...Battle of Midway On December 7th, 1941, Isoroku Yamamoto and the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Immediately following “A date that will live in infamy”, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared a state of war and officially entered the United States of America into World War II. While the war officially lasted until September 2, 1945, the turning point of the United States war on Japan came three years prior. On June 4th, 1942, the US met Japan at the Battle of Midway, in a naval fight that would ultimately decide the fate of the South Pacific. In charge of their respective fleets, Isoroku Yamamoto (Japan) and Chester Nimitz (USA), each shared similar backgrounds. Both Yamamoto and Nimitz entered their respective countries’ naval academy at the age of seventeen. The men each rose prominently to positions of great control, realizing the growing importance of aircraft carrier warfare. At 44, Yamamoto became Japan’s youngest admiral. Armed with the task of creating a self-sustaining empire (the “New Empire”), Yamamoto decided to bomb Pearl Harbor and subsequently attack Midway in attempt to gain control over the Pacific. Prior to Yamamoto’s attack, the United States developed a secret weapon against the Japanese. The United States’ weapon, “Magic”, was a system that deciphered Japanese code. By the end of May 1942, Chester Nimitz knew exactly when and where the Japanese intended to strike. Nimitz realized he must locate Yamamoto’s carriers and attack them first for...
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...did breaking code JN-25 and code ULTRA give aid to the Allies in the Pacific and Atlantic theatres of World War Two? Word Count: 3746 Abstract: This extended essay has the subject of Code Breaking Intelligence. When studying the Second World War, the phrase ‘code breaking’ is not highlighted as a significant factor, so this investigation is to assess the contribution of code intelligence in the Second World War. The main question being: To what extent did breaking code JN-25 and code ULTRA give aid to the Allies in the Pacific and Atlantic theatres of World War Two? The scope of this investigation is confined to two specific codes called the JN-25 and Ultra. This is due to the abundance of codes and ciphers used during WWII. It is also limited to where, either the Pacific or Atlantic theatres, these two codes were most effectively applied to aid the Allies. Information was attained from secondary sources to create a bank of relative information to the research question. The conclusion that can be drawn from this investigation is that code intelligence did significantly aid the Allies in the Pacific and Atlantic theatres. With the assistance of JN-25 the Americans halted the Japanese in the Pacific theatre, stopping its expansionist and aggressive behaviour. Similarly, the British and the Americans, with the help of code Ultra, achieved an offensive against Germany and Hitler, plus shortening the war by two to four years, supported by the historians: Wladyslaw Kozaczuk...
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...be said to mark the beginning of the greatest of global conflicts. In 1931, the Japanese army invaded Manchuria, a northern province of China. In July 1937, the Japanese moved again, this time directly against the Nationalist regime of Chiang Kai-shek. The atrocities that followed shocked the world. Meanwhile, in 1936, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler moved aggressively into the Rhineland, previously a demilitarized zone, and in 1938, he incorporated Czechoslovakia and Austria into the Third Reich. By this time, the Western world was fully alert to the menace of the fanatically ambitious and confident Fuhrer. Then, in the early morning hours of September 1, 1939, Hitler sent his armies into Poland. Two days later, France and Great Britain declared war on Germany. Within a matter of weeks the Soviet Union, which had recently signed a non-aggression treaty with Hitler, attacked Poland from the east. Within a month, Polish resistance collapsed, and Warsaw fell. World War II had begun. In general, the American people did not want to have any part in a European war. They felt protected by great oceans on both sides of the North American continent. And they felt that, in World War I, American boys had fought and bled in France mostly to make fortunes for munitions makers and arms merchants. Moreover, the United States had allowed its armed forces to wither in the 1920s and 1930, so that when World War II broke out in Europe, its army of 190,000 men ranked about eighteenth in the global...
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