Abstract
Japan’s occupation of the “Co-Prosperity Sphere” began on a strategically auspicious note. The speed at which the Japanese Empire grew in the initial stage of its war with the Allied forces was astonishing. Equally impressive was the geographical extent of this rapidly expanding empire. By March 1942, Japan had extended its war theatre 8,100 by 6,250 miles while bringing about 500 million people under its rule.1 Within a few months of the opening of hostilities, the Empire stretched eastward to the Solomon Islands, westward to Burma, and southward to Timor. This meant that Southeast Asia could now provide Japan with immediate war resources in raw materials and Pacific islands, a cluster of unsinkable aircraft carriers with oil stocks, and military facilities.2
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Notes
Jon Halliday, A Political History of Japanese Capitalism (New York: Random House, 1975), 141.
Marius B. Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 648.
Grant Goodman, ed., Japanese Cultural Policies in Southeast Asia during World War 2 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), 3.
Joyce C. Lebra in Lebra, ed. and intro., Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in World War II (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1975), xiv.
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Mamoru Shinozaki, Syonan—My Story (Singapore: Asia Pacific Press, 1975), 76–77.
Yoji Akashi, “Japanese Policy towards the Malayan Chinese, 1941–45,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 1, no. 2 (September 1970): 76.
Otabe Yūji, Tokugawa Yoshichika no Jūgonen Sensō [Tokugawa Yoshichika’s Fifteen Years’ War] (Aoki Shoten, 1988), 163–64.
Fujiwara Satoshi, Shinohara Keiichi, and Nishide Takeshi, Ajia Senji Ryūgakusei [Asian Students in Wartime Japan] (Kyōdō Tsūshin, 1996), 116–18.
As quoted in Kadono Hiroko, Tōnanajia no Otōtotachi [Younger Brothers of Southeast Asia] (Sankosha, 1985), 259–60.
Tran My-Van, “Japan and Vietnam’s Caodaists: A Wartime Relationship (1939–45),” in Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 27, no. 1 (March 1996): 183.
An important work on Bose is Milan Hauner, India in Axis Strategy: Germany, Japan, and Indian Nationalists in the Second World War (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1981).
Eunice Thio, “Singapore under Japanese Rule,” in Ernest C. T. Chew and Edwin Lee, eds., A History of Singapore (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1991), 101.
In Burma, Colonel Suzuki Keiji founded the “Minami Kikan” [Southern Agency] to support the formation of the Burmese Independence Army. John Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (London: Faber, 1986), 285.
Lee Kuan Yew, Towards Socialism, vol. 5 (Singapore: Government Printing Office, 1962), 10–11.
E. J. H. Corner, Omoide no Shōnan Hakubutsukan [Shonan Museum in my Memory], trans. Ishii Mikiko (Chūkō Shinsho, 1981), 4–5.
Tokugawa Yoshichika, Saigo no Tonosama [The Last Lord] (Kōdansha, 1973), 74–75.
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© 2007 Eri Hotta
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Hotta, E. (2007). Pan-Asianism in the Co-Prosperity Sphere. In: Pan-Asianism and Japan’s War 1931–1945. The Palgrave Macmillan Series in Transnational History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230609921_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230609921_8
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