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“In the half century before 7 December 1941, Japan had built a powerful army and navy and dramatically extended its control in Asia with startling victories over China in 1894 and Russia in 1905. During the Great War of 1914–18, Japanese influence in the Pacific increased, this time with the aid of the Western powers. At the Versailles Conference, the victorious Allies assigned Tokyo a mandate over the Marshall, Mariana, and Caroline archipelagos in the Central Pacific. Under the League of Nations, which Japan joined, powers holding
such authority agreed to act as guardians of resident peoples while neither exploiting resources nor fortifying territories. The Japanese soon showed more interest in exploitation than guardianship. In the mandated islands, Japanese Imperial Army and Navy personnel surveyed coastlines and inland terrain and began building ports, airfields, radio stations, rail lines, mines, and plantations. Engineers and plantation managers often were military officers or intelligence agents in civilian clothes. But with the League of Nations far away and Western governments occupied by prosperity in the 1920s and economic depression in the 1930s, Tokyo had a free
hand. Anxious for a firsthand view of Japanese activity in the mandates, in 1923 the U.S. Navy sent Marine Lt. Col. Earl Ellis to reconnoiter the area; Ellis was captured by the Japanese and died under mysterious circumstances.
The Japanese 2d Division celebrates landing at Merak, Java, 1 March 1942. (Sectie Militaire Geschiedenes Landmachstaf)
Japanese troops move through Java. (Sectie Militaire Geschiedenes Landmachstaf)
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