Pacific War

The Pacific War was a theatre of World War II including East Asia, Southeast Asia and Oceania, separate from World War II in Europe.

Western accounts generally consider the war to have started with the Pearl Harbor attack of December 1941. Chinese accounts date it from Japan's invasion of the Chinese heartland in July 1937 (see World War II in China) or even their expansion into Manchuria in 1931. The war ended with Japanese surrender in August 1945; an important factor was that the first, and so far the only, atomic bombs used in warfare were detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To a great extent the 1937-1945 Second Sino-Japanese War was part of the Pacific Theatre, the overall war of many nations against Imperial Japan. In some ways, though, it was unique; it started before the more general war, was a land and air war rather than largely naval and island-hopping, and was fought almost entirely by the Chinese themselves without much involvement of their allies. Also, all its battlegrounds and memorials are in China. Wikivoyage therefore has a separate World War II in China article.

Understand
Japan underwent major changes starting with the American Commodore Matthew Perry's "gunboat diplomacy" visit in 1853 which forced the government to sign a number of humiliating and disadvantageous treaties with Western powers. Japan reacted to this shock by quickly "modernizing" along Western lines, copying legal and institutional approaches and sending young Japanese to universities in Europe and the United States to bring home "Western knowledge". After that, Japan quickly became established as the first non-Western industrialized country and a major power in East Asia. The Meiji Restoration of 1868 broke the power of the shoguns who had been the real rulers for centuries (albeit always acting in the Emperor's name) and restored the Emperor to a central role. However, while the Emperor did regain political power and prestige, a "Meiji oligarchy" around him ran most of the daily affairs of state.

Japan began to expand in the late 19th century, annexing Okinawa in 1879, then defeating China in the 1894-95 First Sino-Japanese War, annexing Taiwan and the Liaodong Peninsula, and forcing China to give up its influence over its vassal state Korea. In the same period, the US became more active in the Pacific, taking over the Philippines in 1898 after a war with Spain, and annexing Hawaii and Guam. Various European powers also expanded their holdings or influence in the region.

The British, aiming to counter Russian influence, helped both China and Japan to build modern navies in the late 19th century. The French sank most of the Chinese fleet at the battle of Fuzhou in 1884, but the Japanese fleet did considerably better. Japan won a war against the Russian Empire in 1905, the first time in centuries that an Asian nation had won a war against a country mostly considered "Western". Indeed Russian Tsar Nicholas II had emphasized his "defender of European Christendom" image in racist war propaganda.

Once the Russians were out of their way, Japan annexed Korea outright in 1910. Japan, with the largest navy in the Pacific, was part of the victorious Allies during World War I, and was able to conquer the German colonies in the area. It would thus gain more territory from the defeated Central Powers following the end of that war in 1918, including the former German concessions in Shandong, China. Such actions by Japan would later result in the May Fourth Movement, which is further described in our article on early 20th century Chinese history.

There was a faction fight among the Japanese high command in the late 1930s; they all agreed that expanding the empire was a fine idea, but how? Should they: The Imperial Way Faction (皇道派), which supported an invasion of the Soviet Union, even tried a coup (the February 26 Incident) in 1936, but that failed. Striking north was tried, but in 1939 the Soviets gave Japanese forces a thorough thrashing at the Battle of Khalkhin Gol in Mongolia. After that, Japan concentrated on striking south; arguably, this was a catastrophic blunder. Among other effects, it allowed the Soviet Union to re-deploy their battle-hardened Siberian troops to the European front, which helped turn the tide of that war eventually leading to the Allied victory in Europe.
 * "Strike North", expand into Mongolia and Siberia and fight only the Soviets
 * "Strike South" fighting the US, the British Empire, and other colonial powers &mdash; the French, Dutch and Portuguese?

China
Japan acquired Taiwan and some territory in Manchuria after winning the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895. They expanded their influence there when they defeated the Russians in 1905; in particular they took over administration of the profitable Russian-built railway. After World War I they got the former German concessions in Shanghai and Shandong. Then in 1931 they staged the Mukden Incident; Japanese troops bombed part of the railway, the attack was blamed on Chinese forces, and that gave Japan a pretext to occupy Manchuria, setting up a puppet state called Manchukuo.

Japan invaded central China in 1937 and soon managed to occupy much of eastern China, including the then-capital Nanjing. This led to eight years of continuous fighting, until the Japanese surrender in 1945; see World War II in China.

Roughly half of the total Japanese ground forces were tied down in China throughout the war, including troops they had planned to use elsewhere. All the Allied land victories in the Pacific War were partly due to Chinese tenacity.

American, British and Dutch sanctions were imposed on Japan after the invasion of China; those, in particular restrictions on oil imports, were the main reason Japan gave for going to war with those nations. The Western powers also sent supplies to China via the Burma Road. The Soviet Union and America also sent volunteer air force units to support China, with the American one based in Yunnan known as the "Flying Tigers". The Chinese resistance against Japanese rule was also financially supported by many overseas Chinese.

Japan joins the world war
Meanwhile, World War II in Europe began with the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, and became more complex when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. "Yesterday, December 7th, 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."

- US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, December 8, 1941

The conflict became global in December 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, other US bases in the Pacific, the Philippines, and British possessions such as Hong Kong, Burma and Malaya. The United States and the entire British Empire immediately declared war on Japan, and Germany declared war on the US.

The Soviet Union did not declare war on Japan until after the end of the war in Europe, in May 1945. After the Japanese surrender, it reclaimed the territories that the Russian Empire had lost to Japan in the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War, and also took the Kuril Islands, which remain disputed between Russia and Japan to this day.

Japanese conquests
Early in the war, Japan invaded and occupied much of Southeast Asia and parts of Oceania; they even managed to bomb the city of Darwin in Australia. By the middle of 1943, virtually all of Southeast Asia had been conquered by Japan, with the colonial powers of the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Portugal and the United States all having suffered humiliating defeats at the hands of the Japanese. The Japanese took effective control of some areas without fighting. The Vichy government in France, essentially a German puppet regime, ordered French administrators in French Indochina (now Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia) to collaborate with Japan, and most did. Thailand, the only country in Southeast Asia not colonized by Western powers, remained nominally independent but was forced to dance to the Japanese tune. Japan was able to establish military bases in these countries and to freely move troops and supplies through them.

Japanese propaganda claimed they were driving out Western imperialists, leading an "Asia for Asians" movement, and this got them some support; countries such as India had both pro-Japanese and pro-Allied movements. Subhas Chandra Bose, the leader of the pro-Japanese Indian National Army (INA), is widely regarded as a national hero in India. In many areas, this was also divided along ethnic lines; in Malaya, at least initially, the Japanese were welcomed by many ethnic Malays and Indians, but opposed by most ethnic Chinese. In China both the Kuomintang and the Communists opposed Japan, but they were sometimes more interested in fighting each other. Everywhere, the local political movements were jockeying for control and trying to use the war to gain independence and/or domestic political influence for the time after the war.

Japanese rule in the occupied territories was brutal, and by the end of the war, the Japanese had lost the support of much of the local population who initially supported them (e.g. Burmese independence hero Aung San). In the occupied areas, Japanese troops engaged in mass rapes, massacres and pillaging, with the Nanjing Massacre of 1937-38 being the most notorious. Many women from China, Korea and other occupied areas were forced to serve as "comfort women", sex slaves in Japanese military brothels. The Japanese also performed inhumane experiments on captive locals from the occupied territories, the most famous being Unit 731 in Manchuria (listed below), though other similar units existed throughout the occupied territories. They also treated prisoners of war very badly; perhaps the most famous incidents were the "Bataan death march" and the use of POWs as slave labour for the Bridge on the River Kwai, but there were many others.

As retribution for their role in resisting Japanese rule in China, the ethnic Chinese &mdash; both in China and in Southeast Asia &mdash; were singled out for the harshest treatment; in all the occupied territories, they were rounded up for "screening" by the Japanese, and the unfortunate ones who were identified (often arbitrarily) as anti-Japanese were brought to remote locations and shot.

The tide turns
The Japanese suffered two important naval defeats at the hands of the Americans in mid-1942, the Battle of the Coral Sea (northeast of Australia) in May and the Battle of Midway (northwest of Hawaii) in June. The Coral Sea was close to a draw &mdash; each side lost one carrier and many aircraft &mdash; but can be counted as a US victory since the planned Japanese landings to take Port Moresby in New Guinea were prevented. Midway was a clear US victory, with many Japanese carriers sunk. Both battles killed a number of elite Japanese naval aviators, a catastrophe for Japanese forces.

These were the first naval battles in history fought mainly by aircraft carriers which never came within sight of each other. The Americans were intercepting Japanese communication, and had broken many Japanese codes, which was an advantage in both battles. At Midway they surprised the Japanese by destroying their aircraft carriers when the planes were away on a bombing raid.

Two land campaigns, both starting in mid-1942 and lasting until early 1943, also went badly for Japan. In what is now Papua New Guinea, a mainly Australian force gave them their first defeat on land at Milne Bay then, in a hard-fought campaign, drove them back along the Kokoda Track. Meanwhile the Americans took the island of Guadalcanal after a prolonged and intense fight, allowing them to defend their supply and communication lines to Australia and New Zealand, and to create a forward base for island-hopping toward Japan.

These Allied victories marked the turning point in the Pacific War.

After that the ANZACs (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) continued the New Guinea campaign and invaded the Solomon Islands, while the British re-took Burma with the help of the Chinese, and reopened the Burma Road to supply Chinese forces. The Japanese had spread their forces too thinly in China, and the Chinese were able to counterattack and reclaim some of the occupied territories. The Americans re-took the Philippines and captured a series of islands across the Pacific, including some like Guam and Wake Island that Japan had taken from them in the first months of the war.

At sea, Japan was defeated repeatedly by the Americans, with some Commonwealth help. The Battle of Leyte Gulf was the largest naval battle of the war; it took place during the invasion of the Philippines, and was a major Allied victory.

End of the war
When the Americans took the Mariana Islands (including Saipan and Guam) in 1944, the ground fighting was intense with heavy casualties on both sides. However the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot" saw over 550 Japanese aircraft destroyed, while America only lost about 120 aircraft. This was a disaster for the Japanese, who were already running short of both planes and pilots.

Air bases in the Marianas allowed the US to directly attack Japan with its long-range B-29 bombers; there were devastating fire bombing raids on many Japanese cities, including a huge one against Tokyo. The atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by B-29s from Tinian.

In early 1945 the US won fierce battles in Okinawa and Iwo Jima and occupied those islands, putting them in position to attack the Japanese home islands with shorter-range aircraft or to invade. Having by then won the naval part of the war, they also bombarded Japanese cities with their ships. Japan tried desperation tactics such as sending kamikaze (translates as "spirit wind", named after typhoons that sank the invading Mongol fleet in the 13th century) pilots on suicide missions to crash planes full of explosives into American ships, but even that did not make a large difference.

The invasion never took place. The Americans dropped the first (and to date only) atomic bombs to be used in actual combat on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, followed by Nagasaki on 9 August 1945; on the same day the Soviet Union invaded Manchuria. Japan surrendered unconditionally to the Allies on 15 August 1945, bringing World War II to an end.

Aftermath
Following the surrender, Japan was occupied by the Americans and forced to give up all its colonies. While the Emperor remained on his throne, many political and military leaders were indicted in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, and many were sentenced to death. The Americans also imposed a new pacifist constitution on Japan, forbidding it from establishing a military, and turning it into a democratic constitutional monarchy. However, when the Cold War began, the American occupiers established the National Police Reserve, a paramilitary organization that would later develop into the Japan Self-Defense Forces, the de facto military of the country.

Taiwan and Manchuria were returned to China, though the Chinese Civil War would resume following the Japanese surrender, eventually resulting in victory for the Communists in the mainland, and the Nationalists being forced to retreat to Taiwan, which continues to be governed separately to this day. Korea regained its independence, but would be split into communist North Korea and capitalist South Korea, leading up to the Korean War. The Americans would eventually leave mainland Japan in 1952, though the American military continues to maintain several bases in different parts of the country. Okinawa was only returned to Japan in 1972, though the United States continues to maintain a strong military presence there.

The Western colonial powers also got their colonies back, but the war had galvanised many nationalist movements, which were to come of age in the years to come and eventually lead to the independence of the colonies. The first was the Philippines, where American rule ended in 1946; the largest was the end of the British Raj in 1947, which became the modern countries of India, Pakistan and later Bangladesh. The Indochina Wars were a brutal example of lingering national and ideological conflict in Asia. Hong Kong and Macau would eventually be given back to China in the 1990s but part of the agreement between China and the former colonial powers stipulates a "one country two systems" arrangement that makes both act like independent countries in some regards.

A few Japanese soldiers, isolated in various jungles, did not know the war had ended and fought on. The last two surrendered in 1974, one on the Philippine island of Lubang and the other on Indonesia's Morotai Island. Two Japanese soldiers would join communist guerrillas in Malaya and Thailand after the end of the war, and only surrendered in 1989 after the end of the communist insurgency.

Sites
Many places that were sites of battles, atrocities or other wartime activities can be visited. There are also many museums with exhibits wholly or partly related to this war.

Australia
Australia and New Zealand declared war on Germany in 1939 shortly after the UK did, and fought for the Allies in Europe and North Africa. As the Japanese attacked American and British territory in the Pacific, most of these troops were relocated to the Pacific theatre.

Canada
Canadian troops were mostly active in the European theatre, though they also fought in the Battle of Hong Kong as part of the British forces.

China
For sites in Mainland China, see World War II in China. For historical reasons, sites in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan are listed separately on this page. This does not represent an endorsement of any political position.

India
India was for the most part spared the horrors of World War II, though Indian troops were used by the British military for their war efforts elsewhere, and eastern India was used as a staging point for Allied troops fighting in Burma. The Japanese had attempted to invade India through Imphal and Kohima in 1944 from then Japanese-occupied Burma, with help from the Indian National Army (INA), a pro-Japanese Indian independence movement. However, the combined British and Indian forces were successful in repelling the Japanese attacks, forcing the Japanese into a retreat by July 1944. World War II would also be a major cause of the Bengal Famine in 1943, as the British diverted nearly all the food to support their war effort in Europe and left next to nothing for the Bengalis.

Singapore
As the headquarters of the British forces in Malaya, there are numerous World War II sites scattered throughout Singapore, including several abandoned pillboxes and coastal gun batteries, as well as numerous beaches where the ethnic Chinese were brought to be shot by the Japanese in the Sook Ching Massacre. We cover a selection of some of the more important sites here.

Pacific Ocean




South Korea
Korea was a Japanese colony from 1910-1945, and many Korean men were drafted into the Japanese military. The Japanese had subjected Korea to a brutal occupation, in which the Korean language and culture were vigorously suppressed, and numerous Koreans were subject to live human experimentations without anaesthetic. Perhaps most notoriously, many Korean women were forced to become "comfort women"; sex slaves in Japanese military brothels.

Taiwan
Taiwan was a Japanese colony from the end of the first Sino-Japanese war in 1895 until 1945, and many Taiwanese were enlisted into the Japanese military. Unlike in other Asian countries, the Taiwanese generally have positive views of Japanese colonial rule, and regard its legacy as an integral part of their national and cultural identity, though there are exceptions. Nevertheless, massacres of both ethnic Chinese and Aboriginal people occurred throughout the occupation. Although not as well-known as their Korean counterparts, numerous Taiwanese women were also forced to serve as "comfort women".

The last Japanese holdout to be found alive was Attun Palalin, better known by his Japanese name Teruo Nakamura, an indigenous Taiwanese of Amis ethnicity who was enlisted as a private into one of the Japanese military's colonial units. He was repatriated to Taiwan following his discovery in 1974 on the island of Morotai, Indonesia, and died of lung cancer in 1979.

United States

 * The at Arlington, Virginia, depicts the famous scene of the raising of the (American) flag on Iwo Jima, whose history is told by the movie Flags of our Fathers directed by Clint Eastwood. One of the soldiers involved, Ira Hayes, is commemorated in a fine song by Johnny Cash.

A number of sites in the US commemorate the internment of Japanese-Americans during the war.



Respect
While few living people remember the war, the countries involved have not always found reconciliation. In particular, the relationships between Japan and its neighbors China and South Korea are still tense today. Outside Japan and Taiwan, you should avoid displaying the Rising Sun Flag in East and Southeast Asia, as that would be the equivalent of displaying the Nazi flag in the West.