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30/5/1942, US Task Force 17 set sail from Pearl Harbour to join Task force 16 against the Japanese at Midway Island,
29/5/1942. Bing Crosby recorded the bestseller White Christmas for the soundtrack of the film Holiday Inn.
28/5/1942, US Task Force 16 sailed to intercept the Japanese fleet bound for Midway Island.
27/5/1942, A Japanese fleet left Japan on operation M.1, the capture of Midway Island. They hope to repeat the surprise factor of Pearl Harbour; however the US had cracked the Japanese radio codes and were ready, see 8/6/1942
18/4/1942, US planes bombed Tokyo and other Japanese cities; the ‘Doolittle Raids’. See 24/11/1944.
21/3/1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. This established the War Relocation Authority, to move Japanese in the US away from the west coast. Some 110,000 Japanese in the US were interned in WRA camps, although most of the 150,000 Japanese in Hawaii were not interned.
3/3/1942, The USA declared the West Coast a military area and evacuated some 100,000 civilians.
24/2/1942, Joe Lieberman, US politician, was born.
23/2/1942, Lend Lease was made reciprocal between the USA and Britain.
10/2/1942, American bandleader Glen Miller was presented with a gold record of his popular tune ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’; the tune was the first to hit one million sales.
27/1/1942, Jacqueline Cochrane, US aviatrix, flew a US bomber to the UK, for raids against Germany.
26/1/1942, American troops landed in Northern Ireland.
25/1/1942, Siam (Thailand) declared war on Britain and the USA. The USA did not declare war on Siam. Many Thai sympathised with the Allied side.
17/1/1942, Muhammad Ali, American boxer, was born in Louisville, Kentucky, as Cassius Clay.
23/12/1941, Wake Island (US territory) surrendered to the Japanese, see 4/9/1945.
11/12/1941. Hitler declared war on the USA, as did Italy, even though he had not yet conquered Russia or invaded Britain. The USA declared war on Germany and Italy.
See also China/Japan/Korea for World War Two in Pacific
See also France-Germany (from 1/1/1870) for main events of World War Two in Europe
8/12/1941. Britain and the USA declared war on Japan. Costa Rica, El Salvador, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic also declared war on Japan, and China declared war on all the Axis powers. Britain declared war on Finland, Rumania, and Hungary. Siam (Thailand) agreed to the passage of Japanese forces through its territory to attack British Malaya.
7/12/1941. Japanese attack on the USA fleet in Pearl Harbour, Hawaii. Pearl Harbour was taken entirely by surprise and within 2 hours 360 Japanese warplanes had destroyed 5 battleships, 14 smaller craft, and 200 aircraft. 2,400 people, many of them civilians, were killed. However the Japanese failed to find and destroy America’s all-important aircraft carriers, both of which were away on manoeuvres. The Japanese force then turned west to strike the British in the East Indies, Australia, and Ceylon (Sri Lanka). The US Congress met to declare war in emergency session on 8/12/1941,
much to the relief of Britain.
6/12/1941. Roosevelt appealed to Hirohito to avoid a war with the USA.
1/12/1941. The Japanese Emperor ratified the decision to go to war with the USA.
3/11/1941. President Roosevelt was warned by the US Ambasador to Tokyo of a possible Japanese attack on the USA.
11/10/1941, The Japanese Government approved plans for an attack on Pearl Harbour.
8/10/1941. The US civil rights leader and Baptist minister Jesse Jackson was born in Greenville, North Carolina.
26/9/1941, The US proclaimed an embargo on steel and scrap iron exports to Japan, with effect from 16/10/1941.
9/9/1941, Churchill met Roosevelt in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland.
26/7/1941, Britain and the USA froze Japanese assets.
11/4/1941, Former US President Herbert Hoover said the USA must stay out of the war in Europe.
10/4/1941. The USA sent troops to Greenland to protect arms supply lines from the USA to Britain.
22/3/1941, The Grand Coulee Dam, on the Columbia River, Washington State, began operating.
11/3/1941. In the USA, the Lend Lease Bill became law. In 