Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia • January 23, 1942 On this date in 1942, over a month after Pearl Harbor, 20,000 Japanese Marines quickly overran the 1,400‑man Australian garrison at Rabaul, New Britain, the largest island in the Bismarck Archipelago (labeled “Niu Briten” on map below). Rabaul’s capture was important because of its proximity to the Caroline…
Kaohsiung, Japanese-Occupied Taiwan • January 9, 1945 World War II in Asia began with Japan’s conquest of Northeast China in 1931. Rogue elements of the Kuantung Army (Japan’s army in China) created an incident on a Japanese-owned railline near Mukden (now Shenyang) and used it as an excuse for military operations in the rest of Manchuria….
Mindoro Island, Philippines • December 15, 1944 On October 17, 1944, the naval, air, and land forces of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area, began their assault on the Japanese-held Philippine island of Leyte. Three days later MacArthur and his staff, accompanied by Philippine president Sergio Osmeña, waded onto Palo Beach (Red Beach),…
Rome, Italy • October 8, 1941 Two months before Great Britain joined the United States in declaring war on Japan, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini used this date in 1941 to blast the Japanese for not carrying their weight in the Tripartite (Axis) Pact, a political, economic, and military agreement that Italy, Germany, and Japan had…
Washington, D.C • October 5, 1943 On this date in 1943 the Japanese news agency Domei acknowledged that the 7,903‑ton Konron Maru was sunk by an American submarine off the west coast of the Japanese home island of Honshū, with the loss of 544 lives. The troopship was sunk by the USS Wahoo using the new,…
Berlin, Germany • August 20, 1939 In the early morning hours on this date in 1939 the first of two back-to-back seismic changes to Europe’s political, economic, and geostrategic equilibria occurred with the signing of the German-Soviet Trade and Credit Agreement in Berlin. An outgrowth of monthslong economic and political talks between German and Soviet…
Aboard the USS Pollack in Pacific Ocean • March 11, 1942 On this date in 1942 the USS Pollack made the first submarine attack using only its deck guns. Its targets were two Japanese fishing boats. During 1942 U.S. submarines reported 34 gun attacks on sampans and trawlers. The number of attacks increased to 64 in 1943,…
Tokyo, Japan · June 22, 1945 Beginning in the summer of 1944 Japanese military prowess fast approached terminal collapse in the Pacific. Between mid-June and early August, Saipan and Guam in the Marianas fell to superior American forces. Peleliu and Angaur in the Palau Islands were in American hands by the end of November 1944….
Chengtu, China · June 15, 1944 On this date in 1944 67 B-29 Superfortresses took off from their base in Chengtu, mainland China, to release 221 tons of bombs on the Imperial Iron and Steel Works at Yawata on the southernmost Japanese home island of Kyūshū. This was the first attack on the Japanese homeland since…
Japanese Naval Base, Truk Lagoon, South Pacific • March 20, 1943 Although Japanese submarines attacked far fewer ships than the Allies or Germany did, they were involved in a dozen or so documented atrocities—naval war crimes—against crew survivors. On this date in 1943 Rear Admiral Takero Kouta, commander of the First Submarine Group at the large Japanese…
