Download War in the Pacific

War in the Pacific
1941-1945
Pearl Harbor: December 7, 1941
•Japan attacked US Naval
Base Pearl Harbor because:
•US was boycotting Japanese
goods because of China and
Indochina (FDR had
demanded Japan withdraw
from both)
•US stood between Japan and
Pacific expansion
•Greater victory than they
had hoped:
•Sank/disabled 19 ships, 188
airplanes, killed over 2400
and wounded 1100
•US aircraft carries out to sea,
so they escaped damage
•Roosevelt declared war the
next day
Victory in the Pacific (1942-45)
•While European war occurring, Japan
taking over much of the Pacific
(wanted living space)
•1942 Japan took Philippines, Malay
States, Dutch East Indies, part of New
Guinea
•US halted their advance north of
Australia at Coral Sea (May) and
Midway (June, considered payback for
Pearl Harbor)
•August, under command of Douglas
MacArthur, launched an attack at
Guadalcanal
•6 months to victory
•Beginning of “island hopping” North to
Japan, take some islands, skip others
•1945 captured Iwo Jima and Okinawa,
allowed US to launch air raids on Japan
•Japan fought back with Kamikaze,
suicide pilots
Pacific Theater
Back to Europe
•Yalta Conference
•Feb. 1945, the Big Three (Roosevelt, Stalin & Churchill) met in the
Soviet Union to decide what to do with the world after the war
•Decisions reached:
•United Nations would be organized as a permanent international peacekeeping organization
•Germany & Berlin would be divided into 4 zones of occupation by the US,
Britain, Soviet Union, & France
Victory Over Japan
•General Hideki Tojo refused to
surrender
•July US issued an ultimatum,
surrender or face “utter
destruction”
•Japan did not surrender
•Japanese refused to surrender &
President Harry S. Truman (FDR
had died in April) knew an
invasion of Japan could mean up
to a 1 million American deaths,
he ordered that a new defensive
weapon be dropped on a
Japanese city
•August 6, 1945 first bomb
dropped on Hiroshima
•Japan still did not surrender
•August 9 second dropped on
Nagasaki
•August 14 Japan surrendered
Truman’s notes to Stalin At Potsdam
Manhattan Project
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Atomic bomb
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Bomb cloud over Hiroshima
Invented in the Manhattan Project
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Albert Einstein told FDR in 1939
that a a-bomb could be built and
the Nazis were working on it
US secret project led by Oppenheimer
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Used people from US, GB, Canada,
and refugees from Nazi-occupied
Europe
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Made Atomic Bomb containing 2
lbs of Uranium; explosive power of
20,000 tons of TNT
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Bombs were known as “fat man”
and “little boy”
Hiroshima bomb killed or injured
130,000 destroyed 60% of city
GB worked on it, Allies did not tell
Stalin about a-bomb: led to resentment
that leads to Cold War
H-bombs, which we have today,
several thousand times more powerful
than a-bomb, can wipe out all life
within a 60- to 100-mile radius
Bad times
Hiroshima Before and After
Effects of the War
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55 million people died in this war
China, Japan, & Germany were in ruins
from the bombing
Millions of people were homeless & w/o
families—known as displaced persons
The US and Soviet Union would have
major conflicts that would result in the
Cold War