Saturday, January 14, 2017

Module Six - Conflict in the Pacific Theatre

Listen to "World War Two - Module 6 - Conflict in the Pacific" on Spreaker.

The links below will help you with translating tools between English and Spanish.
1. Audio  of a  words  in both English and Spanish. Will also translate phrases.
2. Google Search - Espana: The word can be typed in English, and the search finds results in Spanish, including images
3. Also Google Arabic is available.
4. Google Translate:Can work in any language necessary
5. Vocabulary List - Content and Connective


Conflict In The Pacific
Rising Tensions Between United States and Japan
We learned earlier how Japan had attacked many of her neighbors. They included: Manchuria, Korea, China, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaya.  The Japanese were brutal (very mean) to the people they conquered. 
Skeletons of Chinese murdered by Japan in WW 2

The United States started standing up to Japan,  They said there would be no more scrap metal delivered (Japan used this to melt down to make weapons). 
Pile of scrap metal

We also told them we would not send them spare parts for airplanes, and that shipments of oil would be stopped. 
Newspaper announcing no oil for Japan

Without all of these resources Japan’s expansion would grind to a stop.  Japan needed to keep expanding their territory to get the raw materials they DID NOT HAVE on their home islands ( Japan is a totally Island nation).
Japan
When we told them STOP, they got mad and began secretly making war plans.

December 7th, 1941 – “A Day That Will Live In Infamy”
Think of it, you are relaxing on a Sunday afternoon in early December.  You decide to listen to the football game on the radio. 



Family listening to radio


Picture taken at the game on December 7th, 1941 between the Washington Redskins and Philadelphia Eagles

You are having fun listening and then you hear this.:
What do you think??? Why did the Japanese do that? Where is Pearl Harbor? What does it mean for the country? What does it mean for me, my brother, my father? How will ALL my family be affected?
Where Did It Happen?
Pearl Harbor is the navy base on the Hawaiian Island of Oahu.
See japan on the left, and the U.S. on the right

WHY Did It Happen???
The strike was intended to hurt the U.S. Pacific Fleet (U.S. Navy In The Pacific Ocean).  This would allow Japan to continue to conquer more territory as they went looking for  natural resources such as oil and rubber in Malaya and the Netherlands  East Indies. 

Notice the highlighting to locate of both Malaya and Netherlands East Indies.  Japan could get natural resources there they did not have on their own islands.

Japan felt they needed to attack us because we were starting to tell them to stop expanding and conquering their neighbors for selfish reasons. In fact we had stopped sending them materials they needed to keep making weapons.  What made Japan the most angry with the U.S. was that after the Japanese had moved into the nearby country of  French Indochina (Modern day Vietnam),   the U.S. stopped sending oil to Japan in the Summer of 1941.  THAT was when Japan started developing final plans to attack.

They felt that if they could hurt our Navy at Pearl Harbor enough then we would not have the power to stop them from expanding.


WHEN and HOW did It Happen???

The U.S. Navy ships the Japanese were attacking were kept at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Hawaii is a series of Islands, so the attack had to be made by Japanese navy ships. The distance was 3,901 miles, so they had to start out WAY ahead of time.  In fact they left Japan November 26th, 1941.
In the mean time, their government people were in Washington D.C. bargaining for a deal so the two countries could get along.  This had been going on for a long time, and they had decided they could not come to an agreement with the U.S., but they had decided to not tell the them right away so they could continue preparing their attack.  The morning of December 7th, 1941 they were finally delivering a message to the U.S. about their desire to stop bargaining with the U.S. Government. However, this message said NOTHING about them going to war against us.



The Japanese government people are on the left and right of the U.S. government man they had been talking to. This picture was taken AFTER they had talked on December 7th, and AFTER the U.S. was aware the attack had started. Look at the expression on the face of the man in the middle. What do you think he was thinking at that moment?
The problem for them was that even this message was delivered after the attacks had started. That means it was considered a sneak attack, which made EVERYONE in the U.S very angry, and MUCH more likely to agree to go to war and do anything necessary to win.
The Attack
It started at 6:53 a.m. in Hawaii on a Sunday morning, December 7th, 1941. People were sleeping. People were going to church. People were doing assigned jobs. People were relaxed because we were NOT at war.




This clip shows something that actually happened. An African American cook, Dorrie Miller, had been only allowed to work as a cook due to the discrimination of the time. however, when tit was needed, he got on this weapon, twin- 50 caliber machine guns, and shot down at least one Japanese plane.

The main targets of the Japanese were the U.S. Air Craft Carriers. Their names were: USS Lexington , the USS Enterprise, and USS Saratoga. The reason these were the main target was that they could carry their airplanes anywhere and launch them against the Japanese. However, NONE of them were at home in Pearl Harbor for the Japanese to hit.



U.S.S. Lexington with planes on deck
Instead the Japanese started attacking everything else. They attacked the Battleships.
You can see the white splash of the 1st Japanese bomb hitting a U.S. Ship
They attacked smaller ships called Destroyers. 

They even attacked the air base where some of the larger planes were kept. There were even bombs dropped on the Hospital by Japanese planes.
Many U.S. Ships were sunk or damaged. Many people were killed or wounded.


Some of the Sailors who could not be identified after being killed that morning were buried here
The Result:
The U.S. people wanted Japan to pay for what they had done, and not with money.

The Japanese surprise attack was the single biggest thing that changed the minds of people in the United States. They moved quickly from ISSOLATIONISM (REMEMBER WHAT THIS MEANS???) to direct involvement.

  • We declared war on Japan on December 8th, , 1941

  • Japan declared war on the U.S. officially on December 8th (Don’t you think they did it with the first bomb dropped on December 7th???).
  • Germany declared war on the U.S. on December 11th, 1941.
  • The U.S.  declared war on Germany and Italy on December 11th, 1941.
Four years later between 62 to 78 million people would be dead who were alive when the war started in 1939.