Prehistory of the Second World War in the Pacific
The prehistory of the Second World War in the Pacific region includes the power constellations and international politics from the beginning of the Japanese Taishō period in 1912 to the outbreak of war with the United States and Great Britain on December 7 and 8, 1941. This period is marked by a domestic political change in Japan, which led to militaristic plans for an expansion of the Japanese Empire into China and Southeast Asia . The Japanese expansion efforts led to the establishment of Manchukuo and from 1937 onwards, the Mukden incident led to the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War , the beginning of the Pacific War . The open door policy of the USA in trade with China, which had been applied by the USA since the beginning of the 20th century, was formally abandoned after the Japanese occupation of Manchuria and the establishment of Manchukuo. After the start of the war with China, US relations with Japan were largely characterized by distrust and rivalry. US sanctions such as the scrap embargo , incidents such as the Panay incident , Japanese war crimes such as the Nanking massacre, and finally Japan's accession to the Axis powers on September 27, 1940 ( Tripartite Pact ) increased expectations of a direct military confrontation on both sides.
Colonial and Imperial backgrounds
At the beginning of the 20th century, most of East Asia and the South Pacific were under the rule of European and American colonial powers . Indochina belonged to France , the Philippines to the USA , East Indies to the Netherlands , and today's Malaysia to Great Britain . Korea and Taiwan were Japanese colonies. After the First World War, the former German colonies of Kiautschou and the archipelagos of the Palau Islands , Carolines , Marshall Islands and the Northern Marianas fell to Japan on the basis of the Treaty of Versailles .
European and American colonies
Southeast Asian colonies of the Dutch, British and French
Large parts of Southeast Asia have been under the colonial rule of European states since the beginning of the 18th century. The countries were rich in raw materials such as oil , coal , bauxite , tin , natural rubber and more.
Today's Indonesia was under Dutch rule, the colony was called the Dutch East Indies . In addition to many smaller islands, this included Sumatra , Java , Lombok , Sumbawa , Sumba , Flores , West Timor , the southern part of Borneo , Celebes , the western part of New Guinea and the Moluccas . Around 85,000 KNIL soldiers were stationed as colonial troops on the islands . East Timor was a Portuguese colony.
British colonies were British India , Brunei , Sabah , Sarawak , the Federated and Unfederated Malay States, and Singapore . British India comprised the present-day nations of India , Pakistan , Bangladesh and Myanmar (then Burma).
French Indochina , in what is now Laos , Cambodia and Vietnam, was particularly interesting in terms of its strategic location bordering China , with which Japan had been at war since 1937.
United States colonies
After the political situation within the United States had calmed down after the end of the Civil War , they began to be interested in acquiring their own colonies in the field of foreign policy. For the first time they participated in related international conferences, such as in 1880 at the Morocco conference in Madrid and 1884/85 at the Berlin Conference , in Berlin took place.
Since 1898 the former Spanish colonies of the Philippines and the Pacific island of Guam belonged to the United States as a colony. This was determined in the Peace of Paris after the end of the Spanish-American War and subsequently culminated in the Filipino-American War , which was officially declared over by the USA in 1902.
At the Berlin Samoa Conference of 1898, the longstanding power struggles between the German Empire on the one hand and Great Britain and the United States on the other over the Samoa Islands were initially settled. The islands came under the common protectorate of all three states.
The Mariana Islands were divided between the German Empire and the United States in 1899 . The United States received the southern part. In the same year the dispute between Great Britain, the USA and the German Empire over Samoa was finally settled. The United States received the southern islands, which from then on became an outer territory of the United States under the name American Samoa . Also Wake was commissioned in 1899 by the United States in possession.
To protect its new colonial territories, the USA built a fleet, which in 1907 led to the merger of the Asian and Pacific squadrons to form the US Pacific fleet in the Pacific region . The USA had set up a naval base in Hawaii as early as 1894 . When the islands were to be annexed in 1897 , there were considerable protests from Japan, as the local population consisted of around 40% immigrant Japanese. The tactical situation in Hawaii also played a role. To underline its own interests, the Japanese Empire even sent a warship to Hawaii.
Japanese Politics in the Era of Imperialism
From 1912 to 1926 ruled the Taishō- Tennō Yoshihito, a mentally ill man who was mentally weakened by an early childhood meningitis . As a result, the power shifted from the Tennō and his confidante, the Genrō , to parliament and the newly founded parties, such as the Rikken Kokumintō , the Rikken Seiyūkai or the Rikken Dōshikai . This period is known as Taishō democracy . In 1916 the Kenseikai were formed from the Rikken Dōshikai, Chuseikai and the Koyu Kurabu . The influence of industry on politics began to increase, as for example the Kenseikai was supported by Mitsubishi through family ties of their chairman Katō Takaaki .
Japan in World War I
Due to an alliance agreement with Great Britain concluded in 1902, Japan entered the First World War (第 一次 世界 大 戦, Daiichiji Sekai Taisen) on August 23, 1914 with a declaration of war on the German Reich on the side of the Entente powers . The Imperial Japanese Navy played an important role in this . She controlled the sea routes in the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean . At the political level, Japan was able to significantly strengthen its influence in China and tried to achieve a higher geopolitical status among the peoples with regard to the end of the war .
On September 2, 1914, Japanese units landed in the Chinese province of Shandong and surrounded the German colony of Tsingtao (→ Siege of Tsingtau ). Furthermore, the Japanese took the German possessions in the Pacific, the Marianas , the Caroline Islands and the Marshall Islands without significant resistance . The German colonial forces finally capitulated on November 7, 1914.
In addition to the British allies, shortly after the outbreak of war, the French also asked for Japanese support on the European front by sending soldiers. France, in view of the poorly developing situation on the Eastern Front , was even ready to sacrifice Indochina for Japanese intervention. But a dispute over overseas customs regulations prevented Japanese troops from being transferred to France.
While the war was raging in Europe, Japan presented its Twenty-One Claims to China on January 18, 1915 . The international reactions were rather restrained. The USA alone objected to the demands and tried in vain to persuade Russia and Great Britain to intervene jointly.
The British Admiralty asked Japan for military assistance in the Mediterranean on December 18, 1916 . Japan dispatched Rear Admiral Kōzō Satō with the cruiser Akashi and eight destroyers , which entered Malta on April 13, 1917 . Another fleet with a cruiser, 14 destroyers and two sloops followed shortly afterwards. The ships were mainly used to escort British troop carriers and cargo ships and to defend against German submarines .
When the US entered the war on April 6, 1917, they were on the same side as Japan, despite tensions between them over Japanese influence in China and the Pacific Islands. This led to the Lansing Ishii Agreement between the two states on November 2, 1917 .
Interwar period
Hara Takashi , chairman of the Rikken Seiyūkai , was appointed the first civil prime minister of Japan in September 1918 . Since the military had a majority of votes in the Secret State Council and the Military Senate, he could hardly exercise his influence over them. Takashi died in an assassination attempt in November 1921.
The Lansing-Ishii Agreement between Japan and the United States was terminated in April 1923 and replaced by the Nine Power Treaty , which had already been concluded on February 6, 1922 at the Washington Naval Conference . On August 17, 1923, the Anglo-Japanese alliance ended , which had been basically announced since mid-1920.
In 1926 the Shōwa period began with Hirohitos enthronement . He ruled a country in which nationalist forces gained increasing influence since the end of the First World War. Several factors favored their rise. In particular, this included the Great Kantō earthquake of September 1, 1923 and its financial settlement via so-called earthquake disaster bills , the payment of which fell in the Japanese banking crisis of 1927, also Shōwa financial crisis ( 昭和 金融 恐慌 , Shōwa Kin'yū Kyōkō ) and the effects of the economic crisis in Japan from 1929 onwards. As a result, 400 banks in Japan closed their doors, stock prices fell sharply and around ten percent of all savings were lost. Since it had not been possible to contain the far-reaching consequences in a satisfactory manner, the current government under Prime Minister Wakatsuki Reijirō resigned and in Japan there were increasing voices that strongly doubted the function of the market economy and saw territorial expansion as the solution to the problems. Due to the restructuring of the economy with a strengthened heavy industry, influential financial groups ( zaibatsu ) emerged with the same goal.
Several coup attempts, including the politically momentous coup attempt of February 26, 1936 , and massive persecution of socialists led to the rise of an ultra-national group of military men in the 1930s who took control of the government, including the office of prime minister.
The aggressive efforts to reorganize the Pacific region had the ostensible aim of ending the hegemony of the Asian countries and colonies by Western European states and replacing them with a Japanese one (→ Pan-Asianism ). The main interest of the Japanese expansion was the area of the then Republic of China . To protect the South Manchurian Railway in Guandong , China , the Japanese were allowed to station military there. This was taken over by the Kwantung Army from 1907 . Over the years it provoked numerous clashes with the Chinese army. This included the blowing up of a railway line on the South Manchurian Railway on September 18, 1931. This so-called Mukden incident was blamed on the Chinese troops. As a result, the Kwantung Army occupied northeast China without authorization from the Japanese government and the Manchurian crisis broke out . This event forced the incumbent Prime Minister Wakatsuki Reijirō to resign in December. Even after his withdrawal, Wakatsuki openly denounced the power of the military and warned strongly against a war with the USA. On March 1, 1932, the puppet state of Manchukuo was proclaimed. This occupation was condemned by the USA through the Hoover-Stimson Doctrine and the League of Nations protested, albeit unsuccessfully. However, almost all states refused to recognize the newly founded state.
In mid-1937 the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out and Japan's advance south through China began. When Japan wanted to expand its sphere of influence further north, the Japanese-Soviet border conflict broke out in 1938/1939 .
In 1940 the Japanese multi-party state was dead, a central organization called Taisei Yokusankai took over all functions. In a press interview on August 1, 1940, the Japanese Foreign Minister Matsuoka Yosuke announced the development of the Greater East Asian sphere of prosperity . This economic and defense community of Asian countries under Japanese rule should be free from Western influence.
On September 22nd of the same year the Japanese pressed a military agreement from the French after a previous ultimatum. This included the use of three airports and the transit of own troops through Indochina to China. In a note to the Japanese, the United States disapproved of this approach and rejected it.
On September 27, 1940, Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy , which expanded the existing Anti-Comintern Pact to include mutual military support. The Japanese emperor thus rejected his neutrality , which he had announced on September 5, 1939, and underlined his aggressive foreign policy, especially towards China.
Japan's relations with Germany
The roots of German-Japanese relations go back to the 17th century ( Edo period , from 1603 to 1868). Well-known German scientists and doctors, such as Philipp Franz von Siebold or Engelbert Kaempfer , worked for the Dutch East India Company in Japan. Through them, Western knowledge spread in Japan and the Europeans learned more about Japanese culture in return .
Relations assumed official status in the 1860s after the closure of Japan in 1861 was abandoned by the then shogunate government . In the same year a friendship, trade and shipping treaty was concluded with Prussia . Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi took the Prussian constitution as a model for the first modern constitution of Japan , which was promulgated in 1889.
Under Jacob Meckel , who was appointed military advisor to the Japanese Army University at the invitation of the Japanese government (→ o-yatoi gaikokujin - "foreign advisor"), the Imperial Japanese Army was able to be formed into an army that was modern for this time.
Although relations cooled down before the First World War due to the European imperialist claims to power in Asia and Japan declared war on Germany in 1914 for reasons of power politics, new talks were held again from 1920 and a German ambassador was dispatched. The Japanese military, in particular, was interested in extensive exchange from the 1930s onwards. For the National Socialists, who had close ties to the Republic of China , closer ties to Japan turned out to be more advantageous after the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War , especially since Japan posed a threat to the Soviet Union in the east. The desired political alliance took shape in November 1936 under the leadership of the German geopolitician Karl Haushofer with the Anti-Comintern Pact and in September 1940 with the conclusion of the three-power pact . Most of the meetings of high-ranking Japanese and German military took place in Haushofer's house.
The situation in China
After the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894/1895, the Japanese Empire annexed Taiwan . Although Japan had hoped to gain considerable influence in Manchuria after the conclusion of the contract by Shimonoseki , the Russian Empire prevailed and received the concession for the Manchurian Railway and Port Arthur on the Yellow Sea for lease. Japan continued to be very interested in resource-rich Manchuria . However, this ran counter to Russian interests, and so the Russo-Japanese War broke out in 1904 , which the Japanese won. As a result, Russia had to give up Manchuria. Japan built the South Manchurian Railway , which was protected by the Kwantung Army and was supposed to transport raw materials towards Korea . Korea became a Japanese protectorate in 1905 and finally annexed in 1910 .
Many politicians and military officials saw an intensification of colonial efforts as the solution to the economic crisis of 1929, which hit Japan hard. This was mainly directed towards Manchuria. After a group of conspirators from circles of the Japanese army had provoked the intervention of the military by a staged act of sabotage on the South Manchurian Railway Company (the so-called Mukden incident ) in September 1931 (→ Manchuria Crisis ), the troops stationed in Guangdong took within half a time Year after year, the entire Manchuria was taken over against the Chinese resistance, weakened by the Chinese civil war , without a declaration of war. The administration of Manchuria fell into Japanese hands and the puppet state of Manchukuo was established under the "leadership" of Pu Yi , the last Chinese emperor of the Qing dynasty . The League of Nations condemned the Japanese actions and on October 24, 1931 demanded a Japanese troop withdrawal and an investigation into the incidents in Manchuria. The Japanese army and the fleet were theoretically directly subordinate to the emperor, but at this point they had largely escaped the control of parliament and the government and were proceeding on their own in China. Due to the successes, the military was able to justify this policy in retrospect and thus gained increasing influence on Japanese politics.
After China imposed a trade boycott on Japan, which further fueled anti-Chinese sentiment in Japan, an incident in Shanghai, in which Japanese monks were mistreated and one of them later succumbed to his injuries, was enough to trigger a large-scale area bombing of Japan on January 29, 1932 against Shanghai .
In May 1933, in view of the internal instability on the one hand ( civil war between the Kuomintang and Communists) and the open threat of a Japanese invasion of Beijing on the other, the Chinese leadership concluded an armistice and recognized the Japanese claims to Manchuria. However, the Japanese continued their advance. In 1933 the provinces of Rehe and Chahar were occupied, in 1935 China had to agree to a buffer zone between Manchukuo and Beijing, in which the Japanese set up the Autonomous Military Council of East Hopei (Hebei), made up of collaborating Chinese military . In 1936 parts of Inner Mongolia were occupied.
Outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War
Only after the Chinese nationalists and communists had agreed on a ceasefire at the end of 1936 (→ Xi'an incident ) did the second united front against the Japanese take shape.
The trigger for the Second Sino-Japanese War , which marked the beginning of the Pacific War, was the incident at the Marco Polo Bridge on July 7, 1937 , in which Japanese and Chinese soldiers fought firefights. The Japanese conquered Shanghai in mid-November and Nanjing in mid-December (→ Nanking massacre ).
US activities in China
The USA initially remained neutral. However, after reports of Japanese war crimes such as the Nanking massacre and the Panay incident , public sentiment turned. For example, the American government was able to impose a steel and oil embargo on Japan and the Chinese national faction militarily a. a. support with the Flying Tigers . Chennault's three squadrons of American volunteer pilots used so-called "defensive pursuit" tactics to defend the Burma Strait , Rangoon and other strategic points in Southeast Asia and western China from Japanese forces. China itself had few, if any, modern aircraft.
The measures were necessary for geopolitical and economic reasons, as the US could not tolerate Japanese domination in Asia. Own interests in China were directly threatened , in the American-ruled Philippines indirectly.
Defense and attack plans
United States
As early as 1913, the USA drafted defense plans in the event that the most diverse powers could attack it. These plans were given colors and the plan for a possible confrontation with Japan was given the name War Plan Orange . It primarily envisaged the defense of the Philippines, which were seen as the primary target of the Japanese. After the Washington Naval Conference of 1922 and the further changing balance of power in the Pacific region, the planners came to the conclusion that a defense of the Philippines and Guam would be an illusion, since the American fleet would only reach the Western Pacific after Japan had annexed both targets. It was therefore decided to move the Pacific Fleet to Manila and to increase the troop strength in the Philippines with the involvement of the local population. The plan foresaw the stationing of around 50,000 American soldiers in the Philippines immediately after the outbreak of war with Japan. However, the Orange Plan ignored the fact that other states would also be involved in a conflict with Japan. Although the planners also developed preliminary defense plans in which they included states such as Great Britain (Plan Red-Orange), the defense strategies seemed too complicated.
Hawaii was first specified as an outpost for troops and supplies in the 1926 revision of the plan . A direct troop crossing to the Philippines was ruled out, but the precautionary capture of the Caroline , Marshall and Mariana Islands to set up bases there were taken into account.
In 1928 the planners were instructed to rework the Orange Defense Plan into the Orange Strategic Attack Plan. This had to be dropped in the end, as the expected Japanese troop strength exceeded the available own forces by more than ten times.
Another revision of the plan, suggested in the mid-1930s by General Douglas MacArthur , provided for the stationing of 10,000 US soldiers and the establishment of a Philippine army under MacArthur in 1936. Given the looming situation in other parts of the world, the planners were unable to incorporate adequate modern weapons in the plan.
Japan
After Japan left the League of Nations in 1933 on the basis of the Lytton Report , the leadership concretized its expansion efforts in the direction of the East Asian mainland. By 1940, industrial production in Japan increased rapidly. Up until 1930 only about 500 vehicles and 400 aircraft had been produced in the military sector, but over the next ten years their number grew to 48,000 vehicles and more than 5,000 aircraft. The navy also increased its ship production five and a half times, not least against the backdrop of the war with China that began in 1937.
Until the beginning of 1940, Japan's plans were primarily to defend the northern borders against the Soviet Union. Operations to the south were only planned in second place. However, in the event of war with the United States, the plan provided for the capture of the Philippines and Guam without, however, providing concrete measures against US intervention. Great Britain and the Netherlands were only vaguely mentioned in this plan.
It was only the cabinet under Konoe who developed the program of a strong expansion to the south in order to advance the development of the Greater East Asian sphere of prosperity. Although this was initially to be achieved by peaceful means, military intervention was not ruled out, as any resistance to this program, including from outside, was viewed as anti-subversive.
Development until the outbreak of war
In Japan, all existing political parties were dissolved and replaced on October 12, 1940 by the Taisei Yokusankai (Association for the Promotion of Tenno Rule) under the leadership of Konoe Fumimaro , who was hailed as the political savior. He proclaimed his Shintaisen doctrine, which among other things called for a national unity to defend against European colonization as well as an expansion policy towards Southeast Asia. This also included coordinating all military forces to achieve these goals.
As Japan continued its aggression against China and advanced to the north of Indochina, the United States imposed a first embargo on Japan on October 16, 1940 , prohibiting the importation of oil and scrap metal. As a result of this embargo, Japanese oil companies turned to Dutch-Indian oil companies and concluded an agreement on November 15 in Batavia for the delivery of 760,000 t of crude oil and 650,000 t of oil products per year in addition to the previously supplied quantities.
In mid-December received copies Japan British secret documents from the German auxiliary cruiser Atlantis in the hijacking of the SS Automedon had been captured. This indicated that the Royal Navy would not be able to station enough ships in the Far East for the foreseeable future to implement the Singapore strategy and prevent Japan from advancing towards the Indian Ocean .
On January 7, 1941, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto wrote a memorandum to the Japanese Navy Minister Koshirō Oikawa , in which he pointed out that a wait-and-see strategy with classic naval battles for the Japanese Navy in the previous simulation games and maneuvers could not be won and therefore the sea-based air forces should be expanded. A concentrated attack on the US fleet right at the start of the war would not only deal a severe blow to their morale and prevent attacks on Japan itself, but would also give the empire a window of six to twelve months to conquer Southeast Asia with its important raw material sources.
On March 5, 1941, Hitler issued his directive No. 24 in Germany , which was to regulate cooperation with Japan. Japan should be moved to act quickly in the Far East in order to divert the USA from the theater of war in Europe and the planned German attack on the Soviet Union (→ Operation Barbarossa ).
The USA, which had entered into a political engagement with the leader of the Chinese national party Kuomintang , Chiang Kai-shek , tried again and again to intervene, but several diplomatic negotiations in 1941, including secret meetings, which the conflicting interests of both states in East Asia and should clarify the Pacific region, remained inconclusive. The Japanese also spoke of a "peaceful" territorial expansion into the Southwest Pacific and called on the Americans to support them in the extraction and production of raw materials such as oil , rubber , tin and nickel , as suggested in a proposal on May 12, 1941 was given to the US Secretary of State by the Japanese Ambassador Nomura.
In mid-May 1941, the so-called Pacific Conference met in Manila , at which envoys from the USA, Great Britain, Australia, the Dutch East Indies and China discussed measures to counter Japan's aggressive policies in the Pacific region.
On July 2, the decision was made in Japan to extend the territorial claim to Southeast Asia. Decryption specialists in the USA succeeded in deciphering a radio message, so that Washington, London and Melbourne were quickly informed about the planned action of the Japanese. The Japanese immediately drafted more than a million men into military service and received approval from the Vichy regime to occupy Indochina , which was carried out on July 29th. Two days later, the US and Britain imposed an export - embargo on Japan and froze its financial resources.
Because of the embargo and because Japan was cut off from the raw material supplies of the European allies, a war with the USA and Great Britain appeared to be the only possibility to prevent the loss of the empire in its previous form. In particular, the abundant natural resources of the Dutch and British colonies were a worthwhile destination for the Japanese. The US stopped all shipping to and from Japan on August 4th. In order to come to an agreement through diplomatic channels, the Japanese side proposed a meeting on August 8th between Japanese Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt to settle the differences in the Pacific region. As there was no sign of an understanding with the USA, general mobilization was announced in Japan three days later , as the situation for Japan worsened dramatically. The Gozen Kaigi , not the Japanese Privy Council , decided on September 6th to wage war against the USA and Great Britain if the negotiations were not concluded by October 10th. Furthermore, she decided on November 5th to start the war with a surprise attack on the USA. Japan set a further deadline for concluding negotiations with the US on November 25th.
On November 17, Prime Minister General Tōjō Hideki held a government statement in front of both chambers of the Reichstag - at the same time also the first radio broadcast from parliament - in which he affirmed the supposed peace will of the empire, but also the demand on "third powers" for a free hand repeated in China; negotiations with the United States began on the same day, led by the special envoy Kurusu Saburō and ambassador Nomura Kichisaburō, who had just arrived in Washington. On December 1, the Gozen Kaigi informed the Tennō about the violent expansion of the Japanese sphere of influence to the south and the planned war of aggression against the USA. Meanwhile, the Japanese Ambassador Admiral Nomura Kichisaburō held peace talks with the American Secretary of State Cordell Hull in Washington, DC .
In the worsening situation, the British put their troops on the Malay Peninsula on high alert on the same day . The fleet under Admiral Tom Spencer Vaughan Phillips was instructed to search the waters east of Singapore for enemy ships.
At the same time, Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku issued the following order to the Imperial Navy on December 1, 1941:
“Japan, under the necessity of her self-preservation and self-defense, has reached a position to declare war on the United States of America, United Kingdom and the Netherlands. The Supreme Commander of the Combined Fleet will start the war with an attack on the enemy fleet in the Hawaii Islands area and destroy it with the 1st Air Fleet. "
“For reasons of self-preservation and self-defense, Japan has achieved a position of declaring war on the United States of America, Great Britain and the Netherlands. The Commander in Chief of the United Fleet will start the war by attacking the enemy fleet in the Hawaii area and destroy it with the 1st Air Fleet. "
American planes sighted twelve Japanese submarines off the coast of Indochina on December 2, heading south, possibly to Singapore. On the same day, Yamamoto gave the signal to start all operations with the words "Climb Mount Niitaka " and the announcement of the day of the attack.
Admiral Phillips flew to Manila on December 4 and met with Admiral Thomas C. Hart and General Douglas MacArthur to reach an agreement for a cooperation agreement in the Far East. In the South China Sea, three Japanese divisions were on their way to invade Thailand and Malaysia at the time.
All Japanese consulates in the USA have been ordered to destroy all of their coding and secret documents. This happened via Radio Tokyo , which used the words "Higashi no kaze ame" (German: "Ostwind, Regen") in a weather forecast. This was one of the possible phrases that would herald war with the United States. In the Dutch colonies, too, this announcement was received and decoded by the listening station Kamer 14 (room 14) in the technical college in Bandung on Java, the importance of which was known to the top management. So they immediately forwarded the report to their embassy in Washington to have the American government notified.
On December 6, Australian reconnaissance planes spotted the Japanese convoy heading south from Indochina. Admiral Phillips then left the round table in Manila. British and American ships were given discontinuation orders to protect the East Asian islands and British reconnaissance planes took off from their bases in order to undertake steady patrol flights.
With the Japanese invasion of the Malay Peninsula and the large-scale attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th and 8th, the actual expansion of the war to the Pacific region began. The next day, the United States, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the Netherlands declared war on the Japanese. Japan itself waited until January 11, 1942, before declaring war on the Netherlands, as it hoped that the Dutch troops would withdraw through its rapid and successful advance southwards, but this did not happen.
The actual world war had broken out from the European and Asian theaters of war .
See also
- Relations between Japan and the United States
- Entry of the United States into World War II
- Japanese imperialism
- Sino-Japanese relations
literature
- Max von Brandt ː The contrast between the Japanese and North Americans in the Pacific. In Zeitschrift für Socialwissenschaft Vol. 10, 1907, pp. 160–165.
- Herbert Feis: Road to Pearl Harbor: The Coming of the War Between the United States and Japan. Princeton University Press, Princeton 2015, ISBN 978-0-691-62061-9 .
- Kotaro Ikeda, Yoshitaro Kato, Junichi Taiyoji: The industrial development in Japan with special consideration of its economic and financial policy (= series of publications on industrial and development policy. Volume 1). Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1970, ISBN 978-3-428-01968-7 , especially p. 89 ff. On the banking crisis of 1927.
- Wolfgang Schwentker: Max Weber in Japan. An investigation into the history of effects 1905–1995. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1998, ISBN 978-3-16-146806-3 , especially p. 284 f. on the banking crisis of 1927.
Individual evidence
- ↑ The date line must be observed for the date . While it was December 7th in Pearl Harbor, Kota Bahru was already on December 8th when the Japanese invaded the Malay Peninsula .
- ^ A b Manfred B. Emmes, The foreign policies of the USA, Japans u. Germany in mutual influence from the middle of the 19th to the end of the 20th century . Lit Verlag, Münster, 2000, ISBN 978-3-8258-4595-7 , (p. 11)
- ↑ THE LITERARY DIGEST 7 August 1897, International Press to the Japanese protest
- ↑ Manfred B. Emmes, The foreign policies of the USA, Japans a. Germany in mutual influence from the middle of the 19th to the end of the 20th century , Lit Verlag Münster, 2000, ISBN 978-3-8258-4595-7 , (p. 13)
- ↑ Manfred B. Emmes, The foreign policies of the USA, Japans a. Germany in mutual influence from the middle of the 19th to the end of the 20th century , Lit Verlag Münster, 2000, ISBN 978-3-8258-4595-7 , (p. 112)
- ↑ Le Monde diplomatique: Going straight ahead into the modern age - Japan in World War I, No. 9159 of April 9, 2010
- ↑ Wilhelm Donko: The Imperial Japanese Navy in the Mediterranean 1917-19: The history of the 3rd special squadron under Rear Admiral Sato . epubli GmbH, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-8442-8714-1 , p. 11 ( google.de [accessed on July 8, 2020]).
- ↑ FAZ article: Historical financial crises: Japan 1927 - The great wobble of Tokyo , under: http://www.faz.net/aktuell/finanzen/fonds-mehr/historische-finanzkrisen-japan-1927-das-grosse-wackeln -von-tokio-1283711.html
- ^ Wolfgang Schwentker : Max Weber in Japan. An investigation into the history of effects 1905–1995 , Mohr Siebeck, 1998, ISBN 978-3-16-146806-3 , page 284
- ^ Embassy of Japan in Germany: German-Japanese Relations - The Japanese-German Relations at a Glance. Retrieved July 8, 2020 .
- ^ The Haushofer Connection , under: Historical Financial Crises: Japan 1927 - The Great Wiggling of Tokyo ( Memento from April 23, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ The Road to War , p. 24.
- ^ The Road to War , p. 27.
- ^ The Road to War , p. 34.
- ↑ Japanese Policy and Strategy, 1931-July 1941 , pp. 49-57.
- ↑ Carl Zimring: Cash For Your Trash: Scrap Recycling in America. Rutgers University Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-8135-4694-0 , p. 87.
- ^ David Evans, Mark Peattie: Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941 , Naval Institute Press 2014, ISBN 978-1-61251-425-3 , pp. 475 f. ( online at Google Book Preview, English).
- ^ Discussions with Japan 1941 and Pearl Harbor.
- ^ David Horner: 2001 History Conference - Remembering 1941 - Strategy and Command in Australia's Campaigns of 1941. In: AWM.gov.au (English).
- ^ University of Tokyo : Speech by Prime Minister Tōjō Hideki before the 77th (extraordinary) Reichstag on November 17, 1941 (Shōwa 16). In: Database on Japanese Politics and International Relations .
- ^ NHK : Sound documents of the war time.
- ↑ Memorandum 91: Regarding a Conversation Between the Secretary of State, the Japanese Ambassador (Nomura), and Mr. Kurusu (English).
- ↑ Chronology of the Dutch East Indies, December 1941 (English).