ABSTRACT
Japan launched an all-out war against China in 1937 but, while the China campaign delivered large territorial gains, it also drained Japanese resources and produced no decisive military outcome. Meanwhile, increasing friction with the Western powers and the United States led to the simultaneous Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor, French Indochina and British Malaysia on 7-8 December 1941 and the beginning of the Pacific War. Initial Japanese expansion was rapid, but within a year the US-led allies regrouped and began to apply their superior naval and industrial power to telling effect. During 1942-45 Japan suffered crippling losses and gradually yielded up all its occupied territory. On 15 August 1945 it finally accepted terms of unconditional surrender to the Allied powers after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by atomic bombs.
