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The Pacific War: China and Japan in WWII
(1941-1945)
Teacher Resource Guide
East Asia National Resource Center
By Kelly Hammond
The Triumph of the Militarists and the
Road to War After the invasion of Manchuria and its
withdrawal from the League of Nations in
1933, Japan was further isolated from the
international community. In 1936, Japan
signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with the
Nazis while continuing to secure their
interests on the mainland China. The
tensions between the Japanese and the
Chinese were running high since the
Mukden Incident and fighting broke out
on the morning of July 8, 1937 at the
Marco Polo Bridge. The Marco Polo Bridge
Incident, which we will explore in detail
below, marks the beginning of WWII in
Asia.
The Chinese army defending Marco Polo Bridge,
1937. Source: Chinafolio.com
The situation in Asia cannot be separated
from developments in Europe around the
same time. The outbreak of the war in
Europe in 1939 had a large impact on the
balance of power in the Pacific theater.
When Germany invaded Poland in 1939,
European powers were too preoccupied
with the events in Europe and could not
attend well to their colonies, especially
those far afield in the Pacific. When Hitler
conquered the Netherlands in May 1940,
Japan quickly took control over oil-rich
colonies in Southeast Asia in an attempt to
secure fossil fuels for their military
endeavours. Japan capitalized on
opportunities to seize colonial possessions
made available by Hitler’s war in Europe.
As Japan, Italy, and Germany entered the
Tripartite Pact in September 1940, the
United States also began to mobilize its
resources to resist them. The United
States felt threatened by the Tripartite
Pact and expanded their support to the
Nationalists in China who had been
fighting the Japanese since 1937.
The U.S. government froze Japanese
assets in the United States and revoked
Japan’s permit to buy U.S. oil. This
embargo meant that the Japanese could
only purchase one month’s supply of oil at
a time, making them fundamentally
vulnerable in the case of a full-scale
protracted war. It was under such
circumstances that the Japanese Army
strategists decided that war with America
would be inevitable. They believed that
launching pre-emptive blow on the United
States would buy Japan some time to get
its empire together in Asia. On December
5, 1941, the Japanese launched a pre-
emptive strike on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at
Pearl Harbor.
The Pacific War was a new kind of war; it
was a naval and an air war. The first trans-
Pacific flight had occurred nearly fifteen
years ago, and the war heavily relied on
the use of aircraft to cover the vast swaths
of land and ocean in the Pacific theater.
For this reason, a primary focus of
military strategy became securing and
destroying air force bases. As well, tiny
atolls, like Wake Island, became useful air
bases and gained completely new strategic
importance. By 1942, the tide had turned
in the Pacific and at the Battle of Midway
the United States had a decisive victory
that put Japan on the defensive for the
rest of the war. However, Japan was not
about to surrender easily. The Japanese
adopted the tactic known as “dig in and
die,” meaning that they would fight to the
last man in a battle. In 1944, as the
situation for Japan became direr, the
Japanese began to increase the number of
kamikaze missions where pilots were
“volun-told” to fly their planes or operate
submarines on suicide missions. By early
1945, the B-29 bombers and other
American aircrafts began large-scale
bombing campaigns on Japanese cities,
causing fires, panic, and the first thoughts
among the Japanese civilians that they
might lose the war.
Iwo Jima Memorial in Arlington, VA.
Source: U.S. Department of Defense
Keeping in mind the Japanese motivations
and justifications for imperial expansion
on the mainland is key to thinking about
how the war unfolded, especially in the
early years. First, Japan needed
resources—especially oil and food—to
sustain its imperial ambitions. Second, the
Japanese were very concerned about
Soviet expansion into Siberia and wished
to maintain Manchuria as a buffer against
the Soviets. Third, racism and militarism
cannot be underestimated as factors
contributing to the war. Throughout the
1930s, the Japanese saw themselves as the
leader among the Asian races and
imagined that it was their duty to protect
Asia from Western colonialism in
whatever ways possible.
Despite the Japanese takeover of
Manchuria, Chiang Kai-shek continued to
spend his political and military energies
on suppressing the Communists, until as
late as December 1936. Following the
Mukden Incident (see the previous
module on Republican China), the
Japanese saw that the League of Nations
would condemn them, so the Saito
Cabinet approved the conquest of major
strategic places in Manchuria and North
China, including Jehol, Rehe, Chengde,
and Shanghaiguan. On May 31, 1932,
Japan and China signed the Tanggu Truce,
which stipulated that Japan would retain
Jehol and Shanghaiguan, and that there
would be a demilitarized zone between the
Great Wall and the Beijing/Tianjin
corridor from which Chinese troops were
barred. This allowed the Japanese to get
closer to their ultimate goal, which was to
draw Chinese recognition of Manchuria.
For the Chinese, the Tanggu Truce ended
the Manchurian crisis in the immediate
sense and gave them some breathing time
to shift their focus to defeating the
Communists. Chiang Kai-shek always
claimed that once he firmly unified China
under his leadership, he would be able to
wage war against Japan on the mainland.
However, in December 1936, Chiang was
kidnapped in Xi’an by a former warlord.
This event in Xi’an, also known as the
Xi’an Incident, exposed disunity among
the Chinese leadership.
The Marco Polo Bridge Incident
The Marco Polo Bridge Incident began on
July 7, 1937. Chinese troops clashed with
Japanese troops, who were conducting
war exercises in the de-militarized area
outside of Beijing. When a Japanese
soldier was declared missing in the
morning following the night exercises, the
local Chinese officer barred the Japanese
from searching the walled city of Wanping.
Consequently, small scale fighting ensued.
At first, it was believed that a truce will
soon be achieved. It was in Japan’s best
interest at the time to defer war because
they had to worry about later engagement
against the Soviets or the Allies in Europe).
Nonetheless, the Konoe Cabinet took the
advice of the Kwantung Army and
approved the dispatch of five army
divisions to China. Although the Japanese
and Chinese commanders in Wanping had
already reached an agreement that could
have settled the dispute, the Konoe
Cabinet decided to send the troops and as
a result the war begun between Japan and
China. Between July 1937 and 1939, the
Japanese Army and Navy overran the
most important and heavily populated
regions of China, suffering few setbacks in
an essentially unbroken string of victories.
By mid-1939, Japan had conquered most
of the densely populated, urbanized
foreign trade-oriented parts of China that
had previously been the lifeline of the
Nationalists. Although Chinese leaders
blamed defeat on inferior armament and
equipment of Chinese army, Chiang Kai-
shek’s ineffective command practices,
factional splits in the Chinese military,
and the continued distrust between the
Communists and the Nationalists were
main contributing factors to Japan’s
victory.
The Marco Polo Bridge Incident.
Source: Cultural China
The Occupation of Shanghai
On August 7, 1937, fighting broke out in
Shanghai and the Japanese finally
captured the city in November 1937. After
six months since the war began, the
Japanese occupied the two most
important cities in China—Beijing and
Shanghai—and were on their way to
capture the Nationalist capital of Nanjing.
The Nationalists were opting for a full-
scale war with the Japanese rather than
negotiating with them. The Nationalists
could have offered the Japanese a
settlement in the north along with the
recognition of Manchukuo. This is what
the Japanese essentially wanted, but the
Nationalists considered such option as
humiliation. Unwilling to negotiate or to
acknowledge the military supremacy of
the Japanese army, Chiang Kai-shek sent
71 divisions of his elite German-trained
soldiers to Shanghai. Chiang’s army
experienced a decisive defeat. This
campaign in Shanghai once again showed
China’s limited ability to wage war against
Japan. With their control over a
significant number of Chinese cities, the
Japanese were able to easily occupy the
railway routes that were essential for
moving supplies and troops across the
mainland.
Nanjing and the Rape of Nanjing
In December 1937, Japanese troops
marched into Nanjing. As the Japanese
rapidly approached Nanjing at the end of
November, Chiang Kai-Shek and the
Nationalist government evacuated to
Wuhan. On December 13, 1937, Japanese
troops entered the undefended city and
killed approximately 200,000-300,000
civilians (according to most estimates).
Japanese troops entering Nanjing.
Source: The Memorial Hall of the Victims
This event is known in the West as the
Rape of Nanjing. These terror tactics
employed by the Japanese were meant to
intimidate the Chinese into submission.
However, such events only exacerbated
anti-Japanese sentiment among the local
Chinese, strengthening their resolve to
fight the Japanese. Chiang Kai-shek was
also hoping for foreign intervention after
the international community found out
about the atrocities in Nanjing. There
were many Western missionaries near
Nanjing who documented and publicized
these events.
Victims of the Nanjing Massacre.
Source: Murase Moriyasu
Furthermore, the Panay incident—when a
U.S. river gunboat responsible for
evacuating British and Americans from
Nanjing was sunk by a Japanese air
attack—forced Japan to apologize and pay
a large compensation to Great Britain and
the United States. However, the United
States, in its isolationist phase, and Great
Britain, preoccupied in Europe, accepted
the Japanese government’s apology and
the monetary compensation without any
further involvement in what was going on
in Nanjing. This was an indication to both
the Japanese and the Chinese that Asia
was low on American and British priorities,
especially in relation to affairs in Europe.
The Flooding of the Yellow River
In 1938, the Japanese pushed down to the
Yellow River with little Chinese opposition.
The Chinese units they faced either fled in
panic or disbanded into predatory
guerrilla bands, mostly because there was
no central command to tell them what to
do. Chiang Kai-shek thus became
extremely concerned about the Japanese
advance and ordered that the dikes of the
Yellow River be blown up to prevent the
Japanese from advancing. The course of
the river shifted and flooded much of
Henan, Anhui, and Jiangsu. As a result,
millions of people died from either the
flood itself or because the floods deprived
them of food and other resources. This
deliberate strategy to shift the course of
the Yellow River to stop the Japanese
advancement led to the death of millions
of Chinese. Such disregard for the lives of
peasants by Chiang’s Nationalists
contributed to winning the Communists
more popular support.
The Chinese Nationalist soldiers during the flood.
In the meantime, the Japanese could not
seize the Beijing-Hankou railways as a
result of the flooding of the Yellow River.
This meant that their attack on Wuhan
depended on an advance westward up the
Yangtze River. Breaking of the dikes of the
Yellow River had prevented the Japanese
from taking the Henan railway junction in
Zhengzhou. Historians thus call this event
the “largest act of environmental warfare
in history,” though the strategic value of
the flood has been questioned by many.
Japan’s advance towards Zhengzhou was
halted, but the Japanese took Wuhan in
October by attacking from a different
direction.
Stalemate after the capture of Wuhan
As the Japanese troops advanced towards
Wuhan, Chinese troops abandoned their
posts, leaving civilian populations
completely vulnerable to rape and murder
by the advancing Japanese army. By the
time the Japanese were approaching
Wuhan and millions of Chinese and
Japanese lives had been lost in the process,
Chiang Kai-shek packed again and fled to
Chongqing. Chiang’s abandonment of
Wuhan further demoralized the Chinese.
After the capture of Wuhan, the Japanese
began to focus on modernizing their
armed forces (as opposed to prioritizing
advancement deeper into China) because
they feared the possibility of war with the
Soviet Union.
The Flying Tigers Until the Americans got involved in the
war after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese ran
the show in the air. The Nationalists had
an air force of 500 planes and only about
150 of them were in operation. Chiang got
his wife, Soong May-Ling (known as
Madame Chiang Kai-shek) to use her
connections to American contacts to get
them pilots to fly the working planes. They
hired Claire L. Chennault, who was still
only a captain in the air force after twenty
years of service and lacked skills. Chiang
and Chennault trusted each other with
blind enthusiasm. Although they managed
to derive small successes, the balance of
attritional losses favored the Japanese
since the Chinese had lost their flying
school and their aircraft factory in
Hangzhou and Nanchang to the Japanese.
The American Volunteer Group (AVG)
also joined the Chinese air force along
with 100 planes that were bought in an
arrangement by Soong’s brother from the
United States. However, they were in
operation only for a few months because
the United States sent non-volunteer air
force officers to China when it entered the
war.
A Chinese guard is guiding one of the Flying
Tigers. Source: U.S. Army Archives
Although the group operated only for a
few months, it completely captivated the
imagination of the American public. The
AVG painted their planes to look like
sharks and tigers and were thus
nicknamed “the Flying Tigers.” Yet, the
problem was that their limited successes
created the false impression that given
material aid and technical advice, China
might become a major player in the war
against Japan.
1940 and the Burma Road
By February 1939, the Japanese had
control of the entire China coast. There
were only two supply lines to get materials
into China. Both were very tenuous and
treacherous. Supplies could only trickle
into China on the Burma Road or from
Russia through Xinjiang, which was
known as “Fly the Hump” over the
Himalayas. It was thus imperative that the
Nationalists keep southwest under their
control; the newly opened Burma Road
provided their only real access to the
outside world.
Map of the Burma Road.
Source: U.S. Army Center of Military History
However, when Japan entered Indo-China,
the British decided to close the Burma
Road. Given the circumstances in Europe,
Great Britain was not willing to fight the
Japanese. The Burma Road, closed in July
1940, was re-opened in October 1940
when the United States shifted its policy
from remaining neutral to supporting
Great Britain. Between July and October
1940, the Nationalists in China did not
have access to supplies and the situation
got quite dire for them.
Pearl Harbor and the Pacific War
On the morning of Sunday, December 5,
1941, Japan sent 356 planes to attack
Pearl Harbor. The mission sank four of the
eight U.S. battleships stationed in the
harbor and destroyed 200 planes on the
ground. Japan lost twenty-nine planes in
the attack. During the attack, the U.S.
carriers were not at port, so none of them
were destroyed, leaving a long-term
impact on the outcome of the war with
favorable consequences for the United
States. Two days after attacking Pearl
Harbor, Japan attacked the Philippines
and British Malaya (Burma). By 1942, the
Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, Burma
and Thailand were under Japanese control.
Pearl Harbor under Japanese attack.
Source: The History Place
The outcome of Pearl Harbor sowed the
seeds of Japanese defeat. The United
States had a far greater industrial capacity
than Japan and the Japanese attack on
U.S. soil strengthened American resolve to
enter the war. However, from Japan’s
point of view, it was a gamble they had to
take.
U.S. anti-Japan propaganda after the attack on
Pearl Harbor. Source: Mike King
The outbreak of WWII in Europe relieved
Japan of the Russian threat but also left
Japan with more Chinese territory than
what it could successfully occupy. The
attack on Pearl Harbor did not
immediately alter the stalemate that had
developed in Asia. Interestingly, when the
United States entered the war, it was
under the impression that the Chinese
were holding off the Japanese in the south.
However, it was a lack of objectives on the
part of the Japanese owing to their relative
indifference about the overwhelming
amount of territory that had come under
their control. It was not until the Ichigo
offensive (see below) in 1944 that the
Americans realized how incompetent the
Chinese army was, because during the
offensive the Japanese trampled the
Chinese. In reality, between 1941 and 1945,
the Japanese had more territory than they
knew what to do with in China and were
primarily worried about the Americans.
Gen. Joseph Stillwell.
Source: U.S. Department of Defense
In 1942, the U.S. government appointed
Joseph Stillwell, influential military officer,
as Major-General to lead operations in
China. By sending such an important
figure, the United States signaled to China
that the Americans were taking the
situation in Asia seriously. Stillwell
personally did not get along with Chiang
Kai-shek and often called Chiang the
“peanut,” even in official correspondence.
Previously in 1941, Roosevelt had signed
the Land-Lease allocations that became
Stillwell’s largest bargaining chip with the
Nationalists. This meant that the Chinese
could gain access to U.S. industrial and
military products through the re-opened
Burma Road. Yet, Stillwell was frequently
frustrated by Chiang and the corruption
among the Chinese generals. In 1942,
Stillwell sent 100,000 Chinese troops to
India to train properly with Land-Lease
equipment and also wished to reorganize
the army, but Chiang opposed.
The growing importance of the south of
China and their connections to Southeast
Asia became a strategic consideration in
the war. The region, known as the China-
Burma-India theater (or the CBI), was
initially low in terms of priority for Great
Britain and the United States. In the
meantime, Chiang tried to maintain his
legitimacy and status as China’s sole
legitimate leader and wished to prove this
to the international community.
Ichigo Offensive
In 1944, there was growing concern
among the Japanese that they were losing
the war. They thus implemented a plan
called the Ichigo Offensive. The
Nationalists quickly abandoned territories
they had defended staunchly from the
beginning of the war. On April 19, 1944,
the Japanese forces launched Operation
Ichigo with 400,000 men organized in
seventeen divisions, supported by 12,000
vehicles and 70,000 horses. The operation
had three major objectives: 1) to control
the entire length of the railroad between
Beijing and Hong Kong, 2) to link up the
forces in China and those in French
Indochina, and 3) to gain control of Allied
air fields in southern China. The Japanese
succeeded in achieving all three of their
goals. However, in late 1944, the U.S.
Pacific offensive succeeded and the
Japanese Navy lost, leaving Okinawa on
the horizon. This meant that the
Americans would not need to launch a
battle against Japan in China.
Yalta, Roosevelt, and Stalin
From left to right: Winston Churchill, Franklin D.
Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin.
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt met
with the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in
Tehran and had Stalin agree to enter the
war against Japan in the Pacific. After the
Germans lost in Europe, the United States
believed that the Soviet entrance would
ensure the Japanese defeat in north China.
This meant that the United States no
longer had to commit as much to a land
battle on mainland China, something that
the Americans wanted to avoid from the
beginning. Stalin was also interested in
regaining the former Russian possessions
in Port Arthur that they lost to the
Japanese earlier.
The end of the war came suddenly.
Following the atomic bombing of
Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, the Soviets
invaded Manchuria—as per their
agreement with Roosevelt in Yalta—and
destroyed Japan’s Kwantung Army in less
than a week. Nagasaki was bombed on
August 9, and Emperor Hirohito
announced Japan’s surrender on August
15.
Surrender of Japan.
Source: Naval Historical Center
After Germany’s surrender, the United
States had accorded Chiang Kai-shek the
right of the commander-in-chief in the
China theatre. With this right, Chiang was
allowed to designate the officers to whom
the commanders of Japanese formations
would surrender. The sudden end of the
war left the Russians in control of
Manchuria, and the Chinese communists
in control of south and west. Chiang
therefore ordered the Japanese to hold
their positions until they could surrender
to officers designated by Chiang himself,
and asked the United States to airlift his
troops north.
The Manhattan Project: Little Boy
and Fat Man
‘Little Boy’ and ‘Fat Man’ are the
codenames of the atomic bombs dropped
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively.
President Roosevelt died in April 1945 and
then Vice President Harry Truman
became the next U.S. President. Truman
was much more willing to use the atomic
bombs to end the war than Roosevelt had
been, and soon after he assumed the
presidency, Truman put a plan in action to
end the war using nuclear power.
Hiroshima after the bombing.
Source: Boston.com
Atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki.
On August 6, 1945, the Japanese city of
Hiroshima was bombed, killing around
60,000 people instantly. Three days later,
Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki
inflicting about the same level of
immediate devastation onto Nagasaki as
Little Boy did to Hiroshima. The Japanese
offered their unconditional surrender five
days later on August 14, 1945, bringing
WWII to an end (the war in Europe had
ended on May 8, 1945, with Germany’s
unconditional surrender).
The Impact of the War on
People in Asia
The war had a profound impact on the
Asia Pacific. First of all, Asian populations
were devastated: 2.5 million Japanese
died; 1.5 million Chinese soldiers died
along with tens of millions of Chinese
civilians; small Pacific islands suffered
grievously. The war also had a profound
impact on Asian Americans. The position
and status of Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos
and Asian Indians residing in the United
States improved because their mother
countries were U.S. allies, whereas the
Japanese were seen and portrayed as
enemies and interned in camps along the
west coast. During the war, more than
40,000 Japanese, along with 70,000
American citizens of Japanese descent
were moved to internment camps. In 1942,
Japanese were culled and removed from
their homes for relocation. The U.S.
government claimed that in some cases,
the relocation was for the protection of the
Japanese themselves.
Japanese relocation camps during WWII.
Although most of the Japanese Americans
living on the continental United States
were forced to live in camps during the
war, in Hawaii, there were simply too
many Japanese Americans, making such
relocation impossible. Also, more than
25,000 Japanese Americans joined the
U.S. army, mostly as interpreters and
translators. Famously, the One Hundredth
Battalion was an all-Japanese American
battalion from Hawaii that served in South
Africa and Italy. The battalion has 18,000
decoration and 3,000 purple hearts
among them. Their distinguished service
in the American Army did much to ease
the anti-Japanese discrimination that was
still prevalent at the end of the war.
Map of Imperial Japan in 1942.
The way the war unfolded in China cannot
be divorced from the global political
climate of the time. The international
climate did in many ways dictate the
direction and progress of the war. It is also
important to keep in mind that the
Europeans were quite happy to let the
Chinese and the Japanese fight it out on
the mainland and were not that interested
in the Pacific theater until the Americans
got involved and they began losing their
colonies to Japan.
Total war is a war in which a belligerent
engages in the complete mobilization of
fully available resources and population.
In the mid-nineteenth century, "total war"
was identified by scholars as a separate
class of warfare. In a total war, there is
less differentiation between combatants
and civilians than in other conflicts, and
sometimes no such differentiation at all,
as nearly every human resource, civilians
and soldiers alike, can be considered to be
part of the belligerent effort.
Japanese imperial propaganda.
Similar to the notion of total war, there is
the idea of “total empire,” which was
developed by Louise Young (see the
accompanying bibliography for more
information). In her book, Young explores
the social and cultural history of Japan’s
construction of Manchukuo as well as the
nature of Japanese imperialism. Young
focuses on the domestic impact of Japan’s
activities in Northeast China between 1931
and 1945, mostly looking at “metropolitan
effects” of empire building—how people at
home imagined and experienced the
empire they called Manchukuo. Contrary
to the conventional assumption that a few
overzealous army officers and bureaucrats
were responsible for Japan’s expansion,
Young finds that a variety of organizations
helped to mobilize popular support for
Manchukuo—the mass media, the
academy, chambers of commerce,
women’s organizations, youth groups, and
agricultural cooperatives—leading to
broad-based support among diverse
groups of Japanese. As the Japanese
empire was being built in Chinese
mainland, Young shows, an imagined
Manchukuo was emerging at home,
consisting of visions of a defensive lifeline,
a developing economy, and a settler’s
paradise.
Japanese imperial propaganda designed to
educate Japanese youth. Source: Po-ru.com
The question, then, is: when did “total war”
and “total empire” start on the mainland
of China? Was it 1931 or 1937? What
marked these changes? How did Japan’s
imperial ambitions in Asia play into the
development of the war? These are some
questions that are open to different
interpretations, but all of them are
essential in thinking about the ways in
which the war is remembered in Asia.
Useful Websites U.S. War Department Propaganda Video about Japan in 1945 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-lQ3BrzQO4 Information about the Pacific War hosted by the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005155 Documentary about China in WWII—mostly assembled from newsreels from the war http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qnhwd0vvj78 History Channel—China in WWII http://www.history.co.uk/explore-history/ww2/china.html Timeline of the Pacific War http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/pacificwar/timeline.htm The National Museum of the Pacific War site—focuses on U.S. involvement in the War http://www.pacificwarmuseum.org/OurMission_History.asp Documentary on YouTube—War in the Pacific http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QOlxW35I4k http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3paxkNa2WC0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XpoS7UpQmk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h--c8KNxMZY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMAVi4VDg1o Bibliography of the Second Sino-Japanese War from Oxford University Press http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199743292/obo-9780199743292-0141.xml Exhibit from the Hoover Archives of documents and artifacts from the China War
http://hoover.archives.gov/exhibits/China/Political%20Evolution/1932-49/ History Channel—the Nanjing Massacre with links to numerous videos http://www.history.com/topics/nanjing-massacre Yale University Project about the Nanjing Massacre http://www.library.yale.edu/div/Nanking/ Highly politicized site about the Nanjing Massacre ***WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES*** http://www.nanking-massacre.com/ First hand account of the Nanjing Massacre hosted by Fordham University http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/nanking.asp Full explaination of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident From Princeton University http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Marco_Polo_Bridge_Incident.html History Channel—Sino-Japanese War (with links to numerous great videos) http://www.history.co.uk/explore-history/ww2/sino-japanese-war.html Documentary on YouTube—WWII and Japan’s Pacific War http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo4BguQ9Mvk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e8bbjosbsY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU-TFcVoeZ4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5xW-HjHTSs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tlmgYjQPBQ Documentary on YouTube—Japan’s War Documentary 1937-1945 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxTzwQGQY0c
Columbia University East Asia for Educators—Japan and China, 1937-1945 http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/main_pop/kpct/kp_japanchina.htm U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian primary source documents from Pacific Theatre http://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945 History Channel—Japan and WWII http://www.history.co.uk/explore-history/ww2/imperial-japan.html Columbia University East Asia for Educators—Japan’s Quest for Power and WWII http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/japan_1900_power.htm
Suggestions for Further Reading
Alen, G. C. Appointment in Japan. London:
Althone Press, 1983.
Allen, Louis. The End of the War in Asia.
London: Hart-Davis, 1976.
Atkins, Taylor E. Primitive Selves: Koreans in
the Japanese Colonial Gaze, 1910-1945.
Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press, 2010.
Ballard, J.G. Empire in the Sun. New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1984.
Barker, Robert. Hiroshima Maidens: A Story
of Courage, Compassion, and Survival.
New York: Viking, 1985.
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