Emotions and Feelings During Japanese Bombing Of The Ship Empire Star 1942 Leaving Singapore

Seventy years ago this month, the U.S. dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, and the Japanese government surrendered to the U.S. and U.S. allies. Planners for the Japanese surrender at Tokyo Bay on Sept. 2, 1945--marking the end of not only World War II but also of Japan's fifteen-year military rampage through the Japanese-dominated Pacific--had more time to prepare for this event than either Gen. George Washington or Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, and thus covered it with an even greater symbolism. Between 1941 and 1945, Americans expressed their anger at Japan's Pearl Harbor attack Pearl Harbor, and the subsequent military aggression.

Japan, the Americans believed, had not only attacked Pearl Harbor, a nation which had opened its doors to the outside world one century before, but had declared war against people who had saved their citizens 1923 citizens. My findings show that enmity directed toward the Japanese was born of much more than the well-documented ethnic hatred, wartime cruelty directed against American soldiers and prisoners of war, or treasonous attitudes with which Americans saw the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Relevant for the Japanese thinking of surrender, the authors speculate, was the Soviet assault on their forces following their declaration of war.

Mays suggested that Japan would be unable to sustain the war with Japan, basing her estimates on Japanese studies about its failure to manufacture planes, losses and damage to ships, precarious food conditions, and the people's antiwar feelings. The study, interestingly, was conducted late in the second year of the war against Japan--the period after which, according to estimates by Japan's Navy's highest command before hostilities, Japan would be unable to wage a successful war. On Aug. 15, 1945, President Truman requested a survey to produce a similar study on the effects of all aerial attacks during the war against Japan.

As part of the Pacific War, Army air forces conducted a campaign of destruction against large industrial centres using firebombs. On 10 November 1941, when Japanese military forces began to be deployed for an offensive which would commence the Aleutian Islands Campaign, I-26 was assigned to the 6th Fleet Scouting Division, receiving orders for a prewar reconnaissance mission over the Aleutian Islands region. The Guadalcanal Campaign began on 7 August 1942, when U.S. Marines landed at Guadalcanal, a small island southeast of Solomon Islands. Shortly after arriving in Truk, I-26 resumed operations with the I-26 Third War Patrol, supporting Japanese forces at Guadalcanal.

After Japans June 1942 defeat on Midway Island, the Allies found themselves able to launch the longest and most gruelling campaign yet to drive Japanese forces off a series of islands that had been captured on the outer rim of the seas.

Fortunately, no nuclear weapons were detonated in war after 1945, possibly due to a taboo against using them that was formed after the dropping of the bombs on Japan.