JAPAN AND THE WORLD WAR 2
INTRODUCTION:
Before 1852 - Japan was considered an isolated country until before 1852. It had the trade relations only between the Dutch islands and the Nagasaki of Japan.
1852 - But in 1852, Mathew C Perry, the commander of US nay reached the bay of Tokyo and handed over a letter to the Shogun asking to open up the economy. When the Japanese did not accept it, he just shelled few buildings in the harbour. An year later, he came back to Japan and a treaty was made to open the economy. Japan had no other option but to agree the terms and open their economy for trade. They were also technically outdated.
This was the ignition of the hatred of Japan towards the Americans.
CONSEQUENCES OF OPENING THE ECONOMY:
1) It is called the realization era of Japanese history. The Japanese who considered their country to be the strongest country, realized that it was no equal to US power.
2) It never thought that it would suffer like China under someone's regime, but arisen such situation.
3) It got its inspiration from China to go for reformist movement and thus came the Emperor Meiji introducing the Meiji restoration.
4) Shoguns were thrown out of power and the years of feudalism came to a stop.
5) Military was reformed and made stronger.
6) The process of industrialization began in Japan.
Japanese understood that they should be on par with the western powers or else they would succumb their growth of territory. Thus Japan started to imitate the west in almost everything.
WHY INTEREST IN KOREA?
- Korea was the hub of raw material like Iron and coal. Japan, not rich in natural resources was a dependent on Korea for its own benefits of industrialization.
- The Korean empire then was autonomous but paid tribute to the Chinese emperor.
- When Japan started to interfere in the matters of Korea, China got involved and sent the troops to sweep out the Japanese troops of Korea. This led to the first Sino Japanese war in 1894-95.
CONSEQUENCES OF THE WAR:
- Japan made a victory over China. This led to the realization of their strength which gave rise to the later invasions.
-It gained Taiwan as a colony from China.
- It demanded many trading rights in several Chinese cities.
- Korea became a tributary state of Japan.
RUSSIA IN PICTURE:
Colonization of Russia began and it began to focus much on Korea and Manchuria in China.
This was against Japanese interests which led to the insecure feeling that if Russia, such a big power occupies two major locations in the Pacific, there would be no stop for them to invade Japan too.
Thus this led to the Russo Japanese war of 1904-05.
CONSEQUENCES:
- Japan won over Russia.
- It blown out a shock and amazement in the other countries that a wild giant was defeated by a small country in the pacific.
- Thus Japan rose to be the great power.
- Korea became the official protectorate of Japan and Manchuria was under its control.
WORLD WAR 1:
- The world war 1 signing the alliance with allies against Germany, was a major victory in the Japan's history.
- Thus occupied all the islands of German possession in pacific and made out to stand very powerful in the pacific.
- China and the other Asian countries were afraid to have any conflict with Japan with its victorious trip over 300 years in the past over the countries.
- Japan was considered a big brother in the pacific and thus the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity sphere was formed under Japan's leadership which was signed by many East Asian countries.
- This was convened for the unification of Asia against t he western imperialism.
THE BEGINNING OF PACIFIC WAR:
EARLY 1930'S:
- China was a divided country with bad internal politics. The Nationalist Party of the government called Kuomintong showed the people, the dictatorship of the government to the people. This led to the rise of Mao's communist party.
- Thus there remained a civil war between the nationalists and the communists which led to the great event of long march.
- But Chinese started focusing much upon the military development which was a threat to the Japan.
- Waiting for the right time, Japan took the advantage of the civil war existing in China and invaded Manchuria in 1931.
- A series of border clashes began with the invasion of Manchuria and other states.
LATE 1930'S:
- The Japanese attacked the Marco Polo bridge which led to the full fledged war as Chinese roused to enter the war.
-It was the second Sino Japanese war of 1937-45.
- 3,00,000 men were killed brutally and 80,000 women were raped. This was considered as the rape of Nanking, the then capital of China.
- Many atrocities were committed against the Chinese population.
- The league of Nations sent a notice to withdraw its troops from China, but it did not listen. Thus it withdrew its membership from the League.
- But Chinese did not give up. They kept fighting. They not surrendering made them win the war.
- Had the war been short, Japan would have faced the victory again and would have ended up with the treaty according to their terms.
-This war pushed the Japanese economy into stagnation and thus led to their military to a limit.
- Japan's colonies did not have the resources like oil, rubber, coal etc in order to make their war and navy machinery on their own.
- So they depended much on the colonies of USA and UK.
- But due to the expansionist policy of Japan and it's atrocities in the east made USA to impose economic sanctions on Japan cutting down the supply of raw material which was the then most needed for Japan to win the battle with China.
- At the same time time, in December, 1940 Japan, the Nazi Germany and the Facist Italy entered into a triple alliance ensuring one another to assist in any event of attack by a power not engaged in the war already.
- The USA's intention in imposing economic sanctions was that it would pressure Japan's economy and it would end the war and further invasions.
- But in a total contradiction to the USA motto, Japan found another solution to gain the raw materials that is to conquer the British and Dutch colonies.
- As the mandatory Britain and other Europeans were already in war with Germany and Italy. So this was an opportunity to the Japanese to conquer these islands as much of the major powers would not even focus on japan's actions.
- Japan found that the only force that could stop it was the American Naval fleet in Pearl Harbour in Hawaii.
- Japan thought that the USA was disinterested in the war and if their fleet was destroyed, they would simply let Japan to carry on with its actions in the pacific.
-They knew that USA army and navy were powerful and stronger than theirs.
- But it is their hastiness that they attacked Pearl Harbour on 7th December, 1941.
- There was a huge mass of destruction and many civilians death.
- Thus it awakened the sleeping Giant to declare war on Japan one day after the attacks.
- When USA declared war on Japan, as per the treaty, the Germany and Italy declared war on USA, thus bringing in the USA into the world war.
-After the attack on Pearl Harbour, the Japanese expanded their kingdom very soon facing large military successes leading to the conquer of Hongkong, Malaya, Dutch East Indies, British Singapore, New Guinea, Philippines and many other locations in the South East Asia and South Asia.
This was considered the worst disaster and the largest surrender of British troops in the British history.
- But in the 1942, the Battle of midway, the victory of USA over the Japanese led to the collapse of them.
- The next continuous victories of USA over the Solomon islands, guadalcanal islands and the Philippines led to the destroyal of the entire Japanese military.
- But until 1945, the Japanese did not give up the Chinese mainland to be free.
- In 1945, USA attacked Iwo Jima in February and Okinawa in April which were of the strategic importance to the Japan.
- To win the above islands, USA faced huge losses due to the Japan's suicidal air attacks called Kamikaze attacks. USA faced many causalities.
- But occupied the islands successfully in mid of June.
-Japan was cut raw material supply. It's army and navy were destroyed.
- USA sent an asylum to Japan to surrender themselves but Japanese military did not give up.
- Thus US flowered the atomic bombs over the Japanese states of Hiroshima on 6th August, 1945. Hundreds and thousands of people were dead due to the initial explosion and many more followed them with the later radiation exposure.
_ 3 days later, on 10th August, 1945, US showered the atomic bombs on Nagasaki. Totally, 1,20,000 civilians died of the explosion and radiation.
- On 8th August, Soviet Union declared war on Japan to take over Manchuria and Korea.
- Finally Japan had surrendered to the allied powers, the USA, the UK and the USSR on 2nd September, 1945.
MY PERSPECTIVE:
Everything actually began with the need to protect itself from the outsiders but ended up to the unending want of Japan to be the super power and occupy all the territories that it could.
The Great Economic Depression of 1929-30 has led to the economic stagnation in Japan and the Great Kanto earthquake sweeped the country to its minimum.
This raised the feeling of nationality among the youth and they were trained for military for the political interests. Thus Japan wanted to expand to achieve economic security and wanted the import the raw materials at cheaper prices in order to develop industrialization. So this led to the colonization.
The people were taught to sacrifice their life for the nation and the emperor since ages. Thus, it became the custom and ideology of everyone in Japan.
The racial discrimination against them by the westerners and Europeans made them fight for the cause and Japan also made an effort to abolish it proposing for the statement of equality in the League of Nations but it was vetoed by the US which was a racial country then.
Another interesting fact is that, Germany supported China until it went into an alliance with Japan. Germany also declared war on US thinking that Japan would defeat USA.
"We have an ally that has not been defeated in the 3000 years of the world history" were the Hitler's words when Japan attacked Pearl Harbour.
And Japan was against the axis powers during the world war 1 but sided with them when in world war 2.
This entire war picture and the attitude of different nations towards the others shows us the selfish mottoes of every nation to expand its own territory, protect its own empire, develop its own nation. This is the political and economic strategy of every country in the past, in the present and will be the same in the future too.
Before 1852 - Japan was considered an isolated country until before 1852. It had the trade relations only between the Dutch islands and the Nagasaki of Japan.
1852 - But in 1852, Mathew C Perry, the commander of US nay reached the bay of Tokyo and handed over a letter to the Shogun asking to open up the economy. When the Japanese did not accept it, he just shelled few buildings in the harbour. An year later, he came back to Japan and a treaty was made to open the economy. Japan had no other option but to agree the terms and open their economy for trade. They were also technically outdated.
This was the ignition of the hatred of Japan towards the Americans.
CONSEQUENCES OF OPENING THE ECONOMY:
1) It is called the realization era of Japanese history. The Japanese who considered their country to be the strongest country, realized that it was no equal to US power.
2) It never thought that it would suffer like China under someone's regime, but arisen such situation.
3) It got its inspiration from China to go for reformist movement and thus came the Emperor Meiji introducing the Meiji restoration.
4) Shoguns were thrown out of power and the years of feudalism came to a stop.
5) Military was reformed and made stronger.
6) The process of industrialization began in Japan.
Japanese understood that they should be on par with the western powers or else they would succumb their growth of territory. Thus Japan started to imitate the west in almost everything.
WHY INTEREST IN KOREA?
- Korea was the hub of raw material like Iron and coal. Japan, not rich in natural resources was a dependent on Korea for its own benefits of industrialization.
- The Korean empire then was autonomous but paid tribute to the Chinese emperor.
- When Japan started to interfere in the matters of Korea, China got involved and sent the troops to sweep out the Japanese troops of Korea. This led to the first Sino Japanese war in 1894-95.
CONSEQUENCES OF THE WAR:
- Japan made a victory over China. This led to the realization of their strength which gave rise to the later invasions.
-It gained Taiwan as a colony from China.
- It demanded many trading rights in several Chinese cities.
- Korea became a tributary state of Japan.
RUSSIA IN PICTURE:
Colonization of Russia began and it began to focus much on Korea and Manchuria in China.
This was against Japanese interests which led to the insecure feeling that if Russia, such a big power occupies two major locations in the Pacific, there would be no stop for them to invade Japan too.
Thus this led to the Russo Japanese war of 1904-05.
CONSEQUENCES:
- Japan won over Russia.
- It blown out a shock and amazement in the other countries that a wild giant was defeated by a small country in the pacific.
- Thus Japan rose to be the great power.
- Korea became the official protectorate of Japan and Manchuria was under its control.
WORLD WAR 1:
- The world war 1 signing the alliance with allies against Germany, was a major victory in the Japan's history.
- Thus occupied all the islands of German possession in pacific and made out to stand very powerful in the pacific.
- China and the other Asian countries were afraid to have any conflict with Japan with its victorious trip over 300 years in the past over the countries.
- Japan was considered a big brother in the pacific and thus the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity sphere was formed under Japan's leadership which was signed by many East Asian countries.
- This was convened for the unification of Asia against t he western imperialism.
THE BEGINNING OF PACIFIC WAR:
EARLY 1930'S:
- China was a divided country with bad internal politics. The Nationalist Party of the government called Kuomintong showed the people, the dictatorship of the government to the people. This led to the rise of Mao's communist party.
- Thus there remained a civil war between the nationalists and the communists which led to the great event of long march.
- But Chinese started focusing much upon the military development which was a threat to the Japan.
- Waiting for the right time, Japan took the advantage of the civil war existing in China and invaded Manchuria in 1931.
- A series of border clashes began with the invasion of Manchuria and other states.
LATE 1930'S:
- The Japanese attacked the Marco Polo bridge which led to the full fledged war as Chinese roused to enter the war.
-It was the second Sino Japanese war of 1937-45.
- 3,00,000 men were killed brutally and 80,000 women were raped. This was considered as the rape of Nanking, the then capital of China.
- Many atrocities were committed against the Chinese population.
- The league of Nations sent a notice to withdraw its troops from China, but it did not listen. Thus it withdrew its membership from the League.
- But Chinese did not give up. They kept fighting. They not surrendering made them win the war.
- Had the war been short, Japan would have faced the victory again and would have ended up with the treaty according to their terms.
-This war pushed the Japanese economy into stagnation and thus led to their military to a limit.
- Japan's colonies did not have the resources like oil, rubber, coal etc in order to make their war and navy machinery on their own.
- So they depended much on the colonies of USA and UK.
- But due to the expansionist policy of Japan and it's atrocities in the east made USA to impose economic sanctions on Japan cutting down the supply of raw material which was the then most needed for Japan to win the battle with China.
- At the same time time, in December, 1940 Japan, the Nazi Germany and the Facist Italy entered into a triple alliance ensuring one another to assist in any event of attack by a power not engaged in the war already.
- The USA's intention in imposing economic sanctions was that it would pressure Japan's economy and it would end the war and further invasions.
- But in a total contradiction to the USA motto, Japan found another solution to gain the raw materials that is to conquer the British and Dutch colonies.
- As the mandatory Britain and other Europeans were already in war with Germany and Italy. So this was an opportunity to the Japanese to conquer these islands as much of the major powers would not even focus on japan's actions.
- Japan found that the only force that could stop it was the American Naval fleet in Pearl Harbour in Hawaii.
- Japan thought that the USA was disinterested in the war and if their fleet was destroyed, they would simply let Japan to carry on with its actions in the pacific.
-They knew that USA army and navy were powerful and stronger than theirs.
- But it is their hastiness that they attacked Pearl Harbour on 7th December, 1941.
- There was a huge mass of destruction and many civilians death.
- Thus it awakened the sleeping Giant to declare war on Japan one day after the attacks.
- When USA declared war on Japan, as per the treaty, the Germany and Italy declared war on USA, thus bringing in the USA into the world war.
-After the attack on Pearl Harbour, the Japanese expanded their kingdom very soon facing large military successes leading to the conquer of Hongkong, Malaya, Dutch East Indies, British Singapore, New Guinea, Philippines and many other locations in the South East Asia and South Asia.
This was considered the worst disaster and the largest surrender of British troops in the British history.
- But in the 1942, the Battle of midway, the victory of USA over the Japanese led to the collapse of them.
- The next continuous victories of USA over the Solomon islands, guadalcanal islands and the Philippines led to the destroyal of the entire Japanese military.
- But until 1945, the Japanese did not give up the Chinese mainland to be free.
- In 1945, USA attacked Iwo Jima in February and Okinawa in April which were of the strategic importance to the Japan.
- To win the above islands, USA faced huge losses due to the Japan's suicidal air attacks called Kamikaze attacks. USA faced many causalities.
- But occupied the islands successfully in mid of June.
-Japan was cut raw material supply. It's army and navy were destroyed.
- USA sent an asylum to Japan to surrender themselves but Japanese military did not give up.
- Thus US flowered the atomic bombs over the Japanese states of Hiroshima on 6th August, 1945. Hundreds and thousands of people were dead due to the initial explosion and many more followed them with the later radiation exposure.
_ 3 days later, on 10th August, 1945, US showered the atomic bombs on Nagasaki. Totally, 1,20,000 civilians died of the explosion and radiation.
- On 8th August, Soviet Union declared war on Japan to take over Manchuria and Korea.
- Finally Japan had surrendered to the allied powers, the USA, the UK and the USSR on 2nd September, 1945.
MY PERSPECTIVE:
Everything actually began with the need to protect itself from the outsiders but ended up to the unending want of Japan to be the super power and occupy all the territories that it could.
The Great Economic Depression of 1929-30 has led to the economic stagnation in Japan and the Great Kanto earthquake sweeped the country to its minimum.
This raised the feeling of nationality among the youth and they were trained for military for the political interests. Thus Japan wanted to expand to achieve economic security and wanted the import the raw materials at cheaper prices in order to develop industrialization. So this led to the colonization.
The people were taught to sacrifice their life for the nation and the emperor since ages. Thus, it became the custom and ideology of everyone in Japan.
The racial discrimination against them by the westerners and Europeans made them fight for the cause and Japan also made an effort to abolish it proposing for the statement of equality in the League of Nations but it was vetoed by the US which was a racial country then.
Another interesting fact is that, Germany supported China until it went into an alliance with Japan. Germany also declared war on US thinking that Japan would defeat USA.
"We have an ally that has not been defeated in the 3000 years of the world history" were the Hitler's words when Japan attacked Pearl Harbour.
And Japan was against the axis powers during the world war 1 but sided with them when in world war 2.
This entire war picture and the attitude of different nations towards the others shows us the selfish mottoes of every nation to expand its own territory, protect its own empire, develop its own nation. This is the political and economic strategy of every country in the past, in the present and will be the same in the future too.
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