Pacific War
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50 free Pacific War trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Pacific War was fought across a third of the planet, from the Aleutians to Australia and from Hawaii to the Asian mainland. For the United States it began on a Sunday morning at Pearl Harbor and ended less than four years later under the shadow of the atomic bomb. This quiz follows that story battle by battle: the carrier clashes of 1942, the long amphibious advance that followed, the commanders on both sides, the ships and aircraft they relied on, and the codebreakers, medics and prisoners whose stories outlived the fighting. The war in China, Southeast Asia and New Guinea gets its place too. It suits students revising the Pacific theater of World War II, teachers who want a ready-made review, and anyone who knows the famous photographs and wants the facts behind them. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which future US president commanded PT-109, a torpedo boat sunk by a Japanese destroyer in 1943?
John F. Kennedy
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.
Q 02Which Native American language did Marine code talkers use for messages Japan never deciphered?
Navajo
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.
Q 03On which island did Joe Rosenthal photograph US Marines raising a flag atop Mount Suribachi in 1945?
Iwo Jima
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.
Q 04Which June 1942 battle, fought six months after Pearl Harbor, cost Japan four aircraft carriers?
Midway
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.
Q 05The Japanese word kamikaze, long used for typhoons that wrecked Mongol invasion fleets, means what?
Divine wind
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.
Q 06Japan's Fu-Go bombs, which killed six people in Oregon in 1945, crossed the Pacific carried by what?
Balloons
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.
Q 07In June 1942 Japan occupied Attu and Kiska, islands belonging to which present-day US state?
Alaska
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.
Q 08Aboard which US battleship did Japan sign the formal surrender that ended the Second World War?
USS Missouri
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.
Q 09Which city suffered the deadliest single air raid of the Second World War, a March 1945 firebombing?
Tokyo
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.
Q 10Which type of US Navy vessel sank more than half of the merchant ships Japan lost in the war?
Submarines
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.
Q 11Which American general waded ashore in the Philippines in October 1944, keeping his vow to return?
Douglas MacArthur
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.
Q 12The 1942 Death March forced American and Filipino prisoners of war to walk out of which peninsula?
Bataan
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.
Q 13Which aviator led sixteen US Army bombers off an aircraft carrier to strike Japan in April 1942?
Jimmy Doolittle
Q 21Which admiral, planner of the Pearl Harbor attack, died when US fighters ambushed his plane in 1943?
Isoroku Yamamoto
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.
Q 22Which Texas-born admiral took command of the US Pacific Fleet weeks after Pearl Harbor?
Chester Nimitz
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.
Q 23Which general, Japan's prime minister during Pearl Harbor, was hanged for war crimes in 1948?
Hideki Tojo
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.
Q 14In which May 1942 naval battle did the opposing fleets never sight or fire on one another?
Coral Sea
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.
Q 15On which island in the Solomons did US Marines land in August 1942 to seize a Japanese airfield?
Guadalcanal
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.
Q 16Which Allied strategy bypassed strongholds such as Rabaul to seize weaker bases nearer Japan?
Island hopping
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.
Q 17Which island was the target of Operation Iceberg, the Pacific War's largest amphibious assault?
Okinawa
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.
Q 18Which Japanese city was struck on 6 August 1945 by the first atomic bomb ever used in war?
Hiroshima
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.
Q 19Which US president, in office for under four months, approved the use of atomic bombs on Japan?
Harry Truman
Harry Truman had been vice president for just 82 days when he took over. Only then was he told that the bomb project existed.
Q 20Which emperor told Japan of its surrender in a recorded radio address broadcast on 15 August 1945?
Hirohito
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.
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.
Q 24Which battleship, sunk at Pearl Harbor with 1,177 of her crew, still lies beneath a memorial there?
USS Arizona
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.
Q 25Which bomber, flown by Paul Tibbets, dropped the first atomic bomb used in war?
Enola Gay
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.
Q 26Which nickname went to the American volunteer pilots who flew shark-faced P-40 fighters for China?
Flying Tigers
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.
Q 27US codebreakers proved Japan's code letters AF meant one base by having it fake a shortage of what?
Fresh water
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.
Q 28Which unarmed Army medic earned the Medal of Honor for rescuing wounded men on Hacksaw Ridge?
Desmond Doss
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.
Q 29Which Olympic runner survived 47 days adrift on a life raft and two years as a prisoner of Japan?
Louis Zamperini
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.
Q 30Which British base did Arthur Percival surrender to Japan in February 1942 with some 80,000 troops?
Singapore
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.