Japan during World War II
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Japan during World War II refers to the history of the Empire of Japan during World War II. This includes the invasion of the Republic of China, the annexation of French Indochina and the subsequent invasion of British India, the Pacific War and the Surrender of Japan.
Prelude
The
Japanese invasion of China
The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the
As part of its operations against China, on 22 September 1940 Japan
China fought Japan with aid from the
Decision process by Japanese leaders
The decision by Japan to attack the United States remains controversial. Study groups in Japan had predicted ultimate disaster in a war between Japan and the U.S., and the Japanese economy was already straining to keep up with the demands of the
Our Empire, for the purpose of self-defense and self-preservation, will complete preparations for war ... [and is] ... resolved to go to war with the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands if necessary. Our Empire will concurrently take all possible diplomatic measures vis-a-vis the United States and Great Britain, and thereby endeavor to obtain our objectives ... In the event that there is no prospect of our demands being met by the first ten days of October through the diplomatic negotiations mentioned above, we will immediately decide to commence hostilities against the United States, Britain and the Netherlands.
Vice Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the chief architect of the attack on Pearl Harbor, had strong misgivings about war with the United States. Yamamoto had spent time in the United States during his youth when he studied as a language student at Harvard University (1919–1921) and later served as assistant naval attaché in Washington, D.C. Understanding the inherent dangers of war with the United States, Yamamoto warned his fellow countrymen: "We can run wild for six months or maybe a year, but after that, I have utterly no confidence".[10]
Origin of conflict
Since early 1941 the United States and Japan had been engaged in negotiations in an attempt to improve their strained relations and end the war in China. During these negotiations, Japan advanced a number of proposals which were dismissed by the Americans as inadequate.[11] At the same time the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands engaged in secret discussions for the joint defense of their territories, in the event of a Japanese attack against any of them.[12] Roosevelt reinforced the Philippines (an American protectorate scheduled for independence in 1946) and warned Japan that the United States would react to Japanese attacks against any "neighboring countries".[12]
Frustrated at the lack of progress and feeling the pinch of the American–British–Dutch sanctions, Japan prepared for war. On 20 November, a new government under Prime Minister Hideki Tojo presented an interim proposal as its final offer. It called for the end of American aid to China and for lifting the embargo on the supply of oil and other resources to Japan. In exchange, Japan promised not to launch any attacks in Southeast Asia and to withdraw its forces from southern Indochina.[11] The American counter-proposal of 26 November required that Japan evacuate all of China without conditions and conclude non-aggression pacts with all Pacific powers.[13] That meant Japan was essentially forced to choose between abandoning its ambitions in China, or seizing the natural resources it needed in the Dutch East Indies by force;[14][15] the Japanese military did not consider the former an option, and many officers considered the oil embargo an unspoken declaration of war.[16]
Japan planned to rapidly seize European colonies in Asia to create a large defensive perimeter stretching into the Central Pacific. The Japanese would then be free to exploit the resources of Southeast Asia while exhausting the over-stretched Allies by fighting a defensive war.[17][18] To prevent American intervention while securing the perimeter, it was further planned to neutralize the United States Pacific Fleet and the American military presence in the Philippines from the outset.[19]
Japanese offensives (1941–1942)
On 7 December 1941 (8 December in Asian time zones), Japan attacked British and American holdings with near-simultaneous offensives against Southeast Asia and the Central Pacific.[20] These included an attack on the American fleets at Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, Guam, Wake Island, landings in Malaya,[20] Thailand and the Battle of Hong Kong.[21]
The Imperial Japanese Navy made its surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawaii Territory, on Sunday morning, 7 December 1941. The Pacific Fleet of the United States Navy and its defending Army Air Forces and Marine air forces sustained significant losses. The primary objective of the attack was to incapacitate the United States long enough for Japan to establish its long-planned Southeast Asian empire and defensible buffer zones. However, as Admiral Yamamoto feared, the attack produced little lasting damage to the US Navy with priority targets like the Pacific Fleet's three aircraft carriers out at sea and vital shore facilities, whose destruction could have destroyed the fleet on their own, were ignored. Of more serious consequences, the U.S. public saw the attack as a barbaric and treacherous act and rallied against the Empire of Japan.
The Japanese invasion of Thailand led to Thailand's decision to ally itself with Japan and the other Japanese attacks led the United States, United Kingdom, China, Australia, and several other states to formally declare war on Japan, whereas the Soviet Union, being heavily involved in large-scale hostilities with European Axis countries, maintained its neutrality agreement with Japan.[22] Germany, followed by the other Axis states, declared war on the United States[23] in solidarity with Japan, citing as justification the American attacks on German war vessels that had been ordered by Roosevelt.[24]
The United States entered the
By 1942, the Japanese Empire had launched offensives in
By the time World War II was in full swing, Japan had the most interest in using biological warfare. Japan's Air Force dropped massive amounts of ceramic bombs filled with bubonic plague-infested fleas in Ningbo, China. These attacks would eventually lead to thousands of deaths years after the war would end.[25] In Japan's relentless and indiscriminate research methods on biological warfare, they poisoned more than 1,000 Chinese village wells to study cholera and typhus outbreaks. These diseases are caused by bacteria that with today's technology could potentially be weaponized.[25]
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Battle of Hong Kong, 8 December 1941, Downtown British Hong Kong under Japanese air raid
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A map of Canterbury in New Zealand prepared by the Japanese Military following the attack on Pearl Harbour
South-East Asia
The South-East Asian campaign was preceded by years of propaganda and espionage activities carried out in the region by the Japanese Empire. The Japanese espoused their vision of a Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, and an Asia for Asians to the people of Southeast Asia, who had lived under European rule for generations. As a result, many inhabitants in some of the colonies (particularly Indonesia) actually sided with the Japanese invaders for anti-colonial reasons. However, the ethnic Chinese, who had witnessed the effects of Japanese occupation in their homeland, did not side with the Japanese.
Hong Kong surrendered to the Japanese on December 25. In Malaya the Japanese overwhelmed an Allied army composed of British, Indian, Australian and Malay forces. The Japanese were quickly able to advance down the Malay Peninsula, forcing the Allied forces to retreat towards Singapore. The Allies lacked air cover and tanks; the Japanese had air supremacy. The sinking of HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse on December 10, 1941, led to the east coast of Malaya being exposed to Japanese landings and the elimination of British naval power in the area. By the end of January 1942, the last Allied forces crossed the strait of Johore and into Singapore. In the Philippines, the Japanese pushed the combined Filipino-American force towards the Bataan Peninsula and later the island of Corregidor. By January 1942, General Douglas MacArthur and President Manuel L. Quezon were forced to flee in the face of Japanese advance. This marked one of the worst defeats suffered by the Americans, leaving over 70,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war in the custody of the Japanese.
On February 15, 1942,
The Japanese then seized the key oil production zones of
Tide turns (1942–1945)
Japanese military strategists were keenly aware of the unfavorable discrepancy between the industrial potential of the Japanese Empire and that of the United States. Because of this they reasoned that Japanese success hinged on their ability to extend the strategic advantage gained at Pearl Harbor with additional rapid strategic victories. The Japanese Command reasoned that only decisive destruction of the United States' Pacific Fleet and conquest of its remote outposts would ensure that the Japanese Empire would not be overwhelmed by America's industrial might. In April 1942, Japan was bombed for the first time in the Doolittle Raid. In May 1942, failure to decisively defeat the Allies at the Battle of the Coral Sea, in spite of Japanese numerical superiority, equated to a strategic defeat for Imperial Japan. This setback was followed in June 1942 by the catastrophic loss of four fleet carriers at the Battle of Midway, the first decisive defeat for the Imperial Japanese Navy. It proved to be the turning point of the war as the Navy lost its offensive strategic capability and never managed to reconstruct the "'critical mass' of both large numbers of carriers and well-trained air groups".[28]
Air raids on Japan
After securing airfields in
Concurrent to these attacks, Japan's vital coastal shipping operations were severely hampered with extensive aerial mining by the U.S.'s Operation Starvation. Regardless, these efforts did not succeed in persuading the Japanese military to surrender.
In mid-August 1945, the United States dropped
Re-entry of the Soviet Union
In spite of
Surrender and occupation of Japan (1945–1952)
Having ignored (mokusatsu) the Potsdam Declaration under government of Prime Minister Kantarō Suzuki, the Empire of Japan surrendered and ended World War II, after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the declaration of war by the Soviet Union. In a national radio address on August 15, Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender to the Japanese people by Gyokuon-hōsō. A period known as Allied-occupied Japan followed after the war, largely spearheaded by United States General of the Army Douglas MacArthur to revise the Japanese constitution and de-militarize Japan. The Allied occupation, with economic and political assistance, continued well into the 1950s. Allied forces ordered Japan to revise the Meiji Constitution and enforce the Constitution of Japan, then rename the Empire of Japan as Japan on 3 May 1947.[30] Japan adopted a parliamentary-based political system, while the Emperor changed to symbolic status.
American General of the Army Douglas MacArthur later commended the new Japanese government that he helped establish and the new Japanese period when he was about to send the American forces to the Korean War:
The Japanese people, since the war, have undergone the greatest reformation recorded in modern history. With a commendable will, eagerness to learn, and marked capacity to understand, they have, from the ashes left in war's wake, erected in Japan an edifice dedicated to the supremacy of individual liberty and personal dignity; and in the ensuing process there has been created a truly representative government committed to the advance of political morality, freedom of economic enterprise, and social justice. Politically, economically, and socially Japan is now abreast of many free nations of the earth and will not again fail the universal trust. ... I sent all four of our occupation divisions to the Korean battlefront without the slightest qualms as to the effect of the resulting power vacuum upon Japan. The results fully justified my faith. I know of no nation more serene, orderly, and industrious, nor in which higher hopes can be entertained for future constructive service in the advance of the human race.
For historian John W. Dower:
In retrospect, apart from the military officer corps, the purge of alleged militarists and ultranationalists that was conducted under the Occupation had relatively small impact on the long-term composition of men of influence in the public and private sectors. The purge initially brought new blood into the political parties, but this was offset by the return of huge numbers of formerly purged conservative politicians to national as well as local politics in the early 1950s. In the bureaucracy, the purge was negligible from the outset. ... In the economic sector, the purge similarly was only mildly disruptive, affecting less than sixteen hundred individuals spread among some four hundred companies. Everywhere one looks, the corridors of power in postwar Japan are crowded with men whose talents had already been recognized during the war years, and who found the same talents highly prized in the 'new' Japan.[31]
The Allied-occupation ended with the entry into force of the Treaty of San Francisco on 28 April 1952. After the occupation, the U.S. military continued to station in Japan based on the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty. The Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) were established on 1 July 1954 as de facto remilitarization of postwar Japan.
Post-war
Repatriation of Japanese from overseas
There was a significant level of emigration to
In 1938, there were 309,000 Japanese in Taiwan.[35] By the end of World War II, there were over 850,000 Japanese in Korea[36] and more than 2 million in China,[37] most of whom were farmers in Manchukuo (the Japanese had a plan to bring in 5 million Japanese settlers into Manchukuo).[38]
In the census of December 1939, the total population of the
After World War II, most of these overseas Japanese repatriated to Japan. The Allied powers repatriated over six million Japanese nationals from colonies throughout Asia.[41] On the other hand, some remained overseas involuntarily, as in the case of orphans in China or prisoners of war captured by the Red Army and forced to work in Siberia.[42]
War crimes
Many political and military Japanese leaders were convicted for war crimes before the Tokyo tribunal and other Allied tribunals in Asia. However, all members of the imperial family implicated in the war, such as Emperor Shōwa, were excluded from criminal prosecutions by Douglas MacArthur. The Japanese military before and during World War II committed numerous atrocities against civilian and military personnel. Its surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, prior to a declaration of war and without warning killed 2,403 neutral military personnel and civilians and wounded 1,247 others.[43][44] Large scale massacres, rapes, and looting against civilians were committed, most notably the Sook Ching and the Nanjing Massacre, and the use of around 200,000 "comfort women", who were forced to serve as prostitutes for the Japanese military.[45]
The
See also
- Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
- Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere
- Imperial Japanese Army during the Pacific War
- Imperial Japanese Navy in World War II
- Japanese colonial empire
- List of territories acquired by the Empire of Japan
- Proposed Japanese invasion of Australia during World War II
References
Citations
- He-Umezu Agreementof 1935 acknowledged the Japanese demands to put an end to all anti-Japanese organizations in China.
- ^ United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "World War II in the Pacific". Holocaust Encyclopedia. Archived from the original on 23 January 2021. Retrieved 9 June 2020.
- LCCN 58037940. Archived from the originalon 25 May 2009. Retrieved 16 June 2015.
- ^ Morton, Louis. "Japan's Decision for War". U.S. Army Center Of Military History. Archived from the original on 5 May 2018. Retrieved 5 May 2018.
- JSTOR 132824
- ^ Hsiung & Levine 1992, p. 171.
- ^ Todd, Douglas. "Douglas Todd: Lest we overlook the 'Asian Holocaust'". Vancouver Sun. Archived from the original on 2021-07-09. Retrieved 2022-01-19.
- ^ Kang, K. (4 August 1995). "Breaking Silence : Exhibit on 'Forgotten Holocaust' Focuses on Japanese War Crimes". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 2022-01-19. Retrieved 2022-01-19.
- ISBN 978-0307739742.
- ^ Dave Flitton (1994). Battlefield: Pearl Harbor (Documentary). Event occurs at 8 minutes, 40 seconds – via distributor: PBS.
- ^ a b "The decision for War". US Army in WWII – Strategy, and Command: The First Two Years. pp. 113–27. Archived from the original on 25 May 2013. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
- ^ a b "The Showdown With Japan Aug–Dec 1941". US Army in WWII – Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare. pp. 63–96. Archived from the original on 9 November 2012. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
- ^ The United States Replies Archived 29 April 2013 at the Wayback Machine. Investigation of the Pearl Harbor attack.
- ^ Painter 2012, p. 26: "The United States cut off oil exports to Japan in the summer of 1941, forcing Japanese leaders to choose between going to war to seize the oil fields of the Netherlands East Indies or giving in to U.S. pressure."
- ^ Wood 2007, p. 9, listing various military and diplomatic developments, observes that "the threat to Japan was not purely economic."
- ^ Lightbody 2004, p. 125.
- ^ Weinberg 2005, p. 310
- ^ Dower 1986, p. 5, calls attention to the fact that "the Allied struggle against Japan exposed the racist underpinnings of the European and American colonial structure. Japan did not invade independent countries in southern Asia. It invaded colonial outposts which the Westerners had dominated for generations, taking absolutely for granted their racial and cultural superiority over their Asian subjects." Dower goes on to note that, before the horrors of Japanese occupation made themselves felt, many Asians responded favourably to the victories of the Imperial Japanese forces.
- ^ Wood 2007, pp. 11–12.
- ^ a b Wohlstetter 1962, pp. 341–43.
- ISBN 978-0399504341
- ^ Dunn 1998, p. 157. According to May 1955, p. 155, Churchill stated: "Russian declaration of war on Japan would be greatly to our advantage, provided, but only provided, that Russians are confident that will not impair their Western Front."
- ^ Adolf Hitler's Declaration of War against the United States in Wikisource.
- ^ Klooz, Marle; Wiley, Evelyn (1944), Events leading up to World War II – Chronological History, 78th Congress, 2d Session – House Document N. 541, Director: Humphrey, Richard A., Washington: US Government Printing Office, p. 310 (1941), archived from the original on 14 December 2013, retrieved 9 May 2013.
- ^ a b Newman, Tim (28 February 2018). "Bioterrorism: Should We Be Worried?". Medical News Today. Archived from the original on 28 February 2018. Retrieved 31 August 2022.
- ^ L, Klemen (1999–2000). "Forgotten Campaign: The Dutch East Indies Campaign 1941–1942". Archived from the original on July 26, 2011.
- ^ a b "Oil and Japanese Strategy in the Solomons: A Postulate". Archived from the original on 2021-08-14. Retrieved 2018-01-26.
- ^ "Battle of Midway | Nihon Kaigun". Archived from the original on 2021-04-18. Retrieved 2018-01-26.
- ISBN 978-0674022416
- ^ "Chronological table 5 1 December 1946 - 23 June 1947". National Diet Library. Archived from the original on 22 July 2019. Retrieved September 30, 2010.
- ^ J. W. Dower, Japan in War & Peace, New press, 1993, p. 11
- ^ "Japanese Periodicals in Colonial Korea". Archived from the original on 2011-12-21. Retrieved 2018-01-26.
- ^ Japanese Immigration Statistics Archived October 15, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, DiscoverNikkei.org
- ^ Lankov, Andrei (March 23, 2006). "The Dawn of Modern Korea (360): Settling Down". The Korea Times. Archived from the original on June 19, 2006. Retrieved December 18, 2006.
- JSTOR 2752241.
- ^ "Monograph Paper 3. Section 13". Archived from the original on October 13, 1999. Retrieved 2009-11-03. The Life Instability of Intermarried Japanese Women in Korea
- ^ Killing of Chinese in Japan concerned Archived 2021-02-24 at the Wayback Machine, China Daily
- ^ "Prasenjit Duara: The New Imperialism and the Post-Colonial Developmental State: Manchukuo in comparative perspective - Japanese,Manchukuo,imperialism,new,were,this,new imperialism,East Asian". Archived from the original on December 23, 2008. Retrieved 2008-12-20. Prasenjit Duara: The New Imperialism and the Post-Colonial Developmental State: Manchukuo in comparative perspective
- ^ "A Go: Another Battle for Sapian". Archived from the original on December 23, 2008.
- ^ "Case Study: The Kurile Islands Dispute". Inventory of Conflict and Environment (ICE), American University. November 1997. Archived from the original on 29 April 2001. Retrieved 31 August 2022.
- ^ When Empire Comes Home: Repatriation and Reintegration in Postwar Japan Archived 2021-06-10 at the Wayback Machine by Lori Watt, Harvard University Press
- ^ "Russia Acknowledges Sending Japanese Prisoners of War to North Korea". Mosnews.com. April 1, 2005. Archived from the original on November 13, 2006. Retrieved February 23, 2007.
- ^ Yuma Totani (April 1, 2009). The Tokyo War Crimes Trial: The Pursuit of Justice in the Wake of World War II. Harvard University Asia Center. p. 57.
- ^ Stephen C. McCaffrey (September 22, 2004). Understanding International Law. AuthorHouse. pp. 210–229.
- ^ "Abe questions sex slave 'coercion'". BBC News. March 2, 2007. Archived from the original on February 6, 2021. Retrieved May 2, 2010.
- ^ Yoshiaki Yoshimi and Seiya Matsuno, Dokugasusen Kankei Shiryō II (Materials on poison gas Warfare II), Kaisetsu, Hōkan 2, Jūgonen sensô gokuhi shiryōshū, Funi Shuppankan, 1997, pp. 25–29
- ^ Daniel Barenblatt, A Plague upon Humanity, 2004, pp. xii, 173.
- ^ Hal Gold, Unit 731 Testimony, 2003, p. 109.
- ^ Drayton, Richard (May 10, 2005). "An Ethical Blank Cheque: British and U.S. mythology about the second world war ignores our own crimes and legitimises Anglo-American war making" Archived January 11, 2012, at the Wayback Machine. The Guardian.
- ^ Yuki Tanaka, Poison Gas, the Story Japan Would Like to Forget, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, October 1988, p. 16-17
- ^ Y. Yoshimi and S. Matsuno, Dokugasusen Kankei Shiryô II, Kaisetsu, Jugonen Sensô Gokuhi Shiryoshu, 1997, p.27-29
General and cited sources
- ISBN 978-0-394-50030-0.
- Dunn, Dennis J. (1998). Caught Between Roosevelt & Stalin: America's Ambassadors to Moscow. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 978-0-8131-2023-2.
- Hsiung, James Chieh; Levine, Steven I., eds. (1992), China's Bitter Victory: The War with Japan, 1937–1945, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, ISBN 0-87332-708-X
- ISBN 0-521-22352-0.
- Jansen, Marius B. (2000). The Making of Modern Japan. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. OCLC 44090600.
- Lightbody, Bradley (2004). The Second World War: Ambitions to Nemesis. London & New York: ISBN 978-0-415-22404-8.
- JSTOR 3634575.
- .
- ISBN 978-0-521-85316-3. Comprehensive overview with emphasis on diplomacy
- ISBN 978-0-8047-0597-4.
- Wood, James B. (2007). Japanese Military Strategy in the Pacific War: Was Defeat Inevitable?. Lanham, M: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0-7425-5339-2.
Further reading
- B-29s had already laid waste to over 60 Japanese cities. (pp. 9-10.) Writes Cockburn: "[But t]he folklore endures. Among the exhibits at the US Air Force's... museum in Dayton, Ohio, is Bockscar, the B-29 that dropped the Nagasaki bomb. It is proudly identified as 'the aircraft that ended World War Two'." (p. 12.)