Military Strategies and Early Atrocities

Terrance visits the baracks of a Japanese internment camp

Martina and Terrance now understand the differences between the strategies of the two sides in World War II.  The Axis countries of Germany, Japan, and Italy did not work well together, while the Allied countries of the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union did.  The Germans hoped to quickly defeat the Soviet Union, and then knock Great Britain out of the war with a bombing and submarine campaign.  The Japanese strategy involved capturing all of the Pacific Ocean islands, including the Philippines, Indonesia, Australia, and Hawaii, and then trying to get America to agree to peace, rather than conducting a bloody and costly war to win them all back.  Both Germany and Japan knew that if they did not win quickly, the industrial and military strength of the United States would turn the tide of war against them.

Martina and Terrance felt sad to learn about some of the war atrocities.  For example, the Japanese did not follow rules of the Geneva Convention when they treated American and Filipino Prisoners of War brutally as they marched them to a prisoner of war camp during the Bataan Death March.  The United States committed its own shameful act when it interned Japanese Americans in camps away from the West Coast because of prejudice and a false belief that they were helping the enemy.  Even though the Supreme Court said the internment was okay, the United States government later apologized and made financial payments to the camp survivors.