Nagoya Castle in Japan was destroyed by Allied bombing on the 14th of May, 1945. The city had been under attack from air raids since April of 1942, and the castle was targeted as it was being used as a Japanese military command post as well as the administrative headquarters for the local prisoner of war camp.
The castle was considered a national treasure. Reconstruction began in the 1950s.
Near Okinawa on the 11th of April, 1945, the USS Missouri was hit by a Japanese kamikaze attack – a suicide mission in the style used by the Japanese military during the Second World War.
The battleship only sustained minor, superficial damage, but the pilot was killed. The ship’s American captain insisted on giving him a funeral with full military honours.
It is estimated nearly four-thousand Japanese pilots died this way in the war’s Pacific Theatre.
The Missouri is now famous for being the site of the surrender of the Empire of Japan later that year, the event that ended the war.
The Battle of Taierzhuang, part of the Second Sino-Japanese War between China and Japan, ran from the 24th of March to the 7th of April, 1938. The first major Chinese victory of the conflict, it was won in part because of the lengths the Chinese soldiers were willing to go to for victory.
This image shows one of China’s suicide bombers putting on a vest made of hand grenades. Some soldiers threw themselves under Japanese tanks and blew themselves – and the vehicles – up.
The Japanese were humiliated by the defeat and denied it in media reports for days after the battle concluded. Chinese victory gave the morale of their people a big boost.
This war ran up until the conclusion of the Second World War, and is considered part of the Pacific Theatre of the worldwide conflict, ending with Japan’s surrender in 1945.
This photograph is of the main railway station in Nagoya, Japan in flames on the 19th of March, 1945, following an air raid by US forces.
The station was opened in 1886. The new complex, completed in 1999, is currently one of the world’s largest stations.
10th February 1945: Residents of the Philippines run from suburbs burned by the Japanese during the Battle of Manila.
The battle ran from the 3rd of February to the 3rd of March, when combined American and Filipino forces liberated the country from nearly three years of Japanese control.
Over 100 000 civilians were killed before victory was achieved.
One of the many buildings destroyed in the 9th August, 1945 atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan was the city’s Catholic church. The Urakami Tenshudo was of historical significance because of the centuries of persecution Japanese Christians faced for practicing their religion.
At Urakami people risked death by torture for following a religion Japanese authorities saw as undermining their power and bringing too much Western influence to the Empire.
Urakami was ground zero for the nuclear attack on the city.
Photographed here on the 7th of January, 1946, the destroyed church is seen to still be a ruin five months after the atomic bombings that forced Japan’s surrender in the Second World War.
25th November 1944: This photograph captures the image a kamikaze hit the American USS Essex in the Second Wold War. Fifteen people were killed and fourteen injured.
An image of the Japanese plane on its suicide attack was also captured.
The Essex survived the attack and was repaired enough to be put back into service by December. The ship went on to be used in three tours during the Korean War.
