HISTORICAL SETTING: Pacific Theater
Halfway across the world, Japan slowly expanded into China and the Pacific in hopes of becoming self-reliant. Throughout the 1930’s, Japan launched many military campaigns to conquer China, beginning with Manchuria in 1931. On 1 August 1940, Foreign Minister Matsuoka Yōsuke announced the government’s ambition to build a self-sufficient regional bloc under Japan’s leadership, known as the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.” By 1941, Japan conquered all of Indochina.
"The World must come to look up to our emperor as the Great Ruler of all nations" (qtd. in "War Comes to America").
- Lord Hotta, Premier of Japan,
1858
("War Comes to America")
"Japan is an aggressor nation!" (qtd. in Hoyt 98).
- President Franklin D. Roosevelt