From Japan's war in China and the attack on Pearl Harbor to Midway, Burma, island-hopping across the Pacific, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Japan's surrender in 1945, with the territory each side held.
Stop 01 · 1931–1938
Japan's War in China
Japan, an industrial and imperial power that already ruled Korea and Taiwan, seized Manchuria in 1931. In 1937 it launched a full-scale war on China, taking Shanghai and the capital, Nanjing, where Japanese troops massacred civilians and prisoners: tens of thousands at the very least, and by many estimates hundreds of thousands. By the end of 1938 Japan held northern China, the lower Yangtze and Canton, but China fought on from the interior, its government moved to Chongqing, and the war bogged down.
Japanese Special Naval Landing Forces in Battle of Shanghai 1937Unknown photographer, Ministry of the Navy · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Who holds what
Japan and its allies · striped where occupied
The Allies, including China
Unshaded: neutral or out of the war. Front lines are simplified.
Japan, an industrial and imperial power that already ruled Korea and Taiwan, seized Manchuria in 1931. In 1937 it launched a full-scale war on China, taking Shanghai and the capital, Nanjing, where Japanese troops massacred civilians and prisoners: tens of thousands at the very least, and by many estimates hundreds of thousands. By the end of 1938 Japan held northern China, the lower Yangtze and Canton, but China fought on from the interior, its government moved to Chongqing, and the war bogged down.
BattlesShanghai, August–November 1937 · Nanjing massacre, December 1937 · Wuhan falls, October 1938
To secure oil and other resources in Southeast Asia, Japan moved troops into French Indochina in 1940–1941; the United States answered by cutting off its oil. Japan decided to strike first. On 7 December 1941 carrier aircraft attacked the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, in Hawai'i, sinking or damaging eight battleships. The United States declared war the next day. Within hours, Japan also attacked the Philippines, Malaya and Hong Kong.
In six months Japan conquered an empire across Southeast Asia and the western Pacific: Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies and Burma, with Thailand as its ally. In February 1942 Singapore, Britain's great Asian fortress, surrendered with some 80,000 British, Indian and Australian troops, the largest surrender in British history. American and Filipino troops held out on Bataan and Corregidor until May. Japan's conquest of Burma cut the Burma Road, China's last land route to its allies.
BattlesSingapore falls, 15 February 1942 · Bataan and Corregidor, to May 1942 · Java Sea, February 1942
In May 1942, in the Coral Sea, American and Australian ships turned back a Japanese invasion fleet heading for Port Moresby, in the first naval battle fought entirely by aircraft from carriers out of sight of each other. In June Japan tried to lure the remaining US carriers into a trap near Midway atoll. But American codebreakers had read Japan's plans, and US dive bombers sank four Japanese aircraft carriers in a few minutes, a loss Japan could never replace. From then on, the Americans held the initiative in the Pacific.
BattlesCoral Sea, 4–8 May 1942 · Midway, 4–7 June 1942
With the Burma Road cut, Allied supplies for China had to be flown over the Himalayas, 'the Hump', one of the most dangerous air routes of the war. In March 1944 Japan invaded India itself, at Imphal and Kohima. In some of the hardest fighting of the war, British and Indian troops held on, and the Japanese, starving and sick, retreated with enormous losses. General Slim's Fourteenth Army, drawn from across the British Empire, then reconquered Burma, taking Mandalay in March 1945 and Rangoon in May.
The Allies fought back in long, bloody campaigns: on Guadalcanal and New Guinea from 1942, and then by 'island hopping' across the Central Pacific, taking key islands for airfields and bypassing others: Tarawa in 1943, then Saipan and the Marianas in 1944, from where bombers could reach Japan. In China, Japan's Ichi-Go offensive in 1944 overran much of the south. At Leyte Gulf in October 1944, the largest naval battle in history broke the Japanese navy, as the Americans returned to the Philippines.
BattlesGuadalcanal, 1942–1943 · Tarawa, November 1943 · Saipan, June 1944 · Leyte Gulf, October 1944
In 1945 the Americans fought their way to Japan's doorstep. Iwo Jima cost nearly 7,000 American lives; Okinawa, from April to June, killed some 100,000 Japanese soldiers and a huge number of Okinawan civilians, along with more than 12,000 Americans. Japanese kamikaze pilots crashed their planes into Allied ships. The Philippines were retaken, and American bombers burned Japan's cities: a single raid on Tokyo in March killed around 100,000 people.
BattlesManila retaken, March 1945 · Iwo Jima, February–March 1945 · Okinawa, April–June 1945 · Tokyo firebombed, March 1945
On 6 August 1945 an American B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing around 70,000–80,000 people at once and many more later. On 8 August the Soviet Union declared war and invaded Manchuria, overrunning it in days. On 9 August a second bomb destroyed Nagasaki. Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's surrender on 15 August, and it was signed in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945, ending the Second World War. Korea was divided at the 38th parallel between Soviet and American occupation.
BattlesHiroshima, 6 August 1945 · Nagasaki, 9 August 1945