How to Learn the Pacific War: 79 Flashcards from Pearl Harbor to the Tokyo Bay Surrender
Study the Pacific War with the 79-card PS9504 deck: Pearl Harbor, Midway, island hopping, casualty figures, plus the three cards you should fix first.
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The Pacific War deck (code PS9504, 79 cards) covers the largest theater of World War II — from the Marco Polo Bridge to the surrender signed in Tokyo Bay. It is a solid chronology, but it argues with itself about when the war even started, and its last ten cards rewind the timeline. Fix those two things and it becomes a genuinely efficient revision tool.
Study this deck: World War II: Pacific Theater
1 / 10When did the Pacific War begin and end?
Tap the card for the answer · swipe right if you knew it, left if not
The deck contradicts itself on the start date
Card 1 says the Pacific War ran from 7 December 1941 to 2 September 1945. But card 3 lists China as an Allied participant "since 1937", card 10 dates the Second Sino-Japanese War to 1937 (with Manchuria in 1931), and every casualty card — 59, 60, 61 — counts the dead for 1937–1945. Card 63 goes further: 7.5 million Chinese were already dead before Pearl Harbor.
That is not an error to delete, it is the historiographical argument itself. Rewrite card 1 to carry both frames: 1941–1945 for the war between Japan and the Western Allies, 1937–1945 for the war in Asia. Every casualty figure in the deck uses the second one.
Eight cards worth knowing cold
| Front | Back |
|---|---|
| What were the results of the Pearl Harbor attack? | 8 US battleships knocked out, 188 aircraft destroyed, 2,403 Americans killed |
| What key American assets survived? | The three carriers were at sea; the submarine base and signals intelligence units were unscathed |
| What was the ABCD line? | American-British-Chinese-Dutch embargoes halting oil, iron ore and steel sales to Japan |
| Why were the embargoes crucial? | Imported oil was about 80% of Japan's consumption |
| What was Japan's strategic belief about the US? | Total victory was impossible; rapid conquest would force a negotiated peace |
| What was the Battle of Midway? | June 1942 defeat that Japan could not replace losses from — the turning point |
| What was the Three Alls Policy? | "Kill all, Burn all, Loot all" — at least 2.7 million civilians killed after 1940 |
| What was the island hopping strategy? | Capturing selected islands and bypassing fortified ones on the way to Japan |
What the 79 cards actually cover
Pearl Harbor, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, the Nanjing Massacre, Khalkhin Gol and Zhukov, the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact, the Southern Plan, the fall of Hong Kong and Singapore, HMS Repulse and Prince of Wales, ABDACOM and Wavell, the Java Sea, the Indian Ocean Raid, the Burma Road, Bataan and the Death March, MacArthur, Curtin's "Australia looks to America", the Darwin bombing and the Sydney Harbour raid, Coral Sea, Midway, Guadalcanal, Operation Cartwheel and Rabaul, the Philippine Sea, Leyte Gulf and kamikaze, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Ichi-Go, U-Go, "Europe first", Operation Downfall, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, the Kwantung Army, Manchukuo, the Hukbalahap and the Việt Minh.
Three repairs before your first review
Re-order the tail. Cards 69 to 72 — Japan's First and Second Operational Phases, the Doolittle Raid, Guadalcanal — belong back at cards 19 and 38 chronologically. Card 72 is also a near-duplicate of card 38; suspend one. Study cards 65–79 first as a "who and what" primer, then run 1–64 as the narrative.
Split card 23. It says about 130,000 personnel became prisoners when Singapore fell on 15 February 1942. That figure is the total for the whole Malayan campaign; roughly 80,000 surrendered at Singapore itself. Note both numbers or the card will mislead you in an exam.
Write the four missing cards. The deck never defines the Hundred Regiments Offensive (used in card 15), never names the Tokyo firebombing of 9–10 March 1945 behind card 73's vague "widespread urban destruction", never covers the US submarine campaign against Japanese merchant shipping, and gives Okinawa no card of its own despite listing it in card 45. Those are guaranteed exam items.
Find PS9504 — World War II: Pacific Theater in your library at flip-it.app.
Related: World War II in Europe: A 96-Card Chronology from Versailles to Nuremberg · Study World War I in 96 Flashcards
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