Page 193 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

1970 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

Japanese and Korean Japanese conflict began. Japanese atrocities during that
Warfare in the 1800s conflict, including a massacre of 100,000–300,000 in
The coming of the modern West to East Asia in the mid- Nanjing, have made for cool relations between the two
nineteenth century helped precipitate a major change in nations ever since.
Japan.The Tokugawa shogunate had grown old and had Japan’s surprise attack on the U.S.Navy at Pearl Harbor
lost energy, and the arrival of eight ships under U.S. Com- in 1941 was designed to keep the United States from inter-
modore Matthew Perry in the mid-1850s, demanding fering in Japan’s plans to build a self-sufficient empire in
trade, helped bring it down. Samurai from provinces that SoutheastAsia.Following the attack,Japan took control of
had been on the periphery of power during the Tokugawa the Philippines, Indochina, Thailand, Burma, and the
shogunate orchestrated the overthrow of the shogunate Dutch West Indies, as well as numerous islands in the
and called for the reestablishment of the emperor to Pacific.When the tide started turning against the Japanese,
power. After this Meiji Restoration (1868), Japan set privations at home grew great; the government en-
about securing itself from European domination by mod- couraged the people by emphasizing the strength of the
ernizing itself furiously—not least its military. “Japanese soul”; recalling the thirteenth-century victory
over the Mongols, young recruits were transformed into
The first Sino-Japanese War kamikaze suicide pilots to attack enemy ships. But in
and the Russo-Japanese War 1945, after experiencing two atomic bombs, Japan sur-
In 1894, Japan intervened in internal Korean politics to rendered.The U.S.-imposed constitution required Japan to
force a Chinese reaction, which brought about the brief foreswear all future military aggression.Although the con-
Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895).The small but modern stitution forbade a military, Japan maintained a very cred-
and well-led Japanese army and navy quickly defeated the ible Self Defense Force with an army, navy, and air force.
larger, older, outdated, and poorly led Chinese forces,
which resulted in the Treaty of Shimonoseki, through The Korean War
which Japan gainedTaiwan and the Liaodong peninsula of In August 1945, to fulfill a promise made at the Yalta
Manchuria. Its acquisition of the latter brought about the Conference and reiterated at the postwar Potsdam Con-
Triple Intervention of Russia,Germany,and France to pre- ference, the Soviet Union transferred a great many divi-
serve Russia’s interest in China’s northeast. Tension sions to the Far East and sliced through the weakened
between Russia and Japan continued for a decade, culmi- Japanese army in Manchuria and quickly moved into
nating in the Russo-Japanese war (1904–1905).A Japan- northern Korea. Meanwhile, beginning on 15 September,
ese fleet attacked the Russian fleet at anchor at Port Arthur the U.S.Army’s Fifty-Fourth Corps liberated Korea south
in southern Manchuria; fighting continued for more than of the thirty-eighth parallel. Within several years there
a year. Hard fighting and huge losses sapped the strength were highly antagonistic regimes on both sides of the
of both sides, and they agreed reluctantly to a U.S.- tense border and, on 25 June 1950, war erupted when
brokered peace (theTreaty of Portsmouth).Japan had dem- 135,000 troops from the north, backed by Soviet T-34
onstrated its might not only against other Asian nations, tanks, invaded the more lightly armed south.
but against a Western power. The Treaty of Portsmouth The Korean War had five phases. The North Koreans
recognized Japan’s interests in Korea, and, emulating pushed south, and U.S. president Harry Truman com-
Western imperialism, in 1910 Japan annexed Korea. mitted U.S. armed forces to slow the North Korean rush
and to maintain a perimeter around Pusan, in the south-
The Second Sino-Japanese War east, as a base for reinforcements and supplies. Beginning
and the Pacific War on 15 September, the United States, the Republic of
In 1931–1932, the Japanese seized control of Manchuria Korea (South Korea), and some United Nations forces
from China; in 1937 the second, and much larger, Sino- broke out of the Pusan Perimeter to link up with a