The Pacific War | Animated History

the following is from a document read out loud during an urgent conference in the Imperial Japanese General Headquarters it outlines Japan's grand strategy for defeating the United States vaca Dai Nippon take aqua pura Coco Coco Iran de gracia Giotto esta hey oh no say a horrible she chokes taking a deuce oh no Jimmy o suta many kiriona siento titanal indicating cacao Yochanan io hawk see Becca can 1000 Manabu benitez de otras ax and a sausage koneko geek she came in Caesarea I'm Griffin Johnston's the armchair historian and today we'll be answering two questions first what was the primary motivation of Japan's decision to wage war on the Western powers namely the United States and second how was that war fought but first I'm pleased to announce that today's video is sponsored by battleship Empire battleship Empire is a realistic military strategy game for mobile devices which does an excellent job in recreating historical naval battles from the Second World War stay tuned for an exclusive offer from the team behind battleship Empire three years after the outbreak of the second sino-japanese war Japan invaded French Indochina in an effort to cut off Chinese supplies it was an easy target Germany had just finished their 46-day conquest of the French mainland shortly after Japan took another gamble and aligned itself with Germany and Italy by signing the tripartite pact it is believed by some historians that the Japanese government hoped that the US would be intimidated into loosening its antagonistic stance on Japan as a result of axis backing in the following year Japan began showing interest in the Dutch East Indies in response to Japanese aggression the u.s. announced an oil embargo and froze Japanese assets being held in the u.s. in July of 1941 the Imperial Japanese Navy predicted that they would be completely out of fuel in just two years as a direct result of the embargo at this point Japan arguably had no other option except to launch an aggressive succession of attacks on Malaya and the Dutch East Indies which would provide the oil rubber tin and iron it would need to sustain itself in a protracted conflict there was one issue the Philippines were controlled by the United States and if the invasion of British Malaya and Dutch East Indies provoked the u.s. in to waging war on Japan the Philippine Islands could not only act as a crucial staging area for an invasion of Japan but they can also block off any imports coming in to the Japanese mainland therefore planning for u.s. involvement would be required if the Japanese ever hoped to achieve their Pacific supremacy the occupation of these three major territories would also allow the formation of a fortified defense perimeter which the Japanese hope to add ward off any and all and fibia slanting zhan the home islands in the case of British or American retaliation in show Walter's words Japan proposed to fight the Pacific War as it had fought China and Russia limiting the conflict by escalating its material and moral costs beyond what the Western powers America in particular were willing pay the strategy was predicated not on American of fitness but on American rationality by 1940 the United States had formulated a plan of its own in case that war broke out in the Pacific it was called plan dog and it can be summed up with just two words Germany first the United States would focus its full attention on defeating Germany and concede the losses of the Philippines Guam and Wake Island after Europe was in allied control the United States planned to retake its holdings in the Pacific and strike Japan itself sir oku Yamamoto the Japanese marshal Admiral of the Navy during the Second World War was responsible for planning an attack on Pearl Harbor which professors Tomioka Shizu and Raymond Callahan described as one of the most elaborate efforts to coordinate simultaneous attacks by aircraft and submarines the attack commenced on the morning of December 7th 1941 tasked with destroying key US air and naval targets hundreds of dive bombers torpedo bombers and fighters filled the sky despite the logistical challenges of the raid the Japanese succeeded in destroying 160 American aircraft sinking eight ships four of which were battleships damaging 10 others and killing 2335 American sailors in eyewitness Pacific Theater donald stratton one of the few soldiers who survived the explosion of the battleship arizona during the Pearl Harbor attack wrote that a fireball engulfed the whole four mast very few escaped from the bow of the ship we were pretty burned our hands our hands were just raw and in the meantime my fingernails had all come off Admiral Yamamoto hoped that the attack would accomplish two things one damaged American morale and two neutralized the US Navy's material advantage although the American fleet was temporarily incapacitated Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor when no US aircraft carriers were in port and so America was quick to recuperate from its losses still the attack did provide Japan with a window of time to occupy Singapore the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies without much resistance it's important to know that just before the attack on Pearl Harbor unbeknownst to the rest of the world President Franklin Delano Roosevelt approved the creation of the Manhattan Project the purpose of which was to explore the military uses of the recently discovered phenomenon of nuclear fission whether they knew it or not the Manhattan Project would be responsible for changing the course of world history forever as well see towards the end of our video before we get to the war a quick word from our sponsor as I've mentioned before battleship Empire recreates the most iconic naval battles of world war two from both the Pacific and Atlantic when you start battleship Empire you'll select a faction and then begin constructing a fleet at your dock yard soon you'll be ready to fight your first battle but before you enter into combat you can devise your own battle plan be sure to carefully construct your formation as numbers won't always win something I find interesting is that you can upgrade certain aspects of each ship such as the elevator of an aircraft carrier or turret of a destroyer furthermore certain tactical abilities can be upgraded on each ship and if you want an edge over in your opponent battleship Empire is offering you 100 gems 20 crude oil 50,000 gold and most notably the USS Hornet by using our promo code down below the game is completely free to download you can find the links in the description available on all mobile devices now back to the video the Malaya Singapore campaign was a resounding success for the Japanese in just two months Singapore had surrendered its fall considered one of the worst defeats in British military history the Dutch East Indies were an even easier target for Japan their only advantage being numerical strength the Dutch had not responded to heightening anti colonial sentiments in the region and could not depend on the local troops to remain loyal to their Dutch commanders in Java for example Dutch rule was deeply unpopular the Japanese quickly captured the region and gained access to the crucial oil fields of southern Sumatra in the Philippines meanwhile the situation was no better hours after the Pearl Harbor attack half of the US Army bombers at Clark Field were destroyed after a Japanese air having short-sighted lis being part wingtip to wingtip according to Victor Brooks in his book hell is upon us the enemy bombers caught much of the American air fleet on the ground during refueling the result was that by the end of the month Manoa the capital of the Philippines was occupied by the Japanese the commander of the local forces General Douglas MacArthur was forced to order a last-ditch retreat to the Bataan Peninsula in the same book Brooks writes that MacArthur now commanded a besieged army that was desperately short of food medicine and modern weapons however the Japanese overran almost every other objective in the region the battling bastards of Bataan hung grimly on and their commander emerged as America's most visible hero but by 1942 approximately six months after the start of the invasion American Filipino forces would be defeated and the largest surrender in American history 20,000 Americans and 60,000 Filipinos entered a brutal captivity from which only a minority would emerge alive four weeks later in early May the garrison on Corregidor was poured into surrender the atrocities that followed these battles include the Bataan Death March and harsh treatment of Allied prisoners corporal Hershel Williams in the book Iwo Jima recalls how prisoners he saw returned from Japanese POWs camps did not even look human I'll never forget them as long as I live they just looked like a skeleton with skin drawn over it after making a last-minute escape to Australia General MacArthur vowed to reporters that he would return to the Philippines to avenge the loss in Burma a similarly elongated campaign developed lasting from December 1941 to July 1945 throughout most of that campaign Japan clung on to its stronghold in Burma the rationale being that doing so would stop the Allied flow of equipment to China and therefore hurt the Chinese war effort soon after the fall of the Philippines in May of 1942 the Japanese attempted to solidify their dominance in the South Pacific by occupying the strategic Port Moresby on New Guinea which resulted in the Japanese fleet making contact with the Allied fleet sent to intercept culminating in the Battle of the Coral Sea the outcome of the battle is generally viewed by historians as a tactical victory for the Japanese and a strategic victory for the Allies as the Japanese sank more ships but their overall advance was halted two of Japan's fleet carriers were also rendered unfit for combat during the battle and unable to participate in the Battle of Midway one month later the Battle of Midway shattered Japanese hopes of occupying Port Moresby due to the loss of aircraft carriers that would be needed to hold on to the territory the battle also paved way for the Guadalcanal campaign which commenced in August 1942 and marked the start of Allied offensive operations in the Pacific despite having to contend with fierce Japanese resistance and tropical diseases by February 1943 the American forces were victorious in their campaign it was also around this time that the US Army Air Forces began modifying b-29 bombers to make them more compatible with early atomic bombs the American strategy after Guadalcanal was known as island hopping which as the name implies consisted of amphibious attacks on strategic islands which would provide staging areas for a future invasion on Japan this resulted in three major battles the first was the Battle of Saipan which took place in June 1944 fighting was fierce but after about a month the Japanese were trapped and rather than surrendering they either committed suicide or died in desperate Banzai charges the Japanese commander is quoted as having said there is no longer any distinction between civilians and troops it would be better for them to join in the attack with bamboo spears than be captured in what would be the largest Banzai charge of the war 4,300 Japanese charged in a 15-hour attack resulting in the complete destruction of the garrison on the island and 650 American casualties meanwhile in the Philippines General MacArthur would fulfill his promise in 1944 after the Battle of Leyte Gulf which was the largest naval battle in history one that the Japanese lost decisively and had never recovered from people of the Philippines he declared after coming ashore I have returned by the grace of Almighty God our forces stand again on Philippine soil the Japanese mounted an energetic counter-offensive but sustained 190,000 casualties before being defeated by the American Filipino forces under MacArthur the second to last major island battle Iwo Jima took place in February of 1945 and like Saipan lasted one month notably however American forces not only lost more men on Iwo Jima of that on Saipan but they actually lost more men than the Japanese who lost their entire 17,000 man garrison at the end of the battle the American flag was lifted on Mount Suribachi which previously had been used to bombard US forces the final major island battle was Okinawa which took place in April of 1945 and lasted about three months the Americans wanted the island in order to establish air bases from which to launch air raids on Japan itself Okinawa was the largest island battle of the war due to its proximity to the home islands the United States took 50,000 casualties about 20,000 of which were deaths the Japanese lost about 100,000 of their 110,000 man garrison of the island it was the largest amphibious campaign of the Pacific War and took a heavy toll on the civilian population of the island it is said that the Battle of Okinawa led the Americans to come up with an alternative to the invasion of mainland Japan because of such fierce resistance the alternative that was ultimately decided upon instead was to use strategic bombing to force Japan and mission will return to the Pacific War companion to summarize Japan's situation toward the end of the war at the start of 1945 Japan was in a difficult position her most powerful warships have been sunk her best pilots had been shot down the fortified islands that formed her first line of defense had been lost as a result her home waters were dominated by American submarines her communications with the rest of the Japanese Empire were all but cut off her cities were subject to regular aerial bombardment and her civilian population was on the verge of starvation at March 1945 the first firebomb attack on Tokyo took place by the end of the war allied air bombing killed about three hundred and thirty-three thousand Japanese and wounded four hundred and seventy-three thousand in total although estimates vary quite significantly meanwhile the atomic bomb was in its final stages of development and was given final approval for its use in late July 1945 exactly five months after the first firebomb attack on Tokyo the world's first atomic bomb was dropped on the port of Hiroshima on August 6th [Music] when the Japanese still refused to surrender a second bomb was dropped on August 9th on Nagasaki to make matters worse for the Japanese the Russians invaded Japanese occupied Manchuria that same day on August 14th a representative acting under the orders of Emperor Hirohito unconditionally surrendered and the Pacific War was over if you haven't already be sure to check out battleship Empire like I said the game is free to download and our promo code can be found below thanks for watching I'd like to thank my general staff on patreon Fritz Joe Crispin Brandon Dwayne Derek Bello Jake Hart Hagan Butler PJ Maeve Eric Greenwood Patrick Reardon John Graham James Thompson Jim Talbott Demetrius Tillman and everyone else listed on screen I'd also like to thank our team David Mann your hair toss and Alexander Blake for making this video possible thanks again and I'll see you next time with the Battle of Britain

Channel: The Armchair Historian

Views: 1,479,439

Rating: 4.8730178 out of 5

Keywords: War in the Pacific, World War 2, Second World War, America's Role in WW2, What did America do in World War 2, Japan in World War 2, Battle of Okinawa, Battle of Iwo Jima, Nuclear Bomb, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Douglas Macarthur, General Macarthur, Pearl Harbor Attack, Battle of Midway, Battle of the Coral Sea, Battle of Leyte Gulf, Invasion of the Philippines

Id: ivQ9O-yB0dw

Length: 16min 20sec (980 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 15 2018