Mukden, Manchuria · September 18, 1931 The political and economic consequences of the collapse of produce prices in the 1920s and the onset of the Great Depression in Japan were marked by an unemployment rate of 25 percent in 1931, factory idleness at 50 percent, exports down by two-thirds, malnourishment in farming settlements, and high tariff barriers…
Tokyo, Japan · September 6, 1941 On this date in 1941, in an Imperial Conference in Tokyo, Japanese officials concluded that if diplomatic measures could not reverse the U.S. policy of embargoing the export of various strategic raw materials (e.g., oil, iron ore, rubber, and scrap steel) to Japan by early October, then the government…
Kyūshū Island, Japan · August 25, 1945 On this date in 1945, ten days after Japan had agreed to unconditional surrender, two U.S. Army pilots flying P‑38 Lightnings on armed reconnaissance landed on Kyūshū Island, the southernmost Japanese Home Island, after one of the P‑38s ran low on fuel. The two pilots became the first…
Moscow, Soviet Union · August 20, 1939 The he Soviet Union and Japan, two expansionist powers that occupied portions of the Asian mainland north of China, butted heads in the Mongolian borderlands as early as 1929. They had also fought a war in 1904–1905, the Russo-Japanese War, over influence in China, Mongolia, and Manchuria, the…
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,…
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, Gen. Hajime Sugiyama, Minister of War in the Imperial Japanese Army…
Tokyo, Japan · August 12, 1945 In 1945 the endgame in Europe was to take 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…
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 insisting on preconditions that protected the status of Hirohito as emperor. (Had there been no Japanese foot-dragging, would the Pacific…
509th Composite Group HQ, Tinian, Mariana Islands · August 8, 1945 On this date in 1945 in Japan, two days after 40,000 Hiroshima men, women, and children had died in an instant (90,000–166,000 would die from burns and radiation exposure within days), U.S. airplanes carpet-bombed the country with over five million leaflets. The leaflets described…
509th Composite Group HQ, Tinian, Mariana Islands · August 6, 1945 For several months the U.S. had dropped more than 63 million leaflets across Japan, warning civilians of devastating aerial bombings. Many Japanese cities suffered terrible damage from napalm bombs that set their wood-frame buildings on fire. On August 1, 1945, some 80 percent of Hachioji, a…
