The forgotten history of Pearl Harbor
22.05.12
The Second World War revolved around not just Europe and the Atlantic, nor even the Pacific, but the whole of Asia. Japan occupied Korea from 1905 to 1945, and in 1931 it used Korean troops when invading Manchuria, a vast territory of China north-east of Beijing. By 1937, in the then capital of China, Nanjing, Japan had killed 300,000 inhabitants in six weeks. By 1939, it had taken over the large island Hainan, off China. The next year, it had invaded French Indochina (now Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia).
Fifty minutes before the Pearl Harbor attack, Japanese troops began a bombardment of Kota Bharu, on the north-east coast of Malaya, soon overrunning British and Indian forces gathered there. Within hours, the Japanese entered Thailand, bombed Hong Kong and Singapore and landed troops north and south of Manila, the capital of the Philippines. Within months, Japan possessed all these territories, as well as the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and Burma. It threatened Australasia and India, the top overseas sources of troops for a beleaguered British Empire.
Source: Spiked