Japan Timeline

The Battle of Sunda Strait was a naval battle which occurred during World War II. On the night of February 28 – March 1, 1942, the United States cruiser USS Houston and the Australian cru...

Battle of Tachiao March 18 - 19, 1942, was the first clash in the Battle of Yunnan-Burma Road in the Burma Campaign of World War II and Second Sino-Japanese War. Advanced elements of t...

On the 24th of March, the Japanese 112th Regiment made frontal attacks on the Oktwin positions while the 143rd Regiment with the aid of friendly local Burmese made use of the cover of the...

On March 20, the 143rd Regiment plus cavalry units attacked the positions of the Chinese Cavalry Regiment north of River彪关, driving the Chinese forces back with heavy losses. The bulk o...

Following the destruction of the American-British-Dutch-Australian Command forces in the battles around Java in February and March, the Japanese sortied into the Indian Ocean to destroy B...

The Battle of Borneo was a successful campaign by Japanese Imperial forces for control of Borneo island and concentrated mainly with the subjugation of Kingdom of Sarawak, North Borneo an...

With Japan's entry into the war, and especially after the fall of Singapore, Ceylon became a front-line British base against the Japanese. Admiral Sir Geoffrey Layton was appointed Comman...

On 9 April 1942 the Japanese attacked the harbor at Trincomalee at 07:00. The British again had warning of the attack, and Hermes and her escorts had left the night before. They were retu...

It was now essential to deny the oil fields at Yenangyaung to the Japanese some 100 miles north of Prome. The allied lines of defence were planned to be from Minhia (west back of the rive...

The Doolittle Raid, 18 April 1942, was the first air raid by the United States to strike a Japanese home island (Honshū) during World War II. It demonstrated that Japan itself was vulnera...

As the raiders landed in China, most were aided by local Chinese forces or civilians. One raider, Corporal Leland D. Faktor, died while bailing out. For aiding the American airmen, the Ja...

The Battle of the Coral Sea, fought during May 4–8, 1942, was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II between the Imperial Japanese Navy and Allied naval and air force...

By the end of 1942, the chances of the Allies re-taking Timor were remote, as there were now 12,000 Japanese troops on the island and the commandos were coming into increasing contact wit...

When dawn broke on the morning of March 26, the American task force was east of the International Date Line, (so it was actually March 27) 180 miles west of Attu and a hundred miles sout...

The Battle of Attu took place May 11, 1943 – May 30, 1943 on Attu Island off of Alaska as part of the Aleutian Islands Campaign during the Pacific War of World War II. Fought entirely bet...

The Centaur was sunk by a Japanese submarine off the Queensland coast in 1943. With only 64 of the 332 people on board surviving, it was the highest casualty list of any merchant ship ...

On Tuesday 8 June 1943 the Mutsu was moored at the Battleship Division 2 flagship buoy No.2 in the Hashirajima fleet anchorage approximately 3 km south-west of the island of Hashirajima a...

Operation Cottage was a tactical maneuver during the Aleutian Islands campaign. In the operation, which took place on August 15, 1943, Allied military forces landed unopposed on Kiska Isl...

The Battle of Changde (simplified Chinese: 常德会战; traditional Chinese: 常德會戰; pinyin: Chángdé Huìzhàn) was a major engagement in the Second Sino-Japanese War. On November 2, 1943 the Imperi...

The Battle of Tarawa was a battle in the Pacific Theatre of World War II, largely fought from November 20 to November 23, 1943. It was the second time the United States was on the offensi...

The Battle of Kwajalein was a battle of the Pacific campaign of World War II, fought from January 31, 1944, to February 3, 1944, on Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Employing the ...

The Battle of Eniwetok was a battle of the Pacific campaign of World War II, fought between 17 February 1944 and 23 February 1944, on Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The invasi...

The Battle of Central Henan, was the first offensive in the Japanese Operation Ichi-Go during the Second Sino-Japanese War. In the Battle of Central Henan, 390,000 Chinese soldiers, le...

Operation Ichi-Go (一号作戦 Ichi-gō Sakusen, lit. "Operation Number One") was a campaign of a series of major battles between the Imperial Japanese Army forces and the National Revolutionary ...

The Battle of Changsha (1944), (also known as the Battle of Hengyang or Campaign of Changsha-Hengyang) was an invasion of the Chinese province of Hunan by Japanese troops near the end of ...

The Battle of Saipan was a battle of the Pacific campaign of World War II, fought on the island of Saipan in the Mariana Islands from 15 June 1944 to 9 July 1944. The invasion fleet embar...

The Battle of the Philippine Sea (aka "The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot") was a decisive naval battle of World War II, and the largest aircraft carrier battle in history. It was fought bet...

The Second Battle of Guam (July 21 — August 8, 1944) was the American capture of the Japanese held island of Guam (in the Mariana Islands) during the Pacific campaign of World War II. ...

The Battle of Tinian was a battle of the Pacific campaign of World War II, fought on the island of Tinian in the Mariana Islands from 24 July 1944 to 1 August 1944. The American victor...

The Battle of Hengyang was the longest defense of a single city of the entire Second Sino-Japanese War. When Changsha fell to the Imperial Japanese Army on June 19, 1944, Hengyang became ...

The Battle of Guilin–Liuzhou (simplified Chinese: 桂柳会战; traditional Chinese: 桂柳會戰; pinyin: Gùilǐu Huìzhàn), also known as the Battle of Guiliu was one of the 22 major engagements between ...

Operation Tiderace commenced when Mountbatten ordered Allied troops to set sail from Trincomalee and Rangoon on 31 August for Singapore. The fleet was not armed with offensive weapons as ...

The Battle of Peleliu, codenamed Operation Stalemate II, was fought between the United States and Imperial Japan in the Pacific Theater of World War II, from September to November 1944 on...

The Battle of Angaur was a battle of the Pacific campaign in World War II, fought on the island of Angaur in the Palau Islands from 17 September 1944 to 30 September 1944. Angaur is a ...

During World War II, Operation Dracula was the name given to an airborne and amphibious attack on Rangoon by British and Indian forces, part of the Burma Campaign. When it was launched, t...

Operation Matador was an amphibious thrust, during the Burma Campaign in January 1945, to capture the strategic port of Kyaukpyu, located at the northern tip of Ramree Island, south of Ak...

The Battle of Iwo Jima (February 19 – March 26, 1945), or Operation Detachment, was a battle in which the United States fought for and captured Iwo Jima (lit. Sulfur Island) from Japan. T...

On February 19, 1945, as part of their island-hopping strategy to defeat Japan, the United States invaded Iwo Jima. Iwo Jima was originally not a target, but the relatively quick fall of ...

On the afternoon of 3 March Lieutenant General Oscar W. Griswold, commander of 14th Corps, reported to Gen. Krueger of 6th Army that all resistance had ceased. The struggle to capture Ma...

Of the 22,786 Japanese soldiers entrenched on the island, 21,570 died either from fighting or by ritual suicide. Only 216 were captured during the battle. The Allied forces suffered 26,03...

Operation Ten-Go (天號作戰 (Kyūjitai) or 天号作戦 (Shinjitai), Ten-gō Sakusen?) was the last major Japanese naval operation in the Pacific Theater of World War II. Other renderings of this operat...

The main landing was made by XXIV Corps and III Amphibious Corps on the Hagushi beaches on the western coast of Okinawa on L-Day, April 1, which was both Easter Sunday and April Fools' Da...

On May 1, B-24 Liberators heavily bombed known Japanese defenses south of Rangoon as an Air Force observation post, a small detachment from Force 136 and a Gurkha composite parachute batt...

Operation Oboe Six was the codename for the campaign by Australian forces to retake Brunei and Labuan island from Japanese forces between 10 June 1945 and the end of World War II. Oper...

On June 21, 1945, Japanese troops were defeated on the Pacific island of Okinawa after one of the longest and bloodiest battles of World War II. Having seized the Ryukyu Islands from Japa...

Marines cleared northern Okinawa, XXIV Corps wheeled south across the narrow waist of Okinawa. The 7th and 96th Infantry Divisions encountered fierce resistance from Japanese troops holdi...

"My God, what have we done?" —Robert Lewis, Commander of the 'Enola Gay'

The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuclear attacks near the end of World War II against the Empire of Japan by the United States at the executive order of U.S. Preside...

Victory over Japan Day (V-J Day, also known as Victory in the Pacific Day, or V-P Day) is a name chosen for the day on which the Surrender of Japan occurred, effectively ending World War ...

A disastrous train fire occurred at the Sakuragi-cho Station on the Keihin-Tohoku line when a MOHA-63 train touched a sagging overhead wire and sparks caused a fire, killing 106 and injur...