Wars & Battles — World War II, Pacific & Home Fronts flashcards
10 of 78 cards free to study here · 6 topics · the whole deck is built into Willys
Japan's road to war and Pearl Harbor, the Pacific turning points and island-hopping battles, the American home front, the atomic bombs and surrender, and the war's immediate aftermath.
Learn deck · part of Wars and famous battles · written against: Conventional dates and outcomes from ancient Greece to 1945; contested figures given as ranges or left out. Updated 2026-10-10.
Study the free sample
10 cards from the deck as they are. Flip, rate yourself, filter by topic; your progress stays in this browser.
Tap the card or press Space to flip
The 10 sample cards as a list
-
What staged incident in September 1931 did Japan's army use as a pretext to seize Manchuria?The Mukden Incident — Japanese officers blew up a stretch of their own South Manchuria Railway and blamed Chinese troops, then used it to justify taking over the region.Japan's Expansion & Pearl Harbor
-
What did Japan name the puppet state it set up in Manchuria in 1932?Manchukuo, nominally headed by Puyi, the last Qing emperor, but run in practice by the Japanese army.Japan's Expansion & Pearl Harbor
-
What made the Battle of the Coral Sea (May 1942) a first in naval history?It was the first battle between aircraft carriers: carrier aircraft did the decisive striking (land-based planes also took part), and the opposing fleets never sighted each other.Turning Points in the Pacific
-
Why is the Battle of the Coral Sea counted as an Allied strategic win even though the U.S. lost the carrier Lexington?It stopped Japan's seaborne invasion of Port Moresby in New Guinea, which would have threatened Australia, and kept two Japanese fleet carriers out of Midway: Shokaku was damaged and Zuikaku lost much of its air group.Turning Points in the Pacific
-
What was the Allied strategy of island hopping (or leapfrogging)?Capturing selected islands that could serve as air and naval bases while bypassing other strongly held ones, leaving them cut off, on the way toward Japan.Island Hopping
-
Which major Japanese base in New Britain did the Allies isolate and bypass instead of invading?Rabaul. Allied air and naval power encircled it, and its large garrison sat out the rest of the war.Island Hopping
-
Which agency did Roosevelt create in January 1942 to convert factories from civilian goods to war production?The War Production Board, which set priorities and allotted scarce materials.The U.S. Home Front
Example: Auto plants stopped making civilian cars and built tanks, trucks and aircraft. -
Which federal agency ran rationing and price controls on the home front?The Office of Price Administration (OPA), which issued ration books and set price ceilings to curb inflation.The U.S. Home Front
-
How did Harry Truman become president in 1945, and what did he learn about soon after?He took office when Franklin Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, and was then briefed in full on the Manhattan Project, which he had known little about as vice president.The Atomic Bombs & Surrender
-
Where was the United Nations Charter signed in June 1945?At the San Francisco Conference, where delegates from 50 nations signed it on June 26, 1945.Aftermath
Unlock the whole deck
You are studying a free 10-card sample. All 78 cards of Wars & Battles — World War II, Pacific & Home Fronts, the other 5 Wars and famous battles decks, and spaced-repetition scheduling are built into Willys. 14-day free trial, then $14.99 a year.
In Willys, tap Exam Library at the top of your Decks (or Browse Exam Library… under the + button), find the exam on its shelf or by search, tick it and tap Add.
More Wars and famous battles decks
← All Wars and famous battles decks, with the study guide and topic outline.
About these cards
Review status: Second-reader reviewed, with corrections applied.
Checked against:
- Checked against the National Archives (milestone documents on Executive Orders 9066 and 8802, the GI Bill and the Marshall Plan; the "We Can Do It!" still-picture record; Prologue magazine and the "A People at War" exhibit on the Navajo code talkers; the guide to the Office of Price Administration's records; the Commission on Wartime Relocation report via DocsTeach; the FDR Library's blog), Public Law 100-383 (Civil Liberties Act of 1988) on govinfo, the Supreme Court's opinions in Korematsu v. United States (1944) and Trump v. Hawaii (2018), Naval History and Heritage Command battle histories and its pages on the Navajo code talkers, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey's Summary Report (Pacific War), Louis Morton's The Fall of the Philippines (U.S. Army official history), the U.S. Army's history of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the National Security Agency's cryptologic history of Midway, the judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the State Department Office of the Historian, the Avalon Project texts of the Japanese Instrument of Surrender and the Soviet declaration of war on Japan, the National Diet Library texts of the Potsdam Declaration and the Constitution of Japan, the war-damage records of Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the UN Charter, Truman Library public papers and education pages, the CIA's history of the Navajo code talkers, the U.S. Department of Energy's Manhattan Project history and National Park Service pages, the National Security Archive (George Washington University), the National WWII Museum, Densho, Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Battleship Missouri Memorial, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, the Atomic Heritage Foundation, TreasuryDirect, the Marine Corps' own history of Tarawa, the American Presidency Project text of Executive Order 9024, edited reference works (the Oxford Companions to American Military History and to United States History, Oxford's World Encyclopedia, Dictionary of World Religions and Pocket Dictionary of Current English, the Dictionary of American History, Gale's World War II Reference Library, Korean War Reference Library, American Home Front in World War II, Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History, Europe Since 1914, Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence, and Security, Encyclopedia of World Biography, Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender and St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, the Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450, the Columbia Encyclopedia) and scholarly books (Heinrichs, Threshold of War; Feis, The China Tangle; Carlson, Joe Rochefort's War; Astor, The Greatest War; Fogel, ed., The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography; Large, Emperor Hirohito and the Pacific War; Wetzler, Hirohito and War; Yamashita, Daily Life in Wartime Japan and Leaves from an Autumn of Emergencies; Pacific War Research Society, Japan's Longest Day). Reference only; all wording original.
These are independent study notes written for Willys. They are not official exam material, may contain mistakes, and are no substitute for your course, your teacher or the exam owner's own publications. Found an error? Tell us — corrections ship as a new version of the deck.
Use of these pages is covered by our Terms of Use.