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Pacific Theater

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Battle of Midway

The Battle of Midway took place in June of 1942 between the U.S. and Japanese navies. The Japanese were involved because they wanted to eliminate the U.S. as a power in the Pacific war, targeting ships that escaped destruction at Pearl Harbor. The U.S. was able to solve Japan's encrypted messages and launch a surprise attack, so they were able to anticipate the Japanese's plot of entrapping them at Midway. The U.S. was able to sink three Japanese aircraft carriers before the Japanese retreated. This was significant because if put the Americans in the offensive position.

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Primary source

Battle of Iwo Jima

The battle of Iwo Jima took place from February 19 to March 26 1945. The purpose of the battle was to give the U.S. a base closer to the Japanese mainland to stage attacks and potential invasions from. The Japanese used new defense tactics, for example instead of defending the coast, they went inland to elaborate networks of caves and tunnels. This tactic made it so that the U.S. was initially very successful, but then was met with more challenges, including an unknown terrain and minimal knowledge of the tunnels. It took the U.S. a month to take the island, with both sides suffering casualties. Yet the Japanese suffered greatly because they were not willing to surrender the island.

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Terms

“We know that enduring peace cannot be bought at the cost of other people's freedom.”
President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Today we may say aloud before an awe-struck world: "We are still masters of our fate. We are still captain of our souls."
Winston Churchill
"You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass."
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto