The Japanese Empire

The Japanese Empire

Author: S. C. M. Paine

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-03-06

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 1107011957

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

An accessible, analytical survey of the rise and fall of Imperial Japan in the context of its grand strategy to transform itself into a great power.


The China Incident

The China Incident

Author: G. William Whitehurst

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2020-12-23

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 147668233X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In 1937, Japan blundered into a debilitating war with China, beginning with a minor incident near Peking (now Beijing) that quickly escalated. The Japanese won significant battles and captured the capital, Nanking, after a horrific massacre of its citizens. Chiang Kai-shek, China's acknowledged leader, would not surrender--each side believed it could win a war of attrition. The U.S. sided with China, primarily because of President Roosevelt's personal bias in their favor. Drawing on a wealth of sources including interviews with key players, from soldiers to diplomats, this history traces America's unexpected and unpopular involvement in an Asian conflict, and the growing recognition of Japan's threat to world peace and the inevitability of war.


China's War with Japan, 1937-1945

China's War with Japan, 1937-1945

Author: Rana Mitter

Publisher: Penguin Group

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780141031453

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In Rana Mitter's tense, moving and hugely important book, the war between China and Japan - one of the most important struggles of the Second World War - at last gets the masterly history it deserves.


The Second Sino-Japanese War

The Second Sino-Japanese War

Author: Charles River Charles River Editors

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2018-08-26

Total Pages: 108

ISBN-13: 9781726210188

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

*Includes pictures *Includes contemporary accounts *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading Though both nations modernized, and China far outweighed Japan in terms of men and materiel potential, the island nation handily won its first modern war. The conflict resulted in Japan's short-term gains in the wake of victory, and the long term disaster for both sides' new roles in Asia, for with the end of Chinese dominance in East Asia came a new era for the region as a whole, an era whose consequences and horrors would not be fully realized for several more decades. Though scarcely mentioned in the world of early 21st century politics, Manchuria represented a key region of Asia during the first half of the 20th century. Once the heartland of the fierce Manchu empire, this northeastern Chinese region's rich natural resources made it a prize for nations in the process of entering the modern age, and three ambitious nations in the midst of such a transformation lay close enough to Manchuria to attempt to claim it: Japan, Russia, and China. For countries attempting to shake off their feudal past and enter a dynamic era of industrialization, Manchuria's resources presented an irresistible lure. With immense natural resources coupled to economic activity more concentrated than elsewhere in China, this region, abutting Mongolia, Korea, the Yellow Sea, and the Great Wall "accounted for 90 percent of China's oil, 70 percent of its iron, 55 percent of its gold, and 33 percent of its trade. If Shanghai remained China's commercial center, by 1931 Manchuria had become its industrial center." (Paine, 2012, 15). Thus, it's not altogether surprising that Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931 resulted from a long, complex chain of historical events stretching back to the late 19th century. Approximately 380,000 square miles in extent, or 1.4 times the size of the American state of Texas, Manchuria came into Imperial Russia's possession in 1900 due to the "Boxer Rebellion" in China, but the Russians held it only briefly; their defeat in the Russo-Japanese War shook loose their control from important parts of Manchuria by the end of 1905. The Kwantung Army deliberately shoved it over that brink in 1931, and the Japanese invasion and occupation of Manchuria is sometimes described as the true beginning of World War II. At the very least, it marked the expansion of Japan's imperial empire, its ongoing friction with China, and what would turn into a Chinese resistance campaign that would last nearly 15 years until the end of World War II. Given its importance, the invasion of Manchuria continues to be remembered as one of the seminal events of the 20th century. In 1937, the Empire of Japan once more went to war with China, a nation broken into petty warlord fiefdoms and wracked by civil war. The most modern Asian nation enacted a brutal campaign over the fragmented realms that made up China, committing atrocities just as horrendous as their Axis ally in Europe. Despite this, the sheer size of China, coupled with Japan's overextension, allowed the larger, less developed nation to endure. At the same time, China was experiencing an equally brutal civil war between Nationalist and Communist forces. This civil war became inextricably intertwined with the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II, and the sheer scale of the horrors of the conflict remain hard to believe today, even as action in that theater is often overlooked because of events in Europe. The Second Sino-Japanese War: The History and Legacy of the Deadly Conflict that Lasted Through the End of World War II examines the notorious fighting, as well as the crucial aftermath. Along with pictures and a bibliography, you will learn about the Second Sino-Japanese War like never before.


The Reluctant Combatant

The Reluctant Combatant

Author: Minoru Kitamura

Publisher: University Press of America

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780761863243

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Reluctant Combatant offers proof that Japanese political leaders were reluctant to engage China in a full-scale conflict during the Second Sino-Japanese War. This book reveals that the Communists, the National Government, local gentry, peasants, and bandits occasionally collaborated with the enemy--Japanese troops--to expand their spheres of influence.


The Battle for China

The Battle for China

Author: Mark R. Peattie

Publisher:

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780804792073

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This project offers the first English-language general history of military operations during the Sino-Japanese war based on Japanese, Chinese, and Western sources.


In a Sea of Bitterness

In a Sea of Bitterness

Author: R. Keith Schoppa

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2011-11-30

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 0674062981

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Japanese invasion of Shanghai in 1937 led some thirty million Chinese to flee their homes in terror, and live—in the words of artist and writer Feng Zikai—“in a sea of bitterness” as refugees. Keith Schoppa paints a comprehensive picture of the refugee experience in one province—Zhejiang, on the central Chinese coast—where the Japanese launched major early offensives as well as notorious later campaigns. He recounts stories of both heroes and villains, of choices poorly made amid war’s bewildering violence, of risks bravely taken despite an almost palpable quaking fear. As they traveled south into China’s interior, refugees stepped backward in time, sometimes as far as the nineteenth century, their journeys revealing the superficiality of China’s modernization. Memoirs and oral histories allow Schoppa to follow the footsteps of the young and old, elite and non-elite, as they fled through unfamiliar terrain and coped with unimaginable physical and psychological difficulties. Within the context of Chinese culture, being forced to leave home was profoundly threatening to one’s sense of identity. Not just people but whole institutions also fled from Japanese occupation, and Schoppa considers schools, governments, and businesses as refugees with narratives of their own. Local governments responded variously to Japanese attacks, from enacting scorched-earth policies to offering rewards for the capture of plague-infected rats in the aftermath of germ warfare. While at times these official procedures improved the situation for refugees, more often—as Schoppa describes in moving detail—they only deepened the tragedy.