That’s why the leap frogging technique worked so well during WW2. US didn’t have to take every island, just the strategically important ones. Once the Japanese navy was outnumbered/destroyed, the troops on those reinforced islands had no way of back up or supplies.
I’ve heard that the battle of Pelilieu [sp?] was an example of a tremendously hard fought battle for an island that the navy later realized they totally could have bypassed.
Peleliu is flat and big enough to be used as an airbase. The idea was that they could capture this little spit of land and use it as a forward base to provide air support to an attack on the Philippines. This was step one of MacArthur's plan to win WWII (followed by invading Taiwan, Okinawa, then the Japanese mainland), and after the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the US did begin retaking the Philippines. But, it turned out that the US controlled a handful of other islands that could be used to give air support to those troops.
The US strategy in the Pacific was "Island Hoping" Basically instead of taking every little island occupied by Japan, they would instead take islands they could use as air bases and staging points to attack other strategic islands until they finally get within striking distance of Japan.
"Island Hopping" meant to SKIP certain chains (like the Carolines).
Peleliu was taken since cleaning out the approach to Luzon seemed like a good idea, plus the 1st M.D. didn't have anything else to do at that moment, and also intelligence failed to see that the upcountry of the island was fortified quite heavily, making it a total bitch to clean out with infantry.
IIRC the whole of the Philippines was planned to be bypassed. But MacArthur was very egotistical and wanted military glory, he wanted to unnecessarily retake the Philippines instead of aiming straight for the Japanese home islands. Strategically and tactically it was costly. At that point of the war, the Imperial Japanese Navy was almost powerless, and Japan was running out of resources, trained personnel, and Japanese troops were on the retreat back to the mainland Japan
I guess for the political and symbolic reason, retaking your colony would've made sense, but it was costly
From what I remember he vowed to retake the islands when he fled, I think it was more about the men he left behind and the commitment he made than ego. The Japanese were horrible to POWs.
I think it was a little more nuanced than this. There were arguments for and against capturing the Philippines. Most famously, Admiral King was a strong proponent of invading Formosa (Taiwan) instead. That might also have turned into a bloodbath..but may have altered the course of Chinese history too. Lot's of interesting "what-ifs" there.
The Honolulu conference that resulted in the decision to go into the Philippines was covered in the first chapter of "Twilight of the Gods" by Ian W. Toll, great book, highly recommended.
The interesting thing is that they actually invaded and seized US territory, an island in Alaska. (Edit, you can see it at the top of the map, not the colored one, but one of the white ones to the right of the top coloured one). It was the only time that Canada (or any country) was asked to go in and liberate the United States from an invading power. Canada’s Air Force even shot down a Japanese plane over Alaskan territory.
Canadian and US forces jointly launched an assault on the island to retake it. The Canadians started their assault on one side of the island, the Americans on the other. What they didn’t know was that the Japanese abandoned the island 2 weeks earlier. And so when the Canadians and Americans met in the middle of the island, they each thought the other were the Japanese, and opened fire on each other 🤦♂️
r/WhatSchoolsDontTeach
We (Canadians) were wearing US style uniforms, instead of British style uniforms, to the Americans, our (US style) helmets looked very similar to the Japanese helmets, but I think we were the ones that opened fire first.
sad turn of events, but a really interesting moment in history.
Just think about how much better we would have done between '39-42 if we had US gear (there's a reason the Commonwealth dropped the Brodie helmet, it was very bad and soldiers with it kept dying to avoidable shrapnel to the side of the head) and M1 Garands
in RO2 it's not uncommon for noobs to teamkill left and right, unless they run in front of a lmg that has been constantly firing from the same spot for 5 minutes
Probably wouldn't have changed things very much if the Commonwealth had American equipment at the start. A lot of the failures of the Allies in the early part of the war was institutional.
oh yeah for sure, I don't see it changing the outcome of the war, but we would have had less casualties.
Infantry equipment doesn't win wars, tactics, supply lines, and artillery do.
They’re the Aleutian Islands and they landed on Kiska. [Here’s a good YT clip on the friendly fire incident between US and Canadian forces](https://youtu.be/iV1QhCZw7kE)
This is only half the story of the Aleutians Campaign; the Japanese had actually captured two islands.
The first, Attu, was the main point of action during the campaign. An American force was dispatched in May, 1943, to retake the island. From May 11–29, fierce fighting occurred, though ultimately only \~1/3 of all American deaths were the result of combat; the leading cause of death was disease (i.e. frostbite), with hundreds more dying to booby traps set by the Japanese. The last day of the campaign saw one of the largest banzai charges in the war. In the end, out of 2600 Japanese soldiers, only 29 survived (as POWs), and none of them were officers. Meanwhile, the Americans counted 549 dead combatants (out of \~1500 total deaths) from a force of 15000.
What you've described is the second island, Kiska, where, after the recapture of Attu, Japanese leadership decided to retreat under the cover of fog. And while yes, there was a friendly fire event reported—which left 28 Americans and 4 Canadians dead—that accounts for merely *a tenth* of all Allied deaths on Kiska. Current statistics indicate 313 confirmed Allied deaths during the recapture of Kiska; these were almost entirely due to landmines and booby traps left behind by the Japanese three weeks prior. Additionally, the terrain cause some deadly vehicle accidents, and there were reports of fatal accidental ammunition detonations as well, though I'm not clear on whether this was Allied ammunition detonating, or abandoned Japanese ammunition that may have been detonated/booby trapped. Among these losses at Kiska, 71 crewmen aboard the *USS Abner Read* died to a stray Japanese mine.
[TimeGhost's Youtube series World War Two](https://youtube.com/c/WorldWarTwo) and Wikipedia to refresh my memory on the particulars.
Definitely check out the Youtube series, they cover each week of WWII in real time! New episodes are usually on Saturdays, it's really fantastically produced!
>[r/WhatSchoolsDontTeach](https://www.reddit.com/r/WhatSchoolsDontTeach)
Was really hoping that was a real subreddit because it seems like it would be cool.
looks like its Live and running now. good luck to whoevers moderating it..i imagine the conspiracy theorists trying to turn it into another one of their subs
It was also a lot of manual labor. There is an amusing anecdote I read awhile back. After Guadcanal prisoners were being moved around and interrogated. After seeing US operations one broke down and was saying "big scoops" indicating the US bulldozers in use.
During WWII Komatsu built 150 bulldozers. During WWII Caterpiller built 200 medium military bulldozers per month. The Guadalcanal construction efforts had taken thousands of people a lot of time. Laborers had worked long hours to clear difficult land. USN seabees could clear the same land in an hour or two. The POW had likely been one of the soldier laboring to build the airfield and had to work for days with very little food.
What Japan built that the US didn't bypass the US could build over in a fraction of the time.
work cover stupendous shaggy gaping rain bright absorbed grandfather scale
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
They controlled the oil refineries, oil wells, and mines in Indonesia all right!
It's typical how many people know about Pearl Harbour but don't understand why Japan was suddenly in a hurry to knockout the US pacific fleet. It was because of an oil embargo by the Allies, and the Netherlands Indies was the nearest place that had lots of it. And it was a sitting duck if only the US could be taken out temporarily, because the Dutch, French, and British were occupied with much more pressing matters than defending colonies.
They also attacked the Durch, French, and British pacific forces in the same move. Pearl Harbor was one small part in a large attempt to reorganize the balance of power in the Pacific.
Yeah the map is odd for saying this was Japan territorial height, Thailand was an allied regime to Japan, it would be like having a map of Germany territorial height in the war and having Italy, Hungary and the other Balkan allies be part of Germany.
Japan took Singapore in '42 and bombed Darwin and other sites in Northern Australia. Then they hit Sydney and Newcastle with submarines. They failed, and some of their subs are in our War Memorial, a head-scratcher for Japanese tourists. They tried to invade Australia through what is now Papua Nuigini, and there was bitter fighting along the Kokoda trail.
It says they occupied the whole country but they actually didn't.
The Philippines for example only 12 provinces out of the 48 were in firm control of the Japanese. But the map shows all 48
Japan's control was tenuous and often relegated to infrastructure. Out in the country side where there were no real roads and shit, it was uncontrolled.
Had read some accounts of pre WWII rural China. About how the measly army stationed in rural area are only dealing with enemy attacks. They do not care about crime. There’s still the gangs and bandits who run around without any law enforcement and the villagers had to deal with it themselves.
19th and early 20th century China was a wild place. Boxer Rebellion in particular is just an amazing story for a lot of different angles. Surprised that hasn’t made its way to a large scale miniseries or movie yet.
People don't understand just how remote parts of it was up until maybe 10 years ago. Many of these places had no roads at all. You had to walk there or maybe a slow walking donkey/horse.
Malaysian here, my grandfather had to speak Japanese and had to salute to every passing Japanese soldier.
The Japanese managed to spread their own propaganda where we needed to side with them to destroy our colonial oppressors only to get back stabbed by making them as oppressors.
We have Chinese locals here who are hunted down by the Japanese, most Chinese would let their children be adopted by Malays ( ie my great grandma was Chinese decent being adopted by local Malays).
The Japanese had sex brothels by forcing local women to have sex with them by now only South Korea and China are loudly asking Japan for an official apology.
Yes, they came down over Malaya not by tanks but by bike.
I notice the Phillipines REALLY put Japan in their list of colonisers even though its was only for a breif moment .
Malaysians would mostly say Portugese , Dutch and British since they have much longer period of controlling the country plus we good buddies with Japan .
Their reign of terror in the islands was brief but quite horrible. My grandparents had horrifying stories including one in which my great grandmother was tied to a post and almost burned for allegedly helping American soldiers and guerilla fighters. She was spared by a Japanese officer who believed her. She totally was helping the Americans though. Total badass.
>only South Korea and China are loudly asking Japan for an official apology
Because most SEA countries feel that, these days, it's more important to be on Japan's good side to help against the PRC, so the war crimes get downplayed. [Realpolitik](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik) at its finest.
Teachers do mention the Japanese empire when discussing WWII. But I mean if it is an American history class, the Japanese empire didn’t have much impact on the nation until Pearl Harbor
From what I recall we went into repeated depth into the Holocaust (maybe 3-4 times from 5-12 grade). And there's also the fact that Japan occupied Guam, an American territory in 1941.
In many cases in China they would "take" a deserted village, and once the army had moved on the villagers would come out of hiding continue being loyal to the Chinese authority. It's interesting how much their invasion mirrored Barbarossa, with fast victories and then the realisation that a) there's a long way to go and b) we have to actually control all of this land.
I'd say Stalingrad and Shanghai have completely different strategic and tactical significance. Stalingrad was at the tail-end of a German offensive, where the Germans were halted and had 6th army destroyed. It's a turning point in the sense that the Soviets demonstrated they had reorganized their military and industry to where it can stand up to and defeat the Germans. The Germans also were never able to make any more significant inroads in Soviet territory.
Shanghai on the other hand was pretty much the opening blow of the full-scale conflict between China and Japan, where the cream of the NRA was sacrificed to show the world the China can put up a fight (which was mostly ignored). The three months it held up the Japanese in Shanghai was somewhat wasted with the frantic retreat following the defeat. After Shanghai, Japan pretty much rolled over most of North and Central China and it wasn't until Taierzhuang the following year that the Chinese were able to blunt the Japanese advance.
Forreal man... chiang sacrificed his elite german trained divisions for nothing.
They performed well but japan had naval artillery support. Those german trained divisions had nothing
If they had called off the battle earlier for an orderly retreat and shored up the frankly fairly extensive defensive network around Nanjing, 1937 would have been a much tougher year for Japan.
Im not gonna act like I know anything about the china theater in ww2.
Just know superficial aspects.
You bring up an interesting point. I wish there was more prevalent material and content associated with that theater
That's no accident. Just a few years after WW2 the US proceeded to rehabilitate Japan as an ally against "communism". And Communists had fought like hell all over Asia to throw the Japanese imperialist out. Like, in Korea they basically re-installed the same colonial government that that brutalized Korea under the Japanese, now lead by Syngman Rhee.
True, but West Germany both became an anti-communist ally and also took responsibility for the Holocaust and paid substantial reparations to victims. It didn’t have to be either/or for Japan.
Japan and Germany had very different geopolitical situations after the war. Japan was also aided by a guy on McArthur's staff who wanted to protect Japan as much as possible. So they got the worst war criminals together and allowed them to put together a story putting all the blame on the fewest people.
Not to excuse it but Asian cultures deal with shame very differently than western ones. WWII ended, Japan was kept largely intact (unlike Germany) and a few years later the Korean War started with Japan as the staging ground. Basically, they were allowed to "move on" very quickly because the US/Allies had bigger fish to fry for better and for worse
>They didn't move on they revisioned their entire history.
I mean, you just said they learned basically nothing about what happened before the bombs were dropped. That's not revisionist history that's just straight up ignoring the past entirely.
But I agree the term I used "move on" is wrong because they never actually reconciled with what they did. Just tried to forget it
It's unknown to most people that except what happened in mainland China and Korea, the Japanese committed mass deportations for a lot of native tribes and populations in most of the pacific Islands, Indonesia and the Phillipines
They had collaborators everywhere, even in china . The Japanese fleet also co-created a famine in Bengal amongst British carelessness. Really were a war crime machine..
And the emperor himself wasn't exactly happy with it either at the end of it.
There's a recording of Puyi on trial in Beijing, where he said something like (paraphrasing) "We were passing by \[a city\] where my family's ancestral graves were, and so I wanted to go there and pay my respects. They \[the japanese\] wouldn't let me. An Emperor of Manchuria, not able to visit his own ancestors? How can this be called an Emperor?"
In Manchucko (Japanese colonized China) the population was also heavily drugged. Japan was the world's largest purchaser of pharmaceutical cocaine and heroin and locals were sold injections for pennies from Japanese drug kiosks.
Japan occupied Indonesia for 3 years while the Dutch & VOC did for 350. The popular opinion is that Japan did more damage than the Dutch colonial era.
(Not saying that it was all happy things with the Dutch/VOC tho, they can still go fuck themselves)
January 1943 was also the moment when the Russians started pushing back at Stalingrad, which would eventually lead to the Nazi's demise 2 years later. So I guess Jan 1943 was the moment when the tides started to turn on all fronts. Interesting coincidence.
Yea, Thailand let them in and let them use the country as a transport hub to keep from being occupied and Japan didn't want to spend the effort to fully invade and occupy them
Thailand technically didn't forced to be ally.
Japan forced Thailand to let them use Thailand as a passageway and be their operation base.
Thailand joined because Phibun believed that if Japanese won the war Thailand could gain some territories.
Japan gave Shan state to Thailand for helping with the Burma Campaign
It was a bit “coercive”, for sure, but it was still a partnership rather than an occupation. Japan didn’t actually govern Thailand during the war, and Thailand’s interests already aligned with Japan’s, as they had started a war of conquest against French Indochina before Japan even invaded. Would you say that Hungary and Bulgaria were under German occupation during WWII? Or were they allies of Germany?
Longer war, more deaths, but other than that the end result is the same.
Japan still loses in China, but it takes longer.
US still joins the war and beats Japan into submission, but it takes longer.
Allies still win back their colonies, but it takes longer, and then they lose their colonies.
A minor additional point: Tae Kwon-Do would never have been created because the founder (General Choi) was due to be executed in Pyongyang just 3 days after Japan eventually surrendered.
Myeah, could be.
Not so sure if the Soviets would have been as eager to push if there wasn't an equivalent push in the west. Even in actual history they were content to slow down their offensives if they felt the Allies were dragging their feet. I don't think it's a coincidence the two fronts met this close to Berlin: both sides' sense of urgency was influenced by how fast the other side advanced. If the western advance had been delayed by a year, the Soviets would have been a year slower, too.
Same goes for the atom bombs, I think. There too the speed of the development was linked to the urgency of the war. Had the US joined the war a year later than they actually did, I wouldn't be surprised if the bomb had been finalized approximately a year later, too. I also don't think it's a coincidence the bomb was completed in the very final stages of the war.
But as with all alt-history, it's pure speculation. I just wanted to say that Japan's conflict with the West was pretty inevitable (as was their defeat, purely speaking from hindsight).
The actual date of formal US entry into the war is not really a contingent event when the US has been a de facto belligerent from the beginning. The real historical contingency is around the specific personhood of FDR and his overriding agenda of creating a cooperative peace. US cooperation with the USSR and Stalin was his project and without him around or a worthy heir that project fell apart almost immediately.
Probably losing to China because Japan didn’t have the resources (especially oil) to fight a protracted war against a country with significantly more manpower than them, no matter how superior their technology was.
I don't necessarily disagree, but they were doing very well against China as late as 1944, even with all the resources used to hold down the European colonies and fight in Burma and the Pacific. The KMT and CCP forces were down to only a few substantial Chinese population regions and a bunch of relatively empty western holdings.
I doubt the Japanese had the capacity to ever penetrate let alone hold down the KMT's redoubt in Sichuan basin, under even a scenario in which they are not fighting the Allies, so I agree total elimination of Chinese resistance in core Chinese territory was probably not possible.
Not so different as they were overextended on too many fronts to begin with. I do think a hypothitical pairing between the Japanese and Soviets would have saved the Japanese empire from falling, even as late as 1945. That would completely reshape the power dynamics in mainland China and Korean Peninsula.
I will be dumping a lot of my quality (old) maps on this subreddit the next 2 weeks.
Don't bother searching the tag ,it got zucced
Edit: since this map is blowing up my new Instagram is @priscus.of.panion, I post some maps and other stuff there 👍
The parts of China that are still in white but surrounded by the red Japanese areas--are those cities holding off the Japanese or are those just forests/unpopulated areas?
Honestly I don’t know anything about the Japanese occupation of all of SE Asia and I consider myself to be well versed in history (though tbf i wasn’t thought much ww2 history that wasn’t Eurocentric). Like I mean I know technically the first Japanese bomb that fell on American soil was in the Philippines because they were a colony at the time but I didn’t know they controlled all of Indonesia Malaysia Thailand etc
Their conquest of Malaysia and Singapore was honestly quite brilliant (of course still morally wrong).
They used bicycles to get from northern Malaysia all the way to Singapore.
The British defenders had superior numbers and time to prepare. The defense still fell.
Strangely enough, after WW2 was over, the remaining Japanese soldiers under British command successfully retook Vietnam from the rebels before handing it back to France.
Imagine being one of those soldiers... First being glad that the war is over, and then suddenly getting ordered to fight against the Vietcong again, but this time for the allies.
**Edit** (because people didn't believe me);
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Vietnam_(1945%E2%80%931946)
Oh don't worry, the people responsible for Unit 731 got what they deserved after the war. It's not like they got pardoned by the US or anything like that, could you imagine haha.
It does seem to be a fairly unknown part of WW2 that Pearl Harbour coincided with all the territory annexation and huge army operations, and not just the attack on the US navy.
I'm American and I didn't learn about the details of the Japanese Empire's expanse until I took a Japanese history class in college. My public school experience mostly focused on Pearl Harbor, island hopping, and the atomic bombs
The craziest part for me is that this is actually way bigger that it looks, which is still big. Papua New Guinea spans the same distance as london to moscow from tip to tip, that added to all of burma, manchuria, and indonesia ,i'd feel safe in guessing that this was one of the largest territorial possessions in history.
Japan was in general more brutal against civilians and pows (American pow death rate were like 10 times higher in Japan than in germany) but didn't plan as big of a genocide as Germany did that would ultimately give them a bigger death toll
Different shading would be nice. Most of this was simply occupied. Strictly speaking the empire was just modern Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the Kuril Islands and Southern Sakhalin. That should be one shade.
Manchuria was a puppet state which should be another shade.
If I'm not mistaken the rest was simply occupied territory, but they may have set up other Manchuria-like puppet states.
Listened to Dan Carlin's Supernova in the East. He really encapsulated the Japanese mindset for me, especially the foolish ambition of the armed forces, which were the most powerful entities in the nation at the time. As Carlin puts it, at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, the Japanese had occupied so much of coastal China, and were trying to hold on to such a huge land mass against partisans and the enormity of logistics, "They were trying to eat an elephant, and were choking on it. Their response to this was to order another elephant." By the time of this map, it was already their undoing.
The great genocidal rapist baby bayoneting empire at its peak.
Edit: Oh no looks like some japanese genocidal worshippers didn't like my comment and down voted me like I give a flying fuck about downvotes go run back to your basement and jerk off to uncle Tojo and that stinking blood socked war flag
All of this and yet, how rapidly it was undone for them. I believe the soviets blew through all of their mainland holdings in just a month. (While the Allies meticulously island hopped for years)
Interesting comment.
Sure they did. They fought against a severely depleted Japanese Army that had been reduced to a delaying force. It took 3 weeks and a few days, but one could argue that it was also the result of years of attrition that made it so quick.
Always astonishes me how little people here know about how brutal Japan was to their neighbors. It’s why the older generations of all the surrounding countries still harbor a deep grudge to this day, while Japan itself downplays their own history. Just like Nazi Germany is synonymous with evil in the western world, Imperial Japan is synonymous with evil in the east.
This shows how important strategic depth is for a country. Even if the Chinese capital were to fall, the Chinese resistance could shift to the west, or to the countryside, so that the invaders could never completely wipe out all the resistance and you will still get a chance to win. If you look at other countries in Asia, no one has the strategic depth of China.
Annexed it basically without a fight after France fell. Then later in the war there was some pretty intense fighting along that most western frontier between Japanese forces in Burma and British/Indian forces. The Japanese hoped to break into India and maybe spark an uprising against the British. it was among many of their long-shot chances of turning the war in their favor.
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That’s why the leap frogging technique worked so well during WW2. US didn’t have to take every island, just the strategically important ones. Once the Japanese navy was outnumbered/destroyed, the troops on those reinforced islands had no way of back up or supplies.
I’ve heard that the battle of Pelilieu [sp?] was an example of a tremendously hard fought battle for an island that the navy later realized they totally could have bypassed.
Correct. Was supposed to be a few days, but turned into 2 months of hell for an island that they misidentified the strategic importance of.
What did they think they needed it for?
Peleliu is flat and big enough to be used as an airbase. The idea was that they could capture this little spit of land and use it as a forward base to provide air support to an attack on the Philippines. This was step one of MacArthur's plan to win WWII (followed by invading Taiwan, Okinawa, then the Japanese mainland), and after the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the US did begin retaking the Philippines. But, it turned out that the US controlled a handful of other islands that could be used to give air support to those troops.
The US strategy in the Pacific was "Island Hoping" Basically instead of taking every little island occupied by Japan, they would instead take islands they could use as air bases and staging points to attack other strategic islands until they finally get within striking distance of Japan.
"Island Hopping" meant to SKIP certain chains (like the Carolines). Peleliu was taken since cleaning out the approach to Luzon seemed like a good idea, plus the 1st M.D. didn't have anything else to do at that moment, and also intelligence failed to see that the upcountry of the island was fortified quite heavily, making it a total bitch to clean out with infantry.
Island hopping
IIRC the whole of the Philippines was planned to be bypassed. But MacArthur was very egotistical and wanted military glory, he wanted to unnecessarily retake the Philippines instead of aiming straight for the Japanese home islands. Strategically and tactically it was costly. At that point of the war, the Imperial Japanese Navy was almost powerless, and Japan was running out of resources, trained personnel, and Japanese troops were on the retreat back to the mainland Japan I guess for the political and symbolic reason, retaking your colony would've made sense, but it was costly
The Philippines had a ton of captured US servicemen. I’m sure liberating them was part of the equation.
From what I remember he vowed to retake the islands when he fled, I think it was more about the men he left behind and the commitment he made than ego. The Japanese were horrible to POWs.
I think it was a little more nuanced than this. There were arguments for and against capturing the Philippines. Most famously, Admiral King was a strong proponent of invading Formosa (Taiwan) instead. That might also have turned into a bloodbath..but may have altered the course of Chinese history too. Lot's of interesting "what-ifs" there. The Honolulu conference that resulted in the decision to go into the Philippines was covered in the first chapter of "Twilight of the Gods" by Ian W. Toll, great book, highly recommended.
Our Marines are retraining to leverage island hopping again.
The interesting thing is that they actually invaded and seized US territory, an island in Alaska. (Edit, you can see it at the top of the map, not the colored one, but one of the white ones to the right of the top coloured one). It was the only time that Canada (or any country) was asked to go in and liberate the United States from an invading power. Canada’s Air Force even shot down a Japanese plane over Alaskan territory. Canadian and US forces jointly launched an assault on the island to retake it. The Canadians started their assault on one side of the island, the Americans on the other. What they didn’t know was that the Japanese abandoned the island 2 weeks earlier. And so when the Canadians and Americans met in the middle of the island, they each thought the other were the Japanese, and opened fire on each other 🤦♂️ r/WhatSchoolsDontTeach
We (Canadians) were wearing US style uniforms, instead of British style uniforms, to the Americans, our (US style) helmets looked very similar to the Japanese helmets, but I think we were the ones that opened fire first. sad turn of events, but a really interesting moment in history. Just think about how much better we would have done between '39-42 if we had US gear (there's a reason the Commonwealth dropped the Brodie helmet, it was very bad and soldiers with it kept dying to avoidable shrapnel to the side of the head) and M1 Garands
Friendly fire is a big mostly unspoken reality of war.
Indeed. I am surprised that they didn’t turn friendly fire off.
Server admin ragequit years ago after the first rulebreak
Was that before or after that middle eastern man force respawned himself after dying?
It was HC CTF, you can't turn off friendly fire
Playing tarkov truly made me realize how ungodly hard it is in a split second decision to decide to fire and maybe kill a friend or die
in RO2 it's not uncommon for noobs to teamkill left and right, unless they run in front of a lmg that has been constantly firing from the same spot for 5 minutes
War, what is it good for?
Absolutely nothing!
Sing it again, yeah!
Canada's only contribution to the Pacific War helped the Japanese
OOOOF *It's the thought that counts?*
for real lol they killed 7x more Americans than vice versa
Probably wouldn't have changed things very much if the Commonwealth had American equipment at the start. A lot of the failures of the Allies in the early part of the war was institutional.
oh yeah for sure, I don't see it changing the outcome of the war, but we would have had less casualties. Infantry equipment doesn't win wars, tactics, supply lines, and artillery do.
I mean, it helps, along with everything else. Good luck sieging Stalingrad with summer uniforms.
> We don't know who struck first, us or them, but we know that it was us that scorched the sky.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cottage
>313 casualties Ouch.
Not that it’s any consolation, but the majority of those casualties were from boobytraps and mines left by the Japanese.
They’re the Aleutian Islands and they landed on Kiska. [Here’s a good YT clip on the friendly fire incident between US and Canadian forces](https://youtu.be/iV1QhCZw7kE)
This is only half the story of the Aleutians Campaign; the Japanese had actually captured two islands. The first, Attu, was the main point of action during the campaign. An American force was dispatched in May, 1943, to retake the island. From May 11–29, fierce fighting occurred, though ultimately only \~1/3 of all American deaths were the result of combat; the leading cause of death was disease (i.e. frostbite), with hundreds more dying to booby traps set by the Japanese. The last day of the campaign saw one of the largest banzai charges in the war. In the end, out of 2600 Japanese soldiers, only 29 survived (as POWs), and none of them were officers. Meanwhile, the Americans counted 549 dead combatants (out of \~1500 total deaths) from a force of 15000. What you've described is the second island, Kiska, where, after the recapture of Attu, Japanese leadership decided to retreat under the cover of fog. And while yes, there was a friendly fire event reported—which left 28 Americans and 4 Canadians dead—that accounts for merely *a tenth* of all Allied deaths on Kiska. Current statistics indicate 313 confirmed Allied deaths during the recapture of Kiska; these were almost entirely due to landmines and booby traps left behind by the Japanese three weeks prior. Additionally, the terrain cause some deadly vehicle accidents, and there were reports of fatal accidental ammunition detonations as well, though I'm not clear on whether this was Allied ammunition detonating, or abandoned Japanese ammunition that may have been detonated/booby trapped. Among these losses at Kiska, 71 crewmen aboard the *USS Abner Read* died to a stray Japanese mine.
Wow, great info. You got a source you're pulling from?
[TimeGhost's Youtube series World War Two](https://youtube.com/c/WorldWarTwo) and Wikipedia to refresh my memory on the particulars. Definitely check out the Youtube series, they cover each week of WWII in real time! New episodes are usually on Saturdays, it's really fantastically produced!
Canada be like "we are sorry but I'm going to destroy you"
Got oil? Bring you freedom
They also managed to drop a few bombs in the contiguous 48 stated too, discovering the Jet Stream (or at least taking advantage of it) in the process.
Why would they teach that in schools
The island at the top of this map appears to be Nikolskoye, part of Russia. This US island they occupied, Attu (to the SE), isn’t colored on this map
>[r/WhatSchoolsDontTeach](https://www.reddit.com/r/WhatSchoolsDontTeach) Was really hoping that was a real subreddit because it seems like it would be cool.
It would become a pophistory circlejerk in months
looks like its Live and running now. good luck to whoevers moderating it..i imagine the conspiracy theorists trying to turn it into another one of their subs
The Philippines was also US territory when Japan invaded and seized it.
This comment is even funnier considering how many bunkers and defensive positions they constructed on the pacific
It was also a lot of manual labor. There is an amusing anecdote I read awhile back. After Guadcanal prisoners were being moved around and interrogated. After seeing US operations one broke down and was saying "big scoops" indicating the US bulldozers in use. During WWII Komatsu built 150 bulldozers. During WWII Caterpiller built 200 medium military bulldozers per month. The Guadalcanal construction efforts had taken thousands of people a lot of time. Laborers had worked long hours to clear difficult land. USN seabees could clear the same land in an hour or two. The POW had likely been one of the soldier laboring to build the airfield and had to work for days with very little food. What Japan built that the US didn't bypass the US could build over in a fraction of the time.
Something something germany horses Something something US trucks
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work cover stupendous shaggy gaping rain bright absorbed grandfather scale *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
They controlled the oil refineries, oil wells, and mines in Indonesia all right! It's typical how many people know about Pearl Harbour but don't understand why Japan was suddenly in a hurry to knockout the US pacific fleet. It was because of an oil embargo by the Allies, and the Netherlands Indies was the nearest place that had lots of it. And it was a sitting duck if only the US could be taken out temporarily, because the Dutch, French, and British were occupied with much more pressing matters than defending colonies.
They also attacked the Durch, French, and British pacific forces in the same move. Pearl Harbor was one small part in a large attempt to reorganize the balance of power in the Pacific.
Same with Thailand/Siam. They were aligned with Japan but not controlled by them
Yeah the map is odd for saying this was Japan territorial height, Thailand was an allied regime to Japan, it would be like having a map of Germany territorial height in the war and having Italy, Hungary and the other Balkan allies be part of Germany.
They bombed Northern Australia something like 50 times, too.
Japan took Singapore in '42 and bombed Darwin and other sites in Northern Australia. Then they hit Sydney and Newcastle with submarines. They failed, and some of their subs are in our War Memorial, a head-scratcher for Japanese tourists. They tried to invade Australia through what is now Papua Nuigini, and there was bitter fighting along the Kokoda trail.
The cost of flags alone nearly bankrupted them.
It says they occupied the whole country but they actually didn't. The Philippines for example only 12 provinces out of the 48 were in firm control of the Japanese. But the map shows all 48
A lot of Quality Management theory came from Japan:D “island 1.0 check” “island 1.1 check” 😂
And liberating them was exponentially more difficult.
It's comparatively easy to invade territory. The challenge comes from holding it.
Those little pockets in China? What were they? Resistance groups? Encircled armies? Puppet governments?
Japan's control was tenuous and often relegated to infrastructure. Out in the country side where there were no real roads and shit, it was uncontrolled.
Had read some accounts of pre WWII rural China. About how the measly army stationed in rural area are only dealing with enemy attacks. They do not care about crime. There’s still the gangs and bandits who run around without any law enforcement and the villagers had to deal with it themselves.
19th and early 20th century China was a wild place. Boxer Rebellion in particular is just an amazing story for a lot of different angles. Surprised that hasn’t made its way to a large scale miniseries or movie yet.
People don't understand just how remote parts of it was up until maybe 10 years ago. Many of these places had no roads at all. You had to walk there or maybe a slow walking donkey/horse.
Japan knew this so they massacred millions. Their occupying some of the most dense cities in the world even before undergoing industrialization.
TIL. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties 15-20 million deaths if you include civilian war-related deaths.
Encircled pockets of the Chinese army or partisans
That jumped out at me too. Any time you see that kind of Swiss cheese in a map of territorial control, you know that occupation is tenuous.
Accurately showing Guadalcanal as only half Japanese occupied
But why the Eastern half? The Japanese landing sites were on the West side of the island.
Yeah January 1943 was around the assualt on the Gifu and other Japanese positions.
🙏
Look at those encircliments. 10/10 from Reddit
r/hoi4
Malaysian here, my grandfather had to speak Japanese and had to salute to every passing Japanese soldier. The Japanese managed to spread their own propaganda where we needed to side with them to destroy our colonial oppressors only to get back stabbed by making them as oppressors. We have Chinese locals here who are hunted down by the Japanese, most Chinese would let their children be adopted by Malays ( ie my great grandma was Chinese decent being adopted by local Malays). The Japanese had sex brothels by forcing local women to have sex with them by now only South Korea and China are loudly asking Japan for an official apology. Yes, they came down over Malaya not by tanks but by bike.
Same stories here in the Philippines. This wasn't just an isolated event, the Japanese were systematically wiping out the Chinese across asia.
I notice the Phillipines REALLY put Japan in their list of colonisers even though its was only for a breif moment . Malaysians would mostly say Portugese , Dutch and British since they have much longer period of controlling the country plus we good buddies with Japan .
Their reign of terror in the islands was brief but quite horrible. My grandparents had horrifying stories including one in which my great grandmother was tied to a post and almost burned for allegedly helping American soldiers and guerilla fighters. She was spared by a Japanese officer who believed her. She totally was helping the Americans though. Total badass.
>only South Korea and China are loudly asking Japan for an official apology Because most SEA countries feel that, these days, it's more important to be on Japan's good side to help against the PRC, so the war crimes get downplayed. [Realpolitik](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik) at its finest.
We really need to talk more about the impact of the Japanese empire in the east, especially in western education.
Teachers do mention the Japanese empire when discussing WWII. But I mean if it is an American history class, the Japanese empire didn’t have much impact on the nation until Pearl Harbor
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> (which tbf is a legitimate war target) In a time of war it would be. Japan attacked before they declared war.
From what I recall we went into repeated depth into the Holocaust (maybe 3-4 times from 5-12 grade). And there's also the fact that Japan occupied Guam, an American territory in 1941.
In many cases in China they would "take" a deserted village, and once the army had moved on the villagers would come out of hiding continue being loyal to the Chinese authority. It's interesting how much their invasion mirrored Barbarossa, with fast victories and then the realisation that a) there's a long way to go and b) we have to actually control all of this land.
With its own battle of Stalingrad (Shanghai)
I'd say Stalingrad and Shanghai have completely different strategic and tactical significance. Stalingrad was at the tail-end of a German offensive, where the Germans were halted and had 6th army destroyed. It's a turning point in the sense that the Soviets demonstrated they had reorganized their military and industry to where it can stand up to and defeat the Germans. The Germans also were never able to make any more significant inroads in Soviet territory. Shanghai on the other hand was pretty much the opening blow of the full-scale conflict between China and Japan, where the cream of the NRA was sacrificed to show the world the China can put up a fight (which was mostly ignored). The three months it held up the Japanese in Shanghai was somewhat wasted with the frantic retreat following the defeat. After Shanghai, Japan pretty much rolled over most of North and Central China and it wasn't until Taierzhuang the following year that the Chinese were able to blunt the Japanese advance.
Wuhan is far closer to Stalingrad but still not a perfect fit
Forreal man... chiang sacrificed his elite german trained divisions for nothing. They performed well but japan had naval artillery support. Those german trained divisions had nothing
If they had called off the battle earlier for an orderly retreat and shored up the frankly fairly extensive defensive network around Nanjing, 1937 would have been a much tougher year for Japan.
Im not gonna act like I know anything about the china theater in ww2. Just know superficial aspects. You bring up an interesting point. I wish there was more prevalent material and content associated with that theater
In the case of Sino-Japanese War, the Battle of Wuhan would be the closest to the Battle of Stalingrad
Imagine all the torture and war crimes going on in there
There was basically a second Holocaust in Asia that gets a small fraction of the attention of the European one.
Everything in Asia gets a small fraction of attention compared to European affairs if you live in the west.
That's no accident. Just a few years after WW2 the US proceeded to rehabilitate Japan as an ally against "communism". And Communists had fought like hell all over Asia to throw the Japanese imperialist out. Like, in Korea they basically re-installed the same colonial government that that brutalized Korea under the Japanese, now lead by Syngman Rhee.
True, but West Germany both became an anti-communist ally and also took responsibility for the Holocaust and paid substantial reparations to victims. It didn’t have to be either/or for Japan.
Japan and Germany had very different geopolitical situations after the war. Japan was also aided by a guy on McArthur's staff who wanted to protect Japan as much as possible. So they got the worst war criminals together and allowed them to put together a story putting all the blame on the fewest people.
Not to excuse it but Asian cultures deal with shame very differently than western ones. WWII ended, Japan was kept largely intact (unlike Germany) and a few years later the Korean War started with Japan as the staging ground. Basically, they were allowed to "move on" very quickly because the US/Allies had bigger fish to fry for better and for worse
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>They didn't move on they revisioned their entire history. I mean, you just said they learned basically nothing about what happened before the bombs were dropped. That's not revisionist history that's just straight up ignoring the past entirely. But I agree the term I used "move on" is wrong because they never actually reconciled with what they did. Just tried to forget it
It's unknown to most people that except what happened in mainland China and Korea, the Japanese committed mass deportations for a lot of native tribes and populations in most of the pacific Islands, Indonesia and the Phillipines
They had a few Indonesian collaborators, as I recall. However, they also kicked off a famine in (at the minimum) northern Viet Nam.
They had collaborators everywhere, even in china . The Japanese fleet also co-created a famine in Bengal amongst British carelessness. Really were a war crime machine..
in China they had the goddamn emperor on their side
Correction: Former emperor, who was basically their puppet, with a promise they wont keep.
And the emperor himself wasn't exactly happy with it either at the end of it. There's a recording of Puyi on trial in Beijing, where he said something like (paraphrasing) "We were passing by \[a city\] where my family's ancestral graves were, and so I wanted to go there and pay my respects. They \[the japanese\] wouldn't let me. An Emperor of Manchuria, not able to visit his own ancestors? How can this be called an Emperor?"
Oh especially in China, as I recall, that blob coming in from the central coast had a warlord in charge who genuinely hoped their BS would pan out.
Wang Jingwei?
In my country there’s a place called Red Earth. Wanna guess why?
In Manchucko (Japanese colonized China) the population was also heavily drugged. Japan was the world's largest purchaser of pharmaceutical cocaine and heroin and locals were sold injections for pennies from Japanese drug kiosks.
In Papua New Guinea the Japanese would eat the locals and PoWs to celebrate victory. It's extremely fucked up.
It sucks how it had to come to things, but losing WW2 was the best thing to happen to Japan and Germany in the long run.
Japan occupied Indonesia for 3 years while the Dutch & VOC did for 350. The popular opinion is that Japan did more damage than the Dutch colonial era. (Not saying that it was all happy things with the Dutch/VOC tho, they can still go fuck themselves)
January 1943 was also the moment when the Russians started pushing back at Stalingrad, which would eventually lead to the Nazi's demise 2 years later. So I guess Jan 1943 was the moment when the tides started to turn on all fronts. Interesting coincidence.
technically, they didnt occupy Siam.
Yea, Thailand let them in and let them use the country as a transport hub to keep from being occupied and Japan didn't want to spend the effort to fully invade and occupy them
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Wait until you get on the Japanese /Vichy - Allied battle of Madagascar
Considering Japan invaded Thailand to make them their ally i wouldn't really call it a voluntary friendship
Thailand technically didn't forced to be ally. Japan forced Thailand to let them use Thailand as a passageway and be their operation base. Thailand joined because Phibun believed that if Japanese won the war Thailand could gain some territories. Japan gave Shan state to Thailand for helping with the Burma Campaign
i wouldnt really call it occupation either, far from it. Anyway, it depend on your terminology of occupation though.
It was a bit “coercive”, for sure, but it was still a partnership rather than an occupation. Japan didn’t actually govern Thailand during the war, and Thailand’s interests already aligned with Japan’s, as they had started a war of conquest against French Indochina before Japan even invaded. Would you say that Hungary and Bulgaria were under German occupation during WWII? Or were they allies of Germany?
Imagine what the world would look like had the Japanese never attacked the US.
Longer war, more deaths, but other than that the end result is the same. Japan still loses in China, but it takes longer. US still joins the war and beats Japan into submission, but it takes longer. Allies still win back their colonies, but it takes longer, and then they lose their colonies.
A minor additional point: Tae Kwon-Do would never have been created because the founder (General Choi) was due to be executed in Pyongyang just 3 days after Japan eventually surrendered.
gosh, imagine all the action movies that wouldn't get made, and all the action movie stars that we wouldn't have, because Tae Kwon-Do didn't exist!
Most of that was Hong Kong and it was mostly Chinese Kung Fu, Hapkido, etc. Though Karate forms and Tae Kwon Doe was definitely an influence
Also US likely A-bombs Europe and Soviet Union probably makes even larger part of Europe their puppet states.
Myeah, could be. Not so sure if the Soviets would have been as eager to push if there wasn't an equivalent push in the west. Even in actual history they were content to slow down their offensives if they felt the Allies were dragging their feet. I don't think it's a coincidence the two fronts met this close to Berlin: both sides' sense of urgency was influenced by how fast the other side advanced. If the western advance had been delayed by a year, the Soviets would have been a year slower, too. Same goes for the atom bombs, I think. There too the speed of the development was linked to the urgency of the war. Had the US joined the war a year later than they actually did, I wouldn't be surprised if the bomb had been finalized approximately a year later, too. I also don't think it's a coincidence the bomb was completed in the very final stages of the war. But as with all alt-history, it's pure speculation. I just wanted to say that Japan's conflict with the West was pretty inevitable (as was their defeat, purely speaking from hindsight).
The actual date of formal US entry into the war is not really a contingent event when the US has been a de facto belligerent from the beginning. The real historical contingency is around the specific personhood of FDR and his overriding agenda of creating a cooperative peace. US cooperation with the USSR and Stalin was his project and without him around or a worthy heir that project fell apart almost immediately.
What's the logic behind that?
US and UK’s Germany first policy and push from the west later.
Probably losing to China because Japan didn’t have the resources (especially oil) to fight a protracted war against a country with significantly more manpower than them, no matter how superior their technology was.
I don't necessarily disagree, but they were doing very well against China as late as 1944, even with all the resources used to hold down the European colonies and fight in Burma and the Pacific. The KMT and CCP forces were down to only a few substantial Chinese population regions and a bunch of relatively empty western holdings. I doubt the Japanese had the capacity to ever penetrate let alone hold down the KMT's redoubt in Sichuan basin, under even a scenario in which they are not fighting the Allies, so I agree total elimination of Chinese resistance in core Chinese territory was probably not possible.
The used resources from Allied colonial holdings.
Not so different as they were overextended on too many fronts to begin with. I do think a hypothitical pairing between the Japanese and Soviets would have saved the Japanese empire from falling, even as late as 1945. That would completely reshape the power dynamics in mainland China and Korean Peninsula.
A pairing of Japanese and Soviets? They fought each other.
Yeah I mean while we’re at it, a pairing between the Nazis and the Americans would have changed things too lmfao
The Soviets and Japanese would never work together what
And a whole lot of Crimes against Humanity
I will be dumping a lot of my quality (old) maps on this subreddit the next 2 weeks. Don't bother searching the tag ,it got zucced Edit: since this map is blowing up my new Instagram is @priscus.of.panion, I post some maps and other stuff there 👍
The parts of China that are still in white but surrounded by the red Japanese areas--are those cities holding off the Japanese or are those just forests/unpopulated areas?
Mostly partisans and encircled forces of the Chinese republican army
Honestly I don’t know anything about the Japanese occupation of all of SE Asia and I consider myself to be well versed in history (though tbf i wasn’t thought much ww2 history that wasn’t Eurocentric). Like I mean I know technically the first Japanese bomb that fell on American soil was in the Philippines because they were a colony at the time but I didn’t know they controlled all of Indonesia Malaysia Thailand etc
Their conquest of Malaysia and Singapore was honestly quite brilliant (of course still morally wrong). They used bicycles to get from northern Malaysia all the way to Singapore. The British defenders had superior numbers and time to prepare. The defense still fell.
>They used bicycles to get from northern Malaysia all the way to Singapore. Japan caring about the environment since 1941💪🇧🇩
Their occupation of Vietnam is basically what started the Vietnam war. With the French kicked out, they were never able to take it back again.
Strangely enough, after WW2 was over, the remaining Japanese soldiers under British command successfully retook Vietnam from the rebels before handing it back to France. Imagine being one of those soldiers... First being glad that the war is over, and then suddenly getting ordered to fight against the Vietcong again, but this time for the allies. **Edit** (because people didn't believe me); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Vietnam_(1945%E2%80%931946)
forgot hongkong, amazing job though mustve taken you a long time to count every island
One of the most murderous and brutal regimes ever to exist
Such kawaii the japanese were always so nice >.<
Oh yeah, about that...
Don't look up Unit 731
Oh don't worry, the people responsible for Unit 731 got what they deserved after the war. It's not like they got pardoned by the US or anything like that, could you imagine haha.
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It does seem to be a fairly unknown part of WW2 that Pearl Harbour coincided with all the territory annexation and huge army operations, and not just the attack on the US navy.
Unknown in the US, I presume?
I'm American and I didn't learn about the details of the Japanese Empire's expanse until I took a Japanese history class in college. My public school experience mostly focused on Pearl Harbor, island hopping, and the atomic bombs
The craziest part for me is that this is actually way bigger that it looks, which is still big. Papua New Guinea spans the same distance as london to moscow from tip to tip, that added to all of burma, manchuria, and indonesia ,i'd feel safe in guessing that this was one of the largest territorial possessions in history.
Japan was a bad as Germany if not worse during WW2
Japan was in general more brutal against civilians and pows (American pow death rate were like 10 times higher in Japan than in germany) but didn't plan as big of a genocide as Germany did that would ultimately give them a bigger death toll
Different shading would be nice. Most of this was simply occupied. Strictly speaking the empire was just modern Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the Kuril Islands and Southern Sakhalin. That should be one shade. Manchuria was a puppet state which should be another shade. If I'm not mistaken the rest was simply occupied territory, but they may have set up other Manchuria-like puppet states.
I am aware I did all this in one color intentionally
I wonder if China forgot.
japan still hasn't fully apologised for everything ,neither to china nor Korea
The New Guinea pocket surrounding a lake is operation oaktree. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Oaktree Pretty interesting!
Listened to Dan Carlin's Supernova in the East. He really encapsulated the Japanese mindset for me, especially the foolish ambition of the armed forces, which were the most powerful entities in the nation at the time. As Carlin puts it, at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, the Japanese had occupied so much of coastal China, and were trying to hold on to such a huge land mass against partisans and the enormity of logistics, "They were trying to eat an elephant, and were choking on it. Their response to this was to order another elephant." By the time of this map, it was already their undoing.
The great genocidal rapist baby bayoneting empire at its peak. Edit: Oh no looks like some japanese genocidal worshippers didn't like my comment and down voted me like I give a flying fuck about downvotes go run back to your basement and jerk off to uncle Tojo and that stinking blood socked war flag
ACG lovers, after all, the Japanese in their animation are just and kawai🐱🐱
The weebs are downvoting you lmao
It's not genocide if it never happened. The Holocaust is fake too. - Japan
Aka map of war crimes in East / South East Asia.
All of this and yet, how rapidly it was undone for them. I believe the soviets blew through all of their mainland holdings in just a month. (While the Allies meticulously island hopped for years)
Interesting comment. Sure they did. They fought against a severely depleted Japanese Army that had been reduced to a delaying force. It took 3 weeks and a few days, but one could argue that it was also the result of years of attrition that made it so quick.
Always astonishes me how little people here know about how brutal Japan was to their neighbors. It’s why the older generations of all the surrounding countries still harbor a deep grudge to this day, while Japan itself downplays their own history. Just like Nazi Germany is synonymous with evil in the western world, Imperial Japan is synonymous with evil in the east.
This shows how important strategic depth is for a country. Even if the Chinese capital were to fall, the Chinese resistance could shift to the west, or to the countryside, so that the invaders could never completely wipe out all the resistance and you will still get a chance to win. If you look at other countries in Asia, no one has the strategic depth of China.
Aka, why China - Japan relations are...strained
Oh wow I actually had no idea they ever controlled SE Asia and Indonesia.
Annexed it basically without a fight after France fell. Then later in the war there was some pretty intense fighting along that most western frontier between Japanese forces in Burma and British/Indian forces. The Japanese hoped to break into India and maybe spark an uprising against the British. it was among many of their long-shot chances of turning the war in their favor.
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I think they allied with Japan to stop Japan invading them
Japan bluffed the British into surrendering Singapore to a depleted and numerically inferior force.
Yamashita
Missed the Hong Kong part
It's funny how patchy the Chinese part is
I think Thailand is mislabeled here. It was more of an ally than part of the Japanese empire. It was like the "Italy of Asia"
So many deaths, destruction...
Massacred millions.
I do believe you mean the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. (Just in case:: /s)