From December 1937 to January 1938, over a period of 6 weeks, the Imperial Japanese Army forces committed brutal mass murder and mass rape against the civilians and soldiers of Nanking (then the capital of the Republic of China). During the Second Sino- Japanese War. An estimated 300,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians were killed, and 20,000 women raped. Weapons used to commit the mass murders included pistols, machine guns and swords.
December 7th 1941, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbour near Honolulu Hawaii. The Japanese intended for this attack to prevent the US Pacific Fleet from interfering with their plans in Southeast Asia. This attack came as a shock to the American people and this lead to the US entry of WWII. A day after the attack, the US declared war on Japan.
The battle in the Kokoda trail began when the Japanese launched their plan to invade Australia. Their goal was to gain control of Port Moresby, the perfect area from which to launch amphibious attacks on Cairns and in turn the whole of Australia. As the Japanese were previously defeated in the battle of Coral Sea in May, 1942 and the Battle of Midway in June, 1942, they were prevented from travelling to the east coast of Papua. This left the Kokoda Trail as their only viable option.
During May and June of 1942 Japanese submarines made a series of attacks on Sydney and New Castle. The Japanese aimed to sink Allied warships, on the 31st of May 3 Japanese submarines sat 13km out from Sydney harbour waiting to attack.
The Battle of Midway was a naval battle fought between the United States navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy near the American Pacific Base at Midway, from the 4th to the 7th of June, 1942. It was the most decisive battle in the pacific theatre as the American Navy inflicted serious damage on the Japanese Navy, which they would never recover from. The machinery used in the battle were mainly aircraft carriers, submarines, ships, and aquatic vehicles as it was a naval battle. Grenades, missiles, and torpedoes were also used heavily as a means of taking out the opponent.
On 6th of August 1945, the world’s first atomic bomb was dropped over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The American B-29 bomber the ‘Enola Gay’ piloted by Paul W. Tibbets dropped the 9000 pound Uranium 235 bomb code-named ‘Little Boy’ on Hiroshima. The initial explosion wiped out 90% of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people, tens of thousands would die later due to radiation exposure. Only three days after Hiroshima, a second B-29 dropped another atomic bomb code-named ‘Fat Man’ on Nagasaki, killing over 40,000 people. The bomb was on Nagasaki was much more powerful weighing over 10,000 pounds, built to produce a 22 kiloton blast. However, due to the topography of Nagasaki the explosion was limited to 2.6 square miles.