Potsdam, Germany • July 21, 1945 The “Big Three” Allies opened their victors’ conference on July 17, 1945, in an undamaged suburb 15 miles/24 kilometers from Berlin, the German capital. Two dramatic unconditional surrenders by the heads of Germany’s armed forces a week after the April 30 suicide of German dictator Adolf Hitler had encouraged the government heads of the…
San Francisco, California • July 15, 1945 On this date in 1945 the USS Indianapolis, a fast Portland-class cruiser in California for repairs, received orders to pick up some special cargo at Hunters Point (predecessor name for the now-closed San Francisco Naval Yard). Eleven days later, on July 26, Indianapolis unloaded her mysterious cargo—a large crate…
Manila, Occupied Philippines • May 6, 1942 On Monday, December 8, 1941, Japanese forces attacked the Philippines, a largely self-governing U.S. possession, formally known as the Commonwealth of the Philippines. (December 8, Manila and Japanese time, was Sunday, December 7, east of the International Date Line, the day Japanese carrier-based planes attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in a…
Berlin, Germany • January 18, 1942 On this date in 1942 Axis partners Germany, Italy, and Japan renewed their military and economic alliance just one and a half years into their 10‑year convention. The Tripartite Pact had come into being on September 27, 1940, when the foreign ministers of the 3 nations met in Berlin. Originally a…
Port Moresby, New Guinea • November 2, 1942 After failing in the Battle of the Coral Sea (May 4–8, 1942) to take the Australian administrative capital of Port Moresby on the island of New Guinea (see map), 4,400 Japanese troops landed on the island’s northeastern shore on the night of July 21/22, 1942, and established beachheads at…
Surigao Strait, Philippines • October 25, 1944 In the lightless hours on this date, October 25, 1945, 2 elderly Japanese battleships—Fuso and Yamashiro—escorted by heavy cruiser Mogami and 4 destroyers, steamed into what would become one of the most lop-sided battles in naval history. The warships made up half the Imperial Japanese Navy’s southern strike force under…
Off the Coast of Leyte Island, the Philippines • October 23, 1944 Allied campaigns from August 1942 to early 1944 had driven Japanese forces from many of their South and Central Pacific island bases, while isolating many of their other bases in the same area. The Allies bypassed a few Japanese bases like Rota in the…
Kyūshū Island, Japan • August 25, 1945 On this date in 1945, 10 days after Japanese Emperor Hirohito had announced his agreement to surrender his nation unconditionally, two U.S. Army pilots flying P‑38 Lightnings on armed reconnaissance landed at Nittagahara Airfield on Kyūshū Island, the southernmost Japanese Home Island, after one of the P‑38s ran low…
U.S. Seventh Fleet HQ • July 30, 1943 During the Pacific War U.S. submarines fired some 11,000 torpedoes, sinking hundreds of Japanese warships and well over one thousand merchant ships. The number of lives lost in the latter engagements is estimated at 116,000 Japanese merchant seamen, with 70,000 casualties the result of U.S. submarine actions. In…
Aboard the U.S. Carrier Shangri-La • July 14, 1945 On this date and the next in 1945, less than four months after the start of the joint U.S. air and naval effort to strangle Japanese maritime traffic by the aerial mining of Japan’s harbors and straits, aptly named Operation Starvation, Navy air groups destroyed over…
