How Did The Second Sino-Japanese War Affect The Growth Of Japan?

After the world war I allied countries had signed the treaty of Versailles. Japan had felt left out because it wanted to include a part about racial equality. They felt that they weren't being treated equally. So Japan had started to take control and conquer land in southeast Asian countries. They wanted to spread their rule and race. The U.S. didn’t agree with Japan’s action and over the years tension has developed between the two countries. Japan bombed Pearl Harbor because of their nationalist mindset, America’s embargo of oil, and the fear of being attacked by the United States because of its growth.

China and Japan are too enormous and influential nations located in Eastern Asia. These two nations are almost always confused because of their similar culture and people, and they also happen to be right next to each other. Japan and China have never been allies and the two countries always seem to be in conflict. These two superpowers are very important to the world, and without them everything would be imbalanced in the global market. The rising superpower, China, is a nation that will continue to grow and improve their economy, while the fragile superpower, Japan, could fall apart at any moment and ruin the balance between all of the other countries.

Japan was a very nationalistic country in which the purpose of the civilians was to fight until death for their emperor. This was evident in the fact that they had practiced an extremely nationalistic concept of Bushido. This concept made surrender unacceptable for all Japanese people and they lived to die for the emperor. There nationalism was fueled by the fact that they won 2 large battles (Sino Japanese War and Russo Japanese war) against larger countries. Along with this, the Japanese also had Kamikaze pilots who suicide by deliberately crashing planes into American warship as a tactic of fighting. This extreme nationalism shows that they could not be fought with regular weapons and so posed a threat for the whole world.

Even though they started as allies they both wanted different things and never had an agreement. The one thing that they both wanted was control and dominance in the Pacific. Japan was thirsty for power after the First World War. If they had power in the Pacific they would have ownership of raw materials, which means they would not have to pay anything to have access to them. The Japanese were determined to make this an accomplished goal. The beginning of Japans and Chinas problems can be traced back to the invasion of Manchuria. In 1931the Japanese invaded Manchuria which part of China and renamed it Manchukuo. This was the start of it all and the reason for the Sino-Japanese War. The Sino-Japanese was lasted until the end of the Second World War (Iriye 4). When China made the decision to take on Japan, other countries got involved, the United States being one of them, who took the Chinese side under Chiang Kai-shek. The Japanese had a slogan: “the Great East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere” which frightened the United States (Iriye 7). Just because the U.S. was known to be the

Between the years of 1927 and 1949 in China two warring sides, China’s Communist Party and China’s Nationalist Party, clashed. Although the two parties had previously worked together in the United Front against Japan when Japan tried to invade, their temporary alliance was dropped as soon as the invasion was over. Halting only for a brief period when Japan attempted to invade a second time in 1936 to form the Second United Front, the two parties resumed fighting after the invasion was over in 1945, and only stopped hostilities when the Communist party drove out the Nationalist party to Taiwan and other islands. This war brought China into a new era under a communist government, the People’s Republic of China. Massive reform and change would

Japan had half the population of the U.S. with less land than Sweden (Background Essay). The need for more land did not leave them with many option; those options being genocide or taking land they chose the latter. They started their conquest by creating the new order. The new order stated that “Manchuria is its reservoir and East Asia (including China) is its paddy field (Doc A).” This is important because it is saying that Manchuria and East Asia are theirs for the taking.

The more Japan fought with China the more relations were lost (Source B). Japan was undergoing a large set of embargoes as countries such as the U.S, Britain and the Netherlands responded to its grant for Japanese air bases in French Indochina (Source C). Source B states that Japan was already lacking in natural resources and its practical response was to expand into neighboring countries (Source F). Tokyo negotiated with Washington as to the issue regarding Japans expansionism. Japan was in desperate search of oil (Source C), although it also knew that a full scale invasion of South-East Asia would prompt war with America (Source B).

China was too much of a hard target for the Japanese to gain land. So they found an easier target, being South-east Asia. It was rich in minerals and oil (Source B). But Japan knew that a full-scale invasion of South-east Asia would lead to a war with the USA (Source B) and perhaps their invasion plans would be failed. They needed something to stop the USA for a while, from prompting war with them, while they took over South-east Asia. Once they got South-east Asia they would be powerful enough to negotiate an armistice with the USA (Source C).

The Japanese Imperial Army, which occupied Nanjing in 1937, committed numerous heinous crimes. Including acts such as rape, arson, looting, and murder. They did however try to persuade that the executions of the Chinese were only combatant, this period holds an event called the Nanjing Massacre for a reason. They targeted innocent Chinese citizens, young children, and women. During this horrific event, around … people lost their lives. Many Japanese today still do not acknowledge this fact however. (BBC – Nanjing Massacre)

Another cause was that the Japanese could not be overlooked in the Pacific even with the "Europe First" approach. First actions were defensive, was to protect areas that were not being used by the Japanese. The Japanese Aggression known as the Second Sino-Japanese War was an invasion which arose after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. This attack would become one of the superior conflicts of World War II as a main front of what is known as the Pacific War. The Great Depression had hit Japan's economy hard. Japan's military leaders argued that Japan could resolve its economic difficulties by expanding into other parts of Asia. The United States had refused to recognize Japan demands. To stop Japanese development, the U.S. forbidden exports of steel, oil and other supplies to Japan. Japan was focused on expanding; so, then the two binary countries debated so they can avoid a

Before the attack, there were many injustice actions. The tension had already started way before this event. The dispute between two countries could be traced back all the way to 1915. When Japan issued the “Twenty-One Demands” on China, it “represented ultimatum to the Chinese government”. They were forced to give Japan a privileged status in some parts of China, also known as the “sphere of influence”. China was divided and conquered by Japan. This became a conflict with the “Open Door” stated policy between the United States and China, “in which all countries were to respect Chinese sovereignty and enjoy equal across to Chinese trade.” Later on, Japan was in an economic crisis and captured the rich province in China. This action was the culmination

In the early 1930, before the start of WWII itself, Japan was already fighting and invading China. This was because Japan saw China was beginning to gain power and could possibly take back land Japan had taken in earlier war. As this happened, Japan began to lose power and, eventually, became desperate for resources and led to the eventual attack on Pearl Harbor.

And even the Japanese operation against the Communists had opposite effect, because Three All Campaign’s aimed at turning people against the Communists by burning down their villages and crops, murdering the peasants made the peasants hate the Japanese even more and help the Communists attack them. The Japan-China war was a great success of the Communists because, by 1945, they controlled eighteen ‘liberation areas’ in the countryside. Invariably it was the Reds to whom the Japanese submitted.

The United States cautioned Japan against further hostile actions by threatening to cut off shipments of raw materials to the country. This was a really risky situation for Japan, its only income of oil and metal came from the United States, while their main source of rubber came from some British territories in Malaya. “Therefore, it would seem that the nation would have to tread lightly to avoid angering the West. Or would it? In a surprising act of defiance, Japan promptly separated from the League of Nations, which was the precursor to the United Nations.” Tensions continued to arise in the region for several years until 1937, when Japan entered full force military combat with the economically depressed nation China. This conflict became known as the Second Sino-Japanese War, which would later be singled out as the starting point of World War II in the Pacific Theater. In the fall of 1940, Japan met with the Germans and fascist-controlled Italy to create an alliance known as the Tripartite Pact. Under this alliance these three nations agreed to work with and hold up each other in their respective countries’

The Second Sino-Japanese war began on July 7th, 1937 and ended on September 9th, 1945. It was a military conflict which was fought between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. As part of the struggle against fascism, Japan invaded China. It is clear that, due to the restriction of its natural resources, Japan tried to increase by robbing resources from other countries. Japan used the conquered Manchuria as a launching base for their troops. Manchuria was an enormous region that consisted of three provinces- Liaoning in the south, Jilin in the middle and Heilongjiang in the north. In 1905, when Japan defeated Russia in the Russo-Japanese war, Russia, which used Manchuria for business and