Pacific Theater

1. Philippines

• The islands were an important US base• US General there was Douglas MacArthur• MacArthur was ordered to leave because it

looked like the Japanese were going to win

• People left behind ran low on supplies• They surrendered to Japanese on April 9, 1942

Bataan Death March

• They were forced to march over 100 miles to prison camp

• Death estimates range from 7,000 – 10,000

2. Doolittle raid

• Led by Jimmy Doolittle• Aircraft carrier got to within 700 miles of

Japan• 16 bombers dropped bombs over Tokyo• Caused Japan to split their force of aircraft

carriers

3. Battle of the Coral Sea

• First sea battle where all the fighting was done by airplanes

• Stopped the Japanese advance toward Australia

4. Midway Island

• The Japanese code had been cracked and the Americans were ready

• Stopped the Japanese sea offensive

5. Iwo Jima

• Led by Admiral Chester Nimitz• Important because it could be

an emergency stop for Americans

6. Okinawa

• Last obstacle before reaching Japanese mainland

• Kamikaze fighting – pilots who deliberately tried to crash their planes into an enemy ship

Manhattan Project

• Try to make a uranium bomb before the Germans did

• Set up a secret city near Knoxville, Tennessee called Oak Ridge

• Trial bomb was set off in New Mexico on July 16, 1945

• FDR dies of a stroke and Harry Truman is new president

• Thought it better to use the bomb than to waste hundreds of thousands of lives

Potsdam Declaration

• Major powers of the world met and demanded that Japan surrender unconditionally

• Japan refused

• On August 6, 1945 the bomber Enola Gay bombed Hiroshima

• The US asked Japan to surrender• They refused

• On August 9, 1945 the US dropped another bomb on Nagasaki

• The next day Japan surrendered

• War “officially” ended onboard the US ship Missouri where MacArthur met with two of the emperor’s representatives