28 Of The Most Powerful Pictures From World War II In The Pacific

MacArthur reaches the shore at Leyte on Oct. 20, 1944, only several hours after US troops had taken the beach.

Dec. 7, 1941: In a surprise attack on the US Naval base at Pearl Harbor, a force of 353 Japanese aircraft killed 2,403 U.S. personnel, including 68 civilians; 129 Japanese soldiers were killed.

Crowds in Times Square watch a bulletin board for latest news of war in the Pacific, following the attack on Pearl Harbor.

This march was named the Bataan Death March because of the high number of brutal and gruesome deaths along the road at the hands of the Japanese.

American Marines approach a group of Japanese-occupied buildings, reduced to rubble during the Battle of Tarawa, a Pacific atoll in the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati), in November 1943. In the background, smoke is rising from an oil-dump hit during the shelling.

Corpses of Japanese soldiers are seen half-buried in the tidal sands of the Tenaru River following a night battle on Guadalcanal, 1942.

Two US officers plant the first US flag on Guam, eight minutes after US Marines and Army assault troops landed on the Central Pacific island during WWII in July 1944.

A US Marine is seen cradling a the barely living body of a tiny infant, who was found facedown in a cave where native islanders had been hiding to escape the fighting between US and Japanese forces.

Marines sit at a table drinking coffee on board a Coast Guard assault transport, after fighting to take Eniwetok Atollt, Marshall Islands, in 1944.

Marines crouching behind a rock take cover as they blow up a cave connected to a Japanese bunker on Iwo Jima in 1945.

A blindfold and bandaged American soldier lies on a stretcher with his hands clasped in prayer, during the fighting to take Okinawa in 1945.

US Marines pose on top of Mount Suribachi on the island of Iwo Jima with the American flag in February 1945.

An American serviceman shares his rations with two Japanese children in Okinawa, 1945.

A Japanese kamikaze aircraft has just struck the deck of the US aircraft carrier Saratoga on Feb. 21, 1945.

A group of Marines present a few rare cheerful smiles while aboard a United States Coast Guard manned transport somewhere in the Pacific, 1945.

Cruiser USS Santa Fe passes alongside Essex class aircraft carrier USS Franklin, which had just been hit by a Japanese dive-bomber, setting off an ammunition store and killing 724 sailors.

Atomic mushroom clouds over Hiroshima (left) and Nagasaki (right) in August 1945.

An aerial view of the damage wrought by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima weeks earlier, bringing a swift end to WWII.

A man with burns over his entire body is treated at the Army Transport Quarantine Station on Ninoshima Island 1945. This man was exposed within 1 kilometer of the hypocenter of the atom bomb dropped on Aug. 6. Persons so close to the hypocenter who received direct heat rays suffered skin-destroying burns and damage to their internal tissues and organs. Most died immediately or within a few days.

A jubilant American sailor grabs and kisses a white-uniformed nurse while thousands jam Times Square to celebrate the long awaited-victory over Japan.

Crowds are seen celebrating Victory Over Japan Day in Oak Ridge, New Jersey.

Silhouetted against the light of a Pacific sunrise, a Coast Guardsman stands in quiet reverence beside the graves, marked with crosses, of comrades who gave their lives fighting for an atoll in the campaign for the Philippines, 1944.