World War II Index/Glossary of Terms
V-J Day
- Victory over Japan Day -- August 15, 1945. The fighting ended the day before on August 14 when the Japanese agreed to unconditionally surrender. The surrender was made formal on September 2 aboard the U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay. After V-J Day, World War II, the most devastating war in human history, was finally over.
Viru Harbor
- An area on New Georgia Island in the Solomons in the Pacific. U.S. Army forces took it on July 1, 1943.
WAC
- Womens' Army Corps.
Waffen SS
- The armed units of the Nazi Party's SS organization.
Wake Island
- An island in the Southwest Pacific opposite the New Guinea coast. A Japanese airfield based here was invaded by MacArthur's Army forces, covered by planes based on Hollandia, on May 17, 1944.
Wannsee Conference
- A meeting held in January 1942 in Germany to find a "Final Solution" for the Jews.
Warsaw (Warsaw Ghetto Uprising)
- The Nazis forced the sizeable Jewish population of this Polish city to live in the restricted area of the Warsaw ghetto. Starting in July 1942, the Nazis went further, deporting the hundreds of thousands of Jews in the ghetto to the Treblinka concentration camp to die. In April 1943 about 750 Jews fought back the Germans for almost a month. In January 1945, the USSR captured Warsaw from the Germans.
Watchtower
- The code name for the Guadalcanal-Tulagi Operation.
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