I shall return!
Douglas MacArthur, upon leaving the Philippines, March 30, 1942.
I want freedom immediately, this very night before dawn if it can be had....We shall free India or die in the attempt. We shall not live to see the perpetuation of our slavery.
Mahatma Ghandi, speech promoting the Quit India Movement, August, 1942.
Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
Winston Churchill, speech after the British victory at the second Battle of El Alamein, November 10, 1942.
In the year 1942...
- World War II rages across the globe. In the Pacific, Japan captures Malaysia and Singapore, invades Burma and Indonesia, defeats the last US forces in the Philippines, sending the captured prisoners on the Bataan Death March, and even bombs California and Australia, but the tide begins to turn when the US Navy checks the Japanese advance at the Battle of the Coral Sea and scores its first victory in the closely fought Battle of Midway. In the European theater, the Germans initiate the "Final Solution," beginning the extermination of the Jews now known to history as The Holocaust, but on the battlefields the once invincible German war machine meets defeat after defeat as Hitler calls off plans to invade England, signaling a British victory in the Battle of Britain, and German armies are turned back in Russia at the brutal Battle of Stalingrad. German forces are also checkmated in Africa when Erwin Rommel is defeated by the British at the Battle of El Alamein and US forces finally enter the European war by landing troops at Rommel's rear as part of Operation Torch.
- Mahatma Gandhi initiates the Quit India Movement, his final, and ultimately successful, drive to force the British out of India.
- US president Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066, clearing the way for the Internment of Japanese-Americans.
- As part of the top secret Manhattan Project, a team of scientists led by Enrico Fermi successfully initiates the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction underneath the bleachers of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago.
- A hurricane smashes Bombay, India, killing more than 40,000 in severe flooding.
- British social reformer William Beveridge presents "The Report to the Parliament on Social Insurance and Allied Services," better known as the Beveridge Report, to the British Parliament, laying out his vision for a British social services network that would serve as the basis of the postwar British Welfare State.
- The Grand Coulee Dam is completed on the Columbia River, becoming the largest dam in the world up to this time.
- Anne Frank begins writing in a diary she receives on her 13th birthday.
- Permanent Daylight Savings Time, called "War Time" by FDR, is initiated in the United States as a wartime energy-saving measure.
- The comic book Archie appears for the first time.
- Albert Camus publishes his existentialist classic, L'Etranger ("The Stranger").
- Isaac Asimov begins publishing the first stories in his "Foundation" series in the magazine Astounding Science-Fiction.
These people were born in 1942:
These people died in 1942:
These films hit theaters in 1942:
1941 - 1942 - 1943
20th century