Rampaging sun flag

Author: Arthur Chase
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-09-01
Features: After Japan's full-scale invasion of China in 1937, the United States, in order to protect its interests in China, supported the then Chiang Kai-shek Nationalist government and condemned Japan's aggression. It also began to tighten its economic sanctions and arms sales to Japan. As Japan's ambitions for expansion and the intensification of the invasion war grew, the U.S. sanctions on Japan, particularly the oil embargo, became increasingly severe. This severely disrupted Japan's invasion plans. To break out of the stalemate in the war of aggression against China and improve its strategic situation, the desperate Japanese government finally decided to launch a war in the Pacific region, hoping to seize the colonies of Britain, the United States, and the Netherlands in Asia and plunder the strategic resources of Southeast Asia to establish the so-called "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere."