Word: pearls
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Marines under Major James Devereux scored four direct hits on the flagship Yubari and sank two destroyers. The force withdrew -- the first small U.S. victory in World War II and the only time in the war that defenders beat back an invasion fleet. In reporting this small triumph to Pearl Harbor, according to a story that may be apocryphal, one of Devereux's men added a bit of bravado that became a popular propaganda slogan: "Send us more Japs...
...Japanese took the Wake garrison at its word. Reinforced by two carriers homeward bound from Pearl Harbor, they struck again before dawn on Dec. 23. Devereux's Marines fought hand to hand on the beaches for more than five hours. The Stars and Stripes was shot down, then hoisted again on a water tower, but at about 8 a.m. a white bedsheet was raised next to it. Devereux's defenders had killed about 800 Japanese at a loss of 120; of the 400 Marine survivors, a couple were beheaded and the rest shipped into captivity...
Despite Doolittle's feat, the Japanese victories throughout the South Pacific could now be halted and reversed only by the U.S. Navy, and the Navy had been badly wounded. On top of the losses at Pearl Harbor, it had to abandon its base at Cavite, outside Manila, and it lost a cruiser and two destroyers in the Battle of the Java Sea (Feb. 27-March...
...secret weapon, though: its code breakers could read Japanese naval messages. From those, Pacific Fleet commander Chester Nimitz knew that the Japanese planned to seize the eastern approaches to Australia by attacking Port Moresby, on the tail of New Guinea, in the first week in May. Nimitz stripped bare Pearl Harbor's defenses to mount an all-out attack on the Japanese invaders as they entered the Coral...
...imperial navy's Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was still determined to do what he had failed to do at Pearl Harbor: draw the U.S. Pacific Fleet into a high- seas confrontation where he could destroy it. His strategy, which he hoped would win the war for Japan or at least open the way to California, was to seize the two tiny islands known as Midway. A lonely outpost 1,100 miles northwest of Pearl Harbor, this was the westernmost U.S. base now that Guam, Wake and the Philippines were lost. The U.S. Navy would have to defend Midway, Yamamoto figured...