The Pacific War: China and Japan in WWII

(1941-1945)

Teacher Resource Guide

East Asia National Resource Center

By Kelly Hammond

The Triumph of the Militarists and the

Road to War After the invasion of Manchuria and its

withdrawal from the League of Nations in

1933, Japan was further isolated from the

international community. In 1936, Japan

signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with the

Nazis while continuing to secure their

interests on the mainland China. The

tensions between the Japanese and the

Chinese were running high since the

Mukden Incident and fighting broke out

on the morning of July 8, 1937 at the

Marco Polo Bridge. The Marco Polo Bridge

Incident, which we will explore in detail

below, marks the beginning of WWII in

Asia.

The Chinese army defending Marco Polo Bridge,

1937. Source: Chinafolio.com

The situation in Asia cannot be separated

from developments in Europe around the

same time. The outbreak of the war in

Europe in 1939 had a large impact on the

balance of power in the Pacific theater.

When Germany invaded Poland in 1939,

European powers were too preoccupied

with the events in Europe and could not

attend well to their colonies, especially

those far afield in the Pacific. When Hitler

conquered the Netherlands in May 1940,

Japan quickly took control over oil-rich

colonies in Southeast Asia in an attempt to

secure fossil fuels for their military

endeavours. Japan capitalized on

opportunities to seize colonial possessions

made available by Hitler’s war in Europe.

As Japan, Italy, and Germany entered the

Tripartite Pact in September 1940, the

United States also began to mobilize its

resources to resist them. The United

States felt threatened by the Tripartite

Pact and expanded their support to the

Nationalists in China who had been

fighting the Japanese since 1937.

The U.S. government froze Japanese

assets in the United States and revoked

Japan’s permit to buy U.S. oil. This

embargo meant that the Japanese could

only purchase one month’s supply of oil at

a time, making them fundamentally

vulnerable in the case of a full-scale

protracted war. It was under such

circumstances that the Japanese Army

strategists decided that war with America

would be inevitable. They believed that

launching pre-emptive blow on the United

States would buy Japan some time to get

its empire together in Asia. On December

5, 1941, the Japanese launched a pre-

emptive strike on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at

Pearl Harbor.

The Pacific War was a new kind of war; it

was a naval and an air war. The first trans-

Pacific flight had occurred nearly fifteen

years ago, and the war heavily relied on

the use of aircraft to cover the vast swaths

of land and ocean in the Pacific theater.

For this reason, a primary focus of

military strategy became securing and

destroying air force bases. As well, tiny

atolls, like Wake Island, became useful air

bases and gained completely new strategic

importance. By 1942, the tide had turned

in the Pacific and at the Battle of Midway

the United States had a decisive victory

that put Japan on the defensive for the

rest of the war. However, Japan was not

about to surrender easily. The Japanese

adopted the tactic known as “dig in and

die,” meaning that they would fight to the

last man in a battle. In 1944, as the

situation for Japan became direr, the

Japanese began to increase the number of

kamikaze missions where pilots were

“volun-told” to fly their planes or operate

submarines on suicide missions. By early

1945, the B-29 bombers and other

American aircrafts began large-scale

bombing campaigns on Japanese cities,

causing fires, panic, and the first thoughts

among the Japanese civilians that they

might lose the war.

Iwo Jima Memorial in Arlington, VA.

Source: U.S. Department of Defense

Keeping in mind the Japanese motivations

and justifications for imperial expansion

on the mainland is key to thinking about

how the war unfolded, especially in the

early years. First, Japan needed

resources—especially oil and food—to

sustain its imperial ambitions. Second, the

Japanese were very concerned about

Soviet expansion into Siberia and wished

to maintain Manchuria as a buffer against

the Soviets. Third, racism and militarism

cannot be underestimated as factors

contributing to the war. Throughout the

1930s, the Japanese saw themselves as the

leader among the Asian races and

imagined that it was their duty to protect

Asia from Western colonialism in

whatever ways possible.

Despite the Japanese takeover of

Manchuria, Chiang Kai-shek continued to

spend his political and military energies

on suppressing the Communists, until as

late as December 1936. Following the

Mukden Incident (see the previous

module on Republican China), the

Japanese saw that the League of Nations

would condemn them, so the Saito

Cabinet approved the conquest of major

strategic places in Manchuria and North

China, including Jehol, Rehe, Chengde,

and Shanghaiguan. On May 31, 1932,

Japan and China signed the Tanggu Truce,

which stipulated that Japan would retain

Jehol and Shanghaiguan, and that there

would be a demilitarized zone between the

Great Wall and the Beijing/Tianjin

corridor from which Chinese troops were

barred. This allowed the Japanese to get

closer to their ultimate goal, which was to

draw Chinese recognition of Manchuria.

For the Chinese, the Tanggu Truce ended

the Manchurian crisis in the immediate

sense and gave them some breathing time

to shift their focus to defeating the

Communists. Chiang Kai-shek always

claimed that once he firmly unified China

under his leadership, he would be able to

wage war against Japan on the mainland.

However, in December 1936, Chiang was

kidnapped in Xi’an by a former warlord.

This event in Xi’an, also known as the

Xi’an Incident, exposed disunity among

the Chinese leadership.

The Marco Polo Bridge Incident

The Marco Polo Bridge Incident began on

July 7, 1937. Chinese troops clashed with

Japanese troops, who were conducting

war exercises in the de-militarized area

outside of Beijing. When a Japanese

soldier was declared missing in the

morning following the night exercises, the

local Chinese officer barred the Japanese

from searching the walled city of Wanping.

Consequently, small scale fighting ensued.

At first, it was believed that a truce will

soon be achieved. It was in Japan’s best

interest at the time to defer war because

they had to worry about later engagement

against the Soviets or the Allies in Europe).

Nonetheless, the Konoe Cabinet took the

advice of the Kwantung Army and

approved the dispatch of five army

divisions to China. Although the Japanese

and Chinese commanders in Wanping had

already reached an agreement that could

have settled the dispute, the Konoe

Cabinet decided to send the troops and as

a result the war begun between Japan and

China. Between July 1937 and 1939, the

Japanese Army and Navy overran the

most important and heavily populated

regions of China, suffering few setbacks in

an essentially unbroken string of victories.

By mid-1939, Japan had conquered most

of the densely populated, urbanized

foreign trade-oriented parts of China that

had previously been the lifeline of the

Nationalists. Although Chinese leaders

blamed defeat on inferior armament and

equipment of Chinese army, Chiang Kai-

shek’s ineffective command practices,

factional splits in the Chinese military,

and the continued distrust between the

Communists and the Nationalists were

main contributing factors to Japan’s

victory.

The Marco Polo Bridge Incident.

Source: Cultural China

The Occupation of Shanghai

On August 7, 1937, fighting broke out in

Shanghai and the Japanese finally

captured the city in November 1937. After

six months since the war began, the

Japanese occupied the two most

important cities in China—Beijing and

Shanghai—and were on their way to

capture the Nationalist capital of Nanjing.

The Nationalists were opting for a full-

scale war with the Japanese rather than

negotiating with them. The Nationalists

could have offered the Japanese a

settlement in the north along with the

recognition of Manchukuo. This is what

the Japanese essentially wanted, but the

Nationalists considered such option as

humiliation. Unwilling to negotiate or to

acknowledge the military supremacy of

the Japanese army, Chiang Kai-shek sent

71 divisions of his elite German-trained

soldiers to Shanghai. Chiang’s army

experienced a decisive defeat. This

campaign in Shanghai once again showed

China’s limited ability to wage war against

Japan. With their control over a

significant number of Chinese cities, the

Japanese were able to easily occupy the

railway routes that were essential for

moving supplies and troops across the

mainland.

Nanjing and the Rape of Nanjing

In December 1937, Japanese troops

marched into Nanjing. As the Japanese

rapidly approached Nanjing at the end of

November, Chiang Kai-Shek and the

Nationalist government evacuated to

Wuhan. On December 13, 1937, Japanese

troops entered the undefended city and

killed approximately 200,000-300,000

civilians (according to most estimates).

Japanese troops entering Nanjing.

Source: The Memorial Hall of the Victims

This event is known in the West as the

Rape of Nanjing. These terror tactics

employed by the Japanese were meant to

intimidate the Chinese into submission.

However, such events only exacerbated

anti-Japanese sentiment among the local

Chinese, strengthening their resolve to

fight the Japanese. Chiang Kai-shek was

also hoping for foreign intervention after

the international community found out

about the atrocities in Nanjing. There

were many Western missionaries near

Nanjing who documented and publicized

these events.

Victims of the Nanjing Massacre.

Source: Murase Moriyasu

Furthermore, the Panay incident—when a

U.S. river gunboat responsible for

evacuating British and Americans from

Nanjing was sunk by a Japanese air

attack—forced Japan to apologize and pay

a large compensation to Great Britain and

the United States. However, the United

States, in its isolationist phase, and Great

Britain, preoccupied in Europe, accepted

the Japanese government’s apology and

the monetary compensation without any

further involvement in what was going on

in Nanjing. This was an indication to both

the Japanese and the Chinese that Asia

was low on American and British priorities,

especially in relation to affairs in Europe.

The Flooding of the Yellow River

In 1938, the Japanese pushed down to the

Yellow River with little Chinese opposition.

The Chinese units they faced either fled in

panic or disbanded into predatory

guerrilla bands, mostly because there was

no central command to tell them what to

do. Chiang Kai-shek thus became

extremely concerned about the Japanese

advance and ordered that the dikes of the

Yellow River be blown up to prevent the

Japanese from advancing. The course of

the river shifted and flooded much of

Henan, Anhui, and Jiangsu. As a result,

millions of people died from either the

flood itself or because the floods deprived

them of food and other resources. This

deliberate strategy to shift the course of

the Yellow River to stop the Japanese

advancement led to the death of millions

of Chinese. Such disregard for the lives of

peasants by Chiang’s Nationalists

contributed to winning the Communists

more popular support.

The Chinese Nationalist soldiers during the flood.

In the meantime, the Japanese could not

seize the Beijing-Hankou railways as a

result of the flooding of the Yellow River.

This meant that their attack on Wuhan

depended on an advance westward up the

Yangtze River. Breaking of the dikes of the

Yellow River had prevented the Japanese

from taking the Henan railway junction in

Zhengzhou. Historians thus call this event

the “largest act of environmental warfare

in history,” though the strategic value of

the flood has been questioned by many.

Japan’s advance towards Zhengzhou was

halted, but the Japanese took Wuhan in

October by attacking from a different

direction.

Stalemate after the capture of Wuhan

As the Japanese troops advanced towards

Wuhan, Chinese troops abandoned their

posts, leaving civilian populations

completely vulnerable to rape and murder

by the advancing Japanese army. By the

time the Japanese were approaching

Wuhan and millions of Chinese and

Japanese lives had been lost in the process,

Chiang Kai-shek packed again and fled to

Chongqing. Chiang’s abandonment of

Wuhan further demoralized the Chinese.

After the capture of Wuhan, the Japanese

began to focus on modernizing their

armed forces (as opposed to prioritizing

advancement deeper into China) because

they feared the possibility of war with the

Soviet Union.

The Flying Tigers Until the Americans got involved in the

war after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese ran

the show in the air. The Nationalists had

an air force of 500 planes and only about

150 of them were in operation. Chiang got

his wife, Soong May-Ling (known as

Madame Chiang Kai-shek) to use her

connections to American contacts to get

them pilots to fly the working planes. They

hired Claire L. Chennault, who was still

only a captain in the air force after twenty

years of service and lacked skills. Chiang

and Chennault trusted each other with

blind enthusiasm. Although they managed

to derive small successes, the balance of

attritional losses favored the Japanese

since the Chinese had lost their flying

school and their aircraft factory in

Hangzhou and Nanchang to the Japanese.

The American Volunteer Group (AVG)

also joined the Chinese air force along

with 100 planes that were bought in an

arrangement by Soong’s brother from the

United States. However, they were in

operation only for a few months because

the United States sent non-volunteer air

force officers to China when it entered the

war.

A Chinese guard is guiding one of the Flying

Tigers. Source: U.S. Army Archives

Although the group operated only for a

few months, it completely captivated the

imagination of the American public. The

AVG painted their planes to look like

sharks and tigers and were thus

nicknamed “the Flying Tigers.” Yet, the

problem was that their limited successes

created the false impression that given

material aid and technical advice, China

might become a major player in the war

against Japan.

1940 and the Burma Road

By February 1939, the Japanese had

control of the entire China coast. There

were only two supply lines to get materials

into China. Both were very tenuous and

treacherous. Supplies could only trickle

into China on the Burma Road or from

Russia through Xinjiang, which was

known as “Fly the Hump” over the

Himalayas. It was thus imperative that the

Nationalists keep southwest under their

control; the newly opened Burma Road

provided their only real access to the

outside world.

Map of the Burma Road.

Source: U.S. Army Center of Military History

However, when Japan entered Indo-China,

the British decided to close the Burma

Road. Given the circumstances in Europe,

Great Britain was not willing to fight the

Japanese. The Burma Road, closed in July

1940, was re-opened in October 1940

when the United States shifted its policy

from remaining neutral to supporting

Great Britain. Between July and October

1940, the Nationalists in China did not

have access to supplies and the situation

got quite dire for them.

Pearl Harbor and the Pacific War

On the morning of Sunday, December 5,

1941, Japan sent 356 planes to attack

Pearl Harbor. The mission sank four of the

eight U.S. battleships stationed in the

harbor and destroyed 200 planes on the

ground. Japan lost twenty-nine planes in

the attack. During the attack, the U.S.

carriers were not at port, so none of them

were destroyed, leaving a long-term

impact on the outcome of the war with

favorable consequences for the United

States. Two days after attacking Pearl

Harbor, Japan attacked the Philippines

and British Malaya (Burma). By 1942, the

Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, Burma

and Thailand were under Japanese control.

Pearl Harbor under Japanese attack.

Source: The History Place

The outcome of Pearl Harbor sowed the

seeds of Japanese defeat. The United

States had a far greater industrial capacity

than Japan and the Japanese attack on

U.S. soil strengthened American resolve to

enter the war. However, from Japan’s

point of view, it was a gamble they had to

take.

U.S. anti-Japan propaganda after the attack on

Pearl Harbor. Source: Mike King

The outbreak of WWII in Europe relieved

Japan of the Russian threat but also left

Japan with more Chinese territory than

what it could successfully occupy. The

attack on Pearl Harbor did not

immediately alter the stalemate that had

developed in Asia. Interestingly, when the

United States entered the war, it was

under the impression that the Chinese

were holding off the Japanese in the south.

However, it was a lack of objectives on the

part of the Japanese owing to their relative

indifference about the overwhelming

amount of territory that had come under

their control. It was not until the Ichigo

offensive (see below) in 1944 that the

Americans realized how incompetent the

Chinese army was, because during the

offensive the Japanese trampled the

Chinese. In reality, between 1941 and 1945,

the Japanese had more territory than they

knew what to do with in China and were

primarily worried about the Americans.

Gen. Joseph Stillwell.

Source: U.S. Department of Defense

In 1942, the U.S. government appointed

Joseph Stillwell, influential military officer,

as Major-General to lead operations in

China. By sending such an important

figure, the United States signaled to China

that the Americans were taking the

situation in Asia seriously. Stillwell

personally did not get along with Chiang

Kai-shek and often called Chiang the

“peanut,” even in official correspondence.

Previously in 1941, Roosevelt had signed

the Land-Lease allocations that became

Stillwell’s largest bargaining chip with the

Nationalists. This meant that the Chinese

could gain access to U.S. industrial and

military products through the re-opened

Burma Road. Yet, Stillwell was frequently

frustrated by Chiang and the corruption

among the Chinese generals. In 1942,

Stillwell sent 100,000 Chinese troops to

India to train properly with Land-Lease

equipment and also wished to reorganize

the army, but Chiang opposed.

The growing importance of the south of

China and their connections to Southeast

Asia became a strategic consideration in

the war. The region, known as the China-

Burma-India theater (or the CBI), was

initially low in terms of priority for Great

Britain and the United States. In the

meantime, Chiang tried to maintain his

legitimacy and status as China’s sole

legitimate leader and wished to prove this

to the international community.

Ichigo Offensive

In 1944, there was growing concern

among the Japanese that they were losing

the war. They thus implemented a plan

called the Ichigo Offensive. The

Nationalists quickly abandoned territories

they had defended staunchly from the

beginning of the war. On April 19, 1944,

the Japanese forces launched Operation

Ichigo with 400,000 men organized in

seventeen divisions, supported by 12,000

vehicles and 70,000 horses. The operation

had three major objectives: 1) to control

the entire length of the railroad between

Beijing and Hong Kong, 2) to link up the

forces in China and those in French

Indochina, and 3) to gain control of Allied

air fields in southern China. The Japanese

succeeded in achieving all three of their

goals. However, in late 1944, the U.S.

Pacific offensive succeeded and the

Japanese Navy lost, leaving Okinawa on

the horizon. This meant that the

Americans would not need to launch a

battle against Japan in China.

Yalta, Roosevelt, and Stalin

From left to right: Winston Churchill, Franklin D.

Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin.

U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt met

with the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in

Tehran and had Stalin agree to enter the

war against Japan in the Pacific. After the

Germans lost in Europe, the United States

believed that the Soviet entrance would

ensure the Japanese defeat in north China.

This meant that the United States no

longer had to commit as much to a land

battle on mainland China, something that

the Americans wanted to avoid from the

beginning. Stalin was also interested in

regaining the former Russian possessions

in Port Arthur that they lost to the

Japanese earlier.

The end of the war came suddenly.

Following the atomic bombing of

Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, the Soviets

invaded Manchuria—as per their

agreement with Roosevelt in Yalta—and

destroyed Japan’s Kwantung Army in less

than a week. Nagasaki was bombed on

August 9, and Emperor Hirohito

announced Japan’s surrender on August

15.

Surrender of Japan.

Source: Naval Historical Center

After Germany’s surrender, the United

States had accorded Chiang Kai-shek the

right of the commander-in-chief in the

China theatre. With this right, Chiang was

allowed to designate the officers to whom

the commanders of Japanese formations

would surrender. The sudden end of the

war left the Russians in control of

Manchuria, and the Chinese communists

in control of south and west. Chiang

therefore ordered the Japanese to hold

their positions until they could surrender

to officers designated by Chiang himself,

and asked the United States to airlift his

troops north.

The Manhattan Project: Little Boy

and Fat Man

‘Little Boy’ and ‘Fat Man’ are the

codenames of the atomic bombs dropped

on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively.

President Roosevelt died in April 1945 and

then Vice President Harry Truman

became the next U.S. President. Truman

was much more willing to use the atomic

bombs to end the war than Roosevelt had

been, and soon after he assumed the

presidency, Truman put a plan in action to

end the war using nuclear power.

Hiroshima after the bombing.

Source: Boston.com

Atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki.

On August 6, 1945, the Japanese city of

Hiroshima was bombed, killing around

60,000 people instantly. Three days later,

Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki

inflicting about the same level of

immediate devastation onto Nagasaki as

Little Boy did to Hiroshima. The Japanese

offered their unconditional surrender five

days later on August 14, 1945, bringing

WWII to an end (the war in Europe had

ended on May 8, 1945, with Germany’s

unconditional surrender).

The Impact of the War on

People in Asia

The war had a profound impact on the

Asia Pacific. First of all, Asian populations

were devastated: 2.5 million Japanese

died; 1.5 million Chinese soldiers died

along with tens of millions of Chinese

civilians; small Pacific islands suffered

grievously. The war also had a profound

impact on Asian Americans. The position

and status of Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos

and Asian Indians residing in the United

States improved because their mother

countries were U.S. allies, whereas the

Japanese were seen and portrayed as

enemies and interned in camps along the

west coast. During the war, more than

40,000 Japanese, along with 70,000

American citizens of Japanese descent

were moved to internment camps. In 1942,

Japanese were culled and removed from

their homes for relocation. The U.S.

government claimed that in some cases,

the relocation was for the protection of the

Japanese themselves.

Japanese relocation camps during WWII.

Although most of the Japanese Americans

living on the continental United States

were forced to live in camps during the

war, in Hawaii, there were simply too

many Japanese Americans, making such

relocation impossible. Also, more than

25,000 Japanese Americans joined the

U.S. army, mostly as interpreters and

translators. Famously, the One Hundredth

Battalion was an all-Japanese American

battalion from Hawaii that served in South

Africa and Italy. The battalion has 18,000

decoration and 3,000 purple hearts

among them. Their distinguished service

in the American Army did much to ease

the anti-Japanese discrimination that was

still prevalent at the end of the war.

Map of Imperial Japan in 1942.

The way the war unfolded in China cannot

be divorced from the global political

climate of the time. The international

climate did in many ways dictate the

direction and progress of the war. It is also

important to keep in mind that the

Europeans were quite happy to let the

Chinese and the Japanese fight it out on

the mainland and were not that interested

in the Pacific theater until the Americans

got involved and they began losing their

colonies to Japan.

Total war is a war in which a belligerent

engages in the complete mobilization of

fully available resources and population.

In the mid-nineteenth century, "total war"

was identified by scholars as a separate

class of warfare. In a total war, there is

less differentiation between combatants

and civilians than in other conflicts, and

sometimes no such differentiation at all,

as nearly every human resource, civilians

and soldiers alike, can be considered to be

part of the belligerent effort.

Japanese imperial propaganda.

Similar to the notion of total war, there is

the idea of “total empire,” which was

developed by Louise Young (see the

accompanying bibliography for more

information). In her book, Young explores

the social and cultural history of Japan’s

construction of Manchukuo as well as the

nature of Japanese imperialism. Young

focuses on the domestic impact of Japan’s

activities in Northeast China between 1931

and 1945, mostly looking at “metropolitan

effects” of empire building—how people at

home imagined and experienced the

empire they called Manchukuo. Contrary

to the conventional assumption that a few

overzealous army officers and bureaucrats

were responsible for Japan’s expansion,

Young finds that a variety of organizations

helped to mobilize popular support for

Manchukuo—the mass media, the

academy, chambers of commerce,

women’s organizations, youth groups, and

agricultural cooperatives—leading to

broad-based support among diverse

groups of Japanese. As the Japanese

empire was being built in Chinese

mainland, Young shows, an imagined

Manchukuo was emerging at home,

consisting of visions of a defensive lifeline,

a developing economy, and a settler’s

paradise.

Japanese imperial propaganda designed to

educate Japanese youth. Source: Po-ru.com

The question, then, is: when did “total war”

and “total empire” start on the mainland

of China? Was it 1931 or 1937? What

marked these changes? How did Japan’s

imperial ambitions in Asia play into the

development of the war? These are some

questions that are open to different

interpretations, but all of them are

essential in thinking about the ways in

which the war is remembered in Asia.

Useful Websites U.S. War Department Propaganda Video about Japan in 1945 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-lQ3BrzQO4 Information about the Pacific War hosted by the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005155 Documentary about China in WWII—mostly assembled from newsreels from the war http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qnhwd0vvj78 History Channel—China in WWII http://www.history.co.uk/explore-history/ww2/china.html Timeline of the Pacific War http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/pacificwar/timeline.htm The National Museum of the Pacific War site—focuses on U.S. involvement in the War http://www.pacificwarmuseum.org/OurMission_History.asp Documentary on YouTube—War in the Pacific http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QOlxW35I4k http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3paxkNa2WC0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XpoS7UpQmk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h--c8KNxMZY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMAVi4VDg1o Bibliography of the Second Sino-Japanese War from Oxford University Press http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199743292/obo-9780199743292-0141.xml Exhibit from the Hoover Archives of documents and artifacts from the China War

http://hoover.archives.gov/exhibits/China/Political%20Evolution/1932-49/ History Channel—the Nanjing Massacre with links to numerous videos http://www.history.com/topics/nanjing-massacre Yale University Project about the Nanjing Massacre http://www.library.yale.edu/div/Nanking/ Highly politicized site about the Nanjing Massacre ***WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES*** http://www.nanking-massacre.com/ First hand account of the Nanjing Massacre hosted by Fordham University http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/nanking.asp Full explaination of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident From Princeton University http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Marco_Polo_Bridge_Incident.html History Channel—Sino-Japanese War (with links to numerous great videos) http://www.history.co.uk/explore-history/ww2/sino-japanese-war.html Documentary on YouTube—WWII and Japan’s Pacific War http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo4BguQ9Mvk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e8bbjosbsY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU-TFcVoeZ4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5xW-HjHTSs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tlmgYjQPBQ Documentary on YouTube—Japan’s War Documentary 1937-1945 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxTzwQGQY0c

Columbia University East Asia for Educators—Japan and China, 1937-1945 http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/main_pop/kpct/kp_japanchina.htm U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian primary source documents from Pacific Theatre http://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945 History Channel—Japan and WWII http://www.history.co.uk/explore-history/ww2/imperial-japan.html Columbia University East Asia for Educators—Japan’s Quest for Power and WWII http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/japan_1900_power.htm

Suggestions for Further Reading

Alen, G. C. Appointment in Japan. London:

Althone Press, 1983.

Allen, Louis. The End of the War in Asia.

London: Hart-Davis, 1976.

Atkins, Taylor E. Primitive Selves: Koreans in

the Japanese Colonial Gaze, 1910-1945.

Berkeley, CA: University of California

Press, 2010.

Ballard, J.G. Empire in the Sun. New York:

Simon & Schuster, 1984.

Barker, Robert. Hiroshima Maidens: A Story

of Courage, Compassion, and Survival.

New York: Viking, 1985.

Barnhart, Michael A. Japan Prepares for

Total War: The Search for Economic

Security, 1919-1941. Ithaca, NY:

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