Greater E Asia Co-prosperity

[zed]

These areas hated white colonials and welcomed Japanese:
1-INDOCHINA
2-BURMA
3-DUTCH EAST INDIES

can colonialism be considered a cause of the Pacific War?

Japans attitude seemed to be, "everyone else is doing it, why should not Japan?"

[corbulo]

FDR did not want any american troops involved in fighting to win back european colonies.

[mdiehl]

Zed. Agreed. Yet by the end of the thing, Aung San was a British loyalist. Shows you how well the Japanese managed to toss away all the initial goodwill they recieved as liberators, and Ho Chi Minh was as actively anti-Japanese as French (and later, US). The best occupation successes for Japan seem to have occurred in Indonesia.

Yeah. I think Colonialism was exactly what the Pacific War was about. That and the pervasive sense that militarism was the only way for Japan to get any respect. In that regard they may have been right. They lost the war but pretty much everyone now respects them and their military accomplishments during the war.

Corbulo. FDR was a pragmatist. Had India been seriously threatened, the US would have been there, or done anything possible to distract the Japanese, IMO. The US, after all, did commit army units and tactical air units to the campaigns to re-take Burma, New Guinea, and North Africa -- all British Colonial or Commonwealth possessions or colonies.

[ReDDoN45]

I´ve written a 30 page long essay on " The long road to Pearl Harbour" dealing wiht the things happening in the Pacific from 1900 to 1941. Of course most emphasis lay on the period between 1932 - 1941. That essay discusses especially this topic quite a lot. THe problem: It is written in German.

I got an A for it

[ReDDoN45]

Greater Co - asian co prosperity was in fact only an opportunistic (the 3rd and this time a politic) attampt by the Japs to break the stalemate in CHina. It failed as the Chinese thought that then though they would get rid of Europeans, they have the Japs as new rulers. It was just too obvious. Though the phrase remained for the later years, it´s main aim was to get CHina into the Jap boat.
Propably I find the links to the sites where I all read that, to write my essay. Most of them are in English