Tokyo, Japan • August 8, 1945 On this date in 1945, Japan’s Foreign Minister Shigenori Tōgō, the government’s leading civilian proponent of a peace settlement with the Allies, visited Emperor Hirohito (posthumously referred to as Emperor Shōwa) at his palace to brief him on Hiroshima’s ruin by (as Hirohito later characterized it) “a new and…
Tokyo, Japan · December 5, 1937 On this date in 1937 Prince Yasuhiko Asaka, a lieutenant general in the Imperial Japanese Army and uncle by marriage to Japanese Emperor Hirohito (posthumously referred to as Emperor Shōwa), flew from Tokyo to his new assignment—temporary command of the Japanese Shanghai Expeditionary Force, a unit of Gen. Iwane…
Aboard the USS Shangri-La · July 28, 1945 The Imperial Japanese Navy had the second most powerful navy in the Pacific Theater in World War II and the third largest navy in the world after the U.S. and Royal navies. During the first years of the war the Japanese Combined Fleet, the IJN’s main ocean-going component,…
Tokyo, Japan · December 5, 1937 On this date in 1937 Prince Yasuhiko Asaka, a lieutenant general in the Imperial Japanese Army and uncle by marriage to Japanese Emperor Hirohito (posthumously referred to as Emperor Shōwa), flew from Tokyo to his new assignment—temporary command of the Japanese Shanghai Expeditionary Force, a unit of Gen. Iwane…
Aboard the USS Shangri-La · July 28, 1945 The Imperial Japanese Navy was the second most powerful navy in the Pacific War in World War II and the third largest navy in the world after the U.S. and Royal navies. During the first years of the war the Japanese Combined Fleet, the IJN’s main ocean-going component, dominated the…