In the previous post, in the broadest of terms, we traced the relationship of China (and by extension Korea) and Japan from pre-history up to the 17th century and the beginning of the Edo period of Japanese history. Also known as the Tokugawa period, this was a period in Japan’s history which experienced prolonged peace and stability, urbanization, economic growth, and expansion of the arts and culture. During this period (1601-1868) the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional daimyo, or feudal lords.
The shogunate believed that the source of the previous era’s instability was the militarism and expansionism of Daimyo Hideyoshi, exacerbated by the dual effect of European traders and Christianity – most notably Portugal and Catholicism. Japan’s governance was dominated by regional daimyō who were rulers/war lords of regions (domains) of Japan. The daimyō discovered that direct trade with the Portuguese increased their wealth and power, even more so if the daimyō directed the people of the domain to accept Christianity. As a result, the traditional Shinto religion was weakened and, in some cases, virtually disappeared, especially among the poor and peasants.
As a result, the Tokugawa Shogunate began to implement policies designed to limit the access of the regional daimyō to foreign trade. The collection of policies issued between 1633 and 1639 are known today as Sakoku which essentially translates as the “locking of the country.” The name was a description coined in a later period. In their own day they were known as the “maritime restrictions.” There were several issues that gave rise to these policies:
The need for control and stability: the Shogunate wanted to prevent powerful regional lords (daimyo) from gaining wealth and power through foreign trade, which could challenge the central government’s control.
Elimination of European colonial influence: to remove the colonial ambitions of Spain and Portugal, who were perceived as threats while at the same time restrict Dutch trade to Nagasaki
Fear of Christianity: the Tokugawa Shogunate viewed Christianity as a subversive force that threatened the social order and the Shogun’s authority, leading to the persecution of Christians and expulsion of missionaries. The advantage of the Dutch trading relationship is that the Dutch Trading companies had no interest in evangelization.
Of interest were restrictions on Japanese citizens. The 1633 edict prohibited any Japanese citizen who had lived abroad for 5 years or more from ever returning to Japan. In 1638, the prohibition was expanded to exclude any Japanese citizen who had ever resided abroad for any amount of time.
During the implementation of the policies, the Shimabara Revolt gave an added incentive to further expand the restriction so as to preserve Tokugawa supremacy, enforce a rigid social structure, and ensure internal peace.
Shimabara Revolt
There was one major disturbance to the relative peace of the Edo period: the Shimabara Revolt. The daimyō of the Shimabara Domain levied incredibly high taxes on the people in order to build Shimabara Castle and other regal endeavors. The daimyō was very anti-Christian, a faith popular among the poor, because he believed it was destructive of the social order. There were strict laws in the Domain prohibiting Christianity which was actively persecuted. In December 1637, an alliance of local rōnin and mostly Catholic peasants rebelled against the Tokugawa shogunate due to discontent over the daimyō policies. The Tokugawa shogunate sent a force of over 125,000 troops supported by the Dutch to suppress the rebels who were defeated.
After the rebellion’s end, the shogunate forces executed an estimated 37,000 rebels and sympathizers as punishment. The daimyō, whose policies had fomented the revolt, was executed. The shogunate suspected that European Catholics had been involved in spreading the rebellion. As a result, the Portuguese traders were driven out of the country, an existing ban on Christian religion was strongly enforced, and an already ongoing policy of national seclusion was made stricter by 1639. Christianity in Japan survived only by going underground.
Sakoku … sort of…
Japan highly regulated its borders to most foreigners from 1639 until the mid-1850s. This isolation, enforced by banning most foreigners from entering and Japanese from leaving, lasted over 200 years until American “gunboat diplomacy” forced Japan to change policies, leading to the Meiji Restoration and modernization. In the retelling of the event, the myth grew that Admiral Perry’s sailing into Tokyo Bay forcibly opened Japan. Japan was “closed” to economic trade with the U.S., but Japan was never “closed.”
Japan was not “closed” under the sakoku policy. There was extensive trade with China through the port of Nagasaki, in the far west of Japan, that included a residential area for the Chinese. As well there were trade and diplomatic missions received from Korea. On a smaller scale there was also trade with the people of Hokkaido (in modern times the northernmost home island of Japan, then a separate Aniu people.) There was also trade with the Ryūkyū Kingdom whose major island is Okinawa. The only European contact permitted was the Dutch enclave on Dejima Island in Nagasaki harbor. Western scientific, technical and medical innovations flowed into Japan through Rangaku (“Dutch learning”). In this way Japan was still open to the developments in Europe of science and other topics.
Natural Isolation
Japan was “isolated” in ways that were natural to its context. It is an island nation whose closest neighbors, China and Korea, lived on the other side of the “Sea of Japan,” a body of water known by the Koreans as the “East Sea” and by the Chinese as the “Whale Sea.” It is a body of water which is often turbulent and stormy and thus naturally limits movement and trade between Japan and its mainland neighbors.
In addition to the maritime isolation, the topology of Japan contains mountain ranges that separate the eastern and western parts of Japan. This limited movement and contact between domains naturally led to a variety of dialects. By the 17th-century Japan had a variety of dialects (hōgen), with significant differences between eastern and western regions, and the Edo (Tokyo) dialect gaining influence over the traditional Kansai (Kyoto) standard during the Edo Era. The relative stability of the Tokugawa era, coupled with restrictions on movement between domains, allowed regional dialects to flourish and diverge further.
Japan was also “isolated” by language from its closest neighbors. Japanese and Korean languages are typologically similar (how the language works) and share loanwords from Chinese, but they aren’t genetically related to Chinese or necessarily each other. A whimsical description is that they are more like cousins who grew up in different houses but borrowed furniture from the same rich relative (China).
We will continue this look into Japan’s “isolation” period in our next post when the Americans arrive in the Western Pacific.
Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archives.
At the end of the previous post, a question was posited: “How did the currents of history bring the U.S. and Japan to this point in history when sanctions and an embargo were the final domino that moved the flames of war to become the firestorm that was the Asia-Pacific War from December 1941 until September 1945?” There is a lot of history upstream of the 1930s and 1940s to consider, but when one reads widely about the period, one recurring topic is China. Japan seemed to be possessed by an inexorable attraction for China. Look at a modern map of China and compare it to a map of East Asia in 1940. Japan occupies all of Manchuria (while trying to pass it off as the independent nation of Manchukuo), has encroached southward into what the Japanese called “mainland China” or simply “China.” Japan also controls virtually every major port along the South China Sea, East China Sea and the Yellow Sea. Meanwhile in the interior of China, Japan controlled vast areas to the Northeast and set up collaborationist regimes, with the Nationalist (KMT) government under Chiang Kai-shek and a loose affiliation of local war lords retreating to the interior and the Communists fighting from their bases to the Northwest. It created an incredibly complex military and political landscape.
If the Japanese were interested in securing the flanks of their advance to the oil and resource rich areas to the south, it would seem diplomatic means and mutually benefiting treaties and agreement would be more efficient and economical. But when one looks at the arc of history between the two nations it tells the tale of an apprentice who grows up and seeks to dominate the one who was once master. And so, in this post, I will attempt to paint with the broadest of strokes and cover 2,000 years of history between the two nations. There will be gaps, a lack of historical details, and a rash of broad assertions trying to summarize periods of the history. But the purpose is to place the 20th century conflict in a large current of regional and world history.
In the beginning
The Japanese archipelago was largely inhabited by the Jōmon people who were hunter-gatherers. During the 1st millennium BC, the Yayoi people migrated to Japan and quickly became dominant. There are different theories as to their origin: Korea or different parts of China, but what is clear is that they brought rice farming with them, beginning a slow transition from a hunter-gathering period to an agrarian society. If one took a snapshot of Japan in the 3rd century (AD), it would largely be an agrarian society. The people (known variously as Wajin or Yamoto) were marked by settled farming (largely rice), metal tools and metallurgy learned from mainland Asia, the development of fortified villages, early social stratification where accumulation of wealth through land ownership and grain storage fostered social hierarchy, and all the elements for later more developed social and political structures. Over time, as with most cultures, the politics moved from clans to chiefdoms, but without centralized government. But by 300 AD Japan experienced the rise of powerful regional leaders. The history of this period is thin, but the legends are plentiful.
The first recorded encounters, taken from Chinese dynastic histories, describe Japan (Wa) as a group of polities engaged in tribute and trade. It was clear that China was in the dominant position as the Japanese leaders sent tribute missions to Chinese courts to gain prestige, acquire recognized titles, and especially to gain access to advanced technology and knowledge. The Chinese character 倭 denoted the nation and the people of Japan. It translated to “dwarf” – which as you can imagine did not find favor with Japan who replaced it with 和 “harmony, peace, balance”.
Nonetheless, unwanted moniker aside, Japan gained writing (Chinese characters), bronze and iron technologies, and the introduction of Confucian ethical ideas. In the mix and middle of all this It is noteworthy that Baekje (one of the ancient three kingdoms that form Korea) often acted as a main intermediary. Its geographical location allowed it to trade with China and Japan and made it the natural route from Japan to the heart of China. Baekje’s contribution to Japanese culture is notable in pottery and Buddhism.
In what is known as the Yamato and Asuka Periods (6th–7th centuries) there was an active effort on the part of the Japanese to learn Chinese models of statecraft. Japan adopted and adapted centralized bureaucracy, legal codes and a calendar system. Students were sent to study administration, law, architecture, and religion but one can see the first movements of the apprentice beginning to rise. Records reveal correspondence asserting Japan’s dignity and implying an equality with the Chinese Emperor.
Part of that insistence is likely related to the idea of the Japanese Emperor. Legend holds that the first was Emperor Jimmu believed to have been born around 711 BC on the island of Kyūshū. He is said to be a descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu. Most modern scholars regard Jimmu and the nine first emperors as mythical. Emperor Sujin, the 10th emperor, may have been a real historical figure, but even then the reach and reign of control was likely very regional and not across the entire archipelago.
In any case, in the early 8th century, known as the Nara period, was the age when the Emperor began to exert control. Administrative, civil and criminal codes were introduced (Ritsuryō), the land was organized into Provinces and Districts, and a caste system was introduced. The city Nara was the first urban population center. It had 200,000 residents – approximately 7% of the nation. The Nara period was the high point of Chinese influence. At this point Japan was fully embedded in the East Asian order with all traces of subordination to China largely gone.
By 894 AD, Japan stopped official missions to China. The Chinese Tang dynasty was greatly diminished, the Japanese were confident in their own institutions, and Chinese knowledge was considered acquired and was beginning to be considered “classical” rather than current/modern. For the next 800 years or so, until the late 16th or early 17th centuries, the relationship was largely trade with occasional moments of diplomacy when one side or the other wanted something. When China was in the ascendancy, it required Japan to become a tribute state in order to trade. When Japan was in the ascendancy, it left the tribute status. But in the big picture of East Asia, for thousands of years, China had been the intellectual, economic, military, and political center of East Asia.
During the Edo Period, things changed – and not for the better. On the Korean peninsula an internal reconfiguration of power led the Korean Emperor to become a tribute state to China – but as the most favored state – now a virtual part of China. Meanwhile, by the last decade of the 16th century, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the most preeminent daimyo, had unified all of Japan, bringing about a period of peace. Hideyoshi was not emperor or part of the imperial lineage (and that is a complicated story, best left to others) but he was a “man with a plan.” He planned to invade China, in effect attempting to claim for Japan the role traditionally played by China as the center of the East Asian international order. As relayed to Jesuit missionaries, Hideyoshi spoke not only of his desire to invade China, but also subjugating the smaller neighbouring states of the Ryukyu Islands (Okinawa), Formosa (Taiwan), and the Philippines.
This was the first evidence (I found) of a Japanese vision of supreme leadership of East Asia. If the metaphor of apprentice-master once had meaning, that was no longer true. From this point in history, China and Japan are dedicated rivals.
Hideyoshi’s first international action was to invade Korea. He tried to solicit the assistance of Portugal, to no avail. Nonetheless he started what became known as the Imjin War, a series of two Japanese invasions of Korea. The first was in 1592 with a brief truce in 1596, and a second invasion in 1597. The conflict ended in 1598 with the withdrawal of Japanese forces from the Korean Peninsula after a military stalemate in Korea’s southern provinces. This period is interesting in that it sets a pattern: unified government, warrior culture dominated society (samurai), a reasonable naval force was available, and a vision of regional leadership as ordained by the gods – and in the background was the Imperial line, descendents of the sun goddess Amaterasu.
While still in the Edo Period, now post-1600, Japan stabilized internally during the Tokugawa shogunate. This ended the period of expansionism, but also restricted diplomacy. China remained a cultural source but no longer considered politically superior. The Tokugawa shogun initiated policies designed to limit the access of the word to Japan. The collection of policies issued between 1633 and 1639 are known today as Sakoku which essentially translates as the “locking of the country.”
And so remained the nation until Admiral Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay.
Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archives. Top image generated by WordPress AI on Jan-526
Depending on how one phrases and frames the question, one will arrive at different and often conflicting conclusions. While writing and posting the series on World War II in the Pacific (late August – early November, 2025) one of the recurring comments was that the United States started the conflict with its complete oil embargo on Japan on August 1, 1941. This followed the freezing of Japanese financial assets held in the United States during July 1941. Some folks asserted that those two actions were a blockade, which by international agreement is an act of war – hence the U.S. started the war.
There are two problems with that position. The first problem is that there is an important difference between a blockade and an embargo. A naval blockade is a military tactic where a belligerent power uses its navy to cut off a coastline or port, preventing all ships (enemy and neutral) from entering or leaving the nation under blockade. The intention is to stop supplies, trade, and communication, effectively starving the enemy’s war effort or economy. And yes, a blockade is indeed a recognized act of war under international law; an embargo is specifically excluded as an act of war.
In 1941 there were no U.S. naval forces operating in or around Japan. There were no restrictions on marine traffic in the western Pacific; Japan’s economic activities were unhindered for any nation that wished to trade with Japan. They were however finding that list of willing trading partners growing ever shorter given Japan’s aggressive expansion policies and military actions in the region.
And that leads us to the second problem. It is a completely myopic view to think war in the Pacific began on December 7, 1941. War in the Asia Pacific region was more than four years old with Japan being the provocateur and initiating agent in every instance. It is clear that the Asia Pacific War started in 1937 when the imperial ambitions of the nation of Japan launched military action against the nation of China, a conflict that some argue had started and been simmering since 1931. In previous posts we traced the rise of Japanese militarism that served as the agent of their colonial ambitions.
To be sure, the oil embargo was one of the dominoes in the chain. A few dominoes later, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, bringing the United States into the war as an active belligerent. The series to date followed the dominoes from the attack on the Hawaiian island of Oahu to the Japanese surrender in September 1945 – with few looks to events before that fateful day.
In case you are wondering about the phrase “the attack on…Oahu” it is good to remember that other installations were hit hard and suffered heavy casualties: Hickam Field, Wheeler Field, Bellows Field, Kaneohe Bay, and Schofield Barracks.
Long before December 1941, dominoes began to fall across the Asia Pacific region. China wasn’t the only nation that had been subjected to Japanese expansion. Japan had annexed Korea in 1910, taken over Manchuria in 1931 (setting up the puppet state of Manchukuo – that no nation recognized), and these are just two of the territories Japanese expansion had acquired by military means. Well prior to 1941, other nations included the Kingdom of Ryukyu (including Okinawa), Taiwan and the Penghu Islands, South Sakhalin, Saipan and Tinian in the Mariana Islands, the Marshall Islands, and the Caroline Islands. The following map shows the Asia Pacific region in September 1939 at the outbreak of war in Europe.
If the Dutch (Netherlands) East Indies and their oil field are the critical domino, you can see why French Indochina (Vietnam) was essential to the Japanese in order to secure and safeguard merchant shipping from the East Indies to Japan.. However, there are still two barriers in the way: (1) the U.S. Territory of the Philippines and (2) the British presence in Malaya, notably the major British port of Singapore. These two represented bases of operation that could interdict any marine traffic in the South China Sea and choke off critical supplies such as oil, rubber, and metals.
Without elaborating, let me simply say that there was great rivalry between the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) and the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN). This rivalry had existed since before the start of the 20th century, ebbing and flowing in intensity. When the 1939 IJA forays into the border areas of Soviet controlled Mongolia and Siberia (the Nomohan Incident) were easily repulsed, Japanese attention and planning turned to the Southeastern Asia region – which had always been the strategic priority in the eyes of the IJN.
If Korea and Manchuria served as a food basket and new homesteads for an exploding Japanese home population, then Java, Malay, Borneo and other nations were seen as sources rich in oil, rubber, and other materials needed for Japan’s military-industrial complex. There was a strong sentiment among Japanese leaders that their national destiny was to be the rightful leader of the “Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.” It was an ideology that was part of the education system and propaganda from the 1920s onward. The ideology was promoted as a means to free other Asian nations from the colonial rule of European nations, but in reality it was to establish themselves as the new colonial master. The underlying motivations for their territorial expansion was explored in a previous post, The Eight Corners of the World. In any case, the 20th century saw Japan transform itself from an island nation to an Asian Imperial Empire founded on military action.
Japan signed the Tripartite Pact on September 27, 1940, in Berlin, forming a military alliance with Germany and Italy as the primary Axis powers in World War II. The reasons were to deter the United States from intervening in Japan’s expansion in Asia, formalize its alliance with Germany and Italy, and establish distinct spheres of influence (Europe for Germany/Italy, Greater East Asia for Japan) for a new world order, all while securing mutual defense against potential attacks, especially from the U.S. and the Soviet Union (which Germany invaded on June 22, 1941)
At this point in time, France was fully occupied by German forces with the south of France (Vichy France) as a puppet government of the Nazis. In an arrangement with the Vichy government, Japan occupied the region of modern-day North Vietnam (French Indochina) starting in September 1940. At the same time Japanese troops began to encroach into “South Vietnam” (also part of French Indochina). By July 1941 Japan expanded its occupation to include all of South Vietnam. Another key domino in the chain fell.
The 1941 occupation of French Indochina was a tactical and strategic military move by the Japanese to position themselves to secure the Dutch East Indies oil fields and to control the sea lanes from those fields to the home islands for merchant shipping. The Japanese viewed the Dutch colonies as vulnerable since Germany had occupied Holland in May 1940. Although Holland was occupied the Dutch army, navy and air forces had not surrendered and were able and willing to defend its colonies and the oil resources. As well, the British military held strongholds in Singapore and Malaysia, bases from which to assist the Dutch, as well as to keep open Burma Road and its supply line to the Chinese fighting the Japanese invaders – and threaten the sea lanes to Japan.
The August 1941 oil embargo did not start the war. The war in the Asia-Pacific region was already underway. One only needed to ask the Chinese, Vietnamese and Mongolians, as well as the Koreans. The embargo was a calculated political action in reaction to the occupation of French Indochina. It was a political action whose hope was to deter Japan from further expansion. Nonetheless, one can ask:
What was the background, purpose, and hope as regards the August 1941 oil embargo from the United States point of view?
The U.S. understood the goals for Japan southwest incursion, but did the U.S. truly understand the underlying motivations?
Was the embargo the decisive reason why Japan attacked Pearl Harbor or just more proximate than a collection of other reasons?
Was the embargo a virtual declaration of war hoping to draw Japan to military action so that the U.S. could enter the war in Europe?
Clearly the December 1941 and early 1942 “blitzkrieg” across Southeast Asia, the Southwest Pacific, and Central Pacific regions accomplished the mission of (a) capturing the resource rich nations and (b) setting a “line of defense” west of Hawaii – why did the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor? Couldn’t they just have left the sleeping giant alone?
But all of the above only leads to a larger question: how did the currents of history bring the U.S. and Japan to this point in history when sanctions and an embargo were the final domino that moved the flames of war to become the firestorm that was the Asia-Pacific War from December 1941 until September 1945? It is not just an interesting question in history. Consider the terms “sanctions”, “embargo”, “frozen financial assets” and others that are current in our news here in 2026. Are there lessons to learn from history?
Stay tuned.
Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archives.
Last year (2025) I explored World War II in the Pacific in order to consider the moral framework of the war considering the counter-factual that no atomic weaponry was available. If you are interested in the series you can read (or review) it here. In the course of reading and research I came across lots of other interesting information. Some was related to specific campaigns, others to strategy, and others still to a range of topics large and small. But there were also questions.
Some of the questions I received most often was allocating some share of the blame for U.S. involvement in the already on-going Asia-Pacific War by its support and aid to China, freezing of Japanese financial assets, the oil embargo of August 1941 or negotiating in less-than-good faith. In some cases, the question was framed to imply that the U.S. wanted the Japanese to initiate military action to give the United States a reason to enter the war in Europe.
Starting tomorrow, a related series begins that explores the currents and eddies of history that brought Japan its wars with China (1894-1895 and 1937-1945), with Russia (1904-1905), the annexation of Korea, Manchuria and French Indochina, and to wider war in the Pacific that stretched from Hawaii to Australia and nations in between, notably the Philippines, Malay, Borneo and the Dutch East Indies.
Perhaps the question that all of this raises is this: how did Japan think it could win such a war? Did its strategic and tactical planning understand the classic Clausewitz dilemma: a nation can be easy to conquer but extremely difficult to hold. Was Japan able to hold on to their gains and fight a war of attrition? We know the answer to the last question: no. But did Japan have other options it believed were viable?
The submarine Sculpin (SS-191) was heavily damaged by the Japanese destroyer Yamagumo north of Truk in the Caroline Islands. Though he has time to escape the boat before it sinks, Captain John P. Cromwell, the commander of the submarine squadron of which Sculpin was a part, chose to go down with the boat rather than face interrogation during his capture that might force him to reveal his knowledge of U.S. Central Pacific strategy and plans.
Captain Cromwell had detailed knowledge of Operation Galvanic (Tarawa), Operation Hailstone *Truk and the Gilbert and Marshall Islands) and the fact that the U.S. had broken the Imperial Japanese Navy coded message traffic (JN-25) more broadly known as ULTRA.
Sculpin was on her ninth war patrol. After engaging a convoy, she was subjected to multiple depth-charge attacks. The damage caused her to surface where she engaged Yamagumo with her deck guns – to no avail. With her captain killed in action as well as others, the surviving senior officer ordered Sculpin abandoned and scuttled. Before he opened the vents, he informed Captain Cromwell. Because of his top secret knowledge, he elected to go down with submarine.
For Captain Cromwell’s selfless sacrifice, he received a posthumous Medal of Honor.
The 42 survivors were picked up by Yamagumo and were POWs for the remainder of the was, liberated in September 1945. Sadly, while being transported to Japan, 21 of the sailors were lost when the cargo ship carrying them was sunk by the USS Sailfish. The survivors were used as slave labor in the Ashio Copper mines in Japan.
Over the course of the last few months, a lot of you have let me know that you regularly forward the series of emails to friends, relatives and interested parties. Thank you! Yesterday I received an email letting me know that one of the friends – a US Naval Academy graduate from the Class of 1959 – let them know that his father, a Lt. Colonel in the US Marine Corp – had been assigned post-war duty on the island of Chichijima. Curiosity kicked in.
Chichijima is the largest and most populous of the Bonin Islands. Chichijima is located in the Pacific Ocean about 620 mi south of central Tokyo and 150 mi north of Iwo Jima. The island is only 9 sq. miles in size. It is the largest of the Bonin Islands and has traditionally (and still today) the seat of local government. The name “Chichijima” means “Father island.”
The Early Years. The island shows some evidence of early inhabitants and various explorers sighted the island (Dutch in 1639; English, Prussians and Russians in the 1820s ) but the “discovery” of the island was when a Japanese merchant shipwrecked there in 1669. The crew eventually repaired the ship 72 days later and sailed home to Japan but reported the unknown island. In May 1675 a specially commissioned expedition located the island, came ashore, collected samples of plants and animals, created preliminary charts and maps, and then returned home to Japan. The island was claimed by Japan, but since Japan was in full isolation, it was more pomp and ceremony since the island remained uninhabited.
This is the last post in this series in which we explored the War in the Pacific…for the time being.
Along the way, it became clear that it was really the Asia Pacific War and had started in 1937 when the imperial ambitions of the nation of Japan launched military action against the nation of China, a conflict that had been simmering since 1931. We traced the rise of Japanese militarism that served as the agent of their colonial ambitions. When their 1939 forays into the border areas of Soviet controlled Mongolia and Siberia were easily repulsed, Japanese attention and planning turned to the Southeastern Asia region. If Korea (annexed in 1910) and Manchuria served as a food basket and new homesteads for an exploding Japanese home population, then Java, Malay, Borneo and other nations served as lands rich in oil, rubber, and other materials needed for their military-industrial complex. There was a strong sentiment among Japanese leaders that their national destiny was to be the rightful leader of the “Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.” It was an ideology that was part of the education system and propaganda from the 1920s onward. It was not to free other Asian nations from the colonial rule of European nations, but to establish themselves as the new colonial master.
The early December 1941 charge across Southeast Asia ultimately led to the deaths of 30 million Asian civilians – and no small measure of war crimes known (Nanjing, Shanghai, Manilla, and more) and unknown. It was not the case that only a small platoon or company of Imperial Japanese soldiers were out of control, its prevalence across time and nations leads one to conclude it was an understood policy among field commanders. Was it the classic forage and pillaging of invading armies or was it also rooted in the notion of nihonjinron (theories of Japanese uniqueness). It was a view that underpinned a broader societal view that placed Japan at the center of Asia and devalued neighboring peoples as lesser people.
The series did not follow all the allied actions in the Central and Southwest Pacific areas, nor did it explore the details of the campaigns in the China-Burma-India (CBI) area. The series tried to point out critical U.S. military encounters with the Japanese that would shape next-step strategy but also inform the war planners on what were the military and socio-political factors needed to be overcome to end the war. Two early posts, Saipan and Battles that changed the War, gave an early indication of the bushido spirit that was present in Imperial soldiers, but also in Japanese civilians, and later in their kamikaze squadrons. The battlefield experience was that less than 3% of Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) soldiers surrendered or were captured. On Saipan and Okinawa, the Army and Marine encountered non-uniformed civilians participating in armed combat. This included women and children. In both battles, allied soldiers witnessed civilian suicides as the alternative to “capture” by the enemy. Such was the indoctrination.
The focus of the series then shifted to considering the role of Emperor Hirohito, the Supreme War Council, and other key leaders in control of Japanese war governance. The early September 2025 posts were extensive and meant to let the reader understand the inner workings of the wartime governance of Japan and the role of Emperor Hirohito. Post-war accounts in the more immediate aftermath of the surrender present the Emperor as constitutional monarch, preventing from interfering with the governance of pre-war and wartime Japan. As time marched on and more accounts were made available, a picture emerged that constitutionally he was in fact the supreme commander of all armed forces, and had considerably more leverage in non-military governance. His role in the continuation of the war with China and the attack on Pearl Harbor and across Southeastern Asia that brought the U.S., Britain, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands and other countries, is debated by historians from the west, China, and Japan.
But is clear from the historical record is:
Cabinet and Supreme War Council recommendations to the Emperor must be unanimous and if unanimity can not be reached, the government collapses and a new cabinet and council must be promoted.
In accord with the Meiji Constitution, certain cabinet members must be filled by active duty members of the military. In the context of #1 above, this means that the military held a de facto veto on anything with which it does not agree. A single military member can either “filabuster” or simply resign – either achieve the same thing: collapse of the government.
In accord with the Meiji Constitution, the Emperor is a Constitutional Monarch, but at the same time is “Supreme Commander” of the Military (daigensui). Yet he seemed to operate out of a self-imposed neutrality at times and at others was actively involved at strategic level planning.
There was a strong current of ultranationalism among the Imperial Army staff and field officers deployed. There was no assurance that they would follow orders to lay down arms since they had ignored orders and instigated armed conflict and operations from Manchuria to New Guinea and beyond. Decisions in the field were often made by majors and colonels based on their view of national priorities. In 1937, there were cases when direct orders from the Emperor were ignored.
There was a long history of military-led assassinations of political leaders in the 1920s and 1930s. The assassinations included Prime Ministers, Navy Secretaries and top governmental leaders.
In the middle of the milieu, decision making, pre-war and during the war, was pluralistic and consensus-oriented participation of ruling elites that resulted in ambiguous individual responsibility baked into a process of negotiation and compromise – this included the Emperor. There was no single desk where the “buck stopped.”
The one decision that needed to be made was some form of surrender. By January 1945, for all practical purposes Japan was militarily defeated. But then surrender is not a military decision, it is a political one. The post Behind the Curtain and others pointed out the lack of a political consensus and will to end the war. From late 1942 onward, Japan was “on the back foot,” suffering defeats on land and at sea. Despite that, the Emperor was assured that the decisive battle (win or lose) that would bring the Allies to the negotiating table was “next.” That was always the goal – negotiate an end to the war that left Japan as the colonial ruler of Southeast Asia, retaining a standing military, and with the kokutai – the Imperial institution in place. That was not the Allied goal.
The Allies’ experience of World War I made clear that an armistice or negotiated cessation of arms only “kicked the can down the road.” The allied intent was to win the war, occupy the nations, and rid Germany and Japan of any trace of the militarism that started the war – and to make sure that they knew they had been defeated so as to preclude the rise of the next generation problem such as the rise of Nazism in Germany in 1930.
As the war entered 1945 both sides were planning for the decisive battle – the invasion of the Japanese home islands. The Japanese planned Ketsu Goand as the end of summer drew near their plans took shape and portended a horrific battle. In parallel, the Allies prepared for the invasion with a naval blockade, unrestricted operations against Japanese merchant shipping by U.S. submarines, and a devastating strategic bombing campaign which included firebombing of Japanese cities, military installations and manufacturing centers. The latter of which grew more intense once US Army Air Forces could operate from Iwo Jima and Okinawa. This all part of a larger Operation Downfall Planning which continued to evolve in the face of intelligence operations that revealed a massive build up of forces on Kyushu that would oppose any landings. The June 1945 Downfall casualty estimates continued to grow at an alarming rate as the late July intelligence became available indicating Japanese troop strength ready to oppose any Kyushu landing force was now 3 times larger than any June planning estimates.
As discussed in last week’s posts, in our counter-factual where no atomic weapons are or will be available in 1945, the Allies still have to find a way to stop the war – and there are only bad options. There are no options that do not involve massive Japanese civilian casualties. But some option has to be found in order to stop the on-going deaths of non-Japanese Asian civilians across Southeast Asia.
Operation Olympic, the invasion of Kyushu, was planned for November but no later than December 1, 1945. In actual history, the weather at the beginning of November would have pushed the invasion until late in the month. In the interim the “blockade-mining-bombing” operations would have continued as discussed in The Unbearable End. The result of this approach without an accompanying invasion of Kyushu would like result in the following:
Month
Expected Condition
Aug–Sep 1945
Urban food ration breakdown begins; coastal transport essentially halted.
Oct–Nov 1945
Coal shortages cripple industry and electric power; rail transport is minimal.
Dec 1945–Mar 1946
Famine and disease on a nationwide scale; mortality potentially in the millions.
Mid–1946
Economic and social collapse, food riots, and potential regime breakdown.
In that post, I wrote:
“Assuming that the Japanese surrender on December 1, 1945, that still means the war continued for another 4 months (August thru November). Without an invasion, losses to the Allied military would have been minimal as Japan began to wither on the vine. If the estimates of blockade lasting until March 1946 yielded 6-10 million deaths due to starvation and disease, what would be the effect by December 1945? Other famine studies suggest that deaths would have been in the 20-25% of total by the half-way point. That translates to roughly 1.4 and 2.25 million people in Japan. Outside Japan in the occupied territories, in the same 4 month period approximately 1 million non-Japanese Asians will die.”
“The resulting death toll of the blockade-mining-bombing (only) is projected to be between 2.4 and 3.25 million civilian deaths across the Asia-Pacific region. Truly an unbearable end.”
Would that have been enough to end the war? Would the collapse of Japanese society be enough to bring the Emperor to issue a Saidan, a sacred decision, to direct the Cabinet and Supreme Council to accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration? Would the advance of the Soviets in Manchuria changed the minds of Japanese leadership? Would the Soviets attempt a larger scale invasion of Hokkaido?
August 1 – December 1, 1945: the death toll
These numbers reflect continued blockade and bombing, Soviet operations in Manchuria, the Kyushu invasion, and continued Japanese action and occupation across Southeast Asia.
Allied military – 100,000 but, in addition, another 115,000 allied POWs would die by either execution or starvation. (note: there were no reliable numbers for Soviet losses in Manchuria)
Japanese military losses in Manchuria and on Kyushu – 1.0 to 1.5 million with another 200,000 dying in Soviet gulags after the war.
Japanese civilians – 1.9 to 2.75 million
Asian civilians outside Japan – 1 million
For just the period Aug 1- Dec 31, 1945 the death toll is estimated at 3.4 to 5.75 million people.
The historian Richard Frank tells a story in his book Downfall about a history symposium in the late 1990s that was meant to cover the breadth of the war in the Pacific. He sat with a noted Chinese historian as together they listened to presenter after presenter talk about the use of atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was as though that was the only topic that mattered. The presenters’ views were extremely narrow – both for and against the use of the atomic weapons. All presented the topic as only a Japan-Allied confrontation. There was no recognition of the tremendous human suffering and death brought about by Japanese aggression across Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. No recognition that the war started before December 7, 1941. Without intention they continued a trend that, by its singular focus on three days of the war in August 1945, unknowingly devalued the humanity of millions and millions of Asians outside Japan. Further, the arguments against the atomic weapons to end the war, never considered the other options to end the war, even in terms of Japanese civilian lives. The majority of the presenters at the symposium were either western or Japanese. When lessons of the past are lost, then consideration of the future becomes even more narrow.
As part of the series I also included several posts on Just War Theory. I had the same kind of impression as Frank and the Chinese Scholar: an extremely narrow view. To be fair, I did not do the same kind of research as with the other aspects of the series, but I found no fruitful leads to continue the search. All the moral theologians and theorists that were accessible to me, after their extended writing, simply concluded that the use of the atomic weapons was immoral and not allowed in the just war tradition. Like the historians above, none of them considered the options to end the war. None of them addressed the wholesale slaughter of civilians up to August 1945 and the moral implications of not stopping the war as quickly as possible. Too many of them pointed to international agreements that were absolute: civilians could not be targeted in war. In 1945 such agreements did not exist.
Nor do they fully exist now. Article 51(5) of Additional Protocol I of the 1977 Geneva Conventions prohibits any “attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.” The absolute prohibition against civilian deaths does not exist in law or convention. The incidental loss of civilian life is held “in the balance” against “direct military advantage anticipated.” The intended targeting of civilians for no other reason than to target them is prohibited. But often war has no intention but civilian deaths happen.
That was not an argument for using atomic weapons. That is something others can take up.
The whole series is also not an argument that “if you don’t want to face a catalog of bad options to end a war” then don’t participate in warfare in the first place. The history of humanity is that even peaceful nations are not given such neat options. There are nations and non-state actors that have their own vision of the way the world should be: a greater Asian prosperity zone free of European powers, a greater Russia, a Roman Empire, a Mongolian Empire, and the list is far longer. And it is always the case that there is a vision held by a small cadre of people that leverage their aspirations upon the people of a nation so that the people see “their destiny.” And somehow that destiny often crosses recognized borders sometimes drawn without regard to peoples. For every Ukraine there is always Russia.
Will there be a World War III? I hope not. But then the nature of war is changing. The battle space remains in the world and now exists online. Nations will battle national; other nations will take sides. Some wars are internal to a nation casting a group as terrorist or patriots depending on one’s point of view; other nations will fund one side or the other. Warfare is increasingly urban which inevitably leads to civilian deaths. More and more women and children, out of uniform, are involved in warfare. Even the vocabulary of warfare is evolving:
After the war, though the atomic bomb has understandably dominated Catholic just war reflection, a number of Catholic theologians reflected more broadly on World War II through the lens of just war. Figures such as Jacques Maritain, Romano Guardini, Johannes Baptist Metz, John Courtney Murray, and Yves Simon uniformly agreed that the war against Nazi Germany and Japan met the just war criteria jus ad bellum – but each also questioned the known effects of strategic bombings, intentional fire bombing, and failure to discriminate actions against civilians as failures, jus in bello.
In this age there has been more attention on The Warfighter and the moral, spiritual, psychological burden brought about in the events they expected to encounter and events that were not part of what combat was supposed to be about. Some also carry the burden of being unable to provide medical aid to a wounded comrade or freezing during a dangerous moment. And there can be moments when one wonders if the toll and sacrifices are not valued or understood by the civilian population. One wants to go home, but worries if they can “go home.” When you read the post-WW II theorists the focus was clear: the burden on the war planner. When one reads the current theorists the burden seems to have fallen on the warfighter – the one whose world consists of himself and the men and women in his unit. It is a small world the warfighter tries to save.
While allied forces completed the battle for Okinawa, naval units continued the blockade, bombing continued as did the Japanese occupation and subjection of Manchuria and parts of China, Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia), Burma (Myanmar), Malaya and Singapore, Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), other smaller locales. Borneo’s liberation was underway as was the Philippines. This was the Asia-Pacific war that needed to stop. The root cause of the war needed to be removed from power and the means to wage war.
In August 1945 there was no end in sight that had anything but bad options.
Thanks for reading.
Image credit: Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archives.
In 2005 the translated diary of Admiral Yonai, the Japanese Navy Minister and member of the Supreme Council, was released. In the days between the Imperial Saiden (Sacred Decision) to accept the terms of Potsdam and before it was announced, Yonai wrote that “It may be inappropriate to put it in this way, but the atomic bombs and the Russian entry into the war were in a sense, God’s gifts…Now we can end the war without making it clear that we have to end the war because of the domestic situation.. I have long been advocating the conclusion [of the war], not because I am afraid of the enemy’s attacks or because of the atomic bombs, the most important reason is my concern over the domestic situation.”
The atomic weapons offered an external excuse for surrender, allowing Japan to end the war without explicitly revealing that the domestic situation had become untenable. Emperor Hirohito, once considered a demigod, was losing public support for continuing the war amid growing hostility toward him and his government. The official propaganda was losing traction in the face of unopposed allied bombers and fighters over the home islands, growing food shortages – the “domestic situation.” Yet even then the general public did not know the extent to the “situation.”
Yoshio Kodama was not a government leader during World War II, but an ultranationalist and powerful political fixer who operated behind the scenes. During the war, he was an agent for Japanese military intelligence and amassed a fortune through smuggling and procuring materials for the Imperial Japanese Navy. He had a unique view of the war from the ground level to halls of power. After the war he wrote a memoir, I Was Defeated, in which he wrote:
Although the nation was resigned to the fact that the decisive battle on the Japanese home islands could not be avoided . . . they still thought that the Combined Fleet of the Japanese Navy was undamaged and expected that a deadly blow would be inflicted sometime either by the Japanese Navy or the land-based Kamikaze suicide planes upon the enemy’s task forces. Neither did the nation know that the Combined Fleet had already been destroyed and neither could they imagine the pitiful picture of rickety Japanese training planes loaded with bombs headed unwavering towards an imposing array of enemy [aircraft carriers and battleships].
In history, after the dropping of the second atomic weapon on Nagasaki, Emperor Hirohito called an Imperial Council, a meeting of serious consequence. The Supreme War Council was deeply divided yet, for the first time, they worked on terms to end the war. After a prolonged discussion the Council was divided. They agreed that the war needed to end, but they disagreed with the conditions of surrender. The post August 1945 in History outlines the divisions between the group that would only accept the Potsdam Declaration for unconditional surrender with four conditions vs. the group that wanted to accept with the only condition being the retention of the Imperial House (kokutai). At the August 9/10 Imperial Council, when all had spoken, the Emperor had the final word. He then announced his support of the “one condition” offer. He said that Japan must “bear the unbearable.” One can only imagine that Hirohito was referring to the psychological impact of defeat after so many years of propaganda.
Without the availability of atomic weapons, as this series has assumed, and as the war continued it would be the civilian people of Japan that truly have to “bear the unbearable.” But it would not be limited to the psychological. The impacts would also be physiological and sociological at the national and the personal levels.
You may have noticed the change in the series graphic from “Ending the War in the Pacific” to “Ending the Asia Pacific War.” The reasons were made clear in the two posts immediately preceding this post. One of the key points to keep in mind is “Excluding Japanese, every single day the war continued [in the summer of 1945] between 8,000 and perhaps 14,000 noncombatants were dying.” (Richard Frank) That is between 56,000 and 98,000 each week or 240,000 and 420,000 per month. The tragedy increased each day, and by far the greatest impact of that tragedy was borne by people who were not Japanese and who were not Westerners.
To not understand this basic reality of the summer of 1945 is to not consider the common humanity of all people involved in this epic battle. It was the dilemma of August 1945 for Allied planners (not having any atomic weapons in this counter-factual speculation) and facing this reality:
Japan is militarily defeated by any meaningful measure.
Surrender is not a military decision but a political one.
The polity of Japan, via the Supreme Council (Big 6), allows hard-core militarists and nationalists to essentially veto all war decisions not to their liking. These people are committed to Ketsu-Go, the decisive battle that will bring the Allies to a negotiating table.
The junior officers in Army Headquarter and in the units operating outside Japan in the occupied territories have a history of setting their own agenda. In other words, there is no surety that they will lay down arms even if Japan surrenders.
As long as Japan does not surrender, the death toll of civilians outside of Japan will continue to increase.
What are the viable options available to the Allies? There are not many and what is available is not good.
Having described the actual history of August 1945 in the previous post, it is time to consider our counter-factual: what if the US and Allies did not possess atomic weapons and did not expect to possess them any time in the immediate future? How does the Asia-Pacific War come to an end?
But then we need to be sure we are talking about the same war. Here is the most commonly offered timeline:
September 1, 1939 World War II began in Europe with Germany’s invasion of Poland
September 3, 1939 France, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand declared war on Germany
September 6, 1939 South Africa declared war on Germany
September 10, 1939 Canada declared war on Germany
May 10, 1940 the Netherlands, officially neutral to this point, declared war after German troops invaded.
July 10, 1940 Italy, an Axis ally, declared war on Britain and France after seeing German success. It is generally thought Mussolini felt it was an opportune moment to enter the war on Germany’s side, believing France was on the verge of defeat and that Italy could secure a place at the eventual peace negotiations with minimal cost.
June 22, 1941 Germany declares war on Russia and begins the invasion. Russia did not technically declare war … They were busy fighting against a blitzkrieg.
December 7, 1941 Japan declared war on the United States (but failed to deliver the diplomatic message prior to the Pearl Harbor attack)
December 8, 1941 Japan attacked Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaya. Diplomatically no message was delivered to Britain who learned about the attack via military channels. In Japan the information was printed in the newspapers.
December 8, 1941 the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the Netherlands declared war on Japan after the Pearl Harbor attack. Interestingly the following countries also declared war on Japan that same day: Cuba, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama and the Dominican Republic.
January 11, 1942 Japan declared war on the Netherlands the same day it launched its invasion of the Dutch East Indies
May 22, 1942 Mexico declares war on Japan, Germany and Italy. Thousands of Mexican citizens enlisted in the US armed forces but most notably the Mexican Expeditionary Air Force’s Escuadrón 201, also known as the “Aztec Eagles,” fought alongside the U.S. in the 1944 and 1945 Philippines Campaign.
August 8, 1945 – late to the battle, Russia declared war on Japan. Russia’s goal was control of the inland sea, warm water ports, Manchuria, Korea and possibly the resource rich Hokkaido.
With that all the major combatants were formally engaged in World War II. At least these are the dates that are given from a western perspective. When did it all end?
September 3, 1943, the Italian government formally agreed to an armistice with the Allies although the German-backed Italian Social Republic in northern Italy continued fighting until April 29, 1945.
May 8, 1945 Germany unconditionally surrendered its military forces to the Allies
August 15, 1945 Japan announced it accepted the unconditional surrender terms (with one condition – maintenance of the kokutai). The formal surrender was signed September 2, 1945.
Six years and 1 day after the start, it was finally over – at least from a western perspective.
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