Warning: This blog post contains some disturbing pictures. One of these, in particular, is very graphic, and may merit special caution.
We are often told that World War II began in Europe, with the 1939 (Nazi) invasion of Poland. And, in truth, there is a good argument to be made for this date. But some would date it earlier, to the Japanese invasion of China in 1937. Some would date it even earlier than that, to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931. You could make an argument for any of these three dates being correct, so I will not attempt to settle this controversy here. But either way, there is much about the war in the East that is unknown to the general public. Whenever and however it became a part of World War II, it is clear that this massive conflict began long before Pearl Harbor. This post will dive into a few of the forgotten aspects of the war in the East, and discuss its roots in local colonization by both Western and local Asian powers.
Vietnamese soldier, 1889 – during the French conquest of Vietnam
Background on prior European (and Japanese) colonization of Asia
For example, the Japanese had colonized Iwo Jima as early as the sixteenth century. And there was actually a corporation from the Netherlands called the “Dutch East India Company.” This private company had invaded Indonesia as early as 1603. But the region later fell under the control of the Netherlands government back in Holland in 1800, creating the province of the “Dutch East Indies.” And the British East India Company had gained control of India, in the 1757 Battle of Plassey. India may be the most populous overseas territory that any empire has ever possessed. In the 1820s, the British Empire later gained control of Malaya, which then included Singapore. The British also fought their first war in Burma in the 1820s, partly to maintain their control of nearby India. The second British war in Burma came in the mid-1850s, with the great “Indian Mutiny” coming in 1857. Control over India then passed from the British East India Company to the British Crown, thus beginning the era of the “British Raj” in India. In 1879, the Empire of Japan soon annexed the Ryukyu Islands, which included the island of Okinawa. In 1885, there was a third British war in Burma, which saw Burma annexed into British India – with sporadic resistance there for decades afterward. In 1886, though, the British returned to separating the provinces of Burma and India from each other. Back in 1858, the French had begun their infamous conquest of what is today Vietnam. In 1887, the process was completed, and the province of “French Indochina” was born – although resistance there continued into the twentieth century, long after World War II. In 1893, the French also had a brief war with Siam (later renamed to Thailand). At the end of that war, Siam thus ceded some land to French Indochina. The Japanese fought their first war with China in the 1890s (with an early invasion of Manchuria), today called the “First Sino-Japanese War.” This was partly about who would control nearby Korea. At the end of the war, the Japanese then began to rule the island of Taiwan in 1895. The Russians then invaded Manchuria in 1900. But the Japanese soon attacked the nearby Russians, and beat them in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. The Japanese then made Korea into a Japanese protectorate in 1905, and formally started to colonize Korea for themselves in 1910. Japanese rule of Korea and Taiwan would then remain unchallenged for decades afterward.
Japanese infantry during the occupation of Seoul – Korea, 1904
Background on the Asia-Pacific theater of World War One
In the earlier Spanish-American War of 1898, the Americans had gained control of Guam and the Philippines, which had previously belonged to Spain. Guam was a part of the Mariana Islands chain, which also included nearby Saipan and Tinian. These two islands still remained under the control of Spain for the time being, but the Spaniards soon sold these two islands to Germany instead. In the First World War, Saipan and Tinian changed hands yet again, as the Imperial German Navy’s “East Asia Squadron” was destroyed. In fact, all Pacific possessions of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire were to change hands in the First World War – with almost no bloodshed involved. Japan thus became the next nation to control Saipan and Tinian. And in 1914, the New Zealanders occupied German Samoa, and the Australians occupied German New Guinea. Also in 1914, the British and their Japanese allies besieged a German-controlled (Chinese) city called Qingdao (also spelled Tsingtao). This was the only major land battle to be fought in Asia, as part of the First World War. In 1915, the distant Ottoman Empire would actually support a rebellion in British Malaya, which was soon suppressed. And in Russia, there was a Central Asian Revolt in Russian Turkestan in 1916, which was also suppressed. The Germans had limited naval engagements off of the Pacific coast of Chile and the Falklands, and in the Indian Ocean. There was even a brief engagement with the Americans at Guam. There was also the saga of the German ship “SMS Seeadler” in this same conflict. (More about that here.) During this war, many troops from India served on the British side, fighting in most of the major theatres of the First World War. To some degree, Siam (later called Thailand) also participated in the First World War.
Siege of Qingdao in the First World War – China, 1914
Chinese Civil War, and the Japanese attacks on both Manchuria and Greater China
But in 1927, a ferocious civil war broke out in China, which was to go on for decades. It continued when the Japanese invaded nearby Manchuria in 1931, and was still going on when the Japanese had border conflicts with the Soviet Union starting in 1932 – which were in Mongolia, incidentally. The first phase of the Chinese Civil War ended in 1936, possibly because of what’s today called the “Second Sino-Japanese War.” That is, the Japanese then invaded China itself in 1937, with infamous atrocities at places like Nanking. The two different sides of the Chinese Civil War thus arranged a cease-fire between them. Instead, the two Chinese factions would be allied against the Japanese for the next several years. In 1939, the Japanese had further border conflicts with the Soviet Union in Mongolia. These resulted in a Soviet and Mongolian victory, which must have concerned the Japanese.
Bodies of Chinese massacred by Japanese troops along a river in Nanking, 1937
A brief overview of conflicts in Continental Asia during World War Two
The distant European war broke out in 1939, with the (Nazi) invasion of Poland. Thus, one might have expected that the Europeans would thus stay out of the war in the East, even when France again went to war with Thailand (now officially called “Thailand”) in 1940 and 1941. (Its name had changed in 1939.) But everything changed in the East, when the Japanese later attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. They also attacked the aforementioned British possessions in Malaya and Singapore, which were soon forced to capitulate to the Japanese. The day after Pearl Harbor, Japan then declared war on both the United States and the British Empire (as you can see here). They adopted grossly misleading slogans, like “Asia for the Asians,” and a “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.” But, in reality, they were just replacing Western imperialism with their own Japanese form of imperialism. The Japanese soon invaded British Burma, thus beginning one of the most forgotten conflicts of World War II. For the British, this would be their primary front against the Japanese, who had once been their allies in World War One. There was a small group of soldiers in India who fought for the Japanese, because they were tired of the ongoing rule of the British Raj. But there were 62 times as many soldiers in India who fought for the British, even though they never got pensions from the postwar Indian government. The pro-Japanese soldiers in India, by contrast, did get such pensions, because they were seen as “freedom fighters” fighting on behalf of the independence of India. With the help of these few Indian soldiers, the Japanese got as far as the gates of British India, but most of the conflict took place in nearby British Burma. The Japanese also began to occupy French Indochina in 1940. And, unknown to many people (including many Americans), the United States actually sent soldiers to fight in the ongoing war in China. The war in China continued long after Pearl Harbor, with limited (albeit important) American involvement. There were even some United States Marines that occupied two Chinese provinces after the war. (More about that here.)
View of the Garrison Hill battlefield, the key to the British defences at Kohima – India, 1944
A brief overview of the Pacific War, and the reasons for the island-hopping strategy
But the greatest dangers to the Japanese war effort still came from the Pacific War, which is somewhat better remembered in my own country. I’m from the United States, which was heavily involved in the Pacific War. There was also some fighting in the nearby Indian Ocean. At first, the Japanese made massive gains, as they conquered American Guam and independent Thailand in 1941. They then conquered the Dutch East Indies and the American Philippines in the following year (1942). On orders from higher up, Douglas MacArthur withdrew from the Philippines before the surrender at Bataan, but famously proclaimed: “I shall return.” Eventually, the Americans did return to the Philippines, although it had little strategic significance for the broader Pacific War when they did so. This seems to have been more of a morale-boosting campaign – done more to “liberate” the local Filipinos, and restore American rule to its former colony. The war-winning strategy would instead be the island-hopping campaign, where one island after another was captured, to bring American troops closer to Japan. Thus, for the various American ground troops, the Pacific War was mostly experienced as one costly (but effective) amphibious operation after another – getting them ever closer to Japan. Nonetheless, they tried to keep the Japanese at bay in various other places for the time being. For example, the Americans sent troops to New Guinea, to prevent nearby Australia from falling to the Japanese. Thus, the Americans fought alongside the local Australian troops at this place, until Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Americans also launched a massive submarine campaign against Japan. This did much to disrupt Japanese shipping.
Fallen soldiers during the Bataan Death March – Philippines, 1942
Battle of Midway, 1942 – the most important naval battle of the Pacific War
Results of island-hopping, with conventional bombings and firebombing of Japan
The Pacific War involved many naval battles that I’m forced to skip over here, in which aircraft carriers played an especially prominent role. But in the island-hopping part of the war, the Americans captured the aforementioned island of Saipan in 1944, putting Japan within range of their land-based bombers. Elsewhere in the Mariana Islands, the Americans captured nearby Tinian, and liberated their former colony in Guam. My Marine grandfather was fighting there in the 1944 liberation of Guam. He was thus haunted by a month of terrible combat there. Soon afterward, the Americans captured Iwo Jima in 1945, which allowed their fighters to accompany the bombers during their upcoming missions over Japan. It also allowed the bombers to land sooner at Iwo Jima, when mechanical problems prevented them from getting all the way back to their original airbases in the Marianas. (I should acknowledge that I’m skipping over massive swaths of the Pacific War – including the distant Aleutian Islands campaign, which was much closer to home for us. These things might be a better topic for a different post.) The last battle of the Pacific War occurred at Japanese Okinawa in 1945. This same Marine grandfather of mine was there for this last battle as well – all three months of it. He was likewise haunted by his experiences there. All the while, American bombers rained death and destruction on the Japanese home islands. Some of this was conventional bombing, but it also included firebombing raids, including at Tokyo itself. By some estimates, one of the Tokyo raids was even more destructive than the later dropping of the atomic bombs.
US Marines pass a dead Japanese soldier in a destroyed village – Okinawa, April 1945
The atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the end of the war in the East
Yet, still, the Japanese refused the terms of “unconditional surrender.” For those who have argued that the subsequent Japanese surrender was “conditional,” I offer evidence that it was actually unconditional at this link. Suffice it to say here that the Japanese did not agree to these “unconditional surrender” terms until the bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. If the Japanese decision to surrender was ever based on the simultaneous Soviet invasion of Manchuria, we know only that Emperor Hirohito did not mention reasons of this kind in his “Jewel Voice” broadcast. Rather, he mentioned a “most cruel bomb” in those arguments for the surrender (as I show in this post). Thus, the Japanese finally surrendered in 1945, with the surrender being formalized aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Unlike the East Germans, the Japanese were spared from Soviet occupation, and from the postwar tidal wave of communism as well. Thus, they joined the Italians and West Germans in postwar prosperity, and received much American aid during the general era of the Marshall Plan as well.
Japanese victim of the atomic bombs, 1945
Effects of the war in Asia, with eventual Cold War – and the “Bamboo Curtain”
At the end of the war, the Japanese were forced to withdraw from Korea, which was then divided into two occupation zones. They also withdrew from the Dutch East Indies, from independent Thailand, and from French Indochina – where the locals fought as ferociously against the French (and, later, the Americans) as they had against the Imperial Japanese. The issues in Korea and Taiwan would only be resolved in the intervening Korean War, although independence for many other places came even sooner. At various times and places, independence was granted to British India, British Burma, British Malaya, Dutch Indonesia, and the American Philippines. By contrast, Saipan and Tinian fell under the control of the United States, becoming the “Northern Mariana Islands.” And the Chinese Civil War resumed in 1945. Despite the aforementioned American troops in those two Chinese provinces, mainland China eventually fell to communism in 1949, as (eventually) did North Korea and North Vietnam. Eventually, all of Vietnam thus fell. Just as people spoke of an “Iron Curtain” in Central Europe, so did they sometimes speak of a “Bamboo Curtain” in East Asia. It was the beginning of the Cold War in Asia. So, just as the end of the war in Europe was complicated, so was the ending of the Asia-Pacific War. But the war was still a great success for the Western Allies – and for many in Taiwan, South Korea, and even Japan itself. For many former colonies of Western powers, the war even led to the end of their colonial rule, and a greater degree of autonomy and self-rule – which was mostly a good thing.
Surrender ceremony aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, 1945
Nonetheless, the war in the East was overall a great success for the Allies – and for many others
Obviously, the results of the war were not perfect, but they were better than further Japanese conquest would have been. As I show at this link, the Japanese mistreated anyone who was not Japanese, including many of their fellow Asians and Pacific Islanders. Japan hasn’t invaded a single neighbor nation since then, which is a testament to the mostly-beneficial effects of the war in the East. One hopes that the sacrifices of the various Allied nations will be remembered, as a terrible threat to the freedom of the region was vanquished, and even overcome.
“And when he gets to Heaven,
To St. Peter he will tell:
Another Marine reporting, sir;
I’ve served my time in hell.”
– From a Marine grave marker on Guadalcanal, 1942
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