A Quick Guide To Japan's Role In The Second World War

Japan attacked the U.S Pacific Fleet on the 7th of December 1941, but what led to that decision? Why did the Japanese attack the USA? - The answer is oil. In this episode of IWM Stories, Adrian Kerrison looks at why the Japanese decided to attack Pearl Harbor.

On the morning of 7 December 1941, at 7.55am local time, 183 aircraft of the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked the United States Naval base at Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii.

On 7 December 1941, Japan launched a surprise air attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Japanese forces also overran Allied possessions in south-east Asia and The Philippines. Japan hoped for a short war, seeking to quickly weaken US naval strength and capture strategically vital oil supplies. But what happened next?

In the later stages of the Second World War in the Pacific, Japan was desperate. They turned to a new tactic - kamikaze. The kamikaze campaign trained attack squadrons specifically for this purpose, and brought into combat a new aircraft - the Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka - the only jet-powered suicide aircraft.

They first saw action at the Battle of Okinawa in 1945, where extensive damage was done to the Allied fleet. But overall, how effective were these aircraft and this campaign?

On the 15th of February 1942, Lt General Arthur Percival signed the largest surrender in British history at Singapore. The city was supposed to be a fortress, but his force of 85,000 men had been defeated by just 35,000 Japanese troops. So how did the Japanese defeat a numerically superior force? Why wasn’t Singapore an impregnable fortress? And could the British have held out?

The Battle of Midway was a pivotal naval battle that began on 3 June 1942 and dramatically changed the course of the war in the Pacific. Join IWM curator Adrian Kerrison at IWM Duxford to find out more about the timeline of events that lead to the Battle of Midway and the crucial decisions leading to Japan's defeat.

In January 1942, the Japanese Army invaded Burma (now called Myanmar). Allied troops endured over three years of brutal fighting, often in extreme terrain and menaced by severe weather and the threat of disease. Allied troops, led by Britain's Indian Army, reoccupied Burma in 1945. Listen to 8 people describe their experiences of the Burma Campaign during the Second World War.

Over 130,000 Allied civilians - 50,000 men, 42,000 women and 40,000 children - were interned in the Far East during the Second World War. The majority of them were Dutch nationals from the Netherlands East Indies.

The Battle of Okinawa was the brutal final chapter in the fighting of the Pacific War. It was a battle that saw such horrific casualties - both military and civilian -  that it forced the United States to look for alternatives to an invasion of Japan to bring the war to an end. 

The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 brought an end to the Second World War, but at a terrible cost to the Japanese civilian population, and signalling the dawn of the nuclear age. What had led to the fateful decision to deploy these new weapons of mass destruction?

Listen to our soundscape and reflect on what happened when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. 

On 9 August 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. Listen to first-hand accounts of what happened in Nagasaki, taken from IWM’s extensive sound archive and the archives of the Atomic Heritage Foundation.

The end of the Second World War witnessed the emergence of a new weapon. How did the Allies make the decision to drop two atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945? 

On 8 May 1945, the Allies celebrated VE Day, marking the end of the war in Europe. But the war in the east still raged on and Japanese surrender seemed a long way off. What did the proposed invasion of Japan look like? 

75 years ago, the Second World War came to an end and was marked by the Allied nations on VJ Day. Listen to the voices of some of those who were there and discover what it meant to them.

What did the end of the Second World War mean to people whose lives had been touched by the conflict? 

The photographs of smiling faces on VE Day conceal the challenges and struggles that still lay ahead in 1945.

Victory over Japan Day marked the end of the Second World War in August 1945. Yet the conflict did not end on this day, particularly in Asia. While decolonisation across South and South East Asia seemed inevitable, the territory of the British Empire was at its apogee in 1945 and the journey to independence for countries in this region was not simple.