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SC (8th Grade)
Social
Studies
Core
1
Monday, January 3,
2000
Part I~ The Lead-Up to the Attack on Pearl Harbor
In the 1920s, during World War I, Japan sided with France and Great Britain against Germany. They didn’t actually take an aggressive stance; that is to say, they didn’t attack Germany in Europe. Instead, they took all of Germany’s island holdings in the Pacific. Then, after the war was over, the Treaty of Versailles allowed them to keep for themselves their new territories: the Marianas, the Carolines, and the Marshall Islands. However, they went against the treaty by immediately fortifying and building up military bases and forces on their new holdings.
After this, they seemed to be taking a turn for supporting democracy, education, business, and commerce. Unfortunately, the militarists and extreme patriots hadn’t disappeared; they had simply been looked over. When the Great Depression hit, they came out into the open again. A new breed of Japanese surfaced: those who promoted conquest and expansion, as well as intolerance and even outright hate of foreigners. Even though the government didn’t support it, the military way of thinking continued to grow.
Japan (especially the military leaders) wanted to be a self-sufficient nation, and for this to be possible; they needed their own stock of natural resources and raw materials. Being a small, overcrowded island nation, they pretty much depended on the rest of the world for the of the world for these items. In March 1933, Japan withdrew from the League of Nations. After this, Japan ended the Washington Treaty, taking away any limit to the size of its naval forces. After stockpiling supplies and building up their navy, Japan began an undeclared war against China. The military leaders set up a plot to kill the ruler of Manchuria, a Chinese colony, planning to back it up with a claim that China had committed political crimes against them. All this was done, and Manchuria was taken, without the Japanese government finding out.
At this point, all of the world powers
were tied up. Great Britain and France were busy dealing with Hitler, and
the U.S. was split over whether to stop Japan or to wait it out, so Japan
got away with the Manchuria "incident". When the government did figure
out what was going on, it was too late, and the military had already planned
another "incident" in Peking. Prince Konoye of Japan resigned and was replaced
by General Hideki Tojo, one of those supporting the attack of China and
extending the Empire of the Rising Sun. He was the one who realized that
the United States was the only thing between Japan and the entire Pacific.
He decided to take out the threat with one swift blow: an attack on the
major U.S. naval base in the Pacific seemed perfect.
Part II~ The Plan and Attack on Pearl Harbor
Tojo said that he would take up Konoye’s talks with the United States. However, talks, in his way of thinking, were more like demands to get what he wanted, when he wanted it, and no questions asked. If he couldn’t get this through diplomatic negotiations and trade, then he’d fight for it, whether his opponent was a world power or not. In this way, General Tojo challenged not only the United States, but Great Britain, too; both being world powers, and each having a great naval force at their command.
Even though it seemed impossible, the Japanese actually had a lot going in their favor. They knew that most of the United States navy was gathered at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, which was pretty much right on the edge of their claims in the Pacific. They also knew that the target military structures weren’t very strong. The oil and other supplies they could gain would make them a rich military power, maybe even strong enough to overwhelm their main rival in the Pacific, the Soviet Union, which at this point appeared to be weakening under the pressure of the German invasion forces. It was also believed that the United States wouldn’t pay any attention to the Pacific until Hitler was defeated, and Britain was too busy trying to keep the Germans from advancing into their own land to bother with some little Japanese-American conflinese-American conflict on the other side of the world.
The Japanese military also knew they were safe if the Germans won the war with the Soviet Union; and that even if they didn’t, the enemy would still have been off guard just long enough for Japan to add China to its empire. Of course, the U.S. and Britain would eventually realize what had happened, but Japan was not at all worried. At that point they would end up working out some sort of agreement that would allow the Japanese to hold on to most of the land that they had stolen right out from under the noses of the major countries of the world. Japan didn’t see any way that they could possibly lose, and decided to go ahead with the expansion into China and the rest of the Pacific.
On 7 December 1941 Japan launched
a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The Americans had expected an
attack from Japan somewhere in Asia, so the attack came as a complete surprise.
Over 300 Japanese planes launched from carriers led the attack. Nineteen
ships were sunk or greatly damaged. 2,400 Americans – both service men
and civilians – were killed. The American public was furious. On 8 December
1941, President Roosevelt delivered his "day that will live in infamy"
speech, convincing the government to declare war on Japan and to officially
join the Allies. The Pacific War had begun.
Part III~ Battle of the Coral Sea
On 18 April 1942, two of the three U.S. aircraft carriers in the Pacific launched their bombers near Japan’s coast. They went on to bomb the city of Tokyo, lifting the morale of the American fighters and public; and enraging and horrifying the Japanese. Isoroko Yamamoto, the man in charge of the Japanese navy, told the Emperor that he was sorry and that it would never happen again. He decided to prevent the United States fleet from getting that close again, they would have to be pushed back so far that they could never hope to come so far again. Yamamoto decided that he could do just that by taking Port Moresby.
Admiral Nimitz, however, found out
about this plot and immediately sent diately sent the U.S.S. Lexington to join
the U.S.S. Yorktown, which was already stationed in the Coral Sea.
The Japanese carrier that was sent to take Moresby didn’t know of these
ships and so went ahead, relying, ironically, on surprise to help win and
secure the area as a Japanese post. The Americans attacked first, taking
out the Japanese light carrier Shoho, sinking it in ten minutes,
which is still a record for air-sea warfare. The invaders turned back,
but the next day, the Japanese sent two heavy carriers, the Shokaku
and Zuikaku to deal with the U.S.S. Lexington and U.S.S.
Yorktown.
They sunk the Lexington, but planes from the Yorktown dealt
the Japanese heavy blows, knocking them out of commission. In this way,
the Battle of the Coral Sea ended as a standoff as far as the win-or-lose,
but the Americans clearly had the upper hand when it came to strategy.
Part IV~ The Battle of Midway
Yamamoto had chosen the small island of Midway for his punishing blow to the United States fleet. Once he had taken the island, Japan would be invincible. So a huge fleet of Japanese ships set out toward Midway; and a smaller decoy was sent north to draw the American ships to Aleutian Islands, away from the target area. Among the larger fleet weng the larger fleet were four heavy carriers: the Akagi, the Kaga, the Hiryu, and the Soryu. Each of these giants was supported by their own set of destroyers. Then came the rear main body of the force, with transports full of troops for an amphibious invasion. None other than Yamamoto himself commanded this group. He was aboard his flagship, the most powerful of them all, the Yamato. It should have been perfect.
Unfortunately for Yamamoto and the Japanese fleet, Admiral Nimitz had known well in advance what the Japanese were planning to do, and was well prepared to deal with the problem. He sent all of his fleet, including the aircraft carriers Enterprise, Hornet, and Yorktown, each with supporting ships, to an area north of the island, and was prepared to hit the invasion force in the flank.
On 4 June 1942, Japan struck, sending
out bombers to weaken the defenses of the island. They were repelled, and
sent on another attack. However, they first needed to be refueled and loaded
up, it was exactly what the Americans had been waiting for. The Japanese
ships were at their most vulnerable, with fuel being pumped on deck and
explosives waiting to be loaded onto the nearby planes. American Devastator
planes from all three ships came in, and the Japanese AA hit almost every
last one of them.
The Japanese thought they had won,
until the thirty-seven Dauntless dive-bombers found them. Half of the dive-bombers
under Lt. Cmdr. McClusky took Kaga, while the other half took on
Akagi.
At the same time, seventeen more dive-bombers from the U.S.S.
Yorktown
crippled the Soryu. The Yorktown was sunk, but not before
she could launch a final attack. Ten minutes later, the twenty-four Dauntlesses
sent out from the Yorktown found and destroyed
Hiryu. All
four of the Japanese’s prize carriers had been sunk.
Part V~ Guadalcanal
After the amazing American victory
at the Battle of Midway, the leader of the Anglo-American Navy knew that
now was the right moment for America to take the offensive. He thought
that Gaudalcanal would be the ideal place to start this new strategy. The
Japanese were building an air base there, and this mission would cover
several objectives. If Japan held Guadalcanal; it would thoroughly seal
the barrierly seal
the barrier that kept U.S. forces out of the Japanese territory. This would
also prevent Australia from being in contact with the United States, and
the country would be threatened by invasion from the Japanese. An American
victory at Guadalcanal would also severely undermine the Japanese troops'
confidence.
An amphibious invasion was planned;
United States ships would bring in marines to start an invasion of the
island of Savo, Florida, and Guadalcanal. The fleets slipped in unnoticed
under the cover of a squall. The Marines quickly took Savo, as well as
the main part of Florida. Two small islands near Florida, however, gave
them some trouble. These islands were completely made up of sheer cliffs,
riddled with caves and tunnels; in which the Japanese were hiding. Marines
threw in dynamite sticks with five-second fuses to take care of the problem,
and eventually took the islands.
The Japanese made several attempts
to stop them, but all with out effect. The Americans had posted scouts
and knew when they were coming. The Japanese tried an air attack with twenty-four
warplanes, but the Americans were pre-informed and had their anti-aircraft
gunmen ready. They attempted another attack, this time with forty-five
bombers, and they were all shot down.
While all this was happenin all this was happening, another
ship had used the storm as a cover – a Japanese ship. She stole into the
harbor, and blew all five of the marine cover units out of the water, in
what came to be known to the Marines as the "battle of the five sitting
ducks". Now, the Marine forces were stranded, with no protection from above
or the sea, and no way to get out. The Japanese were convinced that they
had won.
Meanwhile, the Marines on the island
of Guadalcanal had taken the Japanese air base and were busy securing the
area. They had taken a prisoner, a Japanese seaman, who told of a village
in distress on the west end of the island. The Americans had seen a white
flag on entering this area, and so they sent a team of twenty-five Marines
to investigate. They were slaughtered mercilessly, a machine gun massacre.
After that, the Marines didn’t take prisoners.
The Japanese were certain that there
were about two thousand Americans on Guadalcanal, and so they sent in their
elite soldiers, nine hundred of the best they could find. Their commander
thought it would be best to attack at night, because the Americans he had
met in China considered night a time for dancing. He didn’t take into account
that they were in the middle of nowhere, fighting a war, not to mention,
who on Earth were they going to dance with? Some Marines realized what
was going on and plannes going on and planned an attack. They cut the soldiers off, and it is
estimated that not even fifty of the "mighty warriors" survived. Those
that did live later died of disease, starvation, jungle rot, or other ailments
caused by crawling around in the hot and steamy tropical rain forests.
After this failure, the Japanese
made several other attempts to retake the air base. They decided this time,
however, to take them with mass and support from the air and sea instead
of relying on skill. They also used the cover of darkness, and so preferred
to fight at night; the Japanese hoped that their sudden appearance out
of the middle of the night would terrify and confuse the enemy. The Marines
were outnumbered by at least ten-to-one, but they kept going. Eventually,
the invaders broke the line, but then had to retreat because of the breaking
of dawn.
On their next attempt, the Japanese
decided to move early, without the cover of their ships and planes. This
way, when they won, their leader could claim full responsibility, and all
of the honor would go to thnor would go to the army, the navy would have no share of it.
Once again, the United States Marines were vastly outnumbered; and the
only thing that kept the Japanese from winning and taking the base was
the dogged persistence of the American soldiers and, especially, their
commanding officers. They kept the men from falling back, and even though
the Japanese broke their line, the Marines caused so many casualties that
the Japanese had to retreat back into the jungle. For the Marines, persistence
truly did pay off.
Meanwhile, the American Marines from
the small islands near Florida had managed to fit themselves onto some
of the smaller boats that had escaped the so-called "Battle of the Five
Sitting Ducks", and headed out to the far side of Guadalcanal. These men
took care of the rear guard that the Japanese had left behind and made
their way to the air base. Once there, they used the new equipment and
fresh supplies they had brought to create a ring of booby traps, fox holes,
barbed wire, and other nasty surprises for the Japanese’s next attack.
This time, they would be ready, and the odds would be much more even.
At least, they thought the odds would
be even. Unknown to the American troops, the Japanese had sent for back
up too. Twenty thousand Japanese elite fighters were on the way to the
island of Guadalcanal, along with tons of food and thetons of food and the big gun, "Pistol
Pete", that spat out 150-millimeter shells. However, on the way to the
specified landing point, they met up with a United States fleet of warships
carrying soldiers from the U.S. Army to help back the Marines up. They
were going straight across the Japanese’s path, so their leader ordered
them to turn in such a manner that all the guns could be aimed at the enemy
ships. The American gunmen pretty much blew them out of the water. The
ships that did make it to the drop-off point were attacked from the sky
by new American planes that had just flown in. Most of the remaining ships
were destroyed, as well as the majority of the supplies, and quite a few
of the unloading team.
When the battle actually came around,
the Japanese were at a major tactical disadvantage. The Americans had well
fortified the area around the base, and with the new troops, they were
ready. Furthermore, the Japanese military leaders constantly egged their
troops on, telling them of their certain victory against the Americans.
This caused the men to yell out the threats that they were told would make
the Americans tremble in their trenches, "U.S. Marine be dead tomorrow!";
the Marines usually responding with more obscene threats that I cannot
include in this paper. This of course pinpointed for the U.S. gunners exactly
where the enemy soldiers were. As soon as the Marines opened fire on tnes opened fire on them,
the Japanese hoard would rush out, screaming and clamoring right into the
middle of the machine gun fire. In one area, the gunners couldn’t shoot
at the retreating Japanese because the bodies were piled so high.
This kind of battle was typical for
the next few months, until the Japanese finally surrendered and fled what
was now known to them as the "Island of Death". In the end, over 50,000
Japanese had been killed, while U.S. Army and Marine deaths didn’t quite
reach 3,000. The fact that they had held this island for over five months,
attacked from the land, sky, and sea with that few casualties, is amazing
in itself. This was also the first time that an American invasion team
had taken a Japanese-held territory. The war was beginning to turn around.
Part VI~ Island-Hopping
to Iwo Jima
After Guadalcanal, the Americans
took the offensive, using a strategy created by Admiral Nimitz called island
hopping. The United States army and navy pilots would fly over an iould fly over an important
Japanese-held island and bomb it to weaken the defenses. Then, the Marines
would land and take the island. To conserve energy and supplies – not to
mention prevent a great loss of lives – Nimitz only took the most important
island and left the rest. He didn’t need to worry about these, they were
without any way to contact the main Japanese force, and so they just sat
there, twiddling their thumbs. This tactic was used in Guam, Saipan, Tinian,
and numerous other islands in the Pacific. The plan was to keep connecting
the dots until, eventually, they got to the island of Japan itself.
Finally, it was time to take the
next leap toward Japan: to the tiny island of Iwo Jima. The Americans needed
Iwo Jima, there were no two ways about it. This little volcanic island
was close enough to Japan that planes sent from it could easily reach the
main islands, make an air raid, and then make it back without running out
of fuel. Unfortunately, the Japanese also knew this, and they had had plenty
of time to properly fortify and defend the island against any threat.
Iwo Jima was a small island, but
it had plenty of room beneath the black, sandy soil. The island could easily
have been compared to an ant nest, with tunnels, chambers, pillboxes, and
even a conference room that was 150 by 200 feet. Almost every hill and
mound on Iwo Jima wamound on Iwo Jima was really a small cave from which the Japanese men would
fire at attacking troops. The Americans had another problem – much of the
fleet that had been used to weaken other islands’ defenses were currently
being borrowed by Douglas McArthur, so the Marines had to deal with fresh
Japanese.
The Americans only got in about three
hundred yards before the ground literally exploded. Out of every hill and
hole, behind every rock, came the fire of automatic weapons and handguns,
450-mm artillery shells carved huge chunks in the Marine forces. It’s a
miracle that they got any further, but somehow, they managed to push in
for an entire mile. The Marines threw grenades and dynamite into the Japanese
pillboxes, and shot as many men as they could. Inch by bloody inch, they
made their way across the island to the dormant volcano.
A team of Marines was sent up, and
they placed a tiny American flag at the summit, and another man took pictures.
The flag brought out the rest of the Japanese, enraged, they fought hand
to hand. While it was meant to give the Americans courage, the flag was
too small to be seen from far off. After the Japanese were, for the most
part, taken care of, another group went up with a much larger flag, accompanied
by a photographer from the Associated Press. He is the one who took the
famous pictures the
famous pictures of the Marines raising the American flag on Iwo Jima. This
was the same event that inspired the memorial in Washington, D.C. Now that
the United States had Iwo Jima, they could launch a full-scale attack on
Japan.
Part VII~ The Atomic
Bombings
On 6 August 1945, the people of Hiroshima
all rushed to their air raid shelters – four American planes had just flown
by. However, the all clear was soon announced; it seemed to have been one
of those American missions in which a few planes flew by, dropping a single
missile. But it wasn’t. Moments later, a white light swallowed the city;
it was later reported that blind men saw this flash. A wall of wind and
heat arose, suffocating people, melting their flesh. Those who could make
it to the river, in hopes of cooling themselves off were boiled to death.
The center of the city was gone; it simply no longer existed. Buildings
collapsed and burned, houses were leveled. Most of the survivors of the
initial blast only lived for a few more weeks, the gamma radiation was
interadiation was
intense. This horror heralded the beginning of the Atomic Age. Those hospitals
that weren’t decimated were jam packed with people needing treatment and
those looking for their family. The city burned through the night, until
the relative peace of the next day. Over 150,000 were dead. Japan wouldn’t
surrender.
Two days later, the Soviet Union
declared war on the island nation. Later that morning, a second atomic
bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, chalking up another 35,000 on
the list of the dead. The military leaders in the country didn’t want to
surrender, but the Divine Emperor of Japan told them that they were to
unconditionally surrender, with the only exception being that they keep
the Imperial Constitution. The Emperor accepted the surrender offered by
the Allied forces, overruling the military leaders who wanted to strike
back. On Sunday, 2 September 1945, official documents of surrender were
signed aboard the U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
©2000 SC
The above material is protected
by copyright law and may only be used in whole or in part with the direct
permission of the author.
Bibliography Delivered From Evil: The Saga of
World War II
Robert Leckie © 1987 R. Leckie
Harper & Row Publishers
Great Battles of World War II
John Macdonald © 1986 Marshall
Editions Limited
Macmillan Publishing Company
World War II: The American Story
No author listed
No copyright listed
1999 World Book Encyclopedia CD-ROM
© 1998 World Book Inc. ©
1998 IBM Corp.
Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia
CD-ROM
© 1992, 1994 Compton’s NewMedia
Time Magazine Multimedia Almanac
CD-ROM
© 1995 TIME Inc.
Time Almanac of the 20th Century
CD-ROM
© 1995 TIME Inc.
The author be reached at:
[email protected] and would appreciate any comments.
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