Coral Sea War

Before the summer of 1942 the United States fought a defensive war in the Philippines. The change in strategy, was when the U.S. went on a land offensive to defeat the Japanese. They planned to do this by capturing all the islands until their empire was nothing but their Japan itself. The name of the battle that marked the turning point was the Battle of Guadalcanal. Japanese forces reached Guadalcanal in May of 1942. When the Allies noticed construction of an airfield on Guadalcanal, the U.S. did an amphibious landing, and the two forces went back and forth. It became a major turning-point in the war because it stopped Japanese expansion.

After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands, President Truman dropped two atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. Since then, there has been arguments whether the bombs should have been dropped or not. President Truman’s choice to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was really the only option he had back then. Today, the bombs that President Truman dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is thought as a horrible event, but Truman dropped the bombs to save American and Japanese lives, and in the end, shortened the war.

But yet they still failed. “First, the Japanese missed their prime targets:the aircraft carriers Lexington and Enterprise (both of which were at sea), and Saratoga. Second, the Japanese failed to destroy the huge oil storage facilities, without which the Pacific Fleet would have been forced to retire to the West Coast.” Many historians argue if they should have attacked us. It was only a matter of time before the U.S was going to be sent into World war II it was a great reason to start early. As the attack didn’t hurt us too much as we were attacking back within 3 days. The japanese had failed there attack and we were catapulted into a war on 2

According to the TF Mountain intelligence, only a few hundred enemy forces were in the area (Fleri, Howard, Hukill, & Searle, 2003). However, this was a sore underestimate due to a high volume of hiding places in caves located in the mountains. The Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance was very aggressive and did not take into account the surround areas or the possibility of enemy forces planning guerrilla

knowledge with regards to the whereabouts of this attack, furthering the argument that the attack was a genuine surprise. American intelligence was unable to speculate or guess the Japanese nation’s intention (source B). This statement is supported by the fact that Japan had meticulously planned the attack, taking various precautionary measures to safeguard the security of their plan (source A). The United States would have found it tremendously difficult to completely decipher the Japanese plan. The messages that were recovered by American intelligence gave no indication that there would be an, “outbreak of hostilities” (Source B).

Japan attacked Pearl Harbor because the U.S. was becoming a threat with their rapid growth in their Navy. Naval Expansion Act was passed on July of 1940 which would allow the U.S. to triple their naval ships by 1944 (Doc.C). This starts to worry Japanese prime minister and war minister Hideki Tojo, who later meets up with top Japanese officials on November of 1941, to secretly talk about the United States Naval Expansion and how it is a danger to Japan future (Doc.E). So Japan attacks Hawaii, Pearl Harbor because they needed to stop the U.S. Navy before they became too strong to

American imperialism: the result of capitalism, business, and trade; the result of fear, competition with other countries, and the quest for furthering an economy—proven with the acquisition of Hawaii and the removal of its ruler, Queen Liliuokalani. Why and how did that happen, and in which ways did it impact the world? The United States removed Hawaii’s queen out of imperialism, an avarice for control of the rich natural resources, and the strategic military standpoint Hawaii provided them with. This changed Hawaii to a tourist base and sugarcane phenomenon, boosting the United States’s economy, but also caused a decline in the population of the Native Hawaiians. The possession of Hawaii also led to the United States’s involvement in World

After the bombing, the United State troops approached the island. At their first sight, the troops thought that they had wiped out all of the Japanese troops. This is because the Japanese had dug a tremendous amount of underground tunnels and hideouts (Chen). This is why the United States had a very limited amount of success with the bombing. The Japanese Imperial Navy was instructed to stay in their positions until all of the beaches around Iwo Jima were full. Once the United States started pushing forward, the Japanese opened

This was the start of the long invasion of Iwo Jima. The Battle of Iwo Jima was fought between the Japanese army and the United States Marine Corps (USMC). The battle, known to the USMC as "Operation Detachment", started on February 19, 1945 and lasted until March 26, 1945 when the last Japanese soldiers were captured or killed. Japan knew that the importance of defending Iwo Jima as its loss would facilitate American air raids against Japanese Home Islands. However Imperial Japanese Navy had already lost almost all of its power and could not prevent U.S. from landing. Also depleting air strength meant the remaining warplanes had to be hoarded to defend Japanese Home Islands. With no available means to defend Iwo Jima, Japan decided to rely on the established defensive equipment in the area and check U.S. by delaying tactics to gain time for defense of the mainland. Japanese Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi was assigned the task of defending Iwo Jima. Knowing he couldn’t win the battle, he aimed at inflicting heavy casualties on American forces to force them to reconsider invasion of Mainland Japan. His strategy was radically different from Japan’s usual strategy of beach defense to face the landings directly. He used Defense in Depth military strategy which seeks to delay rather than prevent the advance of the attacker, buying time and causing additional casualties. A complex and elaborate defense was prepared. Among other things, an extensive system of tunnels was built to connect the prepared positions so that positions which had been cleared could be re-occupied. Numerous snipers and camouflaged machine gun positions were also set up. The Marines were able to cut off Mount Suribachi from the rest of the island by the morning of 23 February. A group of Marines were sent to capture the summit. They were given an American flag to fly to signal its capture. They met with little Japanese resistance and hoisted the U.S. flag over Mount Suribachi: the first

The main deficiency with Japan’s war plan for Midway, as Symonds pointed out, came from the assumption that the Americans would react and behave in the way that the Japanese wanted, enough for them to strangle and beat down U.S. forces enough to drag them to the negotiation table as they had done with the Russians in the Russo – Japanese War. One mistake that Symonds pointed made on the part of the Japanese regarding their Midway plan was that attacking the island itself provided no advantage for them but everything for the Americans. Japan did not have the resources to both take over Midway and maintain the island, but it boosted all the benefits for the Americans because Midway provided land-based air cover, shorter logistic lines and was close enough to repair facilities that the U.S. forces did not have to stress. Essentially by picking this island, the Japanese had lost another step in the overall battle. Midway was closer to the U.S. bases which were crawling with American submarines and therefore easier to protect instead of the geographical location of Japan were trying to provide resources to Japanese on the would be occupied island would stretch out Japan’s already depleting sources as pointed out by Commander Miyo. Symonds also shows how the war wasn’t a miracle by

After General MacArthur’s arrival, Japan went on the defensive and constructed the Sho-Go or Operation Victory. Their goal was to “decoy the U.S. Third Fleet north away from the San Bernardino Strait, while converging three forces on Leyte Gulf to attack the landing” (Britannica). Once this was

But fortunately for the United States, they were able to intercept and decipher the Japanese code. This gave the United States enough time to gather up forces to fight against the Japanese. The Japanese goal was to end the United States involvement in the Pacific. A couple months before the Battle of Midway the United States was able to launch a surprise Attack against the Japanese which they were launched from the island of Midway. The United States was able to successfully bomb the Japanese mainland. Or the Japanese this show them that they were not Invincible that they could be

A long-standing debate in American history is when the United states gained the upper hand against Japan in World War. Some say it happened at the Battle of Midway, while others claim it to be Guadalcanal. Both had their significances and contributions to the American victory, but the victory at Guadalcanal is likely to not have occurred had Japan won the Battle of Midway. The American victory at Midway did several things for them, firstly they gained morale and momentum in the pacific, they essentially destroyed the Japanese navy’s surface fleet, and they secured Midway Atoll. When combined, the resulting outcome spells out the start of Japan’s failure to when the war.

America just got out of The First World War and The Great Depression. We had lost many troops and we were recovering from the hard times of The Great Depression. Most Americans had no desire to join the war. Before the attack on Pearl Harbor, we helped in the war by providing arms to our allies and neutral countries. One of the main reasons that America finally joined the war is because of Japan and their attack on Pearl Harbor, after America was thrust into WWII everyday life changed all across the country.

The book “Miracle at Midway” written by Charles Mercer really fascinated me about the Battle of Midway. Charles Mercer used this book to describe the detailed work American did to beat Japan at Midway. This book was approximately 150 pages and included many pictures that were very familiar to what the reader was imagining in their own head. The author Charles Mercer served as an intelligence officer in the Pacific. He then was called to active duty in the Korean War. After his postwar career he became an editor with a book publishing house in New York.