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Liberation in China and the Pacific
Dr. Rana Mitter depicts how China held a critical role in the Pacific theater during the war as a key ally for the United States. The war's end, however, brought a devastating blow to American diplomacy as China ultimately fell to communism, forever changing the global balance of power in the emerging Cold War.

Top image courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration, 520868.
Between 1937 and 1945, war raged between Japan and its enemies, first China, and then the United States and the British Empire. The war ended in Asia only with the atomic bombings of Japan, but the continent failed to find peace as new Cold War conflicts emerged from the rubble.
Origins of the War in Asia
World War II began on July 7, 1937—not in Poland or at Pearl Harbor, but in China. On that date, outside of Beijing, Japanese and Chinese troops clashed, and within a few days, the local conflict had escalated to a full, though undeclared, war between China and Japan.
The war between China and Japan was at first a conflict in which no western powers were openly involved. The Chinese Nationalist (Kuomintang) government under its leader Chiang Kai-shek had to move to the interior as the Japanese invaded the great cities of the East, such as Shanghai, Beijing and Nanjing, committing many atrocities against the local populations along the way. The Chinese Communists held out in their base in northwest China. It looked to many as if China would have to surrender and accept peace on Japanese terms. Yet China continued to resist, with some unofficial assistance from the Soviet Union, the United States, and Britain, hoping that a foreign power might come to its rescue.
By 1941, it was becoming increasingly clear that Japan intended to dominate all of East Asia. Britain found itself entangled in a war for survival with Hitler’s Germany. The United States, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, decided to push back against Japanese intentions. On August 1, the United States imposed an oil embargo on Japan, cutting off some 80 percent of its supplies. Japan began to set in motion a high-risk plan to change the situation.
Pearl Harbor and the US Response
Just before 8 o’clock in the morning on December 7, 1941, local time, Japanese military aircraft attacked the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Two hours later, the attack left 18 US naval ships sunk or damaged and 347 planes destroyed. More devastating, the Japanese attack killed 2,403 and wounded 1,178. President Roosevelt, announcing the news to a shocked nation, declared it a “day which will live in infamy.”
When Japan decided to declare war on the United States, it knew that it was taking a huge risk. One leader compared the decision to throwing himself off the Kiyomizu temple in Kyoto. However, Japan’s leaders were gambling on winning this war swiftly by crippling America’s naval capacity in the Pacific, thus preventing the United States from interfering with Japan’s expansion into Southeast Asia. They knew, as did Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill and China’s leader Chiang Kai-shek, that the industrial capacity of the United States meant that it could win a war through its sheer capacity to renew its supply of ships and armaments, as well as its recruitment of troops.
In retrospect, the attack on Pearl Harbor was not as well-planned as it appeared. To do longer-term damage, it would have been more effective to bomb power plants, oil reserve tanks, and naval repair vessels. Yet initially, it was the start of a huge wave of Japanese military successes. Within days and weeks, targets including Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies (rich in oil, rubber, tin and bauxite) fell to the Japanese. In the Philippines, then under American control, the Japanese forced US commander General Douglas MacArthur to retreat. As he did, MacArthur issued his famous vow, “I will return.” The US territories of Guam and Wake Island also fell. In the first half of 1942, the Japanese also won two major naval battles in the Pacific, in the Java Straits, and in the Coral Sea.
A major turning point came June 4-7, 1942, at the Battle of Midway Island with an attempt by the Japanese naval command to draw the American navy out, thereby making it more vulnerable. However, the Japanese did not know that the United States had cracked their intelligence codes and that the Americans were ready for their attack on the island. In the ensuing battle, Japan lost four precious aircraft carriers, along with a heavy cruiser and over 300 planes.
From that point, the Japanese military effort in the Pacific had to concentrate on the defensive. As with the Solomon Islands in 1942, the United States slowly recaptured more and more territory. In 1943, US forces advanced steadily in the region, recapturing the Philippines and attacking New Guinea. Launching an assault in the central Pacific, US forces steadily but surely took control over areas conquered by Japan.
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