ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the growing confrontation between Japan and the United States in the 1930s that culminated in Japan's surprise attack on the American fleet at Pearl Harbor. The war of attrition that followed, conducted on a scale never before seen, ended with the still-controversial decision to use the atom bomb against Japan. The chapter addresses the aftershocks of the Japanese incursions into Southeast Asia, where, with their initial victories, they both liberated and subjugated the former European colonies. The initial defeat of the European overlords by the Japanese left an indelible impression in the minds of the formerly subjugated populations of Southeast Asia. Japanese colonial rule ended in August 1945, as abruptly as it had begun and before most of the Indies had been reconquered by the Allies. The Japanese occupation of Vietnam from 1941 to 1945 transformed the unpromising revolutionary prospects there as completely as did Japanese occupying armies elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
