On April 1, 1945, after suffering the loss of 116 planes and
damage to three aircraft carriers, 50,000 U.S. combat troops,
under the command of Lieutenant General Simon B. Buckner
Jr., landed on the southwest coast of the Japanese island
of Okinawa, 350 miles south of Kyushu, the southern main
island of Japan.

Determined to seize Okinawa as a base of operations for
the army ground and air forces for a later assault on
mainland Japan, more than 1,300 ships converged
on the island, finally putting ashore 50,000 combat
troops.

Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr.
(18 July 1886 – 18 June 1945)

Buckner was among the casualties,
killed by enemy artillery fire just three
days before the Japanese surrender.

The 1952 film Okinawa starring Pat O’Brien, is one of several movies to depict this decisive episode in the history of the
war.

Fort Buckner is a small United States Army base located immediately south of Camp Foster, near Futenma, on
Okinawa, Japan.

The west Pacific volcanic island of Iwo Jima was declared
secured by the U.S. military after weeks of fiercely fighting
its Japanese defenders.

The Americans began applying pressure to the Japanese
defense of Iwo Jima in February 1944, when B-24 and B-25
bombers raided the island for 74 days straight.

When all was done, more than 6,000 Marines died fighting for the
island, along with almost all the 21,000 Japanese soldiers trying
to defend it.

On March 19, 2003, the United States, along with coalition
forces primarily from the United Kingdom, initiated war on
Iraq. Just after explosions began to rock Baghdad, Iraq’s
capital, U.S. President George W. Bush announced in a
televised address, “At this hour, American and coalition
forces are in the early stages of military operations to
disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world
from grave danger.”

President Bush and his advisors built much of their case
for war on the specious claim that Iraq, under dictator
Saddam Hussein, possessed or was in the process of
building weapons of mass destruction.

No weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. The
U.S. declared an end to the war in Iraq on December 15,
2011, nearly ten years after the fighting began. 

President George Bush (right) speaks to Donald Rumsfeld
and Paul Wolfowitz during a visit at the Pentagon on March
25, 2003.

     
CARLATA BRADLEY

On January 18, 1919, in Paris, France, some of the most
powerful people in the world meet to begin the long,
complicated negotiations that would officially mark the
end of the First World War.

Dignitaries gathering in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles, France, to sign the Treaty of Versailles.

The Council of Four (Also known as the ‘Big Four’) at the
Paris Peace Conference. President Woodrow Wilson is
at the far right.