Evening all, started another new one that I have had in the query. As I started reading I quickly realized just how much I had skimmed over this part of WWII. I don't think I did it purposely,actually I sense I was programmed to not look at Japan, in the same way I was directed to look at Germany and Italy to a lesser extent. I should have known better after learning about Paperclip,that the same people allowing that to happen, had a plan all along for their Japanese friends. I find 'Gold Warriors' by the husband/wife team of Sterling & Peggy Seagrave very intriguing reading...

..o..

It was at this point that Queen Min refused to cave in to Japanese bullying, and was murdered. The stage was now set for the unprecedented cruelties of the twentieth century.

Having humiliated Manchu China, Japan felt ready to take on Tsarist Russia, which was building railroads into Manchuria. On February 8, 1904, Japan launched two more surprise attacks, one on the Russian naval base at Vladivostok, another on two Russian warships in the mouth of Korea’s Inchon harbor. In reply, the Tsar sent his Baltic fleet half way around the world, only to see it destroyed by Japan’s navy in the battle of Tsushima, in May 1905. As China had done, Russia sued for peace, giving Japan the lower half of Sakhalin Island, transferring to Japan its lease on South Manchuria, and giving Japan control over the southern section of its Manchurian Railway, between Port Arthur and Changchun.

Now feeling invincible, Japan formally declared Korea a colony. Nobody asked Koreans what they thought. Western governments did not protest. Great numbers of Japanese arrived in the peninsula to make their fortunes. With them came legions of agents for the great zaibatsu conglomerates, seizing every commercial opportunity, every natural resource. Japan took control of law and order, creating new police and secret police networks. No longer making any pretense of chivalry, Japanese abused Korean sovereignty at every turn, crushing all resistance. A newspaper editor was arrested when he wrote: “Ah, how wretched it is. Our twenty million countrymen have become the slaves of another country!”

https://exploringrealhistory.blogspot.com/2022/07/part-1-gold-warriors-behind-mask-rogue.html