomb detonated near Alamogordo, NM

J. Robert Oppenheimer

Truman Makes a Tough Decision Truman’s advisers had warned him to

expect massive casualties if the U.S. invaded Japan

The Allies threatened Japan w/ “prompt & utter destruction” of the nation did not surrender unconditionally; the Japanese did not reply

Truman order for THE bomb to be dropped

The Bombs of JapanHiroshima

8/6/1945, U.S. plane named the Enola Gay, dropped “Little Boy,” a Uranium bomb on Hiroshima

150,000 causalities city was on fire for days

Nagasaki 8/9/1945, “Fat Man,”

a plutonium bomb, was dropped from the sky on the city of Nagasaki

100,000 causalities

Aftermath of the Cities Radiation poisoning, which was not

considered when dropping the bombs, continued to produce unpredictable symptoms

This claimed more victims with the years to come

Generation of Japanese still suffering Both cities were little more than mounds

of rubble near where the bombs hit

Before & After:Hiroshima

Before & After:Nagasaki

Japan Surrenders Japan was considering

surrendering 2 days before the bombs were dropped when the USSR entered the war on the Chinese front

8/14/1945, Japanese leaders accepted American terms

9/2/1945, Japan officially surrenders

PREPARE QUIZ TAKE OUT FULL, SEPARATE SHEET OF

PAPER

NUMBER 1-5

QUIZ1. This was perfectly located, roughly halfway

between the Marianas and Japan?2. He was commander of the B-29s based in the

Marianas?3. Who led the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos?4. What were the names of the 2 bombs dropped

in Japan?5. What were the names of the cities that the

bombs were dropped?