Tokyo, Japan • September 30, 1943 On this date in 1943, at the fourth Imperial Conference held since the start of the Pacific War, senior Japanese military and civilian leaders adopted the “absolute defense perimeter” strategy after securing the requisite imprimatur of Shōwa Emperor Hirohito. The strategy reflected a shift in the expectations of both…
Vichy, France • September 22, 1940 As early as June 1940, after French resistance to the German conquest of France crumbled, Japan made overtures to Vichy French authorities for permission to station troops in French Indochina (now Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) and for their warships to take up naval stations off Northern Indochinese ports in…
Seattle, Washington State • September 21, 1942 On this date Boeing’s largest-to-date, 4‑engine heavy bomber lifted off on its maiden flight from its namesake’s airfield in Seattle, Washington. Three years earlier the forerunner of the U.S. Army Air Forces had expressed its interest in a replacement bomber for the company’s first 4‑engine heavy bomber, the…
Tokyo, Japan • September 18, 1931 The assassination of the Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin in June 1928 was the first in a daisy change of major Sino-Japanese crises faced by the new Japanese emperor, Hirohito (posthumously referred to as Emperor Shōwa), whose reign began 18 months before. Manchuria (sometimes referred to by its historical name Guandong)…
Tokyo, Japan • September 6, 1941 On this date in 1941, in an Imperial Conference in Tokyo, Japanese military and political leaders embarked on a collision course with the West. It was decided that Japan would begin war preparations against the U.S., Great Britain, and the Netherlands (all countries with territorial claims in Southeast Asia;…
Tokyo, Japan • August 29, 1944 From the summer of 1944 to the spring of 1945, Japanese forces continued their retreat from military outposts in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Japanese losses in personnel, warships, and airplanes were minimized by frontline commanders, who exaggerated Japanese military successes against the Allied enemy in reports to Imperial…
Tokyo, Japan • August 14, 1945 Two days after the United States had dropped a second atomic bomb on a major Japanese city, this on Nagasaki on August 9, Emperor Hirohito (posthumously referred to as Emperor Shōwa) personally intervened during an Imperial Conference (Gozen Kaigi) to let diehard hawks in his government and armed services know…
Tokyo, Japan • August 12, 1945 In 1945 the endgame in Europe was to capture Berlin, the epicenter of Nazi resistance, which the Red Army did in the last week of April. On May 7 and 8, 1945, Adolf Hitler’s political heir, Adm. Karl Doenitz, surrendered Nazi Germany unconditionally to the Allies. The endgame in the…
Washington, D.C. • August 10, 1988 On this date in 1988 U.S. President Ronald Regan signed into law the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. Regan’s signature corrected a wrong that occurred when another American president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, issued Executive Order 9066. The February 19, 1942, order directly led to the exile and incarceration of more…
509th Composite Group HQ, Tinian, Mariana Islands • August 9, 1945 Despite the shockwaves that Hiroshima’s destruction on August 6, 1945, sent through Imperial circles, Japan’s government refused to agree to an unconditional surrender; their leaders insisted on preconditions, chief among them protecting the “prerogatives” of Emperor Hirohito as Japan’s “sovereign ruler.” (Had there been no Japanese…