Historical Background

On the 7th December 1941 Imperial Japan, concerned the United States found its increasing military power unacceptable, made a pre-emptive strike on the US Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, thereby precipitaing the war in the Pacific. Japanese forces swept through the region, capturing the Philippines and Singapore the following year. Their advance across Burma was halted only by desperate resistance from British and Commonwealth troops at the battles of Imphal and Kohima in the Arakan peninsula, preventing the conquest of India.

Imperial Japan had become the new power in the region, but defeat by US forces at the Battle of Midway in June 1942 proved a watershed. From then on Japan was forced to retreat, losing the Philippines in 1944 and the battle of Iwo Jima in March 1945. But while the Japanese suffered constant setbacks, their forces fought with an unbelievable tenacity, leaving the Allies to fear the only way to defeat the nation would be by invading Japan. Allied commanders estimated their losses for such an operation to be over a million men.

But the Allies had one weapon in their arsenal the Japanese did not: the atomic bomb. Harry S. Truman, Winston Churchill and Chiang Kai-shek met at Potsdam in Germany and on 26th July they issued their Joint Declaration, demanding Japan's unconditional surrender. The Japanese high command refused and on 6th August 1945 the US Air Force dropped the Little Boy atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. Three days later the Fat Man bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Both explosions caused massive devastation, resulting in the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives. On 15th August Emperor Hirohito made a dramatic radio address to the nation, declaring that Japan would accept the Allies' Joint Declaration.  The war in the Pacific was over.