End of WWII in the Pacific Semester 2 Week 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 Japan Nagasaki Hiroshima 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

QUIZ This was perfectly located, roughly halfway between the Marianas and Japan? He was commander of the B-29s based in the Marianas? Who led the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos? What were the names of the 2 bombs dropped in Japan? What were the names of the cities that the bombs were dropped?