THE WAR BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND THE EMPIRE OF JAPAN, World War II in the Pacific Theatre – Part II

Kamikaze Pilots In Japanese, the term kamikaze translates roughly to “divine wind.” During the end of World War II, desperate Japanese leaders recruited men to serve as suicide pilots – promising them eternal life in heaven in exchange for their lives. The men target ships with their heavily armed airplanes, then crashed into the ship.

Kamikazes

Kamikaze Attack of the USS St. Louis

Iwo Jima, February 1945 Okinawa, April 1945 Major United States Victories of 1945

The Manhattan Project A top-secret program set up by the United States government in order to develop and test an atomic bomb. Suggested by none other than Albert Einstein, who feared that the Germans would create the weapon first, the program was led by J. Robert Oppenheimer and completed at Oak Ridge, TN and Los Alamos, NM.

Einstein writes to FDR

Test at Los Alamos, NM

J. Robert Oppenheimer “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

Harry S Truman

Hiroshima, Japan The bombing of Hiroshima, Japan was the dawn of the atomic age. The city of approximately 120,000 people was reduced to rubble instantaneously. The plane Enola Gay dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, after having taken off from Okinawa, Japan.

Hiroshima, August 6, 1945

Nagasaki, Japan The decision to use a nuclear weapon against civilian populations in Hiroshima and Nagasaki is still a controversial one – some maintain that it was simply murder. Harry Truman, however, explained that an invasion of Japan’s main islands would easily have cost one million American lives and perhaps even more Japanese lives – military and civilian.

Surrender on board the USS Missouri September 2, 1945 The Japanese formally surrendered to the United States on board the USS Missouri, on September 2, General Douglas MacArthur accepted the Japanese surrender and served as governor of the islands during its Reconstruction after World War II, planting the seeds of democracy and individual rights in Japan which flourish there today.

Surrender on the USS Missouri, Sept 2, 1945

Japanese Internment Camps, WW II During World War II in the United States, Japanese Americans were robbed of their individual rights and civil liberties and forced to relocate into internment camps for the duration of the war.

Japanese Relocation Camps Japanese Americans were forced to live in crowded conditions with little or no privacy, and many were robbed of personal property or forced to sell their possessions at low prices. While the indignities and insults were great, there should not be any parallels drawn between the way Japanese-Americans were treated in internment camps and the way Jewish people were treated in concentration camps and death camps.