On this day in 1941, two Japanese intelligence agents were arrested in Honolulu after the FBI received an anonymous tip that the agents were secretly taking photographs of the US naval base at Pearl Harbor.

On this day in 1941, Japanese forces in Siberia began their third and final attempt to take Petropavlovsk.

On this day in 1941, Soviet troops defending Petropavlovsk started a counterattack against the Japanese.

On this day in 1941, US forces in the Philippines began bulking up their coastal defenses after General Douglas MacArthur, C-in-C for American forces there, was alerted that the War Department considered the island a potential target for Japanese invasion.

On this day in 1941, the third and final Japanese attempt to capture Petropavlovsk ended in defeat as the Red Army broke through the right flank of the Japanese lines.

On this day in 1941, Soviet premier Ivan Konev gave the Red Army the go-ahead to mount an amphibious assault on the Japanese island of Hokkaido. Code-named "Operation Citadel", the assault's objective was to force the Imperial Japanese Army to divert men and resources from its faltering Siberian campaign.

On this day in 1941, the Red Army commenced Operation Citadel.

On this day in 1941, the Red Army landing force at Hokkaido attacked the Japanese village of Nemuro.

On this day in 1941, Wehrmacht troops in Russia began a two-pronged assault on the town of Prokhorovka near Kursk.

On this day in 1941, Japanese resistance in Nemuro collapsed.

On this day in 1941, Soviet premier Ivan Konev used the occasion of the 24th anniversary of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution to call for Japan's surrender.                          

On this day in 1941, Japanese dictator Hideki Tojo rejected Konev's surrender demand, vowing Japan would fight the Red Army to the last man.

On this day in 1941, in 1941 the Third Battle of Kursk began in earnest as Red Army tank and infantry divisions launched a counterattack against German troops near Prokhorovka.

On this day in 1941, US Secretary of State Cordell Hull imposed a deadline of November 28th for Japan to agree with a ceasefire with the Soviet Union and a withdrawal of Japanese troops from mainland China; after that, Hull warned ominously, 'things are automatically going to happen'.

On this day in 1941, the Soviet landing force on Hokkaido captured the mountain village of Sapporo.

On this day in 1941, the Third Battle of Kursk ended with a Soviet victory as Red Army cavalry broke through the German lines at Prokhorovka and drove the Germans into retreat.

On this day in 1941, Soviet bombers flying from airfields on the island of Hokkaido attacked Tokyo for the first time; 87,000 Japanese died in the air raid, among them Imperial Japanese Navy Combined Fleet commander-in-chief Admiral Isoroku.

On this day in 1941, Soviet-backed Communist partisans in Korea began a guerrilla uprising against Japanese occupation authorities.                                                                    

On this day in 1941, Soviet combat forces in Japan wiped out the last pockets of Imperial Army resistance on Hokkaido and started crossing over to the neighboring island of Honshu.

On this day in 1941, a US Navy carrier task force left the Pacific Fleet base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on a mission to guard American installations in the Philippines against possible Japanese attack.

On this day in 1941, just 24 hours before Cordell Hull's ultimatum to Japan was scheduled to have expired, Prime Minister Tojo was overthrown in a coup mounted by dissident Imperial Army officers with the acquiescence of Emperor Hirohito. A new provisional government headed by Mamrou Shigemetsu quickly made peace overtures to the United States and opened secret truce negotiations with Korean guerrilla leader Syngman Rhee.

On this day in 1941, the US carrier task force which had been dispatched from Pearl Harbor four days earlier was recalled on orders from CINCPAC.                                      

On this day in 1941, the US embassy in Tokyo informed the Japanese foreign ministry that the White House was accepting the Shigemetsu government's peace proposal; in turn, the Japanese embassy in Washington told the State Department that Japan would begin withdrawing its troops from China within 72 hours.

On this day in 1941, the Soviet Union and Japan signed a formal cease-fire pact, ending the Second Russo-Japanese War.                                                                                              

On this day in 1941, the US carrier task force which had left Pearl Harbor on November 26th returned to Hawaii.

On this day in 1941, Germany's unilateral cease-fire with Great Britain cames to an abrupt end as a British naval patrol in the North Sea fired on and sank a U-boat which had been covertly monitoring operations at the Royal Navy base in Scapa Flow.

On this day in 1941, German planes bombed London for the first time in six months.