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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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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Kamikaze bombers were a last ditch effort by the Japanese to try and combat the more advanced U.S. military. A Kamakazi was a Japanese suicide pilot. The goal of the Kamikaze was to fly their planes filled with explosives into U.S. ships. This attempt did not breed the success emperor Hirohito had planned.
General MacArthur was a five star heavily decorated general in charge of the Philippines during WWII. He was extremely successful in leading his pacific force. After the war he took charge of the U.S. occupation of Japan. He was the voice behind the puppet of Japanese Emperor Hirohito. MacArthur was able to ratify a new constitution for Japan and enforce disarmament. He greatly impacted the positive postwar relationship between the U.S. and Japan.
Firebombing was the act of bombing using incendiary devices, instead of causing a single explosion. The thought behind these was that in the Japanese cities made predominantly out of wood, lighting one building on fire had the potential to take out many others. The firebombing had exceptional results, but did kill many civilians as the Japanese put manufacturing plants in residential areas.