The Pritzker Military Library celebrates the end of WWII with
'The Allied Race to Victory' by Suzanne Hanney
Anniversaries are always important, and with the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II on August 14, “we believe you should pause for a moment and think about what has gone before and educate those born more recently for whom it is historic memory,” said Rob Havers, Ph.D, president and CEO of the Pritzker Military Library, regarding its current exhibit, “The Allied Race to Victory.” As the tide turned for the Allies in 1944, the last year of WWII, the United States shifted resources to the Pacific. Combined air, land and naval operations countered overwhelming defenses to bring the war to the Japanese main island and end it. The 75th anniversary, Dr. Havers said, is one of the last where World War II veterans are still with us. “We are on the cusp of living memory rolling over into actual history and there is something terribly poignant when you come face to face with an individual who lived the service you are teaching on.” The Pritzker Library chose to cover the war with Japan “because we felt that it has often gotten lost in the shuffle, but it was a very crucial part of World War II. Looking back from the vantage point of 75 years, it seems inevitable the Allies would triumph, but it didn’t seem that way at the time,” Dr. Havers said. Instead, Americans lived with uncertainty – much like today’s struggle with COVID-19. “The war against Japan wasn’t decided conclusively until the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan.” U.S. military units that had finished fighting in Europe in spring 1945 were on standby for an invasion of Japan. Estimates were that a million US personnel could be lost. “There is no escaping the manner of those casualties are horrific,” Dr. Havers said. “The context at the time was that the U.S. was conducting conventional raids on the mainland,
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inflicting casualties at the same rate as Hiroshima. There was little debate in the minds of military and political leaders in the U.S. about the absolute necessity not of burning civilians but of ending the war because every day casualties were going on, on both sides.” Seizure of the Mariana Islands of Saipan, Guam and Tinian in July and August was the first Allied success of 1944. The islands provided airfields within range of Japan. In the corresponding Battle of the Philippine Sea, the Imperial Japanese Navy lost nearly all its carrier-based aircraft. In September 1944, the U.S. began an assault at Peleliu in the Philippines, territory it lost in 1942 when Japanese defeated a joint force of Americans and Filipinos. Gen. Douglas MacArthur had fled, but promised to return. Retaking the Philippines was the largest campaign in the Pacific; after success at Peleliu, soldiers advanced on the island of Leyte on October 20 and on the largest island, Luzon, on Jan. 9, 1945. Simultaneously, Marines under Adm. Chester Nimitz drew ever closer to Japan, landing at Iwo Jima in February 1945 and Okinawa in April 1945. In the last two months of 1944, the Air Force began using the new B-29 bomber on Japanese military-industrial targets. In January 1945, the strategy switched to low-level, indiscriminate firebombing, which took the lives of 300,000 civilians in the final months of the war. On August 6, after the Japanese had refused unconditional surrender, the Allies dropped an atomic bomb -- equivalent to 2,000 B-29s – on Hiroshima, killing 70,000 people. When there was still no response, a second atomic bomb was dropped August 9 on Nagasaki, killing 13,000 people. On the afternoon of August 15, the Japanese accepted unconditional surrender. The United States began occupation of Japan that month and the formal surrender was signed September 2 aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo bay.
October 20, 1944 - Leyte Led by the firepower of the U.S. 7th fleet, Allied forces stormed ashore at 10 a.m., but the Japanese sent reinforcements from Luzon over the next two months. October 23 - 26, 1944 The Battle of Leyte Gulf Possibly the largest naval battle in history involved 200,000 personnel: combined American and Australian forces and the Imperial Japanese Navy off the Philippine islands of Leyte, Samar and Luzon. As U.S. forces made their way ashore, the Imperial Navy sent its remaining six carriers – bereft of planes – to lure the US 3rd fleet into open waters and its more heavily armed battleships. But more accurate American gunnery, combined with advanced submarine warnings and U.S. Navy air superiority, sank four Japanese carriers and 22 other battleships, destroyers and cruisers. The U.S. Navy lost six ships, including three carriers, to “kamikaze” suicide bombers.
