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| 1943, July 5 |
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| The Japanese government announced that it had approved the cession of six Malayan states to Thailand. | 1 |
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| 1944, July 18 |
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Gen. T j Hideki and his entire cabinet resigned and were replaced by Gen. Koiso Kuniaki (1880–1950) as prime minister and Adm. Yonai Mitsumasa as deputy prime minister. | 2 |
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| 1945, March |
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| U.S. planes firebombed Tokyo, killing tens of thousands. Similar attacks were carried out in May. | 3 |
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| April |
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| Koiso was replaced by Adm. Suzuki Kantar (1867–1948) as prime minister. | 4 |
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| July 10–19 |
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The Japanese home islands were attacked with mounting intensity. Over 1,000 carrier planes raided Tokyo (July 10); the U.S. fleet moved in to shell Honsh and Hokkaid (July 14–15); the British fleet joined in carrier raids against Japanese centers (July 17); and U.S. and British fliers sank some of the last remnants of the Japanese navy in Tokyo Bay (July 19). On July 26, the U.S., Great Britain, and China demanded that Japan surrender unconditionally, but the demand was ignored. | 5 |
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| Aug. 6–14 |
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| The WAR IN THE PACIFIC ENDED in a week of disaster for Japan. An atomic bomb (See Aug. 6), the formula for which had been secretly perfected by U.S. and British scientists, was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima (Aug. 6). It killed or injured some 200,000 people and leveled four square miles of houses and factories, roughly 80 percent of the city. Two days later, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, and Soviet troops swept into Manchuria (Aug. 8). On Aug. 9, a second atomic bomb shattered Nagasaki. The Japanese government offered to surrender if Emperor Hirohito were permitted to retain his throne (Aug. 10), and on receiving this assurance the Japanese accepted terms of surrender (Aug. 14). | 6 |
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| Aug. 28–Sept. 2 |
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| U.S. forces landed in Japan to occupy strategic centers while the disarmament of Japanese military forces and the surrender of navy ships and aircraft proceeded rapidly. Formal terms of surrender were signed by the Japanese envoys on board the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay (Sept. 2). (See Japan, 1946–2000) | 7 |
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