Did you know ...
the Allied force which landed on Morotai in September 1944 was over a hundred times larger than the Japanese force defending the island?
the 1945 loss of German U-boat U-864 during Operation Caesar , a secret mission to deliver technology to Japan , is the only known incident of one submerged submarine sinking another?
on the last day of the Battle of Hill 170 in January 1945, an estimated 700 Japanese artillery shells landed on the hill?
in the Shanghai ghetto , a part of the city occupied by Imperial Japan , about 20,000 German and Austrian Jews escaped the Holocaust ?
the Japanese icebreaker Sōya (pictured) survived a torpedoing by the USS Greenling in 1943 and rescued the Sakhalin Huskies Taro and Jiro from Antarctica in 1958?
the Sakuradamon Incident of 1932 was an unsuccessful assassination attempt against Emperor Hirohito of Japan by a Korean nationalist ?
while naval attaché in Tokyo , future four-star admiral Frederick J. Horne (pictured) became the first United States Navy officer to be decorated by the Empire of Japan ?
the final twenty minutes of the 1941 documentary film Kukan shows an air attack by Japanese bombers against Chongqing , the World War II capital of China ?
the design of the U.S. anti-crop E77 balloon bomb was based on the design of the World War II Japanese fire balloon ?
the USS PGM-18 was blown five feet (1.5 m) out of the water after striking a Japanese mine off the coast during the Battle of Okinawa ?
in the Battle of Sio , Papuan Corporal Bengari and his five companions ambushed 29 Japanese soldiers and killed them all before they could fire a shot?
during a 1942 air attack on the Koolama , an Australian merchant ship , a man survived a direct hit to his head by a bomb , dropped by a Japanese aircraft?
Patrick Heenan , a Captain in the British Indian Army , was convicted of treason after spying for the Empire of Japan during the Malayan campaign of World War II ?
RAAF Beaufort squadrons fighting in New Guinea under the command of Group Captain Val Hancock were so short of ammunition in 1945 that they used captured Japanese ordnance to augment their bomb loads?
Japanese admiral Ogasawara Naganari , close confidant and biographer of Fleet Admiral Togo Heihachiro , was tutor to Emperor Hirohito on naval matters?
Japanese admiral Mitsumi Shimizu authorized the midget submarine operation during the attack on Pearl Harbor ?
Yamamoto Tatsuo , former head of the Bank of Japan , was the first businessman to become a cabinet minister in Japan ?
Admiral Naokuni Nomura , WW2 Japanese naval attache to Berlin , returned home on U-511 , a submarine that had been presented by Adolf Hitler to Japan in 1943?
a series of miscommunications and withdrawals by Allied forces during the Battle of Kranji allowed the Japanese forces to gain strategic footholds which led to the fall of Singapore in 1942?
a Japanese submarine shelled the Ellwood Oil Field during World War II , the first direct attack by an enemy power on the mainland United States since the War of 1812 ?
General William C. Chase was awarded the Bronze Star for his successful defense against Japanese counterattacks during the Admiralty Islands campaign in World War II ?
Captain Aub Koch of G-AEUH , a Qantas airliner shot down by Japanese fighter planes in 1942, also survived being shot down again in 1943?
Australian soldier Ringer Edwards survived 63 hours of crucifixion by Japanese soldiers during World War II ?
More interesting facts on Empire of Japan
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