(E. T.s Note) The following is a brief synopsis of the rise and fall of the Japanese Empire that was published in the Johannesburg Sunday Times that E. T. deemed apropriate for
this date. The author was not identified.
THIS WAS REPORTED TODAY, AUGUST 11, 1945:
RAPID RISE AND FALL OF
THE JAPANESE EMPIRE
Nation That Turned On Its
European Mentors
SUNDAY TIMES, JOHANNESBURG,
TRANSVAAL, AUGUST 12, 1945.
JAPAN'S admission of complete and
humiliating defeat is now only a formality.
It is
her first defeat since the American naval officer Perry awakened the isolated
island nation in 1853 and set it off on the ambitious, course of Empire
building.
Japan built slowly and patiently at first. Her
victory in the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-5 gained her Korea. She became a world power by her success
in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5. Japan was befriended by all the European
nations. Germany taught her how to organize her armies. Her navy was modeled on
the British navy. The Netherlands gave her battleships. From America she learnt
industrial efficiency and mass production.
In the Great War
Japan was on the side of the Allies. She helped to kick Germany out of Kiaochow
in China, and at the end of the war was rewarded by the mandate
over the Marshall Islands.
After the war Japan was all for
peace and order, She was a member of the
League of Nations. Then she got ambitious, she left the League because it
would not approve of her unprovoked war on China and annexation of Manchuria. She
flouted world opinion by waging a major war- on China She " accidentally
" bombed British and American gunboats.
She joined the Axis when Hitler
had rearmed Germany.
Below is a chronology of the
Japanese war, but it tells little of the drama of Japan's attack on Pearl
Harbour while her emissaries
Were in Washington.
ostensibly to negotiate a peace pact; it cannot convey the treachery of Japans attempt to stab her former ally,. B r
i t a i n , in the back while she was at death
grips with Germany.
Japan won the opening rounds of her, fully-calculated war so easily that
Tokyo was elated. She gained spectacular victories conquered Burma and Malaya,
Singapore, the Philippines and in the Java Sea. But they were all won while
British and American forces in the Far East were painfully thin.
From December 7, 1941, until the
Battle of the Coral Sea in May, 1942 the first major Allied victory in the
Pacific nothing was able to stem the Japanese tide. That, era was a gloomy
period in the European war: Hitler's armies were advancing in Russia. Rommel
was top dog in North Africa.
But Britain and America and
particularly America were rushing reinforcements to the Pacific. As the
Australians fought the Japs to a standstill in New Guinea and
thwarted their plan to invade Australia, MacArthur, spurred on by his vow to
avenge Corregidor, was building up a powerful force
in Australia.
Once the Jap flood was arrested
it started to recede. After the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway—both
decisive American victories—the enemy navy was on the retreat. Jap air power
was steadily destroyed After the Japanese naval disaster in the battle of Leyte, when the Japs risked
powerful naval forces to try and interfere with Mac-Arthur's amphibious
offensive against the Philippines, the Japanese navy retreated to "skulk
in home waters.
Japan could only send suicide bombers against Allied
task forces. Her . naval power, so
formidable in 1941 was finally broken and her conception of empire shattered.
Meanwhile, Britain's Forgotten Army the 14th Army under General Slim—had
fought and won the major land campaign of the Japanese war, reconquered Burma
and reopened the Burma road to long-suffering China.
This is the sequence of events that brought airpower—and finally the
atomic bomb—within striking distance of Japan, and forced the proud nation that had never
bowed its head to sue for peace and ask for special favours for its "
divine " Emperor before an Allied
soldier had landed on its shores.
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