One of the most bitter battle arenas of the Second World War, Pearl Harbor represented the trigger that led America into the greatest conflict ever recorded and the eventual liberation of the people of Asia and the Pacific.
After Pearl Harbor was struck, the Japanese swept across the Pacific. Thousands of Americans and Filipinos died on the Bataan Death March and prisoners were forced to labor for the Japanese, building the infamous Thai-Burma death railway.
It was a war of hatred, fanned by propaganda. The Allies filmed themselves machine-gunning Japanese survivors and showed it in cinemas. The Japanese scoured their prison camps to find prisoners fit enough to act in a propaganda film
The closer the Allies got to Japan, the more savage the fighting. Tiny islands like Peleliu and Iwo Jima were carpeted with corpses. The Americans slaughtered wounded Japanese; both sides looted and mutilated the dead.
