Japan's Victory Over The Pacific Islands example essay topic

Prior to the 20th century Japan was basically a self-contained, independent nation with little international ties. Japan, a great power since it defeated Russia in the 1905 Russo-Japanese War, was engulfed by sever economic depression. The Japanese economy and its people had suffered greatly through the Great Depression and began to sympathise with countries such as Germany and Italy who suffered greatly also. Like Germany and Italy, Japan replaced a parliamentary system with a fascist one under General Hideki Tojo and Emperor Hirohito, the figurehead ruler of Japan to whom all swore absolute allegiance. During the 1930's, the Japanese military established almost complete control over the government as it was seen as inadequate because it could not alleviate the stress of the Depression. Many political enemies were assassinated, and communists persecuted.

Indoctrination and censorship in education and media were intensified. Navy and army officers soon occupied most of the important offices, including the one of the prime minister. Bent on expansion, Japan saw the raw materials of the Chinese province of Manchuria to be essential to recovering from the effects of the Depression and an aid to successfully complete its plan of expansion through the pacific. Japan followed the example of Western nations and forced China into unequal economical and political treaties. In 1931, after assuming control over Korea, Japan invaded Manchuria, it set up a puppet state, known as Manchukuo, in 1932.

When the League of Nations refused to recognize the new state, Japan simply withdrew from the League. By 1937, Japan was waging an undeclared war in China, taking cities up and down the Chinese coast and slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Chinese. According to eastern accounts, World War II began in 1931. Japan was able to take over many Asian nations as well as Pacific Island nations fairly easily not only because Japan may have had the greatest navy in the world, but it also had the most clever propaganda policy. The Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, though eventually exposed as a hollow promise of freedom, allowed the Japanese greater freedom when assuming control of the regions in Southeast Asia it needed for rubber, oil, and other raw materials. To Tokyo, Southeast Asia only meant raw materials and the tools of war, a partial explanation for the incredible atrocities inflicted upon these peoples by their Japanese overlords.

The Japanese planed to create a domino effect throughout the Pacific Islands and the mainland of Asia by taking the individual nations one at a time or in small groups to establish itself an empire which would be world central because it stretched as far as the international-date-line to the west coast of the United States. With so many military bases and room to spread and travel Japan thought it could establish an empire too great in terms of the shear amount of space it occupied, that none would dare challenge it. By 1936, the Japanese Empire included the islands of Japan, the Korean peninsula, and Manchukuo. Since 1931, Tokyo had worked to extend itself throughout China; however, after initial success, the Japanese found themselves bogged down in a stalemated war on the Chinese mainland. Still, Japanese expansionist aims went far beyond China. It was their destiny, they believed, to be master of all Asia and the Pacific Ocean.

When war broke out in Europe in September 1939, the Japanese, despite a series of victorious battles, had still not brought their war in China to an end: on the one hand, the Japanese strategists had made no plans to cope with the guerrilla warfare pursued by the Chinese; on the other, the Japanese commanders in the field often disregarded the orders of the supreme command at the Imperial headquarters and occupied more Chinese territory than they had been ordered to take. (Joel, J., 1968) Half of the Japanese Army was thus still tied down in China when the commitment of Great Britain and France to war against Germany opened up the prospect of wider conquests for Japan in Southeast Asia and in the Pacific. Japan's military ventures in China, were consequently restricted rather more severely by choice. (James, D., 1995) The island Archipelago of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) along with French Indochina and British-held Malaya contained raw materials (tin, rubber, petroleum) that were essential to Japan's industrial economy, and if Japan could seize these regions and incorporate them into its empire, it could make itself virtually self-sufficient economically and thus become the dominant power in the Pacific Ocean. The United States uttered its first protest against War in the Pacific when Japanese troops entered northern Indochina in September 1940. Germany and Italy, by contrast, recognized Japan as the leading power in the Far East by concluding with it the Tripartite, or Axis, Pact of Sept.

27, 1940: negotiated by Japanese foreign minister Matsuoka Yos uke, the pact pledged its signatories to come to one another's help in the event of an attack "by a power not already engaged in war". (Reese, M., 1971, p. 31) Japan also concluded a neutrality pact with the U.S.S.R. on April 13, 1941. On July 2, 1941, the Imperial Conference decided to press the Japanese advance southward even at the risk of war with Great Britain and the United States. It was considered more important to risk war with more than one enemy at a time than to give up its quest for domination of the Pacific region. The United States reacted vigorously, not only freezing Japanese assets under U.S. control but also imposing an embargo on supplies of oil to Japan. Dismay at the embargo drove the Japanese naval command, which had hitherto been more moderate than the army, into collusion with the army's extremism.

(Harris, N., 1969) When negotiations with the Dutch of Indonesia for an alternative supply of oil produced no satisfaction, the Imperial Conference on September 6, at the high command's insistence, decided that war must be undertaken against the United States and Great Britain unless an understanding with the United States could be reached within a few weeks' time. General Tojo Hideki, who succeeded Kono e as premier of Japan in mid-October 1941, continued the already desperate talks. The United States, however, persisted in making demands that Japan could not concede: renunciation of the Tripartite Pact (which would have left Japan diplomatically isolated); the withdrawal of Japanese troops from China and from Southeast Asia (a humiliating retreat from an overt commitment of four years's tanning); and an open-door regime for trade in China. When Cordell Hull, the U.S. secretary of state, on Nov. 26, 1941, sent an abrupt note to the Japanese bluntly requiring them to evacuate China and Indochina and to recognize no Chinese regime other than that of Chiang Kai-shek, the Japanese could see no point in continuing the talks.

The evolving Japanese military strategy was based on the peculiar geography of the Pacific Ocean and on the relative weakness and the non-preparedness of the Allied military presence in that ocean. The western half of the Pacific is dotted with many islands, large and small, while the eastern half of the ocean is, with the exception of the Hawaiian Islands, almost devoid of landmasses (and hence of usable bases). (James, D., 1995) The British, French, American, and Dutch military forces in the entire Pacific region west of Hawaii amounted to only about 350,000 troops, most of them lacking combat experience and being of disparate nationalities. Allied air power in the Pacific was weak and consisted mostly of obsolete planes. If the Japanese, with their large, well-equipped armies that had been battle-hardened in China, could quickly launch coordinated attacks from their existing bases on certain Japanese-mandated Pacific islands, on Formosa (Taiwan), and from Japan itself, they could overwhelm the Allied forces, overrun the entire western Pacific Ocean as well as Southeast Asia, and then develop those areas' resources to their own military-industrial advantage. If successful in their campaigns, the Japanese planned to establish a strongly fortified defensive perimeter extending from Burma in the west to the southern rim of the Dutch East Indies and northern New Guinea in the south and sweeping around to the Gilbert and Marshall islands in the southeast and east.

(James, D., 1995) The Japanese believed that any American and British counteroffensives against this perimeter could be repelled, after which those nations would eventually seek a negotiated peace that would allow Japan to keep her newly won empire. On Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, a total of about 360 aircraft, composed of dive-bombers, torpedo bombers, and a few fighters, was launched in two waves in the early morning at the giant U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor. "The base at that time was accommodating 70 U.S. fighting ships, 24 auxiliaries, and some 300 planes". (Harris, N. 1969, p. 112) The Americans were taken completely by surprise, and all eight battleships in the harbor were hit (though six were eventually repaired and returned to service); three cruisers, three destroyers, a minelayer, and other vessels were damaged; more than 180 aircraft were destroyed and others damaged (most while parked at airfields); and more than 2,330 troops were killed and over 1,140 wounded. Japanese losses were comparatively small. The Japanese attack failed in one crucial respect, however; the Pacific Fleet's three aircraft carriers were at sea at the time of the attack and escaped harm, and these were to become the nucleus of the United States' incipient naval defense in the Pacific.

Pearl Harbor's shore installations and oil-storage facilities also escaped damage. (Harris, N. 1969) The Pearl Harbor attack, unannounced beforehand by the Japanese as it was, unified the American public and swept away any remaining support for American neutrality in the war. On December 8 the U.S. Congress declared war on Japan with only one dissenting vote. A unified American-British-Dutch-Australian Command, (ABDACOM), was responsible for holding Malaya, Sumatra, Java, and the approaches to Australia became operative on Jan. 15, 1942; but the Japanese had already begun their advance on the oil-rich Dutch East Indies. Japan enjoyed a series of minor victories in South East Asia, mainly because they convinced the natives they would be given the prospect of freedom from their European authorities if they joined with Japan in their struggle against them. These small victories weren't given much thought by the allies until one of the greatest turning points in the history of the war occurred unexpectedly.

(Breuer, W. 1999) On February 15 Japanese troops forced the 90,000-strong British, Australian, and Indian garrison in Singapore, under Lieutenant General A.E. Percival, to surrender. Singapore was the major British base in the Pacific and had been regarded as unassailable due to its strong seaward defenses. The Japanese took it with comparative ease by advancing down the Malay Peninsula and then assaulting the base's landward side, which the British had left inadequately defended. Japan realized at this moment that victory in the war was attainable and the possibilities that a victory would bring were beyond their original plans as masters of the Pacific region, they could now go global with their empire. When ABDACOM was dissolved on Feb. 25, 1942, only Java remained to complete the Japanese program of conquest. (Laidlaw, R. 1991) Japan's initial war plans were realized with the capture of Java.

But despite their military triumphs, the Japanese saw no indication that the Allies were ready for a negotiated peace. On the contrary, it seemed evident that an Allied counterstroke was in the making. Japan with its new found confidence was ready for it. Soon America and Japan were engaged in the battle of the Coral Sea which produced mixed results as Japan failed to gain the area they sought, whilst Americas Navy suffered great loses of ships, artillery and navy personnel. The Japanese continued with their plan to seize Midway Island. Seeking a naval showdown with the remaining ships of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and counting on their own numerical superiority to secure a victory The Americans, however, had the incomparable advantage of knowing the intentions of the Japanese in advance, thanks to the U.S. intelligence services' having broken the Japanese Navy's code and deciphered key radio transmissions.

(Harris, N., 1969) In the ensuing Battle of Midway, the Japanese ships destined to take Midway Island were attacked while still 500 miles from their target by U.S. bombers on June 3. The Japanese carriers were still able to launch their aircraft against Midway early on June 4, but in the ensuing battle, waves of carrier- and Midway-based U.S. bombers sank all four of the Japanese heavy carriers and one heavy cruiser. Appalled by this disaster, the Japanese began to retreat in the night of June 4-5. (Harris, N. 1969) Midway had been saved from invasion, which was a massive turning point giving the upper-hand back to the Allies, and with a raised morale they continued to push Japan back into its original territory. Following The Battle of Mid-way, Japan consecutively lost battles on the Chinese and Burmese fronts in 1942, the Solomons, Papua, Madagascar and the Aleutians in 1943. Japanese plans for global domination looked bleak as they struggled to hold onto small land areas which they had easily taken in the early days of their war efforts.

On July 27, 1945, the Allied powers requested Japan in the Potsdam Declaration to surrender unconditionally, or destruction would continue. However, the military did not think of surrendering under such terms, partially even after US military forces dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, and the Soviet Union entered the war against Japan on August 8. On August 14, however, the more moderate emperor Showa finally decided to surrender unconditionally. (Harris, N. 1969) Japan's military efforts were brought to a halt and many of the small Islands they had previously claimed under their empire of liberation were given back to the native owners and the European authorities. Japan's, "Asia for Asians" plan had not been realised and in the post war era, Japan concentrated mainly on opening up trade with America and Russia and other European countries to gain back their trust and also to try and replenish is weakened military. Overall Japan's initial war effort had been greatly successful and many of their goals concerning Southeast Asia and the Pacific region were achieved.

It was not until American Intelligence Agencies cracked Japanese communication codes that the war was turned around. Had these codes not been worked out, the outcome of World War Two could have been very different, as The Battle of Mid-way would have sealed Japan's victory over the Pacific Islands. After a series of consecutive loses after Mid-way Japan began to retreat and its plans for establishing an Empire which would ensure global domination faded. Even its original plan for establishing an empire which stretched across Southeast Asia and the Pacific region, which was meant to boost Japan's economy, military strength and global position as a world power could not be realized as an unconditional surrender to the Allies was Japan's only way to end the suffering of its military and people.