Manila, Philippines • March 3, 1945 On this date the monthlong Battle of Manila ended when U.S. and Filipino forces captured Manila’s Finance Building. It was the last set of government offices in the Philippine capital still occupied by a scrum of Japanese sailors and soldiers serving under the fanatical ex-Rear Adm. Sanji Iwabuchi, a…
Manila, Occupied Philippines • May 6, 1942 On Monday, December 8, 1941, Japanese forces attacked the Philippines, a largely self-governing U.S. possession, formally known as the Commonwealth of the Philippines. (December 8, Manila and Japanese time, was Sunday, December 7, east of the International Date Line, the day Japanese carrier-based planes attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in a…
Washington, D.C. • April 9, 1983 On this date in 1983, National POW/MIA Recognition Day, 31 of the 67 Army and Navy nurses who had been captured by the Japanese in 1942 and interned at the Santo Tomas and Los Baños internment camps in the Philippines were honored at a White House ceremony by President Ronald…
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…
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),…
Bari, Italy • November 8, 1943 On this date in 1943, 13 U.S. Army flight nurses, 13 young enlisted medics, and 3 flight crew boarded a Douglas C‑53 transport in Sicily for a 90‑minute flight to Bari on the Italian mainland. As a unit of the 807th Medical Air Evacuation Squadron, the team’s assignment was to…
Manila, Philippines · December 10, 1941 On this date in 1941, 3 days after the U.S. Pacific Fleet had been severely crippled at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Japanese troops landed on the U.S.-held island of Guam in the Western Pacific Ocean and occupied it within hours. On the same day elements of the Japanese 14th Area…
Bari, Italy · November 8, 1943 In this date in 1943, 13 U.S. Army flight nurses, 13 young enlisted medics, and 3 flight crew boarded a Douglas C‑53 transport in Sicily for a 90‑minute flight to Bari on the Italian mainland. As a unit of the 807th Medical Air Evacuation Squadron, the team’s assignment was to…
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…
Tokyo, Japan · June 30, 1941 On September 19, 1931, soldiers of the Kwantung Army (eventually the largest, most prestigious branch of the Imperial Japanese Army) invaded Manchuria in Northeast China from their base at Port Arthur (present-day Dalian or Lüshun Port) and established a puppet state they called Manchukuo. This event was a massive…