Berlin, Germany • September 27, 1940 On January 6, 1939, Japan was approached by Germany with a proposal to reshape the Anti-Comintern Pact. The anti-communist pact, which Japan had signed with Nazi Germany in 1936 and Fascist Italy in 1937, largely targeted the Soviet Union, Tokyo’s decades-long adversary on the Asian continent. The January proposal…
Aboard USS Shangri-La • July 28, 1945 In December 1941 the Imperial Japanese Navy had the second most powerful navy in the Pacific Theater in World War II and the third largest navy in the world after the U.S. and Royal navies. During the first years of the war the Japanese Combined Fleet (Rengō Kantai), the IJN’s…
Chicago, Illinois • July 3, 1945 On this date in 1945 Hungarian-born physicist and inventor Leó Szilárd drafted the first of two versions of a petition to President Harry S. Truman, urging him not to use the atomic bomb on Japan before that nation had been given a chance to surrender. It was Szilárd who,…
Tokyo, Japan • October 16, 1941 On this date in 1941 three-time Prime Minister of Japan Prince Fumimaro Konoe resigned from office. Konoe (also rendered Konoye) had lost the support of cabinet and Army minister Gen. Hideki Tōjō, who called for a firmer line with the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt over the U.S….
Quebec, Canada • August 18, 1943 On this date in 1943 in Quebec, Canada, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King, along with their Combined Chiefs of Staff, set to work planning Operation Overlord, the 1944 invasion of German-occupied France. At this first of two Quebec conferences,…
Philippine Sea, North Pacific Ocean • June 19, 1944 On this date in 1944 a huge gale hit the two gigantic artificial harbors known as Mulberry harbors that the British had built in England, floated across the English Channel, and deposited on Normandy’s beaches several days after the Allies’ June 6 invasion. The gale inflicted losses…
Tokyo, Japan • August 8, 1945 On this date in 1945, Japan’s Foreign Minister Shigenori Tōgō, the government’s leading civilian proponent of a peace settlement with the Allies, visited Emperor Hirohito (posthumously referred to as Emperor Shōwa) at his palace to brief him on Hiroshima’s ruin by (as Hirohito later characterized it) “a new and…
Shanghai, China • August 13, 1937 The Battle of Shanghai began on this date in 1937. It was the first major battle of World War II (the European conflict erupted two years later), and it eventually involved nearly one million combatants. When hostilities broke out Minister of War (1937–1938) Field Marshal Hajime Sugiyama advised Emperor Hirohito…
Washington, D.C. · December 31, 1943 By this date in 1943 Boeing delivered its 92nd B‑29 Superfortress to the U.S. government after the giant bomber began rolling off the assembly line the previous September. Even before the country was at war and government funds had been allocated, Boeing had produced a prototype of the long-range…
Berlin, Germany • December 25, 1941 On this date in 1941 Japanese citizens celebrated the 15th anniversary of the succession to the Imperial Throne of Emperor Hirohito (posthumously referred to as Emperor Shōwa), according to tradition the 124th direct descendant of Jimmu, the legendary first ruler of the Empire of the Rising Sun. Festive toasts…