World War II

World War II brought major campaigns in the Pacific and European theaters, including fighting in the Philippines, Okinawa and the Ryukyus, Iwo Jima, New Guinea, Guadalcanal, Pearl Harbor, the Rhineland, Ardennes-Alsace, Northern France, Normandy, Central Europe, and Rome-Arno, with the listed deaths for each campaign. American military service personnel participants totaled 16,112,566, with 291,557 in-theater deaths, 113,842 deaths in service, 671,846 wounded in service, and 78,773 missing in action. Illinois suffered 22,283 deaths and 1,310 missing in action, while Kane County suffered 565 deaths; Kane County also had seven Pearl Harbor casualties, one Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, Walter E. Truemper, sixty-nine missing in action, and its youngest casualties were ages 15 and 17. In 1941 Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the United States declared war; in 1942 American B17s staged their first bombing raid on Germany; in 1944 Allied forces invaded the European continent along the Normandy coast of northern France in the campaign known as D-Day; in 1945 Germany surrendered, and the United States dropped atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki before Japan surrendered. Over 105 million men served in uniform in all combatant countries from 1939 to 1946, over 15 million died on active service, civilian deaths are estimated at between 26 and 34 million, and military conflicts were fought on every continent except Central and South America.

Geneva, Illinois · United States