It has always been a matter of debate as to when did the Second World War start in the Far East. While people commonly imagine it to have begun with Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the lineage of an organized effort by Japan to achieve specific imperialist goals can be traced back to 1937 when it made expansive attempts in China. China made an inviting target at this time because of the ongoing civil war between China’s Nationalist government, the Kuomintang (the KMT) and the Chinese Communist forces led by Mao Zedong.
In the 1930’s the Chinese suffered continued territorial encroachment from the Japanese, using their Manchurian base. The whole north of the country was gradually taken over. The official strategy was to secure control of China by defeating her internal enemies first (Communists and various warlords), and only then turning attention to the defence of the frontier. This meant the Japanese encountered virtually no resistance, apart from some popular uprisings by Chinese peasants which were brutally suppressed.
In 1937 skirmishing between Japanese and Chinese troops on the frontier led to what became known as the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. This fighting sparked a full-blown conflict, the Second Sino-Japanese War. Under the terms of the Sian Agreement, the Chinese Nationalists (KMT) and the CCP now agreed to fight side by side against Japan. The Communists had been encouraged to negotiate with the KMT by Stalin, who saw Japan as an increasing threat on his Far Eastern border, and began supplying arms to China. China also received aid from western democracies, where public opinion was strongly anti-Japanese. Britain, France and the US all sent aid (the latter including the famous ‘Flying Tigers’ fighter-pilot volunteers).
Although the Japanese quickly captured all key Chinese ports and industrial centres, including cities such as the Chinese capital Nanking and Shanghai, CCP and KMT forces continued resisting. In the brutal conflict, both sides used ‘scorched earth’ tactics. Massacres and atrocities were common. The most infamous came after the fall of Nanking in December 1937, when Japanese troops slaughtered an estimated 300,000 civilians and raped 80,000 women. Many thousands of Chinese were killed in the indiscriminate bombing of cities by the Japanese air force. There were also savage reprisals carried out against Chinese peasants, in retaliation for attacks by partisans who waged a guerrilla war against the invader, ambushing supply columns and attacking isolated units. Warfare of this nature led, by the war’s end, to an estimated 10 to 20 million Chinese civilians deaths.
By the end of 1937, it had become apparent to some within the Japanese government and military that they were not winning the war in China. Instead, they were simply spilling more and more resources into what was a bottomless hole. The Japanese foray into China that began in 1937 would become one of the principal factors in the ultimate defeat of Japan, as resources that could have been used in the Pacific were lost in the seemingly endless countryside of China.
1940
The outbreak of the war in Europe in 1939 and Germany’s stunning defeat of France in 1940 had important repercussions for Japan in Asia. Japanese leaders had so long been watching Germany’s performance from the fence. After the defeat of France, their hesitation turned into a newfound admiration for Hitler.
The outbreak of the war in Europe in 1939 and Germany’s stunning defeat of France in 1940 had important repercussions for Japan in Asia. Japanese leaders had so long been watching Germany’s performance from the fence. After the defeat of France, their hesitation turned into a newfound admiration for Hitler.
Deeply anguished and threatened by economic sanctions from the Western powers, Japan decided to forge a formal alliance with Germany and Italy that came to be referred to as the Tripartite Pact. The pact formally announced the intention of the three powers to create a new world order and to respect each other’s sphere in Europe and in Asia. Most importantly for Japan, the pact seemed to offer possible security against American military intervention in China or Soviet intervention along the Manchurian border.
Extension of Japanese aggression to French Indochina (modern-day Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos), brought forth strong objections from the United States. The Roosevelt administration broadened its existing embargo on strategic materials from the U.S. to include scrap metal of any kind. The hope was that the United States could utilize economic pressure, to which Japan was highly susceptible, to force a moderation of Japanese actions. The embargo had the opposite effect, encouraging Japanese militarists to see the United States as set on a policy of conflict. Japan took the decision that December 1941 represented the best opportunity for it to strike at the United States if no agreement could be reached prior to that point.