Date: Tuesday, August 27 Class: 12 Modern History Concept: Conflict in the Pacific

1. Date: Tuesday, August 27 Class: 12 Modern History Concept: Conflict in the Pacific

2. Impact of Japanese occupation on South East Asia

3. OCCUPATION AND POWS World War 2 1937-1945 Back to World War 2 
During the Second World War, Japan invaded and occupied vast swathes of territory in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. In some countries, the invaders established puppet governments. ITreatedwith disdain by the Japanese, they were basically a tool to impose social control and curb the power of local warlords. Other occupied territories were controlled by military governments and subject to martial law. Hong Kong was ruled by a military government under General Rensuke Isogai which controlled every area of political and public life. The Pacific island of Guam was also ruled directly by an army which ruthlessly imposed Japanese cultural practices upon the population. The Chamorros were forced to learn Japanese customs. Yen became the currency. People suspected of hiding friends or family members wanted by the authorities were harassed, beaten, tortured and executed. These regimes were all characterised by a brutality that had become ingrained in the Japanese Imperial Army. The occupation of Hong Kong began with the bayoneting of wounded Allied soldiers in St. Stephen’s Hospital; it continued in the same bloody manner. Roughly 10,000 women were raped in the month following Japanese victory. The occupiers recruited former members of the Hong Kong Police to orchestrate public executions. In Indonesia, occupied in 1942, civilians were arbitrarily arrested, tortured and sexually abused. Thousands were interned in concentration camps or used as slave labour for Japanese military projects. Prisoners of War taken by the Japanese originated from many different countries: China, India, Burma, Britain and the Commonwealth, the USA, the Netherlands and the Philippines. Japanese military culture did not subscribe to the idea of surrender; becoming a POW was to disgrace oneself and one’s country. Prisoners taken by the Japanese were brutally treated; the 1927 Geneva Convention was flagrantly ignored. The Red Cross was denied access to camps; beatings, executions, medical experiments, poor sanitation, starvation rations, disease and torture were part of everyday life. Prisoners such as Philip Meninsky visually chronicled their experiences using human hair, plant juice, blood and toilet rolls. Their work was later used as evidence at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. The Bataan Death March is one of the most infamous example of Japanese brutality towards POWs. Following the fall of Bataan in the Philippines, 75,000 American and Filipino prisoners were marched from the Bataan peninsula to prison camps; they suffered physical abuse, murder, torture and starvation. The construction of the Burma-Thailand Railway, a horrific slave labour project which killed around 90,000 Asian labourers and 16,000 Allied POWs (mainly through overwork, malnutrition and disease) is another. According to the figures of the Tokyo Tribunal, 27.1% of all western prisoners taken by the Japanese died; the Chinese figure is much higher. While just over 80,000 Western Allied POWS were released after the Japanese surrender, the Chinese figure was just 56. The Tribunal condemned the Japanese Prime Minister Tojo and six others to death for their responsibility for these crimes; sixteen more were sentenced to life imprisonment

4. The turning point in the war against Japan came in May-June 1942, when she lost her supremacy at sea to the United States after the naval Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway Island. American and Australian forces halted the Japanese advance in New Guinea; and there then began an island to island advance by the Allies in the Pacific. This stepping-stone advance went on for the next three years, and in 1944 the systematic bombing of Japanese industrial cities started. In Burma the Japanese proclaimed Burmese independence in 1943 and set up a puppet government. In early 1944 they tried to break through to India via Manipur. The attempt was foiled, and British Empire forces went over to the offensive. They had the assistance of American and Chinese troops in the north, and in the later stages from the defection of the Burma National Army, led by Aung San*, from the Japanese whom they had previously supported. In the course of the next fifteen months the British imperial armies reconquered Burma, entering Rangoon in May 1945. The British then made plans for the invasion of Malaya. At the same time, in the Philippines, where Filipino guerillas had tied down considerable Japanese forces during the years of occupation, an American counterinvasion started in October 1944, and completed the re-conquest of the islands in July 1945. In Thailand a resistancemovement had beenorganised by PridiPhanomyong. In 1944 he became prime minister in place ofSonggram, as thewarturnedagainst Japan. Secretnegotiationswiththe western AlliespreparedthewayforthedayofliberationfromtheJapanese. In August 1945, beforetheplannedBritishinvasionofMalaya had started, Japan capitulatedafteratomicbombs had beendropped on twoof her cities, Hiroshimaand Nagasaki, (Thewar in Europewasalreadyover, withthecollapseof Italy and thenofGermany.) AllJapan'sconquests in South East Asiawerereturned to theirformerrulers, and Japan itselfwasoccupied by mainlyAmericanforcesunderGeneral MacArthur(who had commandedthePhilippinesoperations) forthenextsevenyears. And theJapanesewereforced to evacuateChina. (TheChineseNationalists and Communiststhenresumedtheir civil war. Thisended in 1949 withtheunificationofChinaunder a Communistregime - exceptforFormosawhichremainedaseparatenationunderChineseNationalist rule.)

5. In colonialSouth East AsiathevariousnativepeoplesbecamedisenchantedwiththeJapaneseduringtheoccupationyears. But thequickJapaneseconquests had totallyshatteredthetraditionof Western invincibility and this, combinedwiththreeyearsofintensiveJapanese anti-Western propaganda, gave a greatimpetus to independencemovementsafterthewar, and made itdifficultforcolonial rule to beresumed. *Aung San, in troublewiththeBritish in 1940 for his extremistactivities, escaped to Japan withsomeof his followers. Theyreturned to Burma withtheJapaneseinvaders in 1942, helpingtheJapanesecampaign by "FifthColumn" actionforwhichtheJapanese had trainedthem. DuringtheJapaneseoccupation Aung San wasappointedDefenceMinister in thepuppetgovernment and Commander-in-Chiefofthe Burma NationalArmy. Aung San foundthat “independence” underJapanesecontrolfell far shortof his expectations; and whentheBritishadvancedinto Burma in 1945 he transferred his allegiance to them, hopingthatthiswouldlead to full independence. Afterthewar he becamethenational leader of Burma, but in 1947 he wasassassinated by politicalopponents.

6. Yogi says: “Make sure you’re doing your own research because this O’Connor bird is struggling!”