The last great war

1. The lastgreat war “if our brothers are oppressed, then we are oppressed. If they hunger, we hunger. If their freedom is taken away, then our freedom is not secure.” - President Franklin Delano Roosevelt By Christopher LaMack

2. U.S. Soldiers with a captured Japanese flag

3. Japan’s “high tide” Since the invasion of China, Japan had been at it’s peak. Seizing territory from the British left and right, the Rising Sun seemed unstoppable. With vast wealth and a guerrilla attack force, Japan was the unchallenged master of Southeast Asia. But another power was making the Empire wary. Ever since FDR signed the Selective Training and Service Act into law on September 16, 1940, America had been preparing for the worst. President Roosevelt knew the war was coming, and the Lend- Lease Act guaranteed support for the Allies, but for now, America was neutral. Japan wanted to keep it that way. So, the Japanese decided to try and intimidate the Americans. On December 6, 1941, they attacked Wake island and the Philippines, among others. The following day, they did the unthinkable.

4. December 7, 1941the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor

5. They attack with torpedoes21 ships are sunk2,403 people are killed

6. “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant, and to fill him with a terrible resolve.”-Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto After Pearl, President FDR asked Congress for a declaration of war on Japan, which he receives. Soon, U.S. Troops are steaming off to North Africa and the Pacific. Meanwhile, U.S. Forces have lost the Philippine Islands. General Macarthur is ordered to abandon his troops there to the Japanese, who are in no way merciful. The POWs are forced to endure the horrible Bataan Death March from the Bataan peninsula to a prison camp almost 60 miles away. Around 10,000 died.

7. “Johnny, get your gun” After our brutal awakening, anti- Japanese sentiment ran rampant throughout the United States, followed by a wave of patriotic fervour, and national pride. The Japanese wanted to intimidate America. They got the opposite effect. In order to respond to suspicions about the Japanese or descendants in the U.S., the president ordered those on the Pacific coast Interned on the grounds of a National Security threat. Although American camps were far better than Nazi camps, the people there still often lived in poverty, and they had to leave their homes. They were allowed to work, and many joined the military. The only other assault on the American mainland was on two islands in the Aleutians, off the coast of Alaska. There, the Japanese were constructing airfields; they were soon dispatched by U.S. Marines. But for other enlisted men, the American campaign to liberate the pacific would begin on a remote jungle island in the Solomans.

8. The Pacific In June of 1942, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto of the Imperial Navy staged a joint attack; on the Aleutian islands, and on a U.S. Base on Midway island. The previous few months had seen the Americans halt a Japanese offensive that would threaten Australia at the Coral Sea. Yamamoto wanted to advance the Japanese defences, and to draw the U.S. Fleet out and into battle, which he felt he could win. The ensuing battle was the battle of Midway, and it was a beaming U.S. Victory. The next step came when Macarthur conceived his “Island Hopping” strategy. The first target was a small island called Guadalcanal, where the Japanese were building an airbase. U.S. Marines would have to use an amphibious landing, which they had not attempted since 1898. The Marines took the Japanese completely by surprise. But they soon recovered and launched a brutal counterattack, which drove the U.S. Fleet away. Isolated and abandoned, the Marines fought on, and held the airfield until the Navy again arrived. Guadalcanal was ours.

9. Japanese troops in the Pacific

10. “people of the Philippines, I have returned.”- General Douglas Macarthur Many of the battles fought in the Pacific were constructed by General Macarthur as part of his plan to retake the Philippines. Eventually, in 1944, U.S. Forces did capture the islands, freeing the Americans still there, as well as Philippino troops.

11. The black sands On February 19, 1945, U.S. Marines invaded a small island just miles from the Japanese coast. From there, an air offensive could be launched on mainland Japan, in accordance with the planned landings there. But in Japanese culture, it was a sacred island, one of the first places on Earth. And they would defend it. The island was Iwo Jima. General Kuribayashi Tadamichi, the island’s defender, had reinforced the defences in preparation for the assault. When the marines landed, they were instantly cut down by howitzer and machinegun fire. The attack was supposed to take six days It took over a month. One in three Marines were casualties. Only 1,000 Japanese surrender. The island’s centre volcano, Mt. Suribachi, held out until the last. Genera Tadamichi was never found. The famous flag raising was the second. The flag was from a sunken ship at Pearl Harbor. Of the six that raised the flag in the photograph, only three survived Iwo. All are deceased now. It was the first time in thousands of years that an invader’s flag had flown over Japanese land.

12. Joe Rosenthal's masterpiece, Marines raise the second flag on iwo

13. Okinawa On Okinawa, the Japanese told the civilians that, if the Americans took the Island, they would slaughter and pillage, terrorizing them. So, when Americans moved in on April 1, 1945, many civilians imagined only misery. They killed themselves in droves; most jumped from cliffs. Whole families gathered around grenades and pulled the pin. U.S. Marines who liberated the island were horrified, and pleaded with the survivors not to take their own lives. The Japanese killed many of them. Meanwhile, Japanese Banzai charges and suicidal mentality exacted their toll on American forces. The goal of the Japanese was not to successfully defend the island, but instead to inflict as much loss of life on the Americans as was possible. Staggering levels of death, as well as collateral damage on the remaining civilian population, were the result of this ideal. As this progressed, the Japanese air arm inflicted destruction en masse on the Allied fleet. Through all of this, however, the Americans were triumphant, and the final phase of the war in the Pacific could commence. The invasion of Japan was set.

14. “they rode the divine wind” As the war progressed, the Japanese High Command became increasingly desperate. The Divine Wind, or “Kamikaze”, was first put into action at Leyte during the fight for the Philippines. Initially to be used by elite pilots as a last resort, the Divine Wind was soon applied to expendable young volunteers whom the Japanese couldn’t afford to train. This road to certain suicide was reminiscent of the samurai tradition of ritual self- murder, and was echoed by suicidal Banzai charges made on the ground. The Germans devised a similar tactic for use by the Sondergruppe Elbe, but this was not intended to be suicidal, as the pilot would attempt to jump to safety.