The Battle of Peleliu, codenamed Operation Stalemate II, was fought between the United States and the Empire of Japan in the Pacific Theater of World War II, from September – November 1944 on the island of Peleliu, present-day Palau.

By the summer of 1944, victories in the Southwest and Central Pacific had brought the war closer to Japan, with American bombers able to strike at the Japanese main islands from air bases secured during the Mariana Islands campaign ( June — August 1944 ).

This was meant to fulfill President Roosevelt's promise to Chiang Kai-shek to begin bombing operations against Japan by November 1944.

Working closely with Winston Churchill of Britain, and Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union, Roosevelt sent his forces into the Pacific against Japan, then into North Africa against Italy and Germany, and finally into Europe starting with France and Italy in 1944 against the Germans.

The completed films included the seven-episode Why We Fight series — consisting of Prelude to War ( 1942 ), The Nazis Strike ( 1942 ), Divide and Conquer ( 1943 ), The Battle of Britain ( 1943 ), The Battle of Russia ( 1943 ), The Battle of China ( 1944 ), War Comes to America ( 1945 ) – plus Know Your Enemy: Japan ( 1945 ), Tunisian Victory ( 1945 ), and Two Down and One to Go ( 1945 ) that do not bear the Why We Fight banner ; as well as the African-American related, The Negro Soldier ( 1944 ).

* 1944 – World War II: Hideki Tōjō resigns as Prime Minister of Japan due to numerous setbacks in the war effort.

In 1944, Ivens made Know Your Enemy: Japan for Frank Capra's U. S. War Department film series Why We Fight.

By January 1944, Germany had diplomatic relations with only a handful of countries: Argentina, Ireland, Vichy France, the Salo Republic in Italy, Occupied Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Croatia, Bulgaria, Switzerland, the Holy See, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Thailand, Japan, and the Japanese puppet states of Manchukuo and the Wang Jingwei regime in China.

* 1944 – Plutonium is first produced at the Hanford Atomic Facility and subsequently used in the Fat Man atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.

Control passed to Japan in 1914 and during World War II the islands were taken by the United States in 1944, with the costly Battle of Peleliu between September 15 and November 25 with more than 2, 000 Americans and 10, 000 Japanese killed.

The poll tax was effectively lifted in the 1930s following the invasion of China by Japan, and was finally repealed in 1944.

The territory comprised the former South Pacific Mandate, a League of Nations Mandate administered by Japan and taken by the U. S. in 1944.

In 1939, Japan committed 22 percent of its GNP to its war effort in China ; this rose to three-quarters of Japan's GNP in 1944.

Between November 1944 and April 1945, Japan launched over 9, 300 fire balloons.

Japan released the first of these bomb-bearing balloons on November 3, 1944.

His books of poetry include Poems 1913 and 1914 ( 1914 ); Poems Translated from the French ( 1914 ); Three Poems ( 1916 ); The Barn ( 1916 ); The Silver Bird of Herndyke Mill ; Stane Street ; The Gods of the World Beneath, ( 1916 ); The Harbingers ( 1916 ); Pastorals ( 1916 ); The Waggoner and Other Poems ( 1920 ); The Shepherd, and Other Poems of Peace and War ( 1922 ); Old Homes ( 1922 ); To Nature: New Poems ( 1923 ); Dead Letters ( 1923 ); Masks of Time: A New Collection of Poems Principally Meditative ( 1925 ); Japanese Garland ( 1928 ); Retreat ( 1928 ); Winter Nights: A Reminiscence ( 1928 ); Near and Far: New Poems ( 1929 ); A Summer's Fancy ( 1930 ); To Themis: Poems on Famous Trials ( 1931 ); Constantia and Francis: An Autumn Evening, ( 1931 ); Halfway House: A Miscellany of New Poems, ( 1932 ); Choice or Chance: New Poems ( 1934 ); Verses: To H. R. H. The Duke of Windsor, ( 1936 ); An Elegy and Other Poems ( 1937 ); On Several Occasions ( 1938 ); Poems, 1930-1940 ( 1940 ); Shells by a Stream ( 1944 ); After the Bombing, and Other Short Poems ( 1949 ); Eastward: A Selection of Verses Original and Translated ( 1950 ); Records of Friendship ( 1950 ); A Hong Kong House ( 1959 ); Poems on Japan ( 1967 ).

* fourth protocol period from 1 July 1944, ( signed 17 April 1945 ), formally ended 12 May 1945 but deliveries continued for the duration of the war with Japan ( which the Soviet Union entered on the 8 August 1945 ) under the " Milepost " agreement until 2 September 1945 when Japan capitulated.

Out of some 448, 000 Japanese residents of South Sakhalin who lived there in 1944, a significant number were evacuated to Japan during the last days of the war, but the remaining 300, 000 or so stayed behind for several more years.

Those include Kōdō Nippon ( The Imperial Way of Japan ) ( 1938 ), Kaigun Bakugeki-tai ( Naval Bomber Squadron ) ( 1940 ), The Burning Sky ( Moyuru ōzora ) ( 1940 ), Hawai Mare oki kaisen ( The War at Sea from Hawaii to Malaya ) ( 1942 ), Decisive Battle in the Skies ( Kessen-no Ōzara-e ) ( 1943 ) and Kato hayabusa sento-tai ( 1944 ).

B-29 raids from those islands began on 17 November 1944 and lasted until 15 August 1945, the day Japan capitulated.

* 1937, Passenger-cargo ship Scharnhorst, 1942 sold to Japan and rebuilt to auxiliary aircraft carrier Shinyo, sunk 1944 by US u-boat

* 1944 – Continuation War: The Vyborg – Petrozavodsk Offensive, the largest offensive launched by Soviet Union against Finland during World War II, ends to a strategic stalemate.

Germany's last offensive on its Western front, Operation Wacht am Rhein, was an offensive launched towards the vital port of Antwerp in December 1944.

The Germans launched a surprise counter offensive in the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944 which was turned back in early 1945 by the Allies after Eisenhower repositioned his armies and improved weather allowed the Air Force to engage.

*, a Majestic-class light aircraft carrier launched in 1944, decommissioned in 1973, and broken up for scrap

* 1944 – Operation Queen, the costly Allied thrust to the Rur river was launched

Beginning in September 1944, over 3, 000 V-2s were launched as military rockets by the German Wehrmacht against Allied targets during the war, mostly London and later Antwerp.

The Operation Pinguin V-2 offensive began on 8 September 1944, when Lehr-und Versuchsbatterie No. 444 () launched a single rocket guided by a radio beam directed at Paris.

In 1944, the United States Maritime Commission launched the SS Harriet Tubman, its first Liberty ship ever named for a black woman.

In late 1944, the German army launched a last-ditch offensive across Belgium, Luxembourg, and northeastern France, popularly known as the Battle of the Bulge, nominally led by German Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt.

The port city was also the main objective of German armies in December ; the inability of the Allies to end the war in 1944 meant that Allied troops had to winter in Belgium, during which time the Ardennes Offensive was launched by the Germans, resulting in heavy fighting on Belgian soil that lasted into 1945.

On 22 June 1944 the huge Soviet offensive Operation Bagration was launched, Minsk was re-captured on 3 July 1944, and all of Belarus was regained by the end of August.

From late 1944 until early 1945, the Japanese launched over 9, 300 of these fire balloons, of which 300 were found or observed in the U. S. Despite the high hopes of their designers, the balloons were ineffective as weapons: causing only six deaths ( from one single incident ) and a small amount of damage.

Montgomery initially suggested Operation Comet, a limited airborne coup de main operation that was to be launched on 2 September 1944.

* USS Grafton ( APA-109 ), a Bayfield-class attack transport launched in 1944 and scrapped in 1974

* was a S-class submarine launched in 1944.

# Operation Overlord would be launched during May 1944, in conjunction with an operation against southern France.

The USS Kasota was a naval tugboat, launched in 1944 and struck from the Navy list in 1961.

In 1944, IBM launched the Executive, a proportionally spaced typewriter.

Joseph Stalin chose Bagration as the name of the Soviet offensive launched on 22 June 1944 that defeated the German Army Group Centre and drove the forces of Nazi Germany out of what is now Belarus.

The German Army launched a surprise attack in December, 1944, in an attempt to capture Antwerp and drive a wedge between the British and American forces in northern France.

The company's first comic book was Yellowjacket, an anthology of superhero and horror stories launched September 1944 under the imprint Frank Comunale Publications, with Ed Levy listed as publisher.

The battle launched the Philippines campaign of 1944 – 45 for the recapture and liberation of the entire Philippine Archipelago and to end almost three years of Japanese occupation.