Japan: Swords and Butterflies - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 264

led thousands of Japanese soldiers to die fighting during World War II rather than betray
their oath to the emperor by surrendering to the enemy.
WHAT WAS JAPAN'S NEW FOREIGN POLICY?
As Japan industrialized, military campaigns followed. Military leaders saw a stark lesson
in world history. War was better than diplomacy. Respect for Japan would come only from
the barrel of a gun. In 1904 Japan attacked Russia, defeated its army, and achieved a stun-
ning naval victory at the battle of Tsushima. Japan was now a major world power. In the
spoils of victory, Japan took control over the southern half of Sakhalin Island and brought
Korea into its sphere of influence. In World War I, Japan joined the enemies of Germany
and was rewarded at the Treaty of Versailles with Germany's Pacific Ocean territories—the
Caroline and Marshal Islands and all the Marianas except Guam. Another post-Meiji trans-
formation had begun. Japan was no longer just a country; it was now an overseas empire.
In 1931 Japan began an assault on China that once again transformed Japan. Its sol-
diers now practiced a brutal, terrorizing military strategy. In 1937 the Japanese army over-
ran Nanking, China. Looting, rape, and pillage on a massive scale followed. General Mat-
sui Iwani ordered all resistance brutally crushed. Tens of thousands of women were raped.
Somewhere between 100,000 and 300,000 people died. Surrounding towns were leveled
and burned. [239]
The last chapter in the Meiji transformation began on December 7, 1941, with the sur-
prise attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. By 1942, the empire was at its apogee. It ran from
the Aleutian Islands in a great arc southward to the Solomon Islands, the Philippines, great
swatches of north New Guinea, Indonesia, the western-seaboard provinces of China, In-
dochina, and Burma—up to the very borders of India.
British casualties in the war for the Far East might be said to begin with the loss of
Singapore, where 9,000 empire troops were killed or wounded, and 130,000 surrendered to
the Japanese. Many died in building the notorious bridge over the River Kwai. American
casualties began with the bombing of Pearl Harbor, with about 3,000 deaths. Estimates of
lives lost on both sides of the conflict are next to impossible to establish. In China, for
example, deaths from disease and military action are thought to run upwards of at least
thirty million. The American war against Japan was long and bloody, in places and islands
fetid with heat, rain, and disease-carrying insects. In the battle for Guadalcanal, for in-
stance, 60,000 soldiers and marines entered combat, and 1,592 were killed; hundreds more
suffered wounds and disease. More than 100,000 Americans took part in the battle for Iwo
Jima; U.S. land casualties were 45,000 dead, 300 missing, and almost 16,000 wounded. In
total, the United States sent 1.25 million men to the Pacific War. Total casualties were on
the order of 171,000, of whom 27,000 are counted as dead or missing.