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In Their Words: Stories of Minnesota's Greatest Generation
"...we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain...Remember December 7th!" 1942. Loc. no. E448.19 a105

"...we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain...Remember December 7th!" 1942. Source: Office of War Information. Learn more.

Before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the majority of American people were against U.S. involvement in the war. In the blink of an eye that attitude changed as the country united against the grave threat to American security posed by the Axis powers. The rapid build-up of military strength caused Isoruku Yamamoto, the Japanese Admiral who had orchestrated the attack on Pearl Harbor, to comment, "All we have done is to waken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."

The United States had military bases in the Pacific to protect its territories, among them Hawaii, the Philippines, Guam, and Alaska, so some troops, ships and other war materiel were in place in December 1941, and an additional Army air base was quickly established in Australia from which the U.S. could carry out campaigns in the Southwest Pacific. Approximately 416,000 American troops (Army, Navy and Marines) were deployed to the Pacific in 1942, and many saw combat soon after their arrival.

The Japanese made steady progress in their bid to take over the islands of the Pacific. By the spring of 1942 they had invaded the Philippines, Burma, the Soloman Islands, and Singapore. U.S. troops on Bataan in the Philippines, short on supplies, surrendered in April. As prisoners of war they faced the infamous 6-day, 90-mile forced Bataan Death March from Mariveles to Camp O'Donnell, among them, several Minnesotans.

The United States quickly went on the offensive. Doolittle's Raiders, led by Lt. Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, made a long-distance bombing run over Tokyo in April 1942 that brought the war to the home islands of Japan. The following May, the U.S. Navy was able to stop the Japanese from an invasion of New Guinea in the Battle of the Coral Sea and, a month later, defeated the Japanese at the Battle of Midway, turning the tide of the war in the Pacific.

In February 1943 the Allied forces captured the island of Guadalcanal after a difficult, five-month campaign. This victory was followed by battles in the Solomon and Gilbert Islands later that year. The Battle of Tarawa opened the way for American troops to invade the Marianas Islands, but with substantial losses. High casualties would continue as the Allies fought their way through the the Marianas in the Battles to recapture Saipan, Tinian, and Guam.

From the Marianas the Allies turned their attention toward the Philippines. The U.S. Naval victory at the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944 incapacitated the Japanese fleet, and early in 1945 U.S. Army troops had recaptured Manila.

The final push toward the home islands of Japan began with the capture of Iwo Jima by the U.S. Marine Corps in March 1945. The home island of Okinawa was the next target, and would be the largest amphibious assault of the war, with more than 200,000 Allied ground troops. The Battle of Okinawa proved one of the fiercest battles of the war, with 12,513 of the 72,000 U.S. casualties killed or missing in action.

The Allies in the Pacific were gearing up for an invasion of Japan when two atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an action that brought a swift closure to the war in the Pacific. The Japanese surrendered on August 14th, and the formal surrender agreement was signed on September 2, 1945.

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