During the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), Japan became the first modern Asian nation to win a war against a European nation.
When Japan was finally defeated in 1945, China was on the winning side, but lay devastated, having suffered some 15 million deaths, massive destruction of industrial infrastructure and agricultural production, and the shattering of the tentative modernization begun by the Nationalist government.
Finally, after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and following Soviet intervention, Japan surrendered in August 1945. Japanese occupation hastened the end of European colonialism and the rise of communism in Asia, while post-war American occupation transformed Japanese society.
After Japan agreed to surrender on August 14, 1945, American forces began to occupy Japan. Japan formally surrendered to the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union on September 2, 1945.
And although the Japanese government never believed it could defeat the United States, it did intend to negotiate an end to the war on favorable terms. It hoped that by attacking the fleet at Pearl Harbor it could delay American intervention, gaining time to solidify its Asian empire.
Japan had the best army, navy, and air force in the Far East. In addition to trained manpower and modern weapons, Japan had in the mandated islands a string of naval and air bases ideally located for an advance to the south.
For over 60 years the United States-Japan Alliance has served as the cornerstone of peace, stability, and freedom in the Indo-Pacific region. The U.S. commitment to Japan's defense under the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty of 1960 is unwavering.
The previous spring Japan in fact had almost experienced a military coup. As he mulled it over, Hitler envisaged an alliance with Tokyo primarily for what it meant in the struggle against “Jewish” Bolshevism. This was to be a pact emphatically denouncing Marxist revolution.
The leaders of the major Allied powers met at the Potsdam Conference from 16 July to 2 August 1945. The participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States, represented by Stalin, Winston Churchill (later Clement Attlee), and Truman respectively.
The main reason Japan would not surrender was that it did not want to get rid of the Emperor, a seemingly non-negotiable term for the U.S.
Japan won a convincing victory over Russia, becoming the first Asian power in modern times to defeat a European power. Russia's Baltic Fleet sailed halfway around the world only to meet its demise at the guns of Adm. Togō Heihachirō and the superior ships of the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Battle of Tsushima.
Keeping Hawaii supplied, with its much larger civilian population and garrison, would have been even more difficult. In short, the Japanese simply did not possess the amphibious and logistical wherewithal to assault, capture, and hold the Hawaiian Islands.
According to British historian Mark Felton: The Japanese murdered 30 million civilians while "liberating" what it called the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere from colonial rule. About 23 million of these were ethnic Chinese. It is a crime that in sheer numbers is far greater than the Nazi Holocaust.
China had been at war with Japan since 1937 and continued the fight until the Japanese surrender in 1945. The United States advised and supported China's ground war, while basing only a few of its own units in China for operations against Japanese forces in the region and Japan itself.
The notional rulers of China, Chiang Kai-shek and his nationalist Kuomintang party, controlled a shrinking area of central and south-west China, fighting the Japanese with a poorly armed and trained army, and sometimes fighting the Chinese communists ensconced in China's north-west.
The Soviet invasion came as a fulfilment of Stalin's promise – made to British and American leaders at the Tehran and Yalta conferences – to join the war against Japan following the defeat of Nazi Germany.
On August 8, 1945, the Soviet Union officially declares war on Japan, pouring more than 1 million Soviet soldiers into Japanese-occupied Manchuria, northeastern China, to take on the 700,000-strong Japanese army.
During the Soviet–Japanese War in August 1945, the Soviet Union made plans to invade Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan's four main home islands. Opposition from the United States and doubts within the Soviet high command caused the plans to be cancelled before the invasion could begin.
Italy wanted to gain the territory of Turkey and Africa but they didn't get what they wanted at end of WWI. Also, they were unhappy with the treaty of Versailles, they thought that injustice had been done to them. So it joined the side of Japan and Germany to get its territories back.
The Japanese intended the attack as a preventive action to keep the United States Pacific Fleet from interfering with its planned military actions in Southeast Asia against overseas territories of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States.
Seeking raw materials to fuel its growing industries, Japan invaded the Chinese province of Manchuria in 1931. By 1937 Japan controlled large sections of China, and war crimes against the Chinese became commonplace.
LONE ALLY. For the past seven decades, Japan, which gave up the right to wage war after its defeat in World War Two, has relied on the United States for protection. In return for its promise to defend the country, the U.S. gets bases that allow it to maintain a major military presence in East Asia.
Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution prohibits Japan from establishing a military or solving international conflicts through violence. However, there has been widespread public debate since 2000 about the possibility of reducing or deleting Article 9 from the constitution.
Bilateral Relations:
There are various concerns between Japan and China, as they are neighboring countries. At the same time, the relationship with China is one of Japan's most important bilateral relationships, and the two countries have close economic relations, as well as people-to-people and cultural exchanges.