History

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought the US into World War II.

On April 9, 1942, the American troops on the Bataan Peninsula of the Philippines surrendered to the Japanese. The captured men were then subjected to the torturous Bataan Death March.

On November 3, 1944, Japan released fusen bakudan, or balloon bombs, into the Pacific jet stream. Japan’s latest weapon, the balloon bombs were intended to cause damage and spread panic in the continental United States.

The War of the Pacific against Imperial Japan was marked by episodes of mass suicides by Japanese soldiers and civilians, notably in Saipan and Okinawa.

The Potsdam Conference was attended by representatives of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union in July 1945.

Manhattan Project veterans remember the death of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

In the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt ordered the “evacuation” of Japanese Americans to relocation and internment camps under Executive Order 9066.

Unit 731, located in Harbin, China, was a secret Japanese project that carried out human medical experiments during the 1930s and 1940s.

World War II was a formative period in the history of New Mexico.