Japan during World War 2.

Answer 1

Timetable of Events

1933: Japan leaves the League of Nations, an organisation whose remit it is to prevent things like war and crime.

1937: Japan invades central China.

1940: Japan joins the Axis which was the name given to all the countries opposing the allies.

1941: Japan and Russia sign a non aggression pact.

1941: The Japanese navy attacks Pearl Harbor in a surprise attack.

1942: Four Japanese carriers are sunk and Japans naval supremacy is lost.

1944: The Japanese navy begins to use Kamikaze suicide pilots.

1945: The marines land in Okinawa and Japan orders all its forces to use kamikaze suicide tactics.

1945: The Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima are destroyed by an atomic bomb.

The lead up to war and the attack on Pearl Harbour

Japan was fighting intermittently since 1931 against the Chinese. The war was a result of decades of Japanese imperialist policy aiming to dominate China politically and militarily in order to take possession of the vast raw material reserves and other resources.

Before 1937 Japan and China fought in small, localised 'incidents.' The 1937 Marco Polo bridge incident was the last of these incidents which marked the beginning of full scale war.

The attack on Pearl Harbour was called operation Z by the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters. The attack took place on the seventh of December 1941 at 3.18 a.m. There were 2 waves of attacks against Pearl Harbour and a third possible wave planned if necessary. The third wave didn't happen because some of the Japanese officers were worried as they still didn't know where the Amererican carriers were. It would take a lot of time and planes would have to land in the dark. Till then only the Royal Navy had developed night landing techniques and in any case, the second wave had satisfied the main objective of the mission.



Pearl Harbor in the 1940s.

Japanese expansion

The Japanese made a big mistake by attacking America as Japan was too small and had too weak a shipbuilding industry to defeat the U.S.A. This mistake lead to the fall of the Japanese empire. They believed destroying its fleet and capturing it quickly would make them win but they underestimated the Americans.

At its maximum expansion, Japan occupied Manchuria, Korea, large parts of China, Formosa, French Indochina, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, The Dutch East Indies, The Philippine Islands, Guam, parts of Alaska, Wake Island, Solomon Islands, and some islands in the south/central pacific region (see Figure 1).

Battle of midway Japanese defeats and the atomic bomb

The Battle of Midway was widely regarded as the most important Naval battle in the Pacific campaign. After the battle of midway the Japanese were constantly retreating without a single major victory until the end of the war. The battle was a Victory for the Americans because the American code-breakers broke the Japanese code in 24 hours. This gave them the information that mid-way was going to be attacked on the 4th June 1941. The Japanese plan was to lure the last few American carriers into a trap. They also wanted midway island to expand their defensive perimeter. With that in mind the American ambushed the Japanese fleet and sunk all four of their aircraft carriers, all the 248 Japanese carrier planes sunk and one cruiser sunk. The Americans only lost 150 aircraft of their 233, one destroyer and one of the 4 aircraft carriers. Over 3000 Japanese were killed and under 400 Americans were killed. Japan was a country which lacked Natural Resources so was unable to replace many of the sank ships. This meant permanent damage to the Japanese fleet. Japanese pilot training programs were unable to keep pace in replacing their losses while the U.S. steadily increased output in both areas.

The nuclear bombs

The name of the project to make the worlds first nuclear bomb was called the Manhattan Project. The project was to end the second world war by dropping nuclear bombs on Japan to force them to surrender. Two nuclear bombs were dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The U.S knew that dropping the bombs would kill hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians but hoped it would save time, American soldiers lives, resources and money. The bombs were each dropped in 1945 by a single aircraft to make it look like an American recognisance mission.

Conclusion

Following the nuclear bombs Japan was forced to sign an unconditional surrender on the fifteenth August 1945. They issued a surrender that was later formally signed on the USS Missouri on the 2nd September 1945. The Japanese were extreme in the Second world war because they committed suicide instead of being captured, committed suicide to help Japan and charged with bayonets (long knifes/swords at the end of a gun) in which they would be massacred attempting to stab an enemy soldier.

Answer 2

Part of the AXIS partnership with Germany & Italy.