50 Fun Facts About Pacific War

Which future US president commanded PT-109, a torpedo boat sunk by a Japanese destroyer in 1943?

John F. Kennedy scratched a rescue plea onto a coconut husk, which two islander scouts paddled 38 miles to deliver. He later kept the shell on his Oval Office desk as a paperweight.

Which Native American language did Marine code talkers use for messages Japan never deciphered?

Navajo was understood by so few outsiders, perhaps 30 by one estimate, that the Marines trusted it as a code. A three-line message took 20 seconds to send, against 30 minutes on the coding machines of the day.

On which island did Joe Rosenthal photograph US Marines raising a flag atop Mount Suribachi in 1945?

Iwo Jima's famous picture shows the second flag raised that day, a replacement for the first. It is the only photograph to win a Pulitzer Prize in the year it was taken.

Which June 1942 battle, fought six months after Pearl Harbor, cost Japan four aircraft carriers?

The Battle of Midway cost the United States one carrier, Yorktown, against the four Japan lost. It is often called the turning point of the Pacific War.

The Japanese word kamikaze, long used for typhoons that wrecked Mongol invasion fleets, means what?

Divine wind named the typhoons that scattered Kublai Khan's fleets in 1274 and 1281. Japan revived the word in 1944 for pilots sent to crash their planes into Allied ships.

Japan's Fu-Go bombs, which killed six people in Oregon in 1945, crossed the Pacific carried by what?

Balloons were cheap enough that Japan released about 9,300 into the jet stream. The six people killed near Bly were the war's only deaths from enemy action in the contiguous United States.

In June 1942 Japan occupied Attu and Kiska, islands belonging to which present-day US state?

Alaska was then a US territory, and the landings were the first foreign occupation of US soil in North America since the War of 1812. Both islands were back in Allied hands by August 1943.

Aboard which US battleship did Japan sign the formal surrender that ended the Second World War?

USS Missouri was the last battleship the United States ever commissioned. On display at the ceremony was the flag Commodore Perry had flown when he opened Japan in 1853.

Which city suffered the deadliest single air raid of the Second World War, a March 1945 firebombing?

Tokyo lost more lives and more ground in that one night than either atomic bombing destroyed. More than 90,000 people died and about a million were left homeless.

Which type of US Navy vessel sank more than half of the merchant ships Japan lost in the war?

Submarines accounted for 56% of Japan's merchant shipping losses. The crews paid heavily: of some 16,000 American submariners who served, about 22% were killed.

Which American general waded ashore in the Philippines in October 1944, keeping his vow to return?

Douglas MacArthur waded in only because a busy beachmaster refused him a landing craft after his boat grounded. He had escaped the islands by PT boat in March 1942.

The 1942 Death March forced American and Filipino prisoners of war to walk out of which peninsula?

Bataan's captives numbered almost twice what Japanese planners had expected, and thousands died on the road. General Masaharu Homma was executed in 1946 for the atrocities.

Which aviator led sixteen US Army bombers off an aircraft carrier to strike Japan in April 1942?

Jimmy Doolittle expected a court-martial after losing all 16 aircraft. Instead he received the Medal of Honor and was promoted two ranks to brigadier general.

In which May 1942 naval battle did the opposing fleets never sight or fire on one another?

Coral Sea was the first battle between aircraft carriers, fought by planes striking over the horizon. Having lost its air cover, Japan recalled the invasion fleet bound for Port Moresby.

On which island in the Solomons did US Marines land in August 1942 to seize a Japanese airfield?

Guadalcanal's airstrip was named Henderson Field and became the prize of the whole campaign. Japan evacuated its last troops by destroyer six months after the Americans landed.

Which Allied strategy bypassed strongholds such as Rabaul to seize weaker bases nearer Japan?

Island hopping left bypassed garrisons such as the big base at Rabaul cut off and useless to Japan's war effort. Rabaul itself was never invaded and held out until Japan surrendered in 1945.

Which island was the target of Operation Iceberg, the Pacific War's largest amphibious assault?

Okinawa cost both sides their commanders. US general Simon Buckner was killed by artillery fire, and Japan's Mitsuru Ushijima took his own life as the battle ended.

Which Japanese city was struck on 6 August 1945 by the first atomic bomb ever used in war?

Hiroshima was chosen as an embarkation port that housed a major military headquarters. Its castle held the command responsible for defending all of southern Japan.

Which US president, in office for under four months, approved the use of atomic bombs on Japan?

Harry Truman had been vice president for just 82 days when he took over. Only then was he told that the bomb project existed.

Which emperor told Japan of its surrender in a recorded radio address broadcast on 15 August 1945?

Hirohito spoke in formal Classical Japanese that ordinary listeners struggled to follow. It was the first known time a Japanese emperor had addressed the common people.

Which admiral, planner of the Pearl Harbor attack, died when US fighters ambushed his plane in 1943?

Isoroku Yamamoto had studied at Harvard and opposed going to war with the United States. American codebreakers sealed his fate by decrypting the timetable of his inspection tour.

Which Texas-born admiral took command of the US Pacific Fleet weeks after Pearl Harbor?

Chester Nimitz had run the destroyer Decatur aground on a mud bank as a young ensign in 1908. He escaped with a letter of reprimand and rose to five-star rank.

Which general, Japan's prime minister during Pearl Harbor, was hanged for war crimes in 1948?

Hideki Tojo shot himself in the chest as American soldiers surrounded his house in September 1945, but the bullet missed his heart. He recovered to stand trial.

Which battleship, sunk at Pearl Harbor with 1,177 of her crew, still lies beneath a memorial there?

USS Arizona blew apart about seven seconds after a bomb reached her forward magazines. Her dead made up roughly half of all the lives lost in the attack.

Which bomber, flown by Paul Tibbets, dropped the first atomic bomb used in war?

Enola Gay was named for Tibbets's mother only the day before the mission, when he took command of the aircraft. She had herself been named after the heroine of a novel.

Which nickname went to the American volunteer pilots who flew shark-faced P-40 fighters for China?

Flying Tigers pilots copied the shark face from a photograph of an RAF squadron in North Africa, which had borrowed it from the Luftwaffe. They first fought 12 days after Pearl Harbor.

US codebreakers proved Japan's code letters AF meant one base by having it fake a shortage of what?

Fresh water was the bait: within 24 hours Japan radioed that AF was running short. Knowing the target let three American carriers lie in wait for the invasion fleet.

Which unarmed Army medic earned the Medal of Honor for rescuing wounded men on Hacksaw Ridge?

Desmond Doss, a Seventh-day Adventist, refused to carry a weapon yet saved at least 75 wounded infantrymen. He was the first conscientious objector to receive the medal.

Which Olympic runner survived 47 days adrift on a life raft and two years as a prisoner of Japan?

Louis Zamperini finished eighth in the 5,000 metres at the 1936 Berlin Olympics before his bomber went down in the Pacific. His ordeal was filmed in 2014 as Unbroken.

Which British base did Arthur Percival surrender to Japan in February 1942 with some 80,000 troops?

Singapore's fall was the largest surrender in British history. Churchill, who had ordered a fight to the last man, called it the worst disaster in British military history.

Which October 1944 battle off the Philippines is often called the largest naval battle in history?

Leyte Gulf drew in more than 200,000 naval personnel and was the last battle ever fought between battleships. It also saw Japan's first organised kamikaze attacks.

Which Gilbert Islands atoll did US Marines take in 1943 after 76 hours of fighting on Betio?

Tarawa's reef stranded the landing boats when the tide failed to rise, leaving Marines to wade some 500 yards under fire. Nearly 6,400 men from both sides died, most of them on or around the tiny islet.

Which US cruiser sank after delivering atomic bomb parts, leaving its survivors adrift among sharks?

USS Indianapolis went down in 12 minutes, and nobody reported her overdue. Of 890 men left adrift, only 316 were alive when a patrol plane happened to spot them four days later.

Which Japanese battleship, the heaviest type ever built, did US carrier aircraft sink in April 1945?

Yamato carried nine 46 cm guns, the largest ever mounted on a warship. She sailed on a one-way mission with orders to beach herself and fight until destroyed.

Which Boeing bomber cost more to develop than the atomic bomb and firebombed Japan's cities?

B-29 Superfortress design and production cost $3 billion, against $1.9 billion for the Manhattan Project. Its crew worked in a pressurised cabin and aimed the guns by remote control.

Which long-range Japanese carrier fighter outclassed Allied aircraft early in the Pacific War?

Mitsubishi Zero designers bought its range and agility by leaving out pilot armour and self-sealing fuel tanks. The name comes from the Imperial year 2600, or 1940, when it entered service.

What name did Allied pilots give the Himalayan air route used to fly supplies from India to China?

The Hump carried about 650,000 tons of supplies into China at a fearsome price. A transport plane could burn three and a half tons of fuel to deliver four tons of cargo.

Which Chinese capital did Japanese troops capture in December 1937, beginning weeks of mass killing?

Nanjing's civilians found some refuge in a safety zone set up by Westerners and led by John Rabe, a German member of the Nazi Party. China's government had already moved inland.

Allied prisoners of war built Japan's notorious Death Railway to link Thailand with which country?

Burma was the far end of a 415 km line that cost the lives of around 12,000 Allied prisoners and more than 90,000 Asian labourers. It inspired the 1957 film The Bridge on the River Kwai.

Which import did the United States deny Japan in August 1941, having supplied over 80% of it?

Oil was Japan's most crucial import, and the navy reckoned its reserves would last less than two years. That deadline pushed Japan's leaders to seize the wells of the Dutch East Indies.

What was the code name of the American plutonium bomb dropped on Nagasaki on 9 August 1945?

Fat Man was named after Sydney Greenstreet's character in The Maltese Falcon. Its design had been proven less than a month earlier in the Trinity test in New Mexico.

Which former Japanese capital did Secretary of War Henry Stimson strike off the atomic target list?

Kyoto was spared after Stimson argued for its historical, religious and cultural significance. General Groves tried to restore it to the list in July 1945 and was refused.

Which Australian city was bombed in 1942 by four of the carriers that had attacked Pearl Harbor?

Darwin was hit by 188 carrier aircraft, their first wave led by the same commander who had led the first wave over Hawaii. It remains the largest attack ever mounted on Australia.

On which New Guinea trail did Australian troops halt Japan's overland advance on Port Moresby?

Kokoda Track fighting carried the Japanese to within sight of Port Moresby before they withdrew in September 1942. The foot track runs 96 km over the Owen Stanley Range.

Which battlecruiser did Japanese aircraft sink off Malaya alongside HMS Prince of Wales in 1941?

HMS Repulse sailed without air cover because the carrier assigned to the squadron had run aground in the Caribbean. No call for RAF fighters went out until an hour into the attack.

British and Japanese troops fought at Kohima in 1944 across a court built for which sport?

Tennis court lines became a no man's land so narrow that grenades were thrown from trench to trench. A tank driven down onto the court finally destroyed the Japanese bunkers.

Which Japanese general earned the nickname Tiger of Malaya for his 70-day conquest of the peninsula?

Tomoyuki Yamashita was hanged in 1946 after a trial that held commanders answerable for their troops' crimes. That principle of command responsibility still carries his name.

Which Allied operation was the planned invasion of Japan's home islands, set for November 1945?

Operation Downfall had two halves: Olympic, a landing on Kyushu, and Coronet, aimed at the plain around the capital in spring 1946. Japan's surrender made both unnecessary.

Which Japanese officer refused to accept the war was over and hid in the Philippines until 1974?

Hiroo Onoda gave up only when his former commanding officer flew out from Japan and formally relieved him of duty. He went home to a hero's welcome.

On which US atoll did a small garrison beat off Japan's first landing attempt in December 1941?

Wake Island's gunners sank the destroyer Hayate, the first Japanese surface warship lost in the war. A second, larger invasion force took the atoll twelve days later.