In 1939, after just over 20 years of peace, Europe found itself at war again. However, this war was a global war taking place in Africa, Asia, throughout the Pacific and Europe. Japan started expanding in the early 1930s, taking over Manchuria and leading to conflict. Hitler’s Nazi Germany started the European conflict in 1939, having already taken over Austria and Czechoslovakia. For those fighting, the children of the WWI veterans, the war was going to be long and threatened the very survival of all the nations involved. It was a war that saw horse-drawn supplies and an atomic bomb. For many, such as the survivors of the atomic bomb, comfort women or those in Eastern Europe the war never really ended.
War in the East, Atrocities and Comfort Women
Japan is an island nation with no resources. One of the potential motivations for the country to join the Second World War was to obtain vital natural resources. By the time the war broke, Japan was entirely dependent on other nations for the supply of raw materials for its industries. For instance, Japan imported almost 90% of crude oil for its domestic use. Therefore, Japan was desperate to get its hands on raw materials. Of most interest to Japan was the petroleum in Indonesia, tin and rubber in Singapore. China and Japan had a long-standing rivalry over the dominance of the Far East. Japan needed very much to curtail the power of China. During its invasion of East Asia, Japan planned to cut off the Burmese road which had helped sustain the Chinese resistance against the Japanese. After conquering Asia, Japan proceeded to mount a very successful military campaign in the Pacific. The Pearl Harbor mission proved very successful for Japan. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese empire extended from Manchuria all the way south to Owen Stanley Range in New Guinea. Japan created a strong solid territory under its control. By this time, the allied forces were in disarray and Japan would attack the depleted US marine fleets at will. Japanese expansion was only halted during the Battle of Midway.
The Japanese invasion of East Asia began with its annexation of Manchuria in 1931. The next six years were marked by relative stability, although more Japanese settlers moved into the region and it was under a colonial government. The Second Sino- Japanese War started in 1937 as a continuation of the long-term conflict between the Japanese and Chinese over dominance in China. The Japanese sought to expand its territory and take political and military control over China in an attempt to secure access to the raw materials in China. It represented a continuation of Japanese expansionism and imperialism and continues to affect relations between Japan and China today.
On September 27, 1940, Japan, Italy and Germany signed a treaty that created the Axis Powers. This Axis agreement would serve as a strategic military alliance for the three nations to help them carry out successful military campaigns against other military powers like Britain and America. However, the alliance system rarely worked in unison-for example, the Germans were establishing stronger relations with the Soviet Union while the Japanese were fighting them.
The Japanese invasion of East Asia was further aggravated by the decision by the USA to impose economic sanctions on it. The USA thought that these sanctions would curtail the Japanese aggression and force the island nation to withdraw from China and Manchuria. The decision by the USA only fueled the Japanese aggression; Japan decided to challenge the US dominance in the Pacific even as it seeks resources to make up for the economic sanctions. Therefore, Japan campaign focused on challenging the American and British forces in Asia and to seize the resource in Southeast Asia territories that were under the control of the two superpowers.
As young children, future Japanese soldiers-the generation coming of age during the Meiji Restoration and imperial Japan -were trained to follow orders given by their parents and commander, and to be loyal to their emperor. The Japanese were convinced of their superiority to other Asian cultures. Moreover, Japan desired to make an Asian empire for Japanese exploitation, through the idea of “Asia for Asiatics”. Local commanders were often more radical and eager for war than their superiors. Their superiors seemed to be aware of the larger picture and were a bit more conservative. In July of 1937, a Japanese soldier went missing in the area of the Marco Polo Bridge; which was the dividing line in China and Japanese forced. The local Japanese forced entry into China, demanding the return of the soldier. and the area experienced gun fires. Although no one knows which side fired, the Japanese used this incident as an excuse to go to war with China.
The Japanese army won a hard fought battle at Shanghai, leveling the city and quickly advanced through eastern China, inland from the coast. The Chinese forces were divided between nationalist and communist, with the letter barely fighting. Despite the help from the Americans, the nationalist forces retreated inland.
At Nanjing, the Japanese experienced heavier than expected resistance as they took the city. The survivors of the battle, along with the inhabitants of the city, especially the young men were often killed. The Japanese soldiers competed with each other over who would behead the most. Other forms of heinous killings included burials, mutilation, death by fire, death by ice, and death by dogs. Furthermore, thousands of women, ages 8-80, were raped. The rape of women accompanied the slaughter of their entire families. Fathers were forced to rape their daughters. Chinese men were sodomized, while others were forced to commit necrophilia or rape their daughters in front of Japanese soldiers.
In an official effort to contain the passions of the men, the Japanese government established official brothels. According to the Japanese leadership, this passion was to blame for the atrocities committed at Nanjing. And if this passion was left unchecked, it might spiral out of control. Furthermore, these brothels were established due to the notions that men should experience sexual intercourse at least once before their death, and that sex before battle would prevent injury. However, the recruitment of women into these brothels involved kidnapping and false promises. These girls would be promised well-paying jobs only to be brought into the brothels as prostitutes. The demands, especially from occupied areas was very high and has remained controversial since the 1970s. After being raped during a “breaking in period”, these comfort women were expected to have sex with at least 10-15 men per day near the front lines. Others served as “wives” for Japanese commanders. In both cases, women were repeatedly raped and kept in slave-like conditions for years. Moreover, they were rarely paid for the services they offered to the soldiers and the commanders. Resistance included suicide and some minor instances of fighting back. This resistance was met with brutality from the soldiers. . The long term effects for these hundreds of thousands, if not millions of women, included being pressured into silence and dealing with societal shame for their experience during the war. Most of them did not have any family, needed to ignore the post-traumatic stress, and experienced a sense of isolation in the society. Until the 2000s, little compensation was given to these women.
John Rabe, a German businessman in China, wrote: I’ve just heard that hundreds more disarmed Chinese soldiers have been led out of our Zone to be shot, including 50 of our police who are to be executed for letting soldiers in. The road to Hsiakwan is nothing but a field of corpses strewn with the remains of military equipment. The Communications Ministry was torched by the Chinese, the Y Chang Men Gate has been shelled. There are piles of corpses outside the gate. The Japanese aren’t lifting a hand to clear them away, and the Red Swastika Society associated with us has been forbidden to do so.
It may be that the disarmed Chinese will be forced to do the job before…they’re killed. We Europeans are all paralyzed with horror. There are executions everywhere, some are being carried out with machine guns outside the barracks of the War Ministry
However, communist and nationalist resistance put the Japanese were in a state of quagmire. They could not withdraw from the war. Yet, they were prevented from winning by the size of China and the growing scope of Chinese resistance. The force of the resistance was bolstered by the truce between the communist and the nationalist forces. This failure in China caused Japan to look to Indochina and east in the Pacific Ocean. They needed to register new victories, to boost their morale, and to gain access to raw materials to reinforce the war effort. Despite the fierce resistance, over four million Chinese troops and about 20 million civilian casualties died during the Japanese occupation.
War with the West
Japan possessed several long standing and additional recent grievances in its road to war. First, Japan harbored animosity towards the Western powers for their refusal to treat Japan as a world power with imperial ambitions. The West had also failed to treat Japanese people as equal to them, especially as demonstrated through unfair immigration policies. The occupation of Manchuria by the Japanese was attacked while the imperialistic actions of other powers was condoned. The Japanese invasion of Indochina caused the United States to freeze Japanese money in American banks and to cut the export of iron and oil to Japan. This response from America prompted Japanese to seek the raw materials from elsewhere. It further soured the relations with the United States and increased the need to attack American bases in the Philippines and in Hawaii. The Japanese ignored the fact that the United States possessed an industrial capacity nine times greater than them. After the successes in the Philippines, a knockout blow was planned for the American base in Hawaii-thus bringing the United States into the war.
American President Franklin Roosevelt’s response: Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan…. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.
However, the propaganda and Japanese claims of creating an Asia for Asiatic peoples was one of exploitation, rape and murder.
