The Second Sino-Japanese War between the Empire of Japan and the Republic of China had been in progress since 7 July 1937, with hostilities dating back to 1931 with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.[37] However, it is more widely accepted[f] that the Pacific War itself began on 7 December (8 December Japanese time) 1941, when the Japanese simultaneously attacked American military bases in Hawaii, Wake Island, Guam, and the Philippines, the British colonies of Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong, and invaded Thailand.[38][39][40]

The Pacific War saw the Allies pitted against Japan, the latter aided by Thailand and to a lesser extent by the Axis powers, Germany and Italy. The Japanese achieved great success in the initial phase of the campaign, but were gradually driven back using an island hopping strategy. The Allies adopted a Europe first stance, giving first priority to defeating Nazi Germany, but still managed to bring to bear the vast industrial might of the United States. The Japanese had great difficulty replacing their losses in ships and aircraft, while American factories and shipyards produced ever increasing numbers of both. Fighting included some of the largest naval battles in history and massive Allied air raids over Japan, as well as the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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Japan surrendered unconditionally on 15 August 1945 and was occupied by the Allies. Japan lost its former possessions in Asia and the Pacific and had its sovereignty limited to the four main home islands and other minor islands as determined by the Allies.[41]

In Allied countries during the war, the "Pacific War" was not usually distinguished from World War II, or was known simply as the War against Japan. In the United States, the term Pacific theater was widely used. The US Armed Forces considered the China Burma India theater to be distinct from the Asiatic-Pacific theater during the conflict.

The major Allied participants were China, the United States and the British Empire. China had already been engaged in a bloody war against Japan since 1937. The US and its territories, including the Philippine Commonwealth, entered the war after being attacked by Japan. The British Empire was also a major belligerent consisting of British troops along with large numbers of colonial troops from the armed forces of India as well as from Burma, Malaya, Fiji, Tonga; in addition to troops from Australia, New Zealand and Canada. The Dutch government-in-exile (as the possessor of the Dutch East Indies) was also involved. All of these were members of the Pacific War Council.[43] From 1944 the French commando group Corps Lger d'Intervention also took part in resistance operations in Indochina. Some active pro-allied guerrillas in Asia included the Malayan Peoples' Anti-Japanese Army, the Korean Liberation Army, the Free Thai Movement, the Vit Minh,[44] and the Hukbalahap.[45][46]

The Axis-aligned states which assisted Japan included the authoritarian government of Thailand. Also involved were members of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, which included the Manchukuo Imperial Army and Collaborationist Chinese Army of the Japanese puppet states of Manchukuo (consisting of most of Manchuria), and the collaborationist Wang Jingwei regime (which controlled the coastal regions of China), respectively.

Japan conscripted many soldiers from its colonies of Korea and Taiwan. Collaborationist security units were also formed in Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, British Malaya, British Borneo, former French Indochina (after the overthrow of the French regime in 1945), as well as Timorese militia.

Between 1942 and 1945, there were four main areas of conflict in the Pacific War: China, the Central Pacific, South-East Asia and the South West Pacific. US sources refer to two theaters within the Pacific War: the Pacific theater and the China Burma India Theater (CBI). However, these were not operational commands.

The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) did not integrate its units into permanent theater commands. The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA), which had already created the Kwantung Army to oversee its occupation of Manchukuo and the China Expeditionary Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War, created the Southern Expeditionary Army Group at the outset of its conquests of South East Asia. This headquarters controlled the bulk of the Japanese Army formations which opposed the Western Allies in the Pacific and South East Asia.

By 1941 the conflict had become a stalemate. Although Japan had occupied much of northern, central, and coastal China, the Nationalist Government had retreated to the interior with a provisional capital set up at Chongqing while the Chinese communists remained in control of base areas in Shaanxi. The Japanese found its aggression against the retreating and regrouping Chinese army was stalled by the mountainous terrain in southwestern China while the Communists organised widespread guerrilla and saboteur activities in northern and eastern China behind the Japanese front line.[citation needed]

Japan sponsored several puppet governments, one of which was headed by Wang Jingwei.[57] However, its policies of brutality toward the Chinese population, of not yielding any real power to these regimes, and of supporting several rival governments failed to make any of them a viable alternative to the Nationalist government led by Chiang Kai-shek. Conflicts between Chinese Communist and Nationalist forces vying for territory control behind enemy lines culminated in a major armed clash in January 1941, effectively ending their co-operation.[58]

As early as 1935, Japanese military strategists had concluded the Dutch East Indies were, because of their oil reserves, important to Japan. By 1940 they had expanded this to include Indochina, Malaya, and the Philippines within their concept of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Japanese troop build-ups in Hainan, Taiwan, and Haiphong were noted, IJA officers were openly talking about war, and Admiral Sankichi Takahashi was reported as saying a showdown with the US was necessary.[61]

In an effort to discourage Japanese militarism, Western powers including Australia, the US, Britain, and the Dutch government in exile, which controlled the Dutch East Indies, stopped selling oil, iron ore, and steel to Japan. In Japan, the government and nationalists viewed these embargoes as acts of aggression; imported oil made up about 80% of domestic consumption, without which Japan's economy would grind to a halt. The Japanese media, influenced by military propagandists,[g] began to refer to the embargoes as the "ABCD line" ("American-British-Chinese-Dutch").

Japanese planning was for a limited war where Japan would seize key objectives and then establish a defensive perimeter to defeat Allied counterattacks, which in turn would lead to a negotiated peace.[68] The early war was divided into two operational phases. The First Operational Phase was further divided into three separate parts in which the major objectives of the Philippines, British Malaya, Borneo, Burma, Rabaul and the Dutch East Indies would be occupied. The Second Operational Phase called for further expansion into the South Pacific by seizing eastern New Guinea, New Britain, Fiji, Samoa, and strategic points in the Australian area. In the Central Pacific, Midway was targeted as were the Aleutian Islands in the North Pacific. Seizure of these key areas would provide defensive depth and deny the Allies staging areas from which to mount a counteroffensive.[68]

By November these plans were essentially complete, and were modified only slightly over the next month. Japanese military planners' expectation of success rested on the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union being unable to effectively respond to a Japanese attack because of the threat posed to each by Germany; the Soviet Union was even seen as unlikely to commence hostilities.

The Japanese leadership was aware that a total military victory in a traditional sense against the US was impossible; the alternative would be negotiating for peace after their initial victories, which would recognize Japanese hegemony in Asia.[69]

Following prolonged tensions between Japan and the Western powers, units of the IJN and IJA launched simultaneous surprise attacks on the United States and the British Empire on 7 December (8 December in Asia/West Pacific time zones). The locations of this first wave of Japanese attacks included the American territories of Hawaii, the Philippines, Guam, and Wake Island and the British territories of Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Concurrently, Japanese forces invaded southern and eastern Thailand and were resisted for several hours, before the Thai government signed an armistice and entered an alliance with Japan. Although Japan declared war on the United States and the British Empire, the declaration was not delivered until after the attacks began.

In the early hours of 7 December (Hawaiian time), Japan launched a major surprise carrier-based air strike on Pearl Harbor in Honolulu without explicit warning, which crippled the US Pacific Fleet, left eight American battleships out of action, destroyed 188 American aircraft, and killed 2,403 Americans.[70] The Japanese had gambled that the Americans, faced with such a sudden and massive blow, would agree to a negotiated settlement. This gamble did not pay off. American losses were less serious than initially thought: the three American aircraft carriers were at sea, and vital naval infrastructure, submarine base, and signals intelligence units were unscathed, and the fact the bombing happened while the US was not officially at war[h] caused a wave of outrage across the US.[70] Japan's fallback strategy, relying on a war of attrition, was beyond the Imperial Japanese Navy's capabilities.[71][72]

Opposition to war in the US vanished after the attack. On 8 December, the United Kingdom,[i][73] the United States,[j][74] Canada,[75] and the Netherlands[76] declared war on Japan, followed by Australia[77] the next day. 152ee80cbc

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