Bright Sword: Construction starts from southeastern Shanxi

The Pacific War (December 8, 1941 - August 15, 1945) was part of World War II, primarily fought in the Pacific Ocean and surrounding countries. It was fought between Japan and the United States and other Allied nations. The war began with the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, a Japanese air attack on the US Pacific naval base in Hawaii. Following the US declaration of war on Japan, China, which had been at war with Japan for many years, also declared war. Nazi Germany and Italy also declared war on the US, merging the two major battlefields of Europe and Asia. Japan's unconditional surrender ended in 1945.

The Pacific War involved 37 nations, encompassing a population exceeding 15 billion. Over 6000 million troops were mobilized on both sides, and the conflict lasted three years and several months, resulting in countless casualties and losses. The Allied Powers included the United States, China, the United Kingdom, British India, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the Netherlands Government-in-Exile, the Free French, and the Soviet Union. The Axis Powers were primarily Japan and its puppet regimes, including Manchukuo, the Wang Jingwei Nationalist Government, and Thailand. Japan also drafted numerous troops from its colonies (such as Korea and Taiwan), and many pro-Japanese factions in China also participated in the war.

In addition to the large-scale naval battles between Japan and the United States, this war also led to the demise of the Axis powers in Europe, the subsequent Cold War situation, the use of atomic bombs, the anti-colonial movement, and political developments in Japan and China, which had a profound impact on the future development of countries around Asia and the Pacific.

Japan's Southward Policy

On August 7, 1936, the Hirota Koki Cabinet proposed Japan’s “National Policy Guidelines” and decided to “ensure the Empire’s position on the East Asian continent in terms of both diplomacy and national defense, while also expanding and developing towards the southern ocean”, that is, to take “southward advance” and “northward advance” as national policy guidelines [3-4]. In order to achieve the “National Policy Guidelines”, Japan first invaded China and implemented a breakthrough in the middle, but was trapped in the Chinese battlefield and unable to extricate itself. Japan urgently needed to find new breakthroughs from “southward advance” and “northward advance”. In 1938 and 1939, it used military force against the Soviet Union, but both ended in failure, and the “northward advance” strategy was impacted [5]. [6]

The international situation changed dramatically at that time. In the summer of 1940, Germany successfully launched a blitzkrieg against Western Europe, the Netherlands and France surrendered one after another, and Britain was also in danger.

On April 15, 1940, Foreign Minister Arita Hachiro issued a statement, declaring that Japan had an inseparable connection with the Southeast Asian countries and the Nanyang region, and that the Japanese government "could not ignore" any changes in the region. On June 29, he delivered a speech on the so-called "Building a New Order in Greater East Asia." On July 26, the Second Konoe Cabinet put forward the "Outline of Basic National Policy" and formulated the "Outline for Dealing with the Current Situation in Adaptation to the Evolution of the World Situation," declaring that the fundamental policy of the Japanese government was "to believe that in the European war, the old forces are succumbing to the power of the emerging countries, and only Britain is left struggling to survive. The world situation is changing rapidly. Japan's current urgent task is to promote the realization of its realization. In order to break away from the situation of being constrained by Britain and the United States, it must establish a self-sufficient situation with Japan, Manchuria and China as the core, and the Nanyang region east of India and north of Australia and New Zealand as a circle. The opportunity to achieve this goal will not come until the future, and the good opportunity will never come again." [7-8]

On August 1, 1940, Foreign Minister Matsuoka Yosuke formally proposed the slogan of establishing the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" in his first speech after taking office. The intention of this move was, firstly, to provide a huge and reliable market and a stable source of raw materials for Japan's manufacturing industry in terms of economy; secondly, in terms of military, it proposed to turn Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific region into Japanese colonies and then establish a "self-sufficient" economic system.[9] At this point, Japan's "Southward Advance" policy was finally established.[10] In mid-December 1940, the Military Research Department was established in Taiwan Province, China, responsible for "the investigation of military intelligence and military geography in various parts of the south". In the same month, the South China Front Army was ordered to conduct tropical and landing combat training for its troops.