n surrendered unconditionally. This marked the end of World War II. VJ day was officially celebrated on the following day, the 15th August. The Japanese surrender was officially accepted by General Douglas MacArthur on the US aircraft carrier Missouri on 2/9/1945.
10/8/1945, Emperor Hirohito of Japan announced he was prepared to surrender unconditionally. The US cancelled plans to drop two further atoms bombs, scheduled for 13 and 16 August.
9/8/1945 The second atomic bomb was dropped, on Nagasaki. 40,000 were killed here. The intended target, Kokura, was obscured by cloud.
6/8/1945. The first atomic bomb was dropped, on Hiroshima, Japan, from the B29 bomber Enola Gay. At 8.15 in the morning a nuclear chain reaction in the bomb built up a temperature of several million degrees centigrade. In 0.1 milliseconds a fireball at 300,000 degrees centigrade was created, and this expanded to 250 yards in diameter one second after detonation. The mushroom cloud reached 23,000 feet into the sky. 78,000 of the city’s population of 300,000 was killed, some instantaneously, by the blast, some later by the firestorm that the bomb created, and another 90,000 injured, many seriously.
4/8/1945, The US dropped leaflets over Hiroshima, warning that their city was to be obliterated.
29/7/1945, Japan rejected a US ultimatum to surrender. The US estimated that 1 million Allied casualties would ensue from a land invasion of Japan.
16/7/1945. The atom bomb, produced at Los Alamos, was tested at Alamogordo airbase in the desert of New Mexico. See 8/3/1950.
25/6/1945. The Charter for the United Nations was drawn up in San Francisco, and signed by 50 countries. This was the successor to the League of Nations. See 18/4/1946.
22/6/1945. US troops captured Okinawa.
8/5/1945. VE Day. The Second World War officially ended in Europe, at one minute past midnight. Field Marshall Keitel signed the final capitulation.
5/5/1945. Elsie Mitchell and the five children she was looking after were killed in Oregon by a Japanese balloon bomb. They ware the only people killed in enemy action on the US mainland during World War Two.
25/4/1945, US and Soviet forces met on the Elbe near Torgau.
24/4/1945, Himmler offered to surrender the German Reich to the governments of Great Britain and the USA.
19/4/1945, US forces took Leipzig; the city was later handed to the Soviet sector, East Germany.
18/4/1945, US troops under General Patton entered Czechoslovakia.
17/4/1945. US troops captured the Buchenwald concentration camp.
1/4/1945, The Battle of Okinawa began as US troops landed on the island. US victory came 83 days later.
23/3/1945. The US 2nd Army crossed the Rhine. By 20/4/1945 British troops had advanced 200 miles into Germany.
16/3/1945, Iwo Jima was totally occupied by US forces; 4,590 US soldiers were killed, out of a force of 30,000 attacking 23,000 Japanese who were heavily dug in with underground bunkers. See 19/2/1945. Iwo Jima, just 750 miles from Tokyo, could now be used as a base to bomb some 66 Japanese cities in an attempt to force a Japanese surrender.
4/3/1945, US General McArthur returned to the Philippines, fulfilling a promise that ‘we shall return’ he made in 1942 when advancing Japanese troops forced him to flee on a torpedo boat.
19/2/1945, US forces began the invasion of Iwo Jima, see 16/3/1945.
16/2/1945. (1) US Air Force began heavy raids on Tokyo.
(2) The US took Bataan, Philippines.
4/2/1945. The Yalta Conference between the Allied leaders Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill opened in the Crimea. This conference concluded on 11/2/1945. Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin all had very different aims. Roosevelt wanted to disengage US troops from Europe to defeat Japan. Stalin wanted to extend Soviet influence as far west into Europe as possible. Stalin got to occupy eastern Poland, as agreed in Tehran on 28/11/1943. Churchill wanted to build a democracy from the ruins of Germany. The ailing Roosevelt trusted Stalin’s assurance that he would work to build a ‘peaceful and democratic world’. The West insisted that Greece be given a western-style democr