Cause and Effect on World War II


1. After months of fierce fighting, Allied Troops who had been defending Bataan in the Philippines surrendered on April 9, 1942 what is the effect?

2. James Doolittle led a daring raid of sixteen American bombers launched from an aircraft carrier in the Pacific to bomb Tokyo. what is the effect?

3. In June 1944 American forces captured Guam and other islands nearby, providing a base for launching bombing strikes on Japan. What is the effect?

4. American bombers pounded Tokyo and other Japanese cities, killing thousands of civilians and crippling Japan economy. What is the effect?

5. In 1939 German-born physicist Albert Einstein wrote a letter to the President warning him that the Nazis might try to build new types of powerful bombs. What is the effect?

6. Harry S. Truman, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin issued the Potsdam Declaration, warning that if Japan did not surrender it would face "prompt and utter destruction." Japan ignored the warning. What is the effect?



A. In retaliation Japan unleashed kamikazes who crashed plants loaded with explosives into American ships.

B. In October American ships were able to destroy most of the Japanese fleet at the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines, the biggest battle in naval history. General Douglas MacArthur fulfilled his promise to return.

C. President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the top-secret operation, the Manhattan Project.

D. About 76,000 Allied prisoners were forced to endure a death march to a prison camp; only about 54,000 survived.

E. On August 6, 1945, an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.

F. There was little military gain, but American morale, which had been low, was lifted.