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Japan Sino-Japanese War
On July 17, 1937, a new wave of expansion on the Asian
mainland
began with a skirmish between Chinese and Japanese troops
at Marco
Polo Bridge outside of Beiping (now Beijing). Although the
Japanese
commander had committed his troops without prior knowledge
or
consent of the government in Tokyo, he was promptly
provided with
reinforcements by the general staff, which by this time
was
strongly influenced by the younger officers. The fighting
quickly
spread, and the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-45) had
begun. On
July 28, Chinese forces evacuated Beiping. Two days later,
the
Japanese army occupied Tianjin, and on August 13 Japanese
forces
attacked China's financial center, Shanghai. Chinese
forces
resisted for three months, but they finally succumbed to
the
better-armed and better-trained Japanese forces. The fall
of
Shanghai left China's capital, Nanjing, unprotected, and
the
Chinese government moved its capital to the southwestern
mountain
city of Chongqing. Japanese forces quickly occupied
Nanjing,
indiscriminately massacring about 100,000 civilians in the
infamous
"Rape of Nanjing." In mid-1938 Japan set its sights on the
central
Chinese industrial city of Wuhan. Wuhan held out for four
and onehalf months but finally surrendered on December 25, 1938.
The fall
of Wuhan, coupled with the earlier fall of Guangzhou on
October 21,
left most urban areas in central and eastern China in the
hands of
Japan. To the north, however, Japanese forces were
defeated after
a protracted battle with a joint Soviet-Mongolian force in
1939.
At home, the Japanese armed forces were portrayed as
benevolent
crusaders striving to free Asia from European colonial
domination.
The military's control over almost every phase of Japanese
life was
by now complete, and opposition to its policies was
tantamount to
treason. The top military commanders enjoyed direct access
to the
emperor, bypassing civilian authority completely.
Data as of January 1994
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