The relationship of events in time is the essence of history. Chronology: 1941-1945 establishes the sequence of events from the time the first bombs on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 until the instrument of surrender was signed aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945 (with emphasis on ground action by United States Armed Forces). The other volumes in the series United States Army in World War II recount in detail the various aspects of a complex global war- individual campaigns, grand strategy, logistics, support, and so forth. In this volume the reader can see the events of the war day by day in their sequence and contemporaneity, measure the scope of the global struggle, and begin to grasp the relation of the innumerable parts to the whole.