Seattle, Washington · November 3, 1944 On this date in 1944 Japan began an explosive balloon campaign against the U.S. and Canada. Over the next five months the Special Balloon Regiment of the Japanese army launched about 9,300 hydrogen-filled rubberized-silk or paper “fire balloons” (fūsen bakudan, lit. “balloon bomb”), or Fu-Go’s as they were known in…
Chungking, China · October 31, 1944 The war against the Japanese in China was desultory at best, and service in that theater was viewed as a graveyard by U.S. military and diplomatic officials. On this date in 1944 Maj. Gen. Albert Wedemeyer arrived to replace dismissed Gen. Joseph Stilwell as commander of the China Theater…
Honolulu, Hawaii · October 29, 1943 In World War II’s Pacific Theater, sea mines—explosive underwater devices that damaged, sank, or deterred Japanese warships, submarines, and maritime commerce—were weapons that had difficulty gaining the same respect as guns, bombs, and torpedoes enjoyed in the U.S. arsenal. Over time, however, a small number of mining advocates in both…
Off the China Coast · October 25, 1944 By October 1944 U.S. Navy submarine Tang and her skipper Richard O’Kane were legendary. (O’Kane had earlier made a name for himself aboard the Wahoo as executive officer under Dudley Walker “Mush” Morton.) The Tang, a Balao-class submarine, was credited during the war years with sinking 31 enemy…
Kragujevac, Serbia, Yugoslavia · October 21, 1941 From Europe, to Africa, to the Far East, regular Axis troops, as well as specialized killing squads (Einsatzgruppen), murdered millions of unarmed civilians. These mass murders often targeted ethnic or political groups. Sometimes they were committed in retaliation for acts of resistance, whether or not the victims were…
Leyte, Philippines · October 20, 1944 In October 1944 Lt. Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita commanded 225,000 Japanese soldiers in the Philippines. On this date in 1944, on a 25‑mile stretch of Leyte Island in the Philippines, an Allied fleet of more than 730 transport and escort vessels, supported by aircraft carriers and 100 warships, put 160,000 U.S. troops ashore under…
Moscow, Soviet Union · October 19, 1941 On this date in 1941, the day the official “state of siege” was declared in the Soviet capital of Moscow, Red Army forces from the Soviet Far East and Siberia began arriving on the Russian Front. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was convinced that evacuating most of his troops…
Tokyo, Japan · October 16, 1941 On this date in 1941 Prince Fumimaro Konoe resigned as prime minister of Japan. Konoe 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. ban on the export of…
Tokyo, Japan · October 13, 1940 On this date in 1940 Japan’s foreign minister Yōsuke Matsuoka, who had grown up in Oregon and California (1893–1902), invited the United States and other nonaligned nations to join the Tripartite Pact, which Axis powers Germany, Italy, and Japan had initialed in Berlin the previous month (September 27). The Pact…
Northern Mariana Islands · October 12, 1944 The Pacific Theater was the largest theater of World War II. Because of its watery expanse, Army aviation engineers and Seabees had to build more than 100 airfields on islands that dotted the Pacific, from New Guinea in the south, up through Guam, the Marianas, Iwo Jima, to Okinawa. On…
