Chant, Christopher

Surveys the wars and military operations that have involved the United States, from the Revolutionary War through the Persian Gulf War.

Photographs and text chronicle the history of the Vietnam War.

World War II was a global conflict that split the majority of the worlds nations into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers.

The end of six years of bloodshed ended on September 2, 1945, when official Japanese representatives signed a capitulation document aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

During World War II the Allies who were a group of countries that cooperated together to oppose the Axis powers, had the mission to stop German, Japanese, and Italian aggression.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is one of the most important and significant events in American history. On December 7, 1941, at 7.55am Hawaiian time, the Japanese began a wave of attacks against the United States naval fleet anchored in Pearl Harbor.

By the mid-1960s ever-larger numbers of US troops poured into South Vietnam. Until this time American involvement was dominated by US air power which struck at North Vietnam. However, after several attacks on US airbases it was decided that more protection was required. It seemed that the South Vietnamese were incapable of providing adequate security. March 1965 saw the beginning of the American ground war when 3,500 Marines were dispatched to South Vietnam.

The Vietnam War constitutes a defining moment in modern history. Starting from a time soon after the Japanese surrender in 1945, at the end of the Second World War, and lasting to the North Vietnamese conquest of South Vietnam in 1975 to re-create a unified Vietnamese state, the war pitted the Communists of Vietnam, against a number of opponents. Those included first the French and second the South Vietnamese and Americans, the latter supported by a number of allies.