OUTCOMES OUTLINE• Explain the impact of Japanese

occupation on South East Asia. 1. Do Now / Mark roll2. Impact of Japanese occupation on South

East Asia3. Keep calm and create mindmaps.4. Writing paragraphs.

DO NOW HOMEWORK

Quick write – 4 minutes:Explain how the home fronts in Japan or Australia were impacted by the war.

Study your STUDY PACKAGE!!You have your yearly exam next Monday!

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

Impact of Japanese occupation on South East Asia

OCCUPATION AND POWSWorld War 21937-1945 Back to World War 2During 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. ITreated with 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

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 resistance movement had been organised by Pridi Phanomyong. In 1944 he became prime minister in place of Songgram, as the war turned against Japan. Secret negotiations with the western Allies prepared the way for the day of liberation from the Japanese.In August 1945, before the planned British invasion of Malaya had started, Japan capitulated after atomic bombs had been dropped on two of her cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, (The war in Europe was already over, with the collapse of Italy and then of Germany.) All Japan's conquests in South East Asia were returned to their former rulers, and Japan itself was occupied by mainly American forces under General MacArthur (who had commanded the Philippines operations) for the next seven years. And the Japanese were forced to evacuate China. (The Chinese Nationalists and Communists then resumed their civil war. This ended in 1949 with the unification of China under a Communist regime - except for Formosa which remaineda separate nation under Chinese Nationalist rule.)

In colonial South East Asia the various native peoples became disenchanted with the Japanese during the occupation years. But the quick Japanese conquests had totally shattered the tradition of Western invincibility and this, combined with three years of intensive Japanese anti-Western propaganda, gave a great impetus to independence movements after the war, and made it difficult for colonial rule to be resumed.

*Aung San, in trouble with the British in 1940 for his extremist activities, escaped to Japan with some of his followers. They returned to Burma with the Japanese invaders in 1942, helping the Japanese campaign by "Fifth Column" action for which the Japanese had trained them. During the Japanese occupation Aung San was appointed Defence Minister in the puppet government and Commander-in-Chief of the Burma National Army.

Aung San found that “independence” under Japanese control fell far short of his expectations; and when the British advanced into Burma in 1945 he transferred his allegiance to them, hoping that this would lead to full independence. After the war he became the national leader of Burma, but in 1947 he was assassinated by political opponents.

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