9.1: The Road to War in Asia

How the War Began

As described in chapter 8, the government ruling in the name of Japanese Emperor Hirohito also shifted toward fascism after the invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and the establishment of the puppet state Manchukuo in northeast China and Inner Mongolia. Manchukuo provided Japan with the economic benefits of an imperial colony: raw industrial materials not available on the islands of Japan, and a foreign captive market for Japanese goods. The military also justified their conquests by claiming they were liberating Asia from European colonialism. Not all the Asian territories they invaded, however, were happy to become part of the Japanese “Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.” ​

Civil War in China

China was still in the midst of a civil war between the Republican Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party. Kuomintang leader and President of the Republic, Chiang Kai-shek, ignored the Japanese threat in northern China until it was too late. Chiang appealed to the League of Nations for assistance against Japan, and the United States supported their efforts. After a six-month investigation, the League found Japan guilty and demanded the return of Manchuria to China. The diplomats of the League had no way to enforce their ruling, so Japan ignored the demand and simply withdrew from the League of Nations. Japanese diplomatic isolation further empowered radical military leaders who could point to success in Manchuria and compare it to the diplomatic failures of the civilian government. The conquest of China would not only provide for Japan’s future industrial needs, but also secure the Empire’s military supremacy in East Asia.

Japan launched a full-scale invasion of China on July 7, 1937 and routed the forces of the Chinese National Revolutionary Army led by Chiang Kai-shek. The broken Chinese army gave up Beijing to the Japanese on August 8, Shanghai on November 26, and the Nationalist capital, Nanjing, on December 13. In the first six weeks after capturing the capital, Japanese troops killed half of the city’s population of 600,000. They began by executing 90,000 Chinese Army deserters who they despised for surrendering, and then moved on to civilians. Japanese troops raped up to 100,000 women and girls and then killed most of them in what is now recognized as one of the worst atrocities of World War II. To pacify the rest, the Japanese distributed opium and heroin to the captive population.  Like the Italian fascists in Ethiopia and the German Nazis in occupied Europe, the Japanese military felt themselves to be superior to the conquered peoples and believed that only terror could subdue the civilian population.

The Rape of Nanking

Hoping to halt the invading enemy, Chiang Kai-shek adopted a scorched-earth strategy of “trading space for time” by destroying dams to stop his nationalist opponents, even if it meant killing millions of his own citizens. His Nationalist government retreated inland, burning villages, breaking down infrastructure, and destroying roads and rails.  Chiang established a new capital deep in the interior at the Yangtze River port of Chungking. Although the Nationalists’ scorched-earth policy hurt the Japanese military effort, it alienated Chinese civilians and became a potent propaganda tool of the emerging Chinese Communist Party. When news of the “Rape of Nanjing” first reached the West, many were skeptical because the violence described was so extreme. However, U.S. missionaries and European businessmen had established an “International Safety Zone” in Nanjing during the atrocities, which saved 200,000 Chinese civilians and documented the Japanese actions. Curiously, the effort was led by the German businessman John Rabe, at the time a card-carrying member of the Nazi Party.  Eyewitness accounts written by Westerners were published in American newspapers, along with photographic evidence, and the brutality of Japanese imperialism began to sink in.  However, not one of the League members one was going to declare war on Japan to save the Chinese.

The United States lacked both the will and the military power to oppose the Japanese invasion, and even continued to sell oil and scrap iron to Japan during their expansions. The Japanese army was a technologically advanced force consisting of 4,100,000 men and 900,000 Chinese collaborators armed with modern rifles, artillery, armor, and aircraft. By 1940, the Japanese navy was the third largest and among the most technologically advanced in the world. Still, Chinese Nationalists lobbied Washington for aid. Chiang Kai-shek’s popular wife, U.S.-educated Soong May-ling, known to Americans as Madame Chiang, led the effort. In contrast to her gruff husband, Madame Chiang was charming and able to use her knowledge of American culture and values to garner support for Chiang and his government. But although the United States denounced Japanese aggression, it took no action. As the Nationalists fought for survival, the Chinese Communist Party was busy accumulating supporters and supplies in the northwestern Shaanxi Province. Mao Zedong recognized the power of the Chinese peasant population and began recruiting from the local peasantry, capitalizing on the outrage caused by both the Nationalist failure to prevent Japanese invasion and its scorched-earth retreat policy. Mao gradually built his force from a meager 7,000 at the end of the Long March in 1935 to a robust 1,200,000 members by the end of World War II.

Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor

While Hitler marched across Europe, the Japanese continued their war in the Pacific. In 1939 the United States dissolved its trade treaties with Japan and the following year placed a war-stopping embargo on oil, steel, rubber, and other vital goods. Instead of being starved into submission, Japan’s resource-challenged military accelerated invasions across East Asia to sustain its war effort. The Japanese took control of French Indochina from the Vichy Regime and began threatening the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) after the Netherlands was occupied by Germany.  Diplomatic relations between Japan and the United States collapsed. The United States demanded that Japan withdraw from China and stopped supplying the island empire with oil (of which they were the major supplier). The Japanese considered the the oil embargo a de facto declaration of war.​

​Japanese military planners, believing that American intervention was inevitable, planned a coordinated Pacific offensive to neutralize the United States and other European powers by providing time for Japan to complete its conquests and fortify its positions. On the morning of December 7, 1941, the Japanese launched a surprise air attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (see Figure 9.1.1). Military planners hoped to destroy enough battleships and aircraft carriers to cripple American naval power for years. The Japanese Kamikaze pilots destroyed or seriously damaged eight battleships (four sank), three cruisers, three destroyers, and 180 aircraft, killing 2,403 American servicemen and wounding a thousand more. Only 353 Japanese bombers, fighters, and torpedo planes were taken out while crippling the entire US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor.  Luckily for the U.S. Navy, the four aircraft carriers assigned to the Pacific were out on maneuvers during the attack…a coincidence that seemed consequential at the time. Figure 9.1.1 is a black and white photo taken on December 7, 1941, soon after the Japanese attack. The photo shows the destruction of 3 American naval ships, namely the USS Arizona,  USS Tennessee, and USS Virginia after they were torpedoed. The ships are on fire and are engulfed in thick dark smoke reaching upward into the darkened skies. In the foreground USS Arizona has almost sunk; water jets are in use to put down the flames on the USS Tennessee and USS Virginia.

American isolationism fell apart after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Japan simultaneously assaulted Hong Kong, the Philippines, and American holdings throughout the Pacific, but it was the attack on Hawaii that threw the United States into a global conflict. Franklin Roosevelt referred to December 7 as “a date which will live in infamy” and called for a declaration of war, which Congress approved within hours. Without any provocation, both Germany and Italy declared war on the US on December 11. ​Within a week of Pearl Harbor, the United States was at war with the entire Axis, turning two previously separate conflicts into a true world war.​ After Pearl Harbor, Japan conquered the American-controlled Philippine archipelago. The prisoners were marched over 80 miles to a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp without food, water, or rest. Ten thousand died on the so-called “Bataan Death March”.​

Although Japan hoped the United States would be unable to respond quickly, four months after Japan’s surprise attack on Hawaii, in April 1942, the US Army Air Force bombed Tokyo using sixteen B-25 medium range bombers launched from an aircraft carrier in the Pacific. The man who planned and led the raid, Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle, said of the plan, “The Japanese people had been told they were invulnerable…An attack on the Japanese homeland would cause confusion in the minds of the Japanese people and sow doubt about the reliability of their leaders.” Doolittle added, “There was a second and equally important psychological reason for this attack: Americans badly needed a morale boost.” Doolittle would lead a long series of daring bombing runs against mainland Japan that would land in China after not being able to return to refueling spots in the Western Pacific.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Burning and Damaged Ships at Pearl Harbor after the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941, National Archives Catalog, in the Public Domain.

The Atlantic Charter 

Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill understood that Germany was a more immediate threat the Japanese.  ​In 1940 and 1941, the United States had already begun providing financial and material support to Great Britain, as it had previously in World War I. New to the Allied list of support was the Soviet Union. Britain had stood alone militarily in Western Europe, but the British made a great show of resistance during the battle of Britain. Roosevelt and Churchill met in April 1941 on a ship off of the coast of Nova Scotia to agree on the Atlantic Charter, a pledge to defend freedom and democracy from fascism.

Churchill referred to the unofficial prerequisites of the charter as the “naughty document”, because it carved the world up into spheres of the victors. After the U.S. officially entered the war, Hitler unleashed U-boat “wolf packs” into the Atlantic Ocean with orders to sink anything carrying aid to Britain.  After losing thousands of merchant ships in 1942 and early 1943, British and U.S. tactics and technology began to turn the tides during the Battle of the Atlantic. British code breakers at Bletchley Park, led by Alan Turing, cracked Germany’s Enigma radio cryptography, partially through the new ENIGMA computer he developed. The surge of intelligence, dubbed Ultra, coupled with naval convoys escorted by destroyers armed with sonar & depth charges, as well as air support, gave the advantage to the Allies. By the mid-1943, Hitler’s navy was losing ships faster than they could be built. Soon the “wolf packs'' were sheltering in a defensive crouch in the harbors of occupied Europe.​

Primary Source: Atlantic Charter, 1941

In 1941 US President F.D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill issued a joint statement called the Atlantic Charter, which affirmed American and British solidarity against the Axis powers. 

• What was the main purpose of the meeting between the US president and British prime minister?
• What were the common principles of the Atlantic Charter?
• What is the significance of the Atlantic Charter?

Review Questions

• Which technological developments were accelerated by the war?
• Was Chiang Kai-shek was an effective leader of the Kuomintang?