Chapter 12: The Long Pacific War
The Manchurian Incident and Its Aftermath
If asked when the Second World War started, many Americans would say December 7, 1941, even though the war had already been raging in both the Atlantic and Pacific theatres for several years. Obsession with this date often limits the perspective of American students in comprehending this complex event. Many historians in Japan would answer this question with September 18, 1931, the start of the Manchurian Incident (Manshū jihen 満州事変). The military part of the *Manchurian Incident* took place over the course of a few days. There was little fighting and few casualties. It was not the sort of armed conflict that today would excite armchair strategists and warfare enthusiasts, but it was terribly important in Japanese and world history. For one thing, the Manchurian incident led to a sequence of events during the course of which Japan marched ever deeper toward warfare on a vast scale, culminating in the Pacific War. The Manchurian Incident, in turn, was the result of a complex web of domestic and international conflict that took place throughout the 1920s--most of which are beyond the scope of this course (#but if you are curious . . . #).
After Japan took over Manchuria in 1931, the situation in Northeast China simmered for several years. Diplomatically, Japan became isolated over Manchuria. By 1932 it had established the puppet state (kairai kokka 傀儡国家) of Manzhouguo 満州国 (often spelled "Manchukuo" or something like it--there is little consistency). Japan's official claim was that Manzhouguo was an independent state--albeit one that was vigorously pro-Japanese--and that its creation reflected the popular will of that region's inhabitants. In 1932 the League of Nations established a commission to investigate the situation. When, in 1933, the commission issued a report critical of Japan, the Japanese delegation to the League of Nations dramatically walked out, never to return. It was from this point on that Japan's official policy shifted firmly in the direction of pan-Asianism. No longer would Japan attempt to cooperate with the Western imperialist powers. Instead, it would forge its own Asiatic empire. This policy propelled Japan toward full-scale war in China, and the war in China eventually lead to war with Britain and the United States (and the Soviet Union, right at the end).
The Second Sino-Japanese War was a long time in the making. Ever since the late 1920s, there had been frequent skirmishes between Japanese and Chinese military forces in various locations in and around China. From the time of its seizure of Manchuria in 1931 until the start of full-scale war in the summer of 1937, Japanese land forces had slowly but steadily grabbed ever more Chinese territory from Manchuria southward in the direction of Beijing (the present-day capital of China, but not the capital during the 1930s). China's leader at the time, Jiang Jieshi 蒋介石 (#image;# better known in the United States as #Chiang Kai-shek#), had come under increasing pressure to resist this Japanese expansion vigorously, but he chose instead to direct his main efforts at eradicating members and soldiers of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), one-time allies of Jiang's Guomindang (GMD; also spelled Kuomintang [KMT]; often awkwardly rendered into English as "Nationalist Party"). Using a medical analogy, Jiang likened the CCP to a cancer and Japanese pressure to a skin rash. Eventually, however, the rash became so widespread that Jiang could ignore it no longer.
On July 7, 1937, Japanese soldiers conducted night maneuvers near the Marco Polo Bridge in the northern suburbs of Beijing. They came into conflict with Chinese soldiers stationed nearby. Nobody knows who fired the first shot, but both sides exchanged gunfire. Initially, nobody expected this small incident to grow into a full-scale war, but Jiang had come under such strong *pressure to resist Japan,* that he decided to make a stand by refusing to give any concessions to Japan when negotiating a settlement. For a variety of reasons, the incident of fighting at the Marco Polo Bridge remained unsettled as of late July, and fighting between Chinese and Japanese forces began to take place elsewhere in China. By August, both sides were engaged in full-scale warfare. This July encounter and its immediate aftermath is known as the #Marco Polo Bridge# Incident (Rokōkyō jiken 盧溝橋事件).
Shanghai, China's largest city, was the scene of the first major round of fighting, which started with a Chinese air attack on the Japanese fleet in Shanghai harbor. The attack was a miserable failure. Japanese commanders found out about it well in advance and had their ships out of the harbor and zigzagging through the open ocean by the time the attack started. Such defensive precautions may not even have been necessary, for the Chinese pilots and crews were generally so inept that a few planes even managed to drop bombs on Shanghai itself, killing numerous civilians--an accident apparently resulting from fear of getting too close to the Japanese ships and not taking wind direction into account. No Japanese ships were damaged or sunk. Spurred on in part by this Chinese air attack, the Japanese response was to amass soldiers for an invasion. During the fall and winter, one major Chinese city after another fell to the invaders. Japanese soldiers were victorious everywhere they fought. (See a *map of this early phase* of the war.)
Soon after the fighting began, Japan's government declared publicly that it would accept nothing less than complete surrender and removal of Jiang's government. This declaration committed both sides to a, long, miserable war in which neither China nor Japan could prevail decisively. Why such a declaration? The main problem here was poor information from the commanders in the field. The first six months of the war was a period of one major victory after another for the Japanese invaders. In general, Japanese soldiers and officers had a contemptuous view of Chinese capabilities, both on the battlefield and in the broader realm of politics. The main reason for resorting to all-out war against a country that Japan deemed essential for its pan-Asian empire was to achieve a quick and decisive victory. The fall of the GMD would then allow Japan to set up a government in China favorable to Japan's interests. With China then on Japan's side, consolidation of the rest of the empire would could proceed rapidly. That was the general idea.
Japan's armies also inflicted tremendous damage on the very places they claimed to be liberating, and Japanese wartime atrocities in Asia took place on a vast scale. How does one explain a genuine belief in liberation on the part of most Japanese while Japan's armies took part in infamous brutality such as the *Rape of Nanjing* (also known as the Nanjing Massacre, late 1937-early 1938)? There is no neat and tidy theory that can explain these things. In the case of Nanjing, a number of factors seem to have converged. Japanese forces in general lacked sufficient numbers of military police to keep order. Moreover, the battle for Nanjing was difficult and costly, and at least some officers promised enlisted personnel the opportunity to loot as way to motivate them. Japanese military training was especially brutal, with those at the top taking out their frustrations on those below. Ordinary soldiers were at the bottom of the pecking order--except for the population of conquered areas. A general contempt for Chinese weakness in the Japanese ranks only exacerbated the situation. These are a few of the factors that contributed to to Nanjing Massacre. What about the theory that Japanese are inherently brutal? That might make for good wartime propaganda, but it does not hold up to even cursory examination. Human beings have been just as brutal as the Japanese forces in Nanjing on thousands of occasions all across the globe, and often the brutality was meted out to people of the same cultural and ethnic group. We probably have to look all the way back to our chimpanzee ancestors fully to explain why brutality on this scale still occurs. (Incidentally, the Nanjing Massacre remains a major issue in East Asian politics. If you are curious about this matter #click here.#)
Let us return now to the main narrative and ask the question: What was going on here? Much more than a quick survey of the battle results would indicate. Let us take a look at three important questions: 1) why did the Chinese armies perform so poorly?; 2) why didn't Jiang press to negotiate a peace treaty after such devastating losses during the first few months of the war? and 3) what problems did these early victories, and the war in general, cause for Japan?
Chinese ground forces vastly outnumbered those of Japan--at least on paper. But these forces were consistently ineffective, with the exception of the CCP irregular forces. The average Chinese soldier was poorly equipped and poorly trained compared with his Japanese counterpart. Furthermore, China's air force was small, and had largely been destroyed during the first few weeks of fighting. Japan, by contrast had substantial air power located in China, which it used very effectively. But these facts are only one part of a much larger picture. One key factor is that the GMD military forces, except for a small elite that Jiang never used in battle--had little or no morale for fighting a serious war.
The root of China's military weakness was Jiang and his pursuit of what I like to call a "balance of weakness." Recall that Jiang's position as China's ruler was precarious owing to the presence of numerous semi-independent powerful groups such as warlords and their armies, *organized crime syndicates* (e.g., #The Green Gang#), and the CCP, which remained strong despite Jiang's repeatedly having tried to *crush it* since 1926. Jiang generally enjoyed the support of China's wealthy elite and of the major organized crime organizations. This support was not based on ideology or any other strong bond. It was based mainly on their seeing Jiang as the person best able to further their interests. Likewise, Jiang enjoyed the nominal support of the major warlords provided that he grant them substantial autonomy and that Jiang remained powerful enough that individual warlords did not see it as being in their best interest to break with or rebel against Jiang. Jiang's basic policies did not change from the 1920s through the 1940s. His goal was to retain and enhance his personal power, to which everything else was subordinate (incidentally, the same could be said for Mao Zedong, CCP leader and Jiang's main domestic enemy). He pursued war with Japan only when popular demands grew so large that Jiang risked alienating his major supporters by not taking a stand. Once he took a stand, he had no choice but to fight on (for reasons we will see below). But Jiang, seems to have known all along that his ultimate battle for power would be fought against other Chinese, not Japan.
So Jiang's basic strategy was to keep all potential challengers to his power weaker than himself. One way that he did so was by encouraging potential rivals to distrust each other. Japan's invasion was in many ways a boon for Jiang, because his position in the GMD was strengthened by it. He became, in other words, the only one with enough power to lead China through the crisis. Throughout the war, Jiang made sure that the situation stayed this way.
The major way of obtaining soldiers for the GMD armies was by *kidnapping young men* from rural villages. Such "recruits" were typically sent to areas of China far from their homes, where they would be unfamiliar with the local geography, and, in many cases, would not even speak the language of the local area (there was no de facto common language throughout all of China at the time). There, these recruits would endure brutal, but generally ineffective "training," while living in wretched conditions. Death was a common fate, even in the absence of any combat. Such soldiers had no real loyalty to the GMD. Insofar as they fought, it was simply to save themselves. Not all GMD army units were staffed this way, but many were. Jiang usually kept his elite soldiers back in reserve and to send armies comprised of forcibly conscripted peasants out in the field to face the enemy.
Jiang carefully balanced the commanders of his armies so that, whenever possible, commanders who distrusted or hated each other would be placed next to each other. GMD commanders often devoted more effort to watching other GMD commanders, not Japanese armies. Indeed, during many of Japan's advances, GMD armies fought bitterly--against each other--to determine which would get to retreat first. Such military forces, although large in number, were nearly useless during serious fighting. Toward the end of the war, Japanese commanders had figured out that simply hiring local peasants to move toward the Chinese lines while holding aloft the Japanese battle flag was often sufficient to spark a panicked retreat.
Not only were these Chinese armies ineffective in opposing Japanese advances, they were often just as brutal to local civilians as were Japanese soldiers. With good reason, local civilians feared GMD and Japanese soldiers about equally. In the remote northwest of China, however, where the CCP established its base of operations, the situation was different. The CCP made an effort to cultivate peasant goodwill, and this effort paid of during the war years as well as during the subsequent civil war in China that lasted roughly from 1947-1949. The CCP armies were effective against the Japanese enemy. They were reasonably well led and consisted of volunteers. It might also be useful to reflect briefly on the Korean War, ca. 1950. China's army then was just as poorly equipped as it had been a decade earlier, and Chinese military leadership was not innovative in any way. The U.S. commander, MacArthur, was contemptuous of Chinese forces amassing at the border of North Korea, and he ignored them--until they attacked and sent the (mainly) U.S. forces into full-scale retreat. The point here is that, even in their poorly equipped state, Chinese armies were capable of fighting effectively. In 1950 the Chinese typical soldier believed in the cause for which he was fighting; in 1940 the typical Chinese soldier did not.
Jiang's government more resembled an organized crime syndicate than a government in the usual sense of the term. Whenever possible, Jiang used the war against Japan to profit materially and monetarily, dolling out the proceeds to those GMD elites Jiang calculated would most benefit his long-term attempt to control China. When the United States got into the war at the end of 1941, Jiang and his cronies began gorging themselves on everything the U.S. could provide. Prices that U.S. soldiers and organizations had to pay for Chinese goods (trucks, supplies, even admission to brothels) increased several hundred percent overnight. Most of the supplies intended to support troops in the field never arrived. It is no wonder that Jiang's armies performed so poorly under these circumstances. Indeed, it is amazing that they held together at all. (There is a superb but little-known book that is particularly insightful about these and related issues concerning the war in China: Graham Peck, Two Kinds of Time. Try to find the earliest edition.)
Why did not Jiang try to work out a deal with Japan after nearly all of China's eastern cities fell to the invaders? The typical explanation was that Jiang was simply determined to fight on for idealistic reasons, but such a thing would have been entirely out of character for him. Jiang had no choice but to fight on because early in the war the Japanese government formally declared that there would be no deal. In other words, nothing short of total surrender by Jiang would have been acceptable. Having made such an unambiguous declaration, Japan's government was unable to back down. This rigidity was not only a problem for Jiang, it became a problem for Japan. And it ultimately led to a broadening of the war by Japan's attacking the United States.
Take a look at *this map* and notice that, of the Chinese territory conquered by Japan during the war, the vast majority of it was in Japanese hands by the end of 1937. After that time, Japanese gains were relatively minimal. Why? There were several reasons. First and most important was logistics. One characteristic of Japan's armed forces at the time was that they were heavily weighted at the front end. Specifically, for approximately every 9 or 10 soldiers fighting on the front line in the infantry, there was one solder behind the lines providing support (e.g., supplies, communications, medical services, etc.). This ratio meant that Japanese armies tended to strike with much greater power than their overall size would indicate as possible, but, on the other hand, they lacked the staying power to carryon on a protracted war. China turned into such a war and became a logistical nightmare for Japanese which were only partially mechanized.
In addition to a severe weakness in its logistics operations, Japanese forces in China faced the constant threat of guerilla attacks. These attacks often came from the CCP armies, but Chinese organizations of various kinds resisted the Japanese presence. Even though the typical GMD soldier in the field had no particular loyalty to the GMD, China had become a nation during the twentieth century (a nation without a strong state). In other words, especially in the cities, but even to some extent in the countryside, ordinary people began self-consciously to think of themselves as Chinese. This national consciousness provided the basic sentiment for opposing Japanese conquest. So wherever Japanese were in China, they faced varying degrees of hostility, which put further *pressure on supply lines* and other aspects of supporting a vast army (well over a million strong) in a vast land area (China is approximately the size of the continental United States). By late 1938, China had turned into a logistical quagmire for Japanese armies, with no immediate prospects for a solution. At this point, many Japanese leaders would undoubtedly have wanted to conclude a diplomatic settlement, but, for the same reason that Jiang had to persist in the fight, so, too, did Japan.
But why did Japan's government declare early on in the fighting that it would accept nothing less than complete surrender, thus committing both sides to a, long, miserable war in which neither China nor Japan could prevail decisively? The main problem here was poor information from the commanders in the field. The first six months of the war was a period of one major victory after another for the Japanese invaders. In general, Japanese soldiers and officers had a contemptuous view of Chinese capabilities, both on the battlefield and in the broader realm of politics. The main reason for resorting to all-out war against a country that Japan deemed essential for its pan-Asian empire was to achieve a quick and decisive victory. The fall of the GMD would then allow Japan to set up a government in China favorable to Japan's interests. With China then on Japan's side, consolidation of the rest of the empire would could proceed rapidly. That was the general idea.
And all indications in late 1937 were that the plan was succeeding. Japanese victories were indeed real. The problem was in Japanese planners at many levels attributing too much importance to those victories. Commanders in the field typically predicted the entire collapse of the GMD in the very near future because they could not imagine Jiang holding out after losing so much prime real estate. The typical refrain would be something like "just one more victory like the one we have achieved today and . . ." Complete victory, in other words always seemed just around the corner. As a result, Japan's government publicly committed itself to the complete removal of the GMD and the creation of what it called a "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" (Dai-tōa kyōeiken 大東亜共栄圏). Jiang's reaction was to keep moving further inland as he lost territory, stretching Japanese supply lines ever thinner. In such a strategy, ineffective armies are less problematic, for it was on sheer distance that Jiang most relied for defense. His armies in the field were, in effect, scarecrows, and he kept his best and most loyal troops close to wherever his capital was (Chongqing for most of the war).
So both Japan and the GMD had gotten themselves into a conflict that neither side appeared able to win, but from which neither side would try to back down. The war was a constant and substantial drain on Japanese resources. In this context Japan's leaders became ever more desperate to find a successful way out of the China quagmire. As we will see next, this desperation led to the Pacific War, that is, to an expansion of the war to include the United States and Britain.
As a preview for the next section, study this slide show: *The Pacific War as Seen by Japan's General Public:*
<<Low Resolution>> <<Medium Resolution>> <<PDF>>
What caused Japan's escalation of its war with China to that of a war with the United States, Britain, and Holland (known collectively in Japanese wartime discourse as the "ABCD" countries)? Interestingly, many Americans would simply state the #attack on Pearl Harbor# as the cause with little or no sense that much had been happening prior to that time--as if Japan's attack came unexpectedly out of the blue. Of course the attack on Pearl Harbor brought the U.S. into the war, but why the attack? The key to answering this question adequately is to bear in mind that Japan's war against the United States was an extension of its war with China, which was ultimately part of a broad plan to create a Japanese-led empire in East Asia.
If Japan was bogged down in China, how could its leaders possibly have come to the conclusion that broadening the war was the way to make progress? At first glance it seems crazy, and, in hindsight, it was obviously a bad decision. But it made sense at the time based on a set of prevailing assumptions. Prior to the formal outbreak of war in December 1941 the United States did not actively assist China. But by the late 1930s, the United States was in a position of opposing Japan's role in the war and begin to put economic pressure on Japan in the form of various sanctions and embargoes starting in 1939. At first these measures were mainly token expressions of U.S. discontent. By 1941, however, the sanctions had become severe and potentially debilitating for Japan. One reason for this increasing severity was that Japan formally joined Germany and Italy in a military alliance. Then, with Vichy French approval, Japan occupied the northern part of Vietnam to put further pressure on China.
This move alarmed the United States government, which convinced Holland and Britain to join with it in putting the squeeze on Japan's resources to wage war. Most serious was a complete cutoff of crude oil and other petroleum sales to Japan (in those days the U.S. was a petroleum exporter) as well as the sale of metals needed for war-related industries. Because this embargo cut off nearly all of Japan's oil supply (and Japan produced no crude oil of its own), foreign affairs planners in the United States were *confident* that Japan would simply have no choice but to pull out of China in a year or two when its reserves ran dry. This thinking made sense and, indeed, Japan's own military planners estimated that at current levels of use, Japan would run out of petroleum products in two years or less. In other words, by doing nothing under current conditions, Japan was sure to lose its war with China because its military machine literally would become immobile within two years.
British Prime Minster Churchill had also convinced Franklin Roosevelt that the rich resources of Malaysia (a British territory) were vulnerable to Japanese seizure, and Roosevelt began dropping hints to Japan's ambassador that any further Japanese expansion in SE Asia would likely be met by active U.S. military intervention. While Roosevelt undoubtedly wanted the United States to enter the Second World War, distaste with the aftermath of World War One (the "war to end all wars") fueled a strong domestic sentiment to avoid getting dragged into another European war. because of this anti-war sentiment, it is doubtful that Roosevelt would have been able to muster the political backing to support military intervention against Japan even if it had continued to expand in Asia.
But Japan's leaders took Roosevelt at his word. They did indeed have their eyes on the vast oil fields of the Dutch East Indies, the mineral wealth of Malaysia, and other such resources. The basic scenario that emerged was for Japan to invade and conquer these areas quickly and then use their resources to supercharge the war effort in China and bring it to a definite and favorable conclusion. Then, with the rich natural resources of SE Asia, Japan would work with a sympathetic government in China to develop its vast human and industrial potential. In other words, it would create the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, which would be so powerful that none of the war-weary western countries would dare challenge it.
The only problem--or so it seemed to Japanese strategic planers--was that the United States would probably intervene to try and stop such a plan. The only military force capable of such intervention was the U.S. Pacific fleet based in Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu in Hawai'i. Pearl Harbor was within reach of Japan's aircraft carriers, and it had a major structural flaw: the harbor mouth was so narrow that only one ship at a time could get through it. Thus, with careful planning and execution, it seemed possible that an attack might well catch most or all of the fleet bottled up in the relatively narrow space of the harbor. After extensive planning and training, Japan's high command, at a meeting with the emperor, decided to proceed with the attack.
But what was the long-term strategy? Did Japan's leaders think that they could prevail in a sustained war with the United States over the course of several years? No, they did not. The success of the overall plan depended on several additional assumptions, one of which was entirely incorrect. The thinking here was that the United States is a rich country whose people had grown lazy and soft from a life of luxury. The United States, therefore, would not have the psychological will to fight Japan in a long, costly war, especially if Japan were successful in destroying the Pacific Fleet and in bring the resources of the Indies and elsewhere quickly into useful production. Seeing Japan's great strength (magnified by the Prosperity Sphere), the U.S. government would seek a negotiated end to the war. Of course, such thinking was utterly off the mark. Notice here, the crucial role of cultural assumptions and stereotypes. In this situation, Japan's leaders became victims of their own prejudices.
So the logic of the plan was reasonably solid, but two key premises were questionable. The assumption that the United States would intervene to stop a Japanese seizure of the Dutch East Indies (etc.), while reasonable, was by no means a certainty. And the assumption that the soft, lazy Americans would lose their will to fight Japan after seeing their fleet destroyed, was not only inaccurate, it was #the precise opposite# of the actual effect. Japan's attack *galvanized U.S. resolve* like nothing else could have done. Intensifying the psychological effect of Japan's attack was the widespread ethnocentric arrogance that these "little yellow men with #buck teeth and thick glasses# who make toys and trinkets" could not possibly be capable of sophisticated military action against the United States. Indeed, an eye witness reported that Roosevelt's first audible reaction upon hearing of the attack was to mutter that German pilots must have been flying the Japanese planes. That the attack appeared to be such an overwhelming success for Japan made a *desire for revenge* all the stronger.
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a serious blow. But it proved to be less of a disaster for the the U.S. and less of a victory for Japan than it seemed in the days immediately following December seventh. First, the most important weapon of the naval part of the Pacific War turned out to be the aircraft carrier, not the battleship. While all of the U.S. battleships were destroyed or badly damaged, the carriers all happened to be away on a training exercise at the time of the attack--pure luck. Also, Japanese pilots went after the big, prestigious targets such as battleships and heavy cruisers, but completely neglected to attack important points of infrastructure such as power stations. Therefore, #salvage# and #repair operations# started immediately, and it was not uncommon for ships Japanese intelligence sources listed as being out of action to appear in the early sea battles of the war. Of course, Japan's aim was to disable the fleet to prevent its interference with the major land grabs in SE Asia, and this it accomplished. In the moderate and long-run, however, the attack caused no major degradation of U.S. war capabilities. Insofar as U.S. pressure on Japan was light early in the war the main reason was the overall tactical decision to concentrate on the war in Europe first.
And speaking of the war in Europe, how did the U.S. get involved in that? In an an uncharacteristic display of living up to his agreements, Hitler invoked the terms of Germany's alliance with Japan and declared war on the United States the day after Japan did. Italy followed suit as well.
The purely military aspects of the war are well known and we will not examine them here. Those interested in the military history of the Pacific War might be interested in these web sites (all optional; some present the war as glorious, some analyze it critically in one way or another, some emphasize gadgetry):
Late in 1943, the U.S. made a specific decision to begin bombing non-military, residential areas in Japanese cities (#official policy statement and assessment#). When Japan had done the same thing in China in the late 1930s, the U.S. denounced the practice as barbaric, and indeed, several high-ranking U.S. air force generals resigned rather than carry out the new policy. In remote areas of Utah, engineers constructed typical Japanese urban houses and experimented to find the most efficient ways to destroy them. The general bombing procedure that resulted was first to drop bombs filled with a highly flammable oil, which would quickly spread after hitting the ground. Following the oil were incendiary cluster bombs, which would set the oil on fire in many different places. The result was a rapidly spreading inferno, which devoured everything in its path. In many cases people tried to escape the flames by jumping into nearby rivers, which was not a good idea. The heat from the bombs was so intense that the river water was often literally boiling. Many more civilians lost their lives in these conventional bombing attacks than in the two uses of atomic bombs. It is probably inevitable to see the the atomic bombings as *more frightful* than conventional bomb attacks owing to the awesome power contained in a single bomb and the aftereffects of radiation. When discussing issues of war morality, however, it seems to me that there is excessive attention paid to the atomic attacks. The more basic question is surely whether it is ethical and/or militarily useful to bomb civilian areas period, regardless of the type of explosives employed.
Because of the experiences mentioned in the above paragraphs and others, ever since the end of the war, there has been a strong tendency among Japanese to see themselves--the people of Japan--*as victims* in the Pacific War. The obsessive invocation of the attack on Pearl Harbor by U.S. presidents and other spokespeople over the years has had no rhetorical effect in changing this common Japanese view. A typical reaction in Japan is that it is grotesque to equate the incineration of whole cities with a focused attack on a military installation. Regardless of what position you might take on these matters, the key point to bear in mind is that most Japanese tend to regard the war as having been a strategic blunder but waged for a righteous cause. Furthermore, their country and its people were victims of military aggression. During the U.S. occupation of Japan from 1945-1952, various censorship rules effectively prevented any sustained public exploration or examination of the war. It should hardly be surprising, therefore, that general views of the Pacific War in the U.S. and Japan remain vastly different (#for example#) as we start the twenty-first century.
