History of Komatsushima, Japan.

• Komatsushima was originally a small fishing village.
• 1899; A port facility is opened and commercial development begins.
• 1933; Regular ferry service begins connecting Shikoku Island with cities on Honshu.
• 1923; A large spinning mill opens in Komatsushima.
• 1951; Komatsushima is designated a city.

History of Japan ^{[2] [3]}

• 950 to 1250; Medieval Warm Period.

• 1300-1850: The Little Ice Age.

• 1914 - 1920 The First World War. [More Information]
  • 1917; Fort Jackson, SC, the nation's largest U.S. Army training facility, established to prepare soldiers for World War I.
  • 1917, February 3: US severs diplomatic ties with Germany.
  • 1917, April 6: The US declares war on Germany.
  • 1918, March 3: Russia and Germany sign an armistice at Brest-Litovsk.
  • 1918, May 28: US forces make their first offensive, at Cantigny, France.
  • 1918, November 11: Armistice Day. At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, Germany signs an armistice with the Allies. The war is officially over. More than 8.5 million have been killed and over twice as many wounded from across the globe. New technology has been created, America has risen to prominence as an economic power and new countries are forming in Europe and the Middle East.
• 1923, September 1, Great Kantō earthquake .
• 1931, September 18, Japan invades Manchuria.
• 1935, October 3; The Second Italo-Abyssinian War. Italian armed forces from Eritrea invaded Ethiopia without a declaration of war. In response Ethiopia declares war on Italy. On October 7, the League of Nations declared Italy to be the aggressor, and started the slow process of imposing limited sanctions on Italy.
• 1937, December 13 – January 1938; The Nanking Massacre was a mass murder (50,000–300,000 dead) and mass rape committed by Japanese troops against the residents of Nanjing (Nanking), then the capital of the Republic of China, during the Second Sino-Japanese War. ^[Ref]
• 1939 - 1945 World War II. [More Information]
  • Axis powers (Germany, Italy, Japan, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria) versus Allies (U.S., Britain, France, USSR, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Greece, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, South Africa, Yugoslavia).
  • 1939: Germany invades Poland.
    
  • 1940, May 10: The Battle of France begins. France asks for an armistice with Germany on June 20.
  • 1940, June 17: The British ocean liner, RMS Lancastria , requisitioned by the UK Government during the Second World War was sunk during Operation Aerial off the cost of Saint-Nazaire, France. At the time of the sinking, there were an estimated 4,000 to 9,000 British military personal and forty civilian refugees, including embassy staff and employees of Fairey Aviation Company of Belgium with their families aboard the ship when the ship was struck by 3 to 4 bombs and quickly capsizes and sinks. Estimates of the death toll vary from fewer than 3,000 to 5,800 people to as many as 6,500 people, the largest loss of life in British maritime history. ^[Ref]
  • 1941, December 7: Japan attacks Pearl Harbor.
  • 1942, April: American and Filipino prisoners of war are forced to endure World War II Bataan Death March in the Philippines.
  • 1945, April 12: President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies at Warm Springs, Georgia.
  • 1945, May 8: Victory in Europe, V-E Day.
  • 1945, September 2: Victory over Japan, V-J Day Japanese sign surrender terms aboard battleship Missouri (BB-63).
    
  • The estimated number of people that perished during World War II is 70 to 85 million. This was about 3 % of the world’s population in 1940. (Estimated to be 2.3 billion). This makes World War II the deadliest military conflict in history. ^{[Ref 1] [Ref 2]}
    
  1. Civilian Deaths totaled 50-55 million.^[Ref]
  2. Death directly due to the war totaled 19–28 million.^[Ref]
  3. Deaths due to war-related disease and famine 21–25 million.^[Ref]
  4. Prisoners of war that died during captivity 5 million.^[Ref]
  5. There were about six million Jews across German-occupied Europe killed during what became known as "The Holocaust" . ^[Ref]
     
     
  Casualties by Country ^[Ref] show/hide
  
  

  Country	Military Casualties	Civilian Casualties	Total
  Albania	30,000	200	30,200
  Australia	39,800	700	40,500
  Austria	261,000	123,700	384,700
  Belgium	12,100	74,000	86,100
  Brazil	1,000	1,000	2,000
  Bulgaria	22,000	3,000	25,000
  Canada	45,400	0	45,400
  China	3-4 million	16-17 million	20 million
  Czechoslovakia	25,000	320,000	345,000
  Denmark	2,100	1,100	3,200
  Dutch East Indies		3-4 million	3-4 million
  Estonia		51,000	51,000
  Ethiopia	5,000	95,000	100,000
  Finland	95,000	2,000	97,000
  France	217,600	350,000	567,600
  French Indochina		1-1.5 million	1-1.5 million
  Germany	5,533,000	1,067,000-3,267,000	6-8 million
  Greece	20,000-35,000	1280,000-765,000	300,000-800,000
  Hungary	300,000	280,000	580,000
  India	87,000	1,413,000-2,413,000	1.5-2.5 million
  Italy	301,400	155,600	457,000
  Japan	2,120,000	480,000-980,000	2.6-3.1 million
  Korea		378,000-473,00	378,000-473,000
  Latvia		227,000	227,000
  Lithuania		353,000	353,000
  Luxembourg		2,000	2,000
  Malaya		100,000	100,000
  Netherlands	17,000	284,000	301,000
  New Zealand	11,900	0	11,900
  Norway	3,000	6,500	9,500
  Papua New Guinea		15,000	15,000
  Philippines	57,000	443,000-943,000	50,000-1 million
  Poland	240,000	5,360,000	6,600,000
  Romania	300,000	53,300	833,000
  Singapore		50,000	50,000
  South Africa		0	11,900
  Soviet Union	8.8 million	15.2 million	24 million
  United Kingdom	383,600	67,100	450,700
  United States	416,800	1,700	418,500
  Yugoslavia	446,000	554,000	1 million

  
  
  

  WORLDWIDE CASUALTIES* ^[Ref]
  
  Battle Deaths 15,000,000
  Battle Wounded 25,000,000
  Civilian Deaths 45,000,000
  
  *Worldwide casualty estimates vary widely in several sources. The number of civilian deaths in China alone might well be more than 50,000,000.
  
  
  
• 1945; The United Nations develops a plan for a trusteeship administration of the Korean Peninsula. The Soviet Union administering the peninsula north of the 38th parallel and the United States administering the south.
• 1950 - 1953; The Korean War is fought in Korea.
• 1954; U.S. Supreme Court decides in Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka that "separate" schools cannot be "equal." This paved the way for desegregation and the civil rights movement.