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, 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.

Army reinforcements disembarking from LST's form a graceful curve as they proceed across coral reef toward the beach." Laudansky, Saipan, ca. June/July 1944.

National Archives

Jan. 9, 1945 - Luzon Landing on the northern Philippine Island, the 6th Army faced little resistance because the Japanese Army had withdrawn to the jungles. General MacArthur moved south to Manila, Corregidor and Bataan to liberate American and Filipino POWs. The battle for Manila destroyed the city and left 100,000 civilians dead.

February 19, 1945 - Iwo Jima Almost equidistant from Guam and the main Japanese island of Honshu, Iwo Jima was strategic for staging air attacks and refueling. Following two months of aerial bombing and two more days by sea, Marines landed. But anticipating the invasion, Japanese soldiers had created 11 miles of protective tunnels, bunkers and pillboxes. Marines gained ground inch by inch, often within the tunnels themselves. After the 36- day battle, the Marines had lost 7,200 men, the Japanese 21,000. Navajo “code talkers” had been in the Pacific campaign since Peliliu and played a major role on Iwo Jima, according to the National World War II Museum website. Fluent in both their own language and English, they used 26 Navajo terms that stood for English letters and also specific terms: “besh-lo,” or “iron fish,” for example, for “submarine.” The enemy was never able to break their code.

April 1 - June 22, 1945 - Okinawa Okinawa was the Japanese high command’s last stand for the homeland. The Allies invaded at dawn on Easter with 1300 U.S. and 50 British ships. The Allies won on the beaches, but the Japanese had withdrawn into caves in the rugged Shuri hills. On April 7 the battleship Yamato was sent to launch a surprise attack on the U.S. Fifth Fleet and to annilhilate American troops pinned down at Shuri. Instead, Allied submarines spotted the Yamato and alerted the fleet, which bombarded and sank the ship. Fierce battles for the hilly terrain continued April 26 to May 6. On Hacksaw Ridge, Cpl. Desmond T. Doss was an Army medic, a conscientious objector who refused to carry a weapon and who rescued 75 wounded comrades. The movie “Hacksaw Ridge” (2016) tells his story. The largest Japanese “kamikaze” attacks of the war sank 26 Allied ships and severely damaged 168; almost 40 percent of the US dead were sailors lost to these attacks. But intense fire from the U.S.S. Mississippi and fighting on land forced the surrender of Shuri Castle in late May. Accepting futility, Japanese General Ushijima and his chief of staff General Cho committed ritual suicide on June 22, which ended the battle. Americans lost roughly 14,000, the Japanese 77,000. Up to 150,000 Okinawan civilians died: some burned beyond recognition, some suicides and bodies never recovered.

Flag raising on Iwo Jima, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo by AP photographer Joe Rosenthal, Associated Press, February 23, 1945.

National Archives