Tokyo, Japan · May 11, 1939 Europe, the United States, and Japan, profiting from the technological, economic, social, and military advantages conferred on their countries by the Industrial Revolution, began placing weaker nations elsewhere in the world under their “protection.” The United States did that in 1898, when the Philippines became an American territory. Japan…
Nanjing (Nanking), China · March 30, 1940 By 1940 Japan had close to a decade’s worth of experience in administering conquered Chinese territory, having installed a puppet government in 1932 in Manchuria, which the Japanese called Manchukuo. On this date in 1940 in Nanjing (Nanking), China, the Japanese installed Wang Jingwei (Ching-wei) as head of…
Central Burma · March 4, 1945 The British Fourteenth Army was a multinational force that took part in the Burma Campaign (January 1942 to July 1945). Units were drawn from the British Army and the Indian Army, with significant contributions from Ghurkha and West and East African regiments. The Fourteenth Army has often been referred…
Singapore Island, British Malaya · February 8, 1942 On this night and the next day in 1942 in British Malaya (today’s Malaysia) Japanese forces surged over and soon pushed the British-led defenders back to the edges of the 220‑sq. mile island of Singapore (the “Gibraltar of the East”), nearly 600 miles from the initial Japanese landing site….
New Delhi, India · February 1, 1943 On this date in 1943 in New Delhi, delegates from Great Britain, the U.S., and China opened a conference to develop a campaign plan (codenamed Anakim) for the reconquest of Burma (also called Myanmar), then a British colony, and to reopen the land supply route to China. The…
Washington, D.C. · January 9, 1941 On this date in 1941 in Washington, D.C., the U.S. State Department advised American citizens to leave Japan. Two summers earlier the State Department had informed Japan that it would not renew the 1911 Treaty of Commerce and Navigation between the two countries, leaving the U.S. free in January…