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The Pacific War, which took place mostly in the Pacific Ocean, its islands, and in Asia, both preceded World War II and also included some of its major campaigns and events. It was fought between Japan and Thailand on one side, and Allied powers on the other, including China, the United States, the United Kingdom, India, the Philippines, Australia, the Netherlands and New ZealandFor alternative meanings, see New Zealand (disambiguation). New Zealand is a country formed of two major islands and a number of smaller islands in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. A common Mori name for New Zealand is Aotearoa popularly translated as Land. The Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR ( Russian: ; tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik (SSSR) also called the Soviet Union ( ; tr. Sovetsky Soyuz , was a state in much of the northern region of Eurasia that existed from 1922 until 1 defeated Japanese forces in 1939, then remained neutral until 1945, when it played an important role on the Allied side in the closing weeks of the war. Nazi GermanyNazi Germany or the Third Reich commonly refers to Germany in the years 1933 1945, when it was under the firm control of the totalitarian and fascist ideology of National Socialism with Adolf Hitler as dictator. The term Nazi is a short form of the German and Fascist Italy were allies of Japan and their naval forces operated in the Pacific and the Indian OceanThe Indian Ocean is the third-largest body of water in the world, covering about 20% of the Earth's water surface. It is bounded on the north by southern Asia (the Indian Sub-continent); on the west by the Arabian Peninsula and Africa; on the east by the between 1940 and 1945.
For the Western Allies there were two major theaters in the Pacific War, the Pacific TheaterDefinition The Pacific Theater of Operations (PTO) is the term used in the United States for all military activity in the Pacific Ocean and the countries bordering it, in World War II. Pacific War is a more common name, around the world, for the broader c and the South-East Asian Theater. In Chinese, the war is also known as the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression or (kang-ri-zhan) Resist Japan War for short.
See also: Causes of World War IIMain Article: World War II World War II may be the single most complicated conflict in all of history and it is therefore difficult to explain its origin. Never have so many nations gone to war in so many different ways and by so many different means.
The roots of the war began in the late 19th century with China in political chaos and Japan rapidly modernizing. Over the course of the late 19th century and early 20th century, Japan intervened and finally annexed Korea and expanded its political and economic influence into China, particularly Manchuria. This expansion of power was aided by the fact that by the 1920s, China had fragmented into warlordism with only a weak and ineffective central government.
However, the situation of a weak China unable to resist Japanese demands appeared to be changing toward the end of the 1920's. In 1927, Chiang Kai-Shek and the National Revolutionary Army of the Kuomintang led the Northern Expedition. Chiang was able to defeat the warlords in southern and central China, and was in the process of securing the nominal allegiance of the warlords in northern China. Fearing that Zhang Xueliang (the warlord controlling Manchuria) was about to declare his allegiance for Chiang, the Japanese intervened and set up the puppet state of Manchukuo. The nominal Emperor of this puppet state is better known as Henry Pu Yi of the Qing Dynasty.
There is no evidence that Japan ever intended to directly administer China or that Japan's actions in China were part of a program of world domination. Rather, Japan's goals in China were strongly influenced by 19th century European colonialism and were to maintain a secure supply of natural resources and to have friendly and pliable governments in China that would not act against Japanese interests. Although Japanese actions would not have seemed out of place among European colonial powers in the 19th century, by 1930, notions of Wilsonian self-determination meant that raw military force in support of colonialism was no longer seen as appropriate behavior by the international community.
Japanese actions were therefore roundly criticized and led to Japan's withdrawal from the League of Nations. During the 1930s, China and Japan reached a stalemate with Chiang focusing his efforts at eliminating the Communists whom Chiang considered to be a more fundamental danger than the Japanese. The influence of Chinese nationalism on opinion both in the political elite and the general population rendered this strategy increasingly untenable.
Meanwhile in Japan, a policy of assassination by secret societies and the effects of the Great Depression had caused the civilian government to lose control of the military. In addition, the military high command had limited control over the field armies who acted on their own interest, often in contradiction to the overall national interest. There was also an upsurge in nationalism and anti-European feeling and the belief that Japanese policies in China could be justified by racial theories. One popular belief with similarities to the Identity movement was that Japan and not China was the true heir of classical Chinese civilization.
In 1937, Chiang was kidnapped by Zhang Xueliang in the Xian Incident. As condition of his release, Chiang promised to unite with the Communists and fight the Japanese. In response to this, officers of the Japanese Kwantung Army, without the knowledge of their high command in Tokyo, manufactured the Battle of Lugou Bridge (also known as the "Incident at Marco Polo Bridge") on July 8, 1937, which succeeded in provoking a conflict between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan, the Sino-Japanese War.
In 1939 Japanese forces tried to push into the Soviet Far East from Manchuria. They were soundly defeated Battle of Halhin Gol by a mixed Soviet and Mongolian force led by Georgy Zhukov. This stopped Japanese expansion to the North and Japan and the Soviet Union kept uneasy peace until 1945.
Japan's policies in the 1930s are remarkable for their disastrously self-defeating nature. Japan's grand strategy was based on the premise that it could not survive a war against the European powers without secure sources of natural resources, yet to secure those resources it decided to undertake the war that it knew it could not win in the first place. Moreover actions such as its brutality in China, and its practice of first setting up, and then undermining, puppet governments in China were clearly antithetical to Japan's overall goals, and yet it continued to persist in them anyway. Finally, this march to self-destruction is remarkable in that many individuals within the Japanese political and military elite realized these self-destructive consequences, but were unable to do anything about the situation. Also, there appears to have been no debate over policy alternatives which might have enabled Japan to further its goals in China.
In addition, throughout the 1930's Japan succeeded in alienating public opinion in the West, particularly the United States. During the early 1930's, public opinion in the United States had been moderately pro-Japanese, however reports of Japanese brutality, such as the Nanjing Massacre, written by Protestant missionaries, novelists such as Pearl Buck and reports from Time Magazine caused American public opinion to swing against Japan as did events such as the Panay incident.