1- Emperor Showa
Also known as Hirohito, he was the 124th Japanese Emperor in their traditional order. He was born on April 29, 1901 and passed on in January 7, 1989 in Japan. He reigned as the Japanese emperor from December 25, 1926 up to the time he died. He is best known for advocating for the Japanese unconditional surrender that led to the end of the Second World War in 1945 before renouncing his divine status in 1946 (Large 2013).
2- General Tojo Hideki
He was born on 30 December 1884 and lived up to 23 December 1948, when he was hanged at Sugamo Prison by the American occupation authorities alongside six other Japanese war criminals. He led the Taisei Yokusankai and became general of the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA). Additionally, on 17 October 1941 he became the 40th Japanese prime minister for the better part of the Second World War and reigned until 22 July 1944. He triggered war between the U.S. and Japan by sponsoring the attack on Pearl Harbor (Weston 2002).
3- Attack on Pearl Harbor
On the 7 December 194, the world was surprised. Two waves of attacking planes hit the Pearl Harbor. The first plane hit target at 7.53 AM with the second at 8.55 of the same morning. By 9.55 AM, the whole place went down to flames and by 1.00 PM of that day, the carriers, which had launched the planes from approximately 274 miles from the coast of Oahu, had headed back to Japan. The attack killed approximately 2,403 people and destroyed 188 planes. 8 battleships were also some of the victims of this attack. The attack was as a result of the failed negotiations between Japan and U.S. which wanted to curb Japan’s aggression. Japan launched this attack to destroy the U.S. naval power (Lassieur 2008).
4- Unit 731
General Shiro Ishii who was an officer of the Kwantung Army commanded this unit. It was initially set up as a top-secret chemical and biological weapons facility in the Second Sino-Japanese war, which took place between 1937 and 1945, and the Second World War. It has been referred to as the Asian Auschwitz. Te unit is allegedly responsible for the death of close to 200,000 civilians and military personnel through the practice of dangerous human experimentation. It was based in Harbin’s Pingfang district (Williams & Wallace 1989).
5- Comfort Women
These refer to the girls and women who were recruited deceitfully or by force by the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy into sexual slavery during the Second World War. The name is derived from a Japanese term: Ianfu, which means prostitute. These young women were coerced, deceived, lured and occasionally kidnapped in the territories occupied by the Japanese forces. However, there are no exact statistics revealing the number of women who were involved in the prostitution, nevertheless, some research have revealed that the figures range from 20,000 to 410, 000 women (Henson 1999).
6- Nanjing Massacre
On December 13, 1937 during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese forces succeeded in capturing the city of Nanking, which was the former capital of the Republic of China. On this date, a mass murder and war rape of the natives occurred in the city. The event lasted about six weeks. The IJA murdered thousands of Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers. The number that lost their lives have been estimated to range between 250,000 and 300,000 people (Fogel 2000).
7- Kamikaze Special Attack
These were suicide attacks by traitors of the military form the Japanese empire. The attacks were aimed at destroying the Allied naval vessels towards the end of the Pacific campaign of the Second World War. The Japanese forces had realized that this was more destructive compared to the conventional attacks. There are variations in the statistics during this suicidal event, but approximately 47 allied vessels were sunk by this attack. The event that saw about 4,000 pilots sacrifice their lives also damaged 300 vessels (Rielly 2010).
8- Matsuoka Yosuke
He was born in 1880 and died in 26th June, 1946. He relocated to the U.S. at the age of 13 years where he lived with relatives while attending school. He graduated with a degree in law from the University of Oregon in 1900. He the Japanese walk out from the League of Nations in 1933 due to their protest against the Lytton Commission report. Following his appointment as the foreign minister, he led the negotiations of the Tripartite Pact with Nazi Germany in September the same year. He was arrested and charged with war crimes following the WWII but died before trial (David 2002).9- Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere
In the early periods of the Emperor Showa’s reign, his government and military created a propaganda concept and promulgated for the Asian population. It was officially announced in 29 June 1940 though it is believed to have been conceived many years prior to this announcement. It described some cultural, economic, social and political reason for its development. Its major aim was to free the Asian nations from the control of the western powers and was led by Japan (Linda 2003).
10- Ngo Dinh Diem
He was born on 13 January 190 in Quang Binh province in the northern division of Vietnam into a noble Vietnamese catholic family. He died on 2 November 1963 in Cho Lon in the southern Vietnam following an assassination. He made himself the Vietnamese president in 1955 and served with a lot of doctoral powers murdering hundreds of the Buddhists in Vietnam, which led to the U.S. withdrawing their support. Following his assassination, tension arose leading to a civil war (Thien 1956).
11- Viet Minh
This term translated into English language means “league for the independence of Vietnam”. A Vietnamese organization led to the struggle of independence for their nation from the Japanese and French rules. It was formed in May 1941 in China. Despite being led by communists, it carried it operations as a national organization (Sheehan 2006)
Bibliography:
Large S. (2013). Emperor Hirohito and Showa Japan: A Political Biography: Nissan Institute Rutledge Japanese Studies. London: Rutledge
Weston M. (2002). Giants of Japan: The Lives of Japan's Greatest Men and Women. Bunkyō, Tokyo: Kodansha America.
Lassieur A. (2008). The Attack on Pearl Harbor: An Interactive History Adventure. Mankato, Minnesota: Capstone Press, Incorporated.
Williams P. & Wallace D. (1989). Unit 731: Japan's secret biological warfare in World War II. New York: Free Press.
Henson M. R. (1999). Comfort woman: a Filipina's story of prostitution and slavery under the Japanese military: Asian Voices Series; Women's studies. Autobiography, Asian studies. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.
Fogel A. J. (2000). The Nanjing Massacre in history and historiography. Berkeley, California: University of California Press.
Rielly R. L. (2010). Kamikaze Attacks of World War II: A Complete History of Japanese Suicide Strikes on American Ships, by Aircraft and Other Means. California: McFarland.
David J. L. (2002). Agony of Choice: Matsuoka Yōsuke and the Rise and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1880-1946. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books.
Linda M. K. (2003). The rise of modern Japan: Book 2 of Curriculum on Asian and Pacific History Series. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Thien P. (1956). President Ngo-Dinh-Diem's political philosophy. Illinois: Review Horizons.
Sheehan M. A. (2006). Communist revolutionary warfare: from the Vietminh to the Viet Cong: PSI Classics of the Counterinsurgency Era Series. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group
