WWII in the Pacific: Who is to Blame?
Americans mark their countries' entry into WWII on December 7th, the date of the attack on their naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in 1941. However, the war in Asia and the Pacific began years before 1941, and it was the nation of Japan that began hostilities. Though one could argue that American political and economic reactions to Japanese moves brought on direct military confrontation between the two powers, it was Japan that is to blame for the conflagration that took place in the middle 20th century.
Beginning in 1894, a recently united Japan began on an imperialist path with demands and attacks on Chinese dominated Korea. The war which ended in the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki not only turned much, but not all of Korea into a Japanese colony but also gave Japan the island of Taiwan and a number of islands formerly under Chinese control.
While it can be said that the United States began an imperialist path in the Pacific in 1898 with its defeat of Spain and its inheritance of the Spanish Philippines, an important difference exists. While the US occupation of the Philippines was sometimes brutal, arrangements were made (and kept) for the independence of the Philippines in 1946. Japan made no such arrangements with the peoples under its control.
In 1904-1905, the Japanese fought a war with Russia which propelled it into the ranks of recognized world powers. The war was fought over influence in northern Korea and a weakened and divided China, and was begun by a Japanese surprise attack on the Russian naval base at Port Arthur in today's northern China. This attack served as a model and inspiration for the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941. The war, the end of which was negotiated in part by US President Theodore Roosevelt, gave China further influence in China and the Far East.
In the years between the end of the Russo-Japanese War and the outbreak of WWII, the Japanese military came to play a greater and greater role in Japanese internal politics, so much so that by the late 1920's/early 1930's, assassinations of Japanese politicians deemed lacking in nationalistic fervor were commonplace. By the early 1930's the military essentially ran the country. Their power only increased as the 30's continued.
Japanese militarism included two important features which make it in many ways similar to German National Socialism, which began the war in Europe. First, Japanese militarism called for the establishment of a Japanese empire in Asia. This was later given the peaceful sounding name of “The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” to appeal to the Asian populations which Japan conquered by military force. Though the “Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” also claimed to work to free Asians from the yoke of white/European colonialism, only a short period of time passed before most of the Asian populations under Japanese control realized that the “Co-Prosperity Sphere” meant that they worked for the prosperity of the Japanese.
This was because Japanese militarism was based not only on a skewed vision of the old samurai “Bushido” code, but on a racial view of the Japanese as a superior race. Constant deference and obedience to Japanese orders was the only thing required from conquered populations. Often overlooked by many are the millions of intentional Chinese deaths in WWII, which have their roots in ethnic animosity. Many know of the “Rape of Nanjing” in 1937, but many do not know that this pattern of wholesale slaughter occurred throughout China and at times involved crude biological and chemical weapons.
This leads us to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and China proper in 1937. Manchuria was under Chinese control in 1931. It was decided by officers in the Japanese military that the resources of Manchuria were needed by the Japanese armed forces, and that the nation was perfectly located as a jumping off point for an invasion of China, the Soviet Union,, or both. On the flimsiest pretext, Japanese troops accused Chinese soldiers of firing upon them, and used this as an excuse for a full-scale invasion of the area, which was rapidly brought under Japanese control. Between 1931 and 1937, the Japanese pressured the Chinese for greater and greater concessions both economically and politically.
Within the Japanese regime, an argument raged between the army and navy as to what course of action to take next. This question at hand was not whether to continue hostilities or make peace, but in which direction the Japanese should attack next. The fact of the matter is that within the Japanese armed forces and in the mind of the Emperor (whose thoughts were exactly in line with those of the military) the question in 1937 and again in 1941 was where to attack next, not if.
The Japanese used the same pretext to invade China itself as they had Manchuria. Accusations were made of Chinese soldiers firing on Japanese troops and a wholesale invasion of China soon followed. As mentioned at the beginning of this paper, the campaign in China was marked by extreme brutality bordering on genocide.
When Japan entered the Tripartite Pact with Italy and Germany, it was joining two other aggressive nations that had already begun war in Europe. With the fall of France to Germany in June 1940, the French colonies in Indochina were put under Japanese control. Contrary to Japanese claims of making an “Asia for Asiatics”, the Japanese became oppressive colonial occupiers in place of the French.
The United States had pressed Japan since the Manchurian invasion to stop its aggressive moves in China, to no avail. Quite the contrary, American statements were sometimes met by Japanese aggression, as is shown by the attack on the American gunboat Panay in 1937. Two or more English Royal Navy vessels also came under fire. These incidents happened on the very day that the Japanese entered the then Chinese capital, Nanjing. Journalist Nick Spark and others believe that the attacks on the American and British vessels were either planned distractions from the Nanjing attack or provocations to begin a war which would drive the English speaking nations out of China.
When the Japanese took over Indochina, the Americans, seeing that Japan would not be deterred by words in their drive to dominate Asia, began an export embargo on Japan. Among the items not to be sold to Japan were oil and steel, both of which the Japanese had been dependent on America for. It was at this time that Japanese plans for attacking US possessions in the Pacific began to be implemented, and on December 7th, put into action.
Though one could possibly skew facts and create an argument by which the United States might take all or some of the blame for beginning WWII, if one takes the Japanese nationalist viewpoint which puts forward the notion that the Japanese were forced into the war by encroaching Western imperialism, and the United States cutting off steel and oil exports to Japan. However, it was Japan that began overt military aggression in China ten years prior to Pearl Harbor, was ruled by a militarist fascist clique which espoused Japanese ethnic and cultural superiority, and had been on an aggressive path since 1894.
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(Murphey 333-334)
(Murphey 337-339)
(Murphey 333-336)
(Murphey 384-388)
(Murphey 384-388)
(Murphey 384-388)
(Murphey 384-388)
(Weinberg 319-320)
(Murphey, 394-395)
(Spark)
(Weinberg, 300-309)