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…
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…
