Battle Of Midway: The Changes Brought by World War II

The United States of America has had to fight through and endure long and hard wars in its past. Wars such as the Vietnam War, the Civil War, and the Gulf War have had a tremendous impact on our nation. Our military has worked long and hard to preserve our rights and our country. There is, however, one war that took it’s toile on our country and our military, and that war is World War II.

The event that got our country involved in World War II was Pearl Harbor.

It was a calm and quiet Sunday morning at 7:39 am on December 7, 1941. Then all of a sudden the peace was interrupted by bombs going off; Pearl Harbor was under attack!!! Japan an axis power secretly had been preparing to attack United States grounds for months. The tensions were high because the oil exports and metal exports had been cut from Japan; in which they had needed to conquer Asia. So they decided to get revenge and destroy most of the United States navy.

The bombing struck in two waves the first at 7:40 am and the second at 8:50 am. Within two hours the United States had lost 188 planes and 18 ships. The casualties were even worse the Japanese casualties resulted in only 100 people being killed, but the U.S. lost 2,403 soldiers and 1,178 people were wounded. The United States president spoke a famous quote the next day “yesterday, December 7, 1941-a date which will live on in infamy..” -President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s December 8 address to congress (A & E Networks).

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There is one group that is mainly remembered in World War II. People who were heartless, cruel, and inhumane, they were the Nazi’s. The Nazi’s were a group from Germany that wanted a perfect society. So they devised a plan to make their dreams come true. It all began in 1939 the Nazi’s began an “euthanasia” program in which 80,000 to 100,000 Germans who were disabled, insane, or mentally ill were killed. The program was based on and operated in Berlin at the number 4 Tiergartinstrasse and ended up being called the T-4 program. The Nazi’s next project was to rid the world of Jews thankfully they failed. But, in 1940 when they were planning this project they almost decided to send to Jews off to Madagascar, instead of eliminating them by gassing them. In the end the Nazi’s killed approximately 12 million people, over 6 million of those being Jews killed in the Holocaust (Wood).

“War terrible war…”- President Snow, The Hunger Games; war can destroy a nation or build a nation it all depends on the outcome. There are many different aspects to war the most important is the military. In the 1030’s the United States army only had 130,000 soldiers willing to fight for our country. Our military was sixteenth largest in the world which made it smaller than Spain, Turkey, and Poland. After the attack on Pearl Harbor the Japanese won two other big battles. In 1942 on April 19, the United States military surrendered the Philippines to Japan, and on May 6, 1942 the island fortress Corregidor fell to Japan also. The major turning in the Japanese plan to conquer the Pacific was the Battle of Midway where Japan lost 4 carriers, 100 pilots and the heavy cruiser Mikima. The year 1942 was tough on Germany the casualty counts were above 1,000,000 for the Soviet Union it was even worse at 4,000,000. There are many historians that believe that the battle at Stalingrad (1942-1943) is the bloodiest battle in history, but also the turning point of WW2 in Europe. It was midnight February 8, 1943 the Japanese destroyers were rescuing 11,000 troops from the vicinity of cape Esperance. It was a very horrifying experience and sight for the crews of the ships. The soldiers were almost completely bare naked, had Dengue and Malaria, and they were so undernourished that their nails and hair had stopped growing. The greatest tank battle in history occurred between the Germans and Russians at the Kursk Sapient in Russia from July 4-22, 1943. More than 3,600 tanks were involved in the tank battle at Kursk Sapient. The Enola Gay plane became well known for dropping the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, but no one ever remembers the name of the plane that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki which was Bock’s Car (Stolley 86-87, 126-135).

There were very many people affected by the Nazi’s, but the most affected was the Jews. There were lots of Jews mistreated, enslaved, and tortured by the Germans. However the United States treated them more like people. There were 600,000 Jews that served in the United States army, sadly there were 35,000 killed, wounded, captured, or went missing during combat. However, there were only two Jewish soldiers that were awarded with the Medal of Honor in WW2. Unfortunately there were many gruesome medical experiments performed on the Jews. The Nazi doctors used to break peoples bones just to see how many times you can break a bone before it won’t heal again. The doctors also would hit people’s heads with hammers to see what their skulls could withstand. There were plenty of people that risked their lives to save the Jews. For example the country of Denmark saved its entire Jewish community. There were thousands saved from the concentration camps at the end of the war. By the end of the war Austria lost 50,000 Jews (36%), Lithuania lost 220,000 Jews (94%), Netherlands lost 106,000 Jews (76%), Bohemia and Moravia lost 80.000 Jews (89%): there were more Jews that died but no one has access to that info (Murray).

In the time period between 1935 and 1945 there were many great weapons created to help with winning the war. The first and earliest was the paratroopers from Russia. The second is the secret code disguised by the Navajo Indians language. However, since the Navajo language didn’t have words for technology used in WW2 existing words were given new meanings. One example is the word hummingbird (da-he-ti-hi) became code for fighter plane. The United States had to train 400 Navajo Indians to use the code; the Japanese never could crack the code. The most powerful artillery gun ever created ever created by any nation and used in WW2 was created by the United States and used against the Russians. The gun was named Karl it could shoot a 2.5 ton (3,000 tons) shell over three miles, and could blast through eighteen feet of concrete. The one weapon that ended the trench warfare stalemate was poison gas. Even though all of the major powers had chemical weapons only Japan (against China) and Italy (against Ethiopia) used them in WW2. During WW2 the Japanese launched “wind ship weapons” of paper and rubber balloons. These weapons carried bombs to the United States, only 1,000 balloons hit their targets and reached as far East as Michigan. Only six people died during these bombs; in Oregon a mother was on a picnic with her five kids when they were hit with a bomb. There is, however, one creation that helped the most and saved many lives was blood transfusion (Benford 1999).

The destruction and devastation that was accounted for after the war was heart wrenching. At the end of the war criminals from Germany disguised themselves off as refugees at the camps that way they could get their freedom. The casualties from WW2 totaled up to a 50 and 70 million people. More than 80% of the total comes from different countries; which was Russia, China, Germany, and Poland. Over half of these casualties were civilians, which ended up being mostly women and children. The largest number of casualties came from Russia with over 21 million casualties. After the allies got to the concentration camps nearly 2,500 of the 35,000 prisoners died six weeks after liberation. Historians believe that 1.5 million children died during the Holocaust. It is also believed that 1.2 million of those kids were Jewish. The Japanese may have started America’s involvement in the war, but America ended the war. On August 15, 1945, the United States Air Force dropped bombs on two big cities in Japan. The two cities were Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The destruction in Hiroshima equaled up to 90,000 – 166,000 casualties and 4.7 sq. miles of land was destroyed. There were some countries that barely lost any citizens, but others that lost devastating numbers. The USSR had a total of 21,300,000 deaths, 13,600,000 were military, and 7,700,000 were civilians. China had a total 11,324,000 deaths, 1,324,000 were military deaths, and 10,000,000 were civilians. Germany had a total of 7,060,000 deaths, 3,250,000 were military deaths, and 3,810,000 were civilians. Poland had 6,850,000 deaths, 850,000 were ilitary deaths, and 6,000,000 were civilians. The United States had a total of 500,006 deaths, 500,000 were military, and 6 were civilians. There were other deaths, but these were all the numbers I had access to. All numbers were estimated on the website, because no one can be really sure how many people died serving their countries(Holmes, 52).

In the midst of war there were many people that are worthy to be remembered for their heroic deeds, but others for horrific tortures, experiments, and pain they inflicted upon people. One man acknowledged for some tortures inflicted on some 3,000 twinsis Dr. Josef Mengele. Dr. Mengele was known and sometimes is still known as “the Angel of Death.” He used mostly Roman and Jewish twins to perform his experiments. His experiments include taking one twins eyeball out and attaching it onto the back of the other twins head, he also would inject a dye into a childs eye to try to change the eye color, and the most horrifying is when he sewed two roman twins together trying to make conjoined twins. After all of his tortures only 200 twins were able to survive. Courage is one thing that is important feature for a soldier to have in war. There is, however one little boy that had a big amount of courage in him. Twelve year old Calvin Graham went and enlisted in the United States Navy telling no one his real age. Before any one found out his actual age he had won a “Bronze Star” and a “Purple Heart” great accomplishments for a little twelve year old boy. Someone once created a legend about a mother that lost her five sons in the “Civil War”, but that’s not true. It is however the case for one mother in Massachusetts during World War 2. Right after her boys childhood friend died all five of them went together and enlisted in the United States Navy. All five of the boys were stationed on the Juneau cruiser, because they didn’t want to be separated. On the thirteenth on November, 1942 the Juneau was sunk by a Japanese submarine. There were 700 sailors aboard the ship and 690 died, among them was the five Sullivans. In April 1943 the boys mother was invited to christen a destroyer newly built and named “The Sullivans” after the five boys. Richard Bong being just a small town farm boy loved being in the sky. In his training Bong scared and amazed his mentors. He would buzz San Francisco office buildign and blow laundry off of clothes lines. In less than two weeks had downed five planes and killed a recored breaking number of 940 men. A week before the war ended the man that had survived 200 combat missions died at age 24 when an experiment jet crashed during takeoff (Wood).

There are many different facts that I was able to find that didn’t really fit into one specific category, so they get their own fun facts category. A few days after the attack on Pearl Harbor President Roosevelt decided that he needed a bullet proof car. However, due to a government budget, he had to buy Al Capone’s limo that had been impounded; later that day he spoke to the press and said ” I hope Mr. Capone don’t mind…”. Over the course of six years (1939-1945) there were 34 million tons of bombs dropped; which averaged to 27,700 tons per month. Most people don’t even know that Hitler had a nephew, but turns out he did. Hitler’s nephew’s name was William Hitler; he served in World War 2 in the United States Navy and changed his name after the war. The Harvard “fight song” apparently is so interested that the Nazi’s pirated it to make their “Sieg Heil” march. Did you know that the concentration camp in Auschwits was the only place where the prisoners were given identification number tattoo’s. The Nazi’s instead of killing Poland babies they kept them to be adopted by German families, because they looked like they were Germans. In 1974 there was a Japanese soldier that had been a jungle on the island of Lubang for 29 years unaware that his country had surrendered and that the war was over. World War 2 is estimated to be the most destructive war in United States history. That war cost more, damaged more, and killed more people than any war in history. Last and not least the most interesting is that during World War 2 the United States decided that hamburger sounded too German so they were named “Liberty Steaks” for the duration of the war (Murray, 57).

After all the troubles our country has gone through the military has protected our rights. The effect on people’s emotions was terrible during World War 2. Pearl Harbor was mostly destroyed and the deaths toll was int the millions. World War 2 was a ard fought war; we fought, we cried, and we overcame. World War 2 was a war for the history books. Our countries future changed and the way we live today was all changed because of World War 2.