ABSTRACT
FOR THE US, Britain and Australia conflict with Japan in the Second World War began in 1941 after the raid on Pearl Harbor. It is this conflict that the term ‘Pacific War’ refers to. But this is to distort the picture, for Japan had by then already been effectively at war for four years, not with any Western power but with China. This conflict began in 1937, two years before the outbreak of war in Europe, and is still known in Japan as the ‘China Incident’.
