of Honor for their actions, including five Marines who received both the Army and Navy versions of the medal for the same action. Occupation of Nicaragua The United States occupied Nicaragua from 1909 to 1933 and intervened in the country several times before that. The American interventions in Nicaragua were designed to prevent the construction of a trans-isthmian canal by any nation but the USA and stop endless civil war. Nicaragua assumed a quasi-protectorate status under the 1916 Chamorro-Bryan Treaty. The occupation ended as Augusto César Sandino, a Nicaraguan insurgent, led guerrilla bands against US troops. Furthermore, the onset of the Great Depression made it costly for the US to maintain occupation. World War II World War II, or the Second World War, was a global military conflict. The conflicts joined from two separate conflicts. The first began in Asia in 1937 as the Second Sino-Japanese War; the other began in Europe in 1939 with the German and Russian invasion of Poland. This global conflict split the majority of the world's nations into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. It involved the mobilization of over 100 million military personnel, making it the most widespread war in history, and placed the participants in a state of "total war", erasing the distinction between civil and military resources. This resulted in the complete activation of a nation's economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities for the purposes of the war effort. Over 60 million people, the majority of them civilians, were killed, making it the deadliest conflict in human history. The worldwide financial cost of the war is estimated at a trillion 1944 U.S. dollars, making it the most costly war both in capital expenditures as well as loss of lives. During this conflict 471 United States military personnel received the Medal of Honor, 273 of them posthumously. A total of 42 Medals of Honor, representing 9% of all awarded during World War II, were presented for action in just two battles – 15 for actions during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and 27 for actions during the Battle of Iwo Jima. Also a total of 21 (4.5% of all World War II Medals of Honor) were awarded to members of the all-Japanese American 100th Infantry Battalion of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, for actions in numerous battles across six different campaigns. Additionally, the only Medal of Honor ever presented