Word: manchuria
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Stalin kept only part of the bargain. On Aug. 8, three months after V-E day and only six days before Japan surrendered, the Soviets finally declared war on Tokyo. At almost no cost, Stalin not only got the Japanese islands but also stripped Manchuria of most of its heavy industrial equipment and shipped it back to the Soviet Union. In Eastern Europe not only did Soviet troops remain in large numbers, but Communists brutally subverted political parties and seized control of national police and military organizations to ring down the Iron Curtain. At the time, the war-weary West...
Actually, the Mukden Incident of 1931 was not the first time Japan's Kwantung army had tried to seize Manchuria. In 1928 the army assassinated the Chinese warlord who ruled the region in hopes of grabbing the territory outright. But the Japanese government squashed any further moves and hushed up the army's involvement in the killing. In 1931, Tokyo again tried to stop the army. But renegade officers arranged for a geisha to distract and delay the envoy sent by the central government. Overtaken by events and well aware that the Manchurian offensive had won acclaim for the militarist...
...involve all its economic forces in a protracted war -- especially one against the Soviet Union, the foe Japan believed it was destined to battle for domination of northeast Asia. The military men knew that while the Japanese archipelago was woefully short of natural resources, neighboring territories were not. First Manchuria, then the rest of the old imperial Chinese realm became the focus of Japan's rush toward autarky. And that quest for security would lead deeper and deeper into...
...fall of Manchuria was followed by the Fake War, an extended period of posturing by the Chinese and Japanese. But in January 1932, as the League of Nations debated Tokyo's aggression, a Japanese cruiser, four destroyers and two aircraft carriers anchored in the Yangtze River off the international city of Shanghai. They had come on the pretext of protecting Japanese citizens from attacks by Chinese mobs. In response, Nationalist forces moved into the Chinese suburb of Chapei and skirmished with patrolling Japanese marines. With his men giving way to the larger Chinese forces, Admiral Koichi Shiozawa ordered planes from...
...strengthening took on fanatical proportions. The state religion built around animist Shinto beliefs was transformed into full-fledged emperor worship. And despite shortages in food and electricity due to the military allocations, the Empire of the Rising Sun believed it was destined to shine over all of East Asia. "Manchuria alone is not enough," wrote navy Lieut. Commander Tota Ishimaru in 1936. "With it alone Japan cannot...