Japan's Involvement in World War II - Essay Example

During the 1920s under the guidance of Liberal Political policies, Japan focused on economic growth and experienced an until then unprecedented growth. This growth was curtailed by the worldwide Depression late in the decade. In a reaction to the economic hardship and in part keeping with Japan's wish to rise as real-world power during the 1930s the government came to be dominated by right-wing and nationalist forces, dominated by a military expansionist agenda. The expansionism arose out of a need for resources to fuel the growing economy.

In 1931 perhaps the first turning point in Japan's expansionary intentions was the Mukden or Manchurian incident where a group of militaryofficers framed the Chinese for a bomb attack on a railway station as a pretext to annex the province; the event as Kitchen outlines was staged by a group of, "dissident officers who were determined to force the Japanese Government to reject the system of international co-operation established at the Washington conference of 1921-22. They wished to break away from a liberal and capitalist system which seemed to them to be based on a set of alien values which subordinated Japan's traditional interests to the needs of the western powers, and which was designed to frustrate the country's legitimate aspirations in the Asian Pacific.

(Kitchen 140) This followed with a full invasion of China in 1937 that forced Japan to leave the League of Nations. The underlying motivation for colonization of neighboring countries lay in acquiring a resource base to fuel their growing economy, and a military option was pushed by the military government. This aim was thwarted by the embargo placed on Japan by the United States in response to Japan's expansionism. Japan then declared war on Japan by invading Pearl Harbor. Bruce Russet in No Clear and Present Danger: A Skeptical View of the United States Entry into World War II has suggested that the declaration of war on the United States was made with the foresight that victory was not possible but rather the goal was to force a reasonable stalemate to allow Japan to negotiate for resources in other countries without sanction.

The fateful decision that drew the United States led to a protracted war with the burden of casualties being on the Japanese side. Following the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Emperor Hirohito