In 1943, Allied forces began a long series of Pacific battles against the Japanese. Month after month, on islands like Tarawa, the Marshalls, the Marianas, Leyte, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, the enemies fought with fierce determination. Surviving soldiers and civilians would describe horrifying bloodshed, and staggering numbers of people killed and wounded.

As American forces won territory ever nearer to Japan, military planners on both sides used casualty figures to construct their strategies. The Japanese intended to resist at all costs, deploying pilots as suicide missiles and expecting civilians to face invaders with sharpened bamboo sticks. Numerous Japanese citizens would be sacrificed, in this plan, to achieve better terms for peace.

On the U.S. side, President Harry Truman and his war advisers hotly discussed casualty estimates for a projected invasion. Congress and the public were solidly behind the war, but the president's advisers disagreed over the proposal's level of risk to human life, based on the number of Americans who had already been killed or wounded in the Pacific theater.

The Costs of War
Explore casualty figures for major battles and events during the final year of the war, from Saipan in June 1944 to the two atomic bombs dropped in August 1945.

Sources
Read about how these casualty figures were compiled.