Washington, D.C. • October 7, 1940 In the 1930s Japan’s statesmen and military leaders in China were acutely aware that their economy and armed forces were dependent on imports from the United States and its colonial friends who had holdings in the Asia Pacific region: the Americans in the Philippines, the British in Malaya (now…
Tokyo, Japan • September 30, 1943 On this date in 1943, at the fourth Imperial Conference held since the start of the Pacific War, senior Japanese military and civilian leaders adopted the “absolute defense perimeter” strategy after securing the requisite imprimatur of Shōwa Emperor Hirohito. The strategy reflected a shift in the expectations of both…
Vichy, France • September 22, 1940 As early as June 1940, after French resistance to the German conquest of France crumbled, Japan made overtures to Vichy French authorities for permission to station troops in French Indochina (now Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) and for their warships to take up naval stations off Northern Indochinese ports in…
Tokyo, Japan • September 18, 1931 The assassination of the Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin in June 1928 was the first in a daisy change of major Sino-Japanese crises faced by the new Japanese emperor, Hirohito (posthumously referred to as Emperor Shōwa), whose reign began 18 months before. Manchuria (sometimes referred to by its historical name Guandong)…
Southwest Pacific Area HQ, Brisbane, Australia • September 13, 1942 On May 14, 1942, after a voyage of 23 days and 9,000 miles, 12,000 men and equipment of the U.S. 32nd Infantry Division arrived in Australia for the purpose of bulking up the understrength defenses of that country. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Allied Supreme Commander of all…
Tokyo, Japan • September 6, 1941 On this date in 1941, in an Imperial Conference in Tokyo, Japanese military and political leaders embarked on a collision course with the West. It was decided that Japan would begin war preparations against the U.S., Great Britain, and the Netherlands (all countries with territorial claims in Southeast Asia;…
Tokyo, Japan • August 29, 1944 From the summer of 1944 to the spring of 1945, Japanese forces continued their retreat from military outposts in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Japanese losses in personnel, warships, and airplanes were minimized by frontline commanders, who exaggerated Japanese military successes against the Allied enemy in reports to Imperial…
Moscow, Soviet Union • August 20, 1939 The Soviet Union and Japan, 2 expansionist powers that occupied portions of the Asian mainland, had butted heads as early as 1904–1905 (the Russo-Japanese War) over influence in China, Mongolia, and Manchuria, the latter country rich in coal, iron, and grains. In September 1931 soldiers in the Kwantung…
Tokyo, Japan • August 14, 1945 Two days after the United States had dropped a second atomic bomb on a major Japanese city, this on Nagasaki on August 9, Emperor Hirohito (posthumously referred to as Emperor Shōwa) personally intervened during an Imperial Conference (Gozen Kaigi) to let diehard hawks in his government and armed services know…
Tokyo, Japan • August 12, 1945 In 1945 the endgame in Europe was to capture Berlin, the epicenter of Nazi resistance, which the Red Army did in the last week of April. On May 7 and 8, 1945, Adolf Hitler’s political heir, Adm. Karl Doenitz, surrendered Nazi Germany unconditionally to the Allies. The endgame in the…