Eighty Years Ago: Asia Pacific, Oct 23 – 29, 1941

Oct 23, 1941: US Senate passes supplemental Lend Lease Bill, adding nearly 6 billion dollars that can be spent on material aid, everything from weapons to food, to the struggling nations of Britain, the Soviet Union and China

Oct 24, 1941: Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, chief planner of attack on Pearl Harbor, writes in letter to Navy Minister Shimada Shigetaro that “the only way is to have a powerful air force strike deeply at the enemy’s heart at the very beginning of the war and thus to deal a blow, material and moral, from which it will not be able to recover for some time”

Oct 25, 1941: US submarine Narwhal on simulated Pacific war patrol off Wake Island

Oct 25, 1941: British battleship HMS Prince of Wales leaves home waters with destroyer escort, bound for Singapore, amid growing concern over potential military threat from Japan

Oct 26, 1941: Japanese troop reinforcements reported in southern China, near border with Hong Kong

Oct 27, 1941: Units of the Winnipeg Grenadiers depart Vancouver, Canada, to boost Hong Kong’s defenses amid fears of imminent Japanese moves

Oct 28, 1941: The Philippine Department Air Force, the air service in the US Army in the Philippines, is renamed Far East Air Force

Oct 29, 1941: US government begins selection of young men under the country’s new peacetime draft

Categories: War

Leave a Reply