8.2.e.2
JAPAN AND WORLD WAR II AND ITS EFFECTS
Anuradha Kayal
Asst. Professor
Dept of History
Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata
JAPAN AND WORLD WAR II
On 7th July 1937, the Japanese troops engaged in a mirror skirmish with Chinese soldiers in the vicinity of the Marco Polo bridge just south of Beijing on July 11. Although a local cease fire took effect the Japanese Government sent additional troops from Korea and Manchuria. The Chinese challenged the Japanese positions and further skirmishes took place. In late July Japanese forces attacked and occupied Beijing and Tianjin. Within a month of the Marco Polo Bridge incident a full-scale war was underway. It is not clear who fired the first shots at Marco Polo Bridge. But in contrast to the events of the Mukden incident six years earlier, which sparked the takeover of Manchuria, it is clear that the Japanese Cabinet under Prime Minister FumimaroKonoe authorized the decision to launch a major offensive. The army itself was divided between the expansionists and a minority who feared a protracted war and wished to negotiate a cease fire. Konoe sided with the expansionists. They wanted to control the iron and coal resources of North China. They also believed that Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Government would always remain a threat to Japan’s control of Manchuria and North Chin. Although he widened the scope of the war, Konoe initially sought to use military pressure to negotiate a settlement with the Nationalists. The Japanese forces extended their control south of Beijing and occupied the Shandong Peninsula and a large portion of the Yellow River. Aided by the navy the Japanese troops also took Shanghai. They then moved swiftly to occupy Nanjing by mid-December. But negotiations stalled. By early 1938, it was clear that the Nationalistswould not recognize the Japanese conquests. Despite the loss of China’s major cities Chiang Kai-shek decided to withdraw to the west and continue a defensive war of resistance. In response the Prime Minister Konoe announced a new goal in January 1938. He issued a chilling call for a war to ‘annihilate’ the Nationalist regime, while one of the worst massacres was under way in Nanjing. As Japanese troops entered the city in the mid-December 1937, they began to round up civilians as well as surrendered soldiers. For seven weeks, through the end of January they murdered tens of thousands of people and raped countless women of all ages. The scope of the Nanjing Massacre remains controversial. Some Japanese historians insist on ‘low’ estimates of perhaps forty thousand killed, while the Chinese government stands by a figure of three hundred thousand murders.Explaining why this massacre took place is as difficult as agreeing on a count of victims. Frontline soldiers were certainly embittered by the tough fighting. They were frustrated at the blurred line between Chinese soldiers and civilians and they feared guerilla attacks.
The greatest puzzle and the greatest crime was that the Japanese high command in Nanjing allowed the round ups, rapes and killing to proceed for weeks on end. Authorities in Tokyo were probably informed as well, but they took no decisive steps torein in their troops. It may be that high level Japanese in bath Nanjing and Tokyo frustrated at the inability to negotiate favourable terms, hoped that the examples of these murders would destroy the Chinese will to resist. Over the following months the Japanese army expanded its control by seizing further key cities and railway lines. The military situation then reached a statement in the fall of 1938. Japan had committed six hundred thousand troops to the field but they were barely able to defend the cities and railway lines in the occupied regions. Japanese forces murdered civilians as well as soldiers in numerous other incidents throughout the course of war, especially in North China. The Nationalist government eventually retreated to the city of Chungking, where it was protected from Japanese attack by mountains and sheer distance. In addition, tensions with the Soviet Union erupted in a major way with a series of battles in the summer of 1939 along the border of China and Mongolia. The better equipped Soviet forces overwhelmed the army. The Japanese lost about twenty thousand soldiers to death or illness, out of the total of slightly over sixty thousand. In an effort to better control the three hundred million Chinese in the occupied areas, Japan created and recognized a new Chinese government to administer these regions in March 1940. It was led by Wang Jing-wei, a rival of Chiang in the Nationalist movement. He shared with the Japanese a distrust of both Soviet and Western powers and justified collaboration with Japan’s military forces by claiming that the two sides shared a vision of Pan-Asian unity against these outside forces. But the Japanese forced him to accept a humiliating ‘treaty’. Wang’s regime remained weak. It depended on Japanese military backing for its survival.
Having failed to break the deadlock in China, Prime Minister Konoe resigned in January 1939. Over the next eighteen months, three men in quick succession served as Prime Minister. They pursued a combination of strategies to break the China stalemate by isolating Chiang and destroying his will and ability to survive. With the West, they tried diplomacy to induce the US and Britain to recognize their position in China. To the diplomats sought to neutralize the threat of the Soviet Union thus freeing the Kwantung forces for action in China. To the south, they considered both diplomatic and military steps to neutralize or eliminate the hold of the British in Malaysia, the French in Indo-China and Dutch in Indonesia. Japanese control of South East Asia would deliver strategic natural resources such as oil, and rubber to the military. It would also provide a base to encircle and attack the Chinese Nationalists.
As Hitler’s regime moved towards war in Europe, the Hiranuma Kichiiro government was attracted to the idea of an alliance with Nazi Germany tocounter both Soviet Union and Western powers in Asia. The ground was prepared by Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936. This committed Japan and Germany to cooperate to oppose Communism. Hitler violated this pact in August 1939 when he suddenly announced a Non-Aggression treaty with Stalin. With the failure of his strategy of cooperation with Germany, Hiranuma’s credibility collapsed. Furious at Hitler’s betrayal he resigned as Prime Minister. When Hitler invaded Poland and France the following month the Nobuyuki Abe and Mitsumasa Yonai cabinets pursued a course of neutrality in the European war and slightly shifted the aim of their diplomacy.
They made tentative efforts to engage Americans and British help to negotiate a settlement in China. But the army continued to force for a Axis alliance. It forced Prime Minister Yonai to resign because he preferred to seek accommodation with the British and Americans.
At this point in the summer of 1940 Konoe returned to power amid great popular hope that he would provide strong leadership and construct a ‘New Order’ abroad and at home. His first major initiative came in September when he concluded the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy. In June 1940 Hitler’s troops entered Paris and the Germans set up the collaborationist Vichy regime to rule over occupied France. The Vichy government administered French colonies as well. The Tripartite Pact enabled the Japanese to negotiate an agreement with the Vichy authorities to station troops in the northern region of the French colony of Indo-China (Vietnam). It is doubtful if an independent French government would have accepted the presence of Japanese troops.
The response of the United States would determine whether Japan’s southern advance might succeed. Tensions between USA and Japan had been building for some time. Throughout the 1930’s, the Americans supported Chinese self determination with strong words, but they had committed no significant resources to the Nationalists. Some business interests hoped to cooperate with Japan in the economic development of Manchuria. But in July 1939 Roosevelt broke off the Japanese American commercial treaty. When Japan moved into Northern Indo China, the American countered with a gradually expanding export embargo. This further provoked Japan’s war hawks. They began to argue for a preemptive strike against the United States and its allies. Hitler complicated these calculations when he broke his peace with Stalin and attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941. Japan chose not to join Hitler’s new war.
By November it became clear to the key figures in the cabinet that a satisfactory diplomatic agreement was impossible. Japan was willing to withdraw only from Indo China, but the United States demanded withdrawal from all of China, except for Japan’s pre-1931 holdings in southern Manchuria. In a meeting before the emperor on November 5, the inner cabinet agreed that if a final round of negotiations did not win American acceptance of Japan’s position in Asia, the army would launch a major offensive to conquer the British and Dutch Colonies of Southern Asia and the American possessions in the Philippines. The navy would carry out a simultaneous attack on the American fleet at Pearl Harbour. The foreign ministry intended to hand over a long memorandum notifying the Americans that negotiations were terminated.
It took Japan’s embassy staff in Washington so long to decode, translate and type the memorandum that it was in fact delivered just after the attack on Pearl Harbour on 7th December 1941. The attack on Pearl Harbour destroyed the heart of America’s Pacific fleet.
On 22nd June 1941 Germany along with other European Axis members invaded the Soviet Union in ‘Operation Barbarossa’. Hitler’s objectives were to eliminate the Soviet Union as a military power. Barbarossa forced the Soviet supreme command to adopt a strategic defence. The diversion of three quarters of the Axis troops and the majority of their air forces from France and the central Mediterranean to the Eastern Front promoted Britain to reconsider its grand strategy. German success in Europe encouraged Japan to increase pressure on European governments in South East Asia
By temporarily ousting the British, Dutch, French and American rulers from South East Asia and Philippines, the Japanese rulers both unwittingly hastened the demise of colonialism in Asia. Japan attempted to supplant the long-established Western colonial governments and to meet the need for raw materials and markets that had inspired the whole push southwards. Japan sought to accomplish its goals by creating a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, an autarkic economic community mutually beneficial to Japan and the countries it had conquered. By developing modern industries in colonies from Korea to Manchuria to Taiwan, they fostered post-war industrialization. But Japan won little thanks and much enduring hatred for their repressive practices of colonial and war time rule in Korea and China above all.
. In 1945 May Germany surrendered and in July 1945 Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union met at the Potsdam Conference to discuss about the East.
The war bequeathed a complex legacy. It left deep physical and emotional scars both inside and outside Japan. At the same time, the war laid on the ground-work for a very different post-war world. Millions of people suffered from the unrelenting pursuit of empire and war. The scale of devastation including the Nanjing Massacre, further atrocities in China, the Vietnamese famine and the hopeless campaign of the Indian National Army further discredited Japan. In addition nearly thirty six thousand British and American prisoners-of-war died in captivity. This represented more than one-fourth of all captured soldiers. The survivors nursed intense anger for decades.
Another group of war victims received much less public attention at the time or immediately after the war. These were the many thousands of young girls or women who were forced to work in ‘comfort stations’ near the front lines of battle. About 80% were Koreans, the remainder included Chinese, Japanese and a small number of European women. Once at the front all the women were forced to serve as prostitutes for Japanese troops. From their perspective, the comfort stations appeared little different from the licensed brothels throughout Japan proper. Many of these women received no pay. Others received ‘Pay’ in the form of military tickets whose only use was to purchase daily necessities.
The war was also traumatic for the Japanese people. About 1.7 million soldiers died between 1937 and 1945. As many as three hundred thousand prisoners of war perished in Soviet detention camp after the war. Air raids left nine million homeless and killed nearly two hundred thousand civilians. The bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki resulted in horrific damage, with human beings within a two mile radius of the epicentre being incinerated in an instant. Another one hundred thousand or more bomb victims died in the following months and years because of the lingering effects of radiation sickness. The experience of defeat sparked a deeply felt revulsion towards all war among millions of Japanese people.
Estimates for the total casualties of the war vary due to the fact that many deaths were unrecorded. Most suggest that some 60 million people died in the war including about 20 million soldiers and 40 million civilians. Many of these deaths were a result of genocidal actions committed in Axis occupied territories and other war crimes committed by Germans as well as Japanese forces. The Nazi were responsible for the Holocaust,- the killing of approximately six million Jews as well as two million ethnic Poles and four million others who were deemed ‘unworthy of life’ as part of a programme of deliberate extermination. In addition the Nazi concentration camp, Soviet gulags (Labour Camps) led to the death of citizens of occupied countries.
The war ended with total victory of the Allies over Germany and Japan in 1945. World War II left the political alignment and social structure of the world significantly changed. While the United Nations was established to foster international cooperation and prevent future conflicts, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival super powers, setting the stage for Cold War.
REFERENCE
1) Gordon, Andrew. – A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa to the Present. Houghton Mifflin Company. Boston 1965
2)Pelz, Stephen E. –The Race to Pearl Harbour Harvard University Press. Cambridge 1971.
3)Young, Louis. Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism University of California Press 1999
4)Barnhart Michael A, Japan Prepares for Total War : The search for Economic security 1919 -1941 N. Y : Cornell University Press 1987.
5)Dower, John. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II New York, W. W. Norton and Co, 1999.