Japan's involvement in World War II was defined by aggressive expansionism, major military engagements, and eventual defeat. Driven by regional dominance and resource acquisition ambitions, Japan launched invasions across East Asia and the Pacific. The conflict began in earnest with the invasion of China in 1937, marked by brutal campaigns such as the Nanjing Massacre.
On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, prompting the United States to enter the war. This surprise assault aimed to cripple the U.S. Pacific Fleet, enabling Japan to secure territories rich in resources, including Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. Early successes included the capture of the Philippines, Singapore, and Indonesia, establishing Japan's Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
However, key battles such as Midway in 1942 and the protracted campaign in Guadalcanal marked turning points, with Allied forces beginning to reclaim occupied territories. Japan faced mounting defeats and resource shortages, exacerbated by relentless Allied bombing campaigns targeting industrial and civilian areas.
Despite fierce resistance, Japan's situation became untenable by 1945. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, combined with the Soviet Union's declaration of war, led to Japan's surrender on August 15, 1945. Emperor Hirohito's announcement of surrender marked the end of the conflict.
Post-war, Japan underwent significant transformation under Allied occupation, leading to the establishment of a democratic government, economic recovery, and a pacifist constitution. Japan's wartime legacy profoundly shaped its modern identity and international relations.
Report from Tokyo, a message to the American people
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A Message to the American People, by Joseph C. Grew, United States Ambassador to Japan, 1932 to 1941
Ten years in Japan, a contemporary record drawn from the diaries and private and official papers of Joseph C. Grew, United States ambassador to Japan, 1932-1942.
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A Contemporary Record Drawn from the Diaries and Private and Official papers of Joseph C. Grew, United States Ambassador to Japan, 1932-1942
War and Conscience in Japan
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One of Japan's most important intellectuals, Nambara Shigeru defended Tokyo Imperial University against its rightist critics and opposed Japan's war. His poetic diary (1936-1945), published only after the war, documents his profound disaffection. In 1945 Nambara became president of Tokyo University and was an eloquent and ardent spokesman for academic freedom. Among his most impressive speeches are two memorials to fallen student-soldiers, which directly confront Nambara's wartime dilemma: what and how to advise students called up to fight a war he did not believe in. In this first English-language collection of his key work, historian and translator Richard H. Minear introduces Nambara's career and thinking before presenting translations of the most important of Nambara's essays, poems, and speeches. A courageous but lonely voice of conscience, Nambara is one of the few mid-century Japanese to whom we can turn for inspiration during that dark period in world history.
The End of the War in the Pacific. Surrender Documents in Facsimile
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Interrogations of Japanese Officials
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Japan's decision for war in 1941 : some enduring lessons
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Japan's decision to attack the United States in 1941 is widely regarded as irrational to the point of suicidal. How could Japan hope to survive a war with, much less defeat, an enemy possessing an invulnerable homeland and an industrial base 10 times that of Japan? The Pacific War was one that Japan was always going to lose, so how does one explain Tokyo's decision? Did the Japanese recognize the odds against them? Did they have a concept of victory, or at least of avoiding defeat? Or did the Japanese prefer a lost war to an unacceptable peace? Dr. Jeffrey Record takes a fresh look at Japan's decision for war, and concludes that it was dictated by Japanese pride and the threatened economic destruction of Japan by the United States. He believes that Japanese aggression in East Asia was the root cause of the Pacific War, but argues that the road to war in 1941 was built on American as well as Japanese miscalculations and overestimated the effectiveness of economic sanctions as a deterrent to war, whereas the Japanese underestimated the cohesion and resolve of an aroused American society and overestimated their own martial prowess as a means of defeating U.S. material superiority. He believes that the failure of deterrence was mutual, and that the descent of the United States and Japan into war contains lessons of great and continuing relevance to American foreign policy and defense decisionmakers. The Strategic Studies Institute is pleased to offer this monograph as a contribution to the national security debate over the use of force to advance the objectives of U.S. foreign policy--p. v.
The Pacific War Papers
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The Pacific War Papers is an annotated collection of extremely rare Japanese primary-source documents, translated into English, that provides an invalu-able resource for historians and students of World War II. These naval and diplomatic documents come from the collection of the late Gordon Prange, the eminent scholar of Pearl Harbor, who obtained them from Japanese naval leaders while working for the Military History Section of the American forces that occupied Japan. Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon have assembled this collection so that these important documents are not lost to history. The editors also provide expert commentary to introduce and explain the importance of the materials. This book forms the companion volume to The Pearl Harbor Papers: Inside the Japanese Plans (Brassey's, Inc., 1993), which Goldstein and Dillon also edited. Most of the documents published here are not available anywhere else, with many translated for the first time. This edited collection covers three main topics: the Japanese navy before World War II, prewar diplomacy and politics, and Japanese naval operations and policy during the war. The documents include diary extracts and candid, short monographs written by high-ranking Japanese officers immediately after the war. They shed new light on the vast naval buildup before the war, the development of the navy's operational concepts for war with the United States, the organization and tactics of aircraft carrier forces, and the failure of Japanese submarine operations. No World War II library will be complete without this important volume.
Hirohito and War : Imperial Tradition and Military Decision Making in Prewar Japan
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The debate over Emperor Hirohito's accountability for government decisions and military operations up to the end of the World War II began before the end of the war and has continued even after his death. This book documents this controversy while providing insights into the Showa emperor's role in military planning in imperial Japan. It argues that Hirohito both knew of and participated in such planning and offers evidence that he was informed well in advance of the planned attack on Pearl Harbor. Using Japanese primary sources, this text aims to show that Hirohito's participation in the decision-making process was entirely consistent with his intellectual background and his passionate belief in the significance of the imperial tradition for the Japanese polity (kokutai) in prewar Japan.
The Japanese story of the battle of Midway : a translation.
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On the fifth anniversary of the Battle of Midway, the Office of Naval Intelligence publishes the official Japanese action report of this engagement, recently translated under the supervision of the Naval Analysis Division, United States Strategic Bombing Survey, and here available in English for the first time.
Although this document is not perfectly complete (part IV for example is missing), it is believed that nothing of any importance will be discovered in the future to change the story in any of its essential details. The report was prepared in the first place under difficulties. It must be remembered that the war diaries of many of the ships engaged, their charts and other valuable papers were lost as a result of the ships having become "inoperational," in the Japanese euphemism.
A battle history of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1941-1945
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The first non-Japanese language battle history of the Imperial Japanese Navy in World War II to recount the war in the Pacific as the Japanese saw and officially recorded it.
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