048 - One Sun Sets, Another Rises

Imperial Japan and the Co-Prosperity Sphere

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There had been a common saying throughout the time of British Colonial rule worldwide from the early 1600s until the beginning of the Second World War: calling it the “Empire on Which the Sun Never Sets.”

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That was true until December 8^th, when the Imperial Japanese Forces attacked much of the British Colonies in Southeast Asia.

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According to Japanese propaganda (information that is meant to push a personal or political agenda), the intention for the Japanese Combined Forces’ attack on British, Dutch, and American forces was the oppression of Asian peoples by Caucasian (European and North American) peoples from the Western Hemisphere, including Colonial China and Vietnam, British Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, and the American-controlled Philippines.

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The Japanese called this unification of Asian peoples the “Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”. Japanese leaders reasoned that, with the Colonial Forces out of the way, Asia could not be “Asia for Asians – led by the Japanese and free of Western powers”. .

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However, as demonstrated with the Japanese occupation of Manchuria and later with the massacre during the Nanking Incident, the Japanese leaders were not seeking freedom for the other Asian nations so much as their own form of Imperial Colonialism, with Japan able to take the rich resources from throughout Asia: coal and lumber from China, tin and rubber from British Malaya, rice and food staples from the Philippines, and fuel oil from the Dutch East Indies.

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With the Japanese occupation, there was also a need for labor. The Japanese relied on captured civilians and POWs to provide that labor, at a horrific cost to those who had been captured.

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