Battle of Midway shifts the Pacific balance

After a rapid campaign down the Malay Peninsula, British-led forces surrendered Singapore. The defeat shattered the myth of European military superiority and intensified Japanese occupation across the...

President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing military exclusion zones that enabled the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans. More than 120,000 people of Japanese...

Dutch forces in Java surrendered to Japan, ending Dutch colonial rule there and beginning a harsh occupation. Japanese authorities mobilized Indonesian labor, extracted rice and other resources, and...

After months of siege, Filipino and U.S. forces on Bataan surrendered to Japan. Thousands of prisoners were forced on a march under extreme heat, hunger, illness, and abuse; many died. Filipino...

The first 29 Navajo recruits arrived for Marine training in May 1942, building a secure communications system from their language. The military depended on Indigenous linguistic knowledge even as...

Allied troops landed on Guadalcanal, beginning a six-month campaign against Japanese forces. Solomon Islanders served as guides, coastwatchers, laborers, and rescuers, often at great personal risk....

The All-India Congress Committee adopted the Quit India resolution in Bombay on 8 August, demanding an end to British rule; Gandhi urged mass nonviolent struggle. British authorities arrested national...

British-led forces began an offensive near El Alamein in Egypt, stopping Axis plans to reach the Suez Canal. The battle’s logistics depended on colonial and Commonwealth troops, port labor, and...

U.S. and British forces landed in Morocco and Algeria under Operation Torch. The campaign unfolded in territories controlled by Vichy France and under French colonial rule. Moroccan and Algerian...

The Red Army launched Operation Uranus, encircling German and allied forces around Stalingrad. Soviet victory drew on the labor, sacrifice, and mobilization of a multiethnic state whose peoples had...