vstars Chapter 467
Chapter 467
1941年3～4月，日本大本营又进行依次假想占领马来西亚之后继续攻占新加坡的陆海空实际兵力联合演习，对航空军部进行海上远距离飞行（包括夜间飞行）及其与海军通讯联络训练，并于1941年9月创设空降部队。[6]
Japan was extremely short of resources and had to import most of its main strategic resources, while Southeast Asia was rich in resources. In particular, "the Dutch East Indies was the oil treasure house of East Asia, with an annual production of about 800 million tons, which was 20 times that of Japan. Japan needed about 500 million tons of oil every year at that time, and its self-sufficiency was less than one-tenth of that"[11]. The geographical location of Southeast Asia was very important. Occupying Southeast Asia could not only cut off two important land transportation lines for aid to China from the United States, Britain and other countries[12]: the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway and the Yunnan-Burma Road, but also move westward into the Indian Ocean to threaten India and join forces with the German army in the Middle East. To the south, it could capture Australia and dominate the Western Pacific.
Since Matthew Perry led an American warship to "visit" Japan in 1853, which opened a new chapter in Japan-US relations, until the Spanish-American War, Japan-US relations were relatively stable. The United States, the victor of the Spanish-American War, and Japan, the victor of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, began competing for hegemony in China and the Pacific region in the late 19th century. [13]
After the Russo-Japanese War, Japan's influence in Northeast China increased greatly, and Japan-US relations took a sharp turn for the worse. Both sides began to regard each other as imaginary enemies. Before the First World War, the contradictions between Japan and the United States on the China issue became acute.
On January 2, 1917, Japanese representative Kikujiro Ishii and U.S. Secretary of State Lansing signed the Lansing-Ishii Agreement on the Chinese issue. In the agreement, the United States recognized Japan's "special rights" in China, especially in South Manchuria, but at the same time reminded Japan that it must not dominate China and must ensure China's open door and equal opportunities for industry and commerce of all countries. [13]
From November 1921 to February of the following year, the Nine-Power Naval Disarmament Conference and the Washington Conference on the Far East were held in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. The Nine-Power Treaty, signed between the United States, Britain, Japan, France, Italy, Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands, and China, declared the implementation of the "Open Door" policy and the principle of "equal opportunity" for all nations in China, and required Japan to surrender its former German interests in Shandong. The Washington Conference, which ended in victory for the United States, brought the conflict between the two countries into the open and intensified the conflict over the Far East and Pacific region between the two countries.
In February 1923, when Japan revised its imperial defense policy, it listed the United States as its first imaginary enemy country based on the international situation at the time.
After the September 1th Incident, tensions between Japan and the United States intensified. In 1934, Japan announced the abolition of the Naval Armaments Treaty, and in January 1936, it withdrew from the London Disarmament Conference. Japan's withdrawal from the Washington and London Treaties severely impacted the Versailles-Washington system, signaling the intensification of tensions between Japan and the US and European powers.
The signing of the Tripartite Pact between Germany, Italy, and Japan in Berlin in 1940 severely deteriorated the United States' strategic position and environment. Consequently, a year before the outbreak of the Pacific War, the United States took three interrelated actions in the Asia-Pacific region: stepping up aid to China's war of resistance; tightening economic sanctions against Japan; and initiating negotiations with Japan. This combination of soft and hard tactics constituted the actual content of the United States' Far East strategy at the time.[15-16]
British and American appeasement policy
Germany's successful blitzkrieg against Western Europe caused European and American imperialism to focus its main energy on the European battlefield, leaving them with no time to look eastward, leaving a "vacuum" in Southeast Asia, which gave Japanese imperialism an opportunity to exploit. [6][17-18]
Japan changed its previous wait-and-see attitude towards signing the Tripartite Pact between Germany, Italy and Japan. On September 27, 1940, the Tripartite Pact between Germany, Italy and Japan was signed in Berlin. It realized the basic policy of Japanese imperialism to "adapt to the sudden changes in the world situation, quickly build a new order in East Asia, and seek to strengthen the axis between Japan, Germany and Italy." [19]