A Sudden Rampage: The Japanese Occupation of Southeast Asia 1941-1945

by Nicholas Tarling

This describes the origins, the methods and the result of imperial Japan's occupation of Southeast Asia during World War II. Japanese policy makers had recognized that the region's European colonial regimes would not last for ever, but they had not envisaged a military conquest. While Japan launched stunningly successful military operations - such as the attacks on Pearl Harbor and Singapore - it found devising occupation policies that were suitable to the diverse regions under its sway after 1941 much harder. To a large extent Japan's policies were improvised, often being based on models derived from the experiences of Manchuria or the homeland itself. For some Japanese the invasion was a work of liberation, and those who tried to extricate Japan from the war as defeat loomed emphasized this rationale. Eventually, however, the people of the region liberated themselves, taking advantage of the interregnum between Japanese military defeat and the imposition of alternative Allied administrations. Any sense of obligation to the Japanese was reduced by the violence of their soldiery and the inadequacy of their administration.

Genres: Japan

286 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2001

About the author

Nicholas Tarling was Professor of History at the University of Auckland from 1968 until 1997 and a Fellow of its New Zealand Asia Institute. He was the editor of The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia and wrote nearly 50 books and a large number of articles on the region.

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most Americans today remember the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor by Japanese forces as the event that brought the United States into the Second World War. Far fewer of them, however, are aware that it was a preemptive strike intended primarily to give the Japanese the opportunity to conquer unimpeded their main target: the resource-rich territories of southeastern Asia then controlled by the Western powers. With Britain, France, and the Netherlands preoccupied with the war in Europe, none of them were in any position to oppose the Japanese advance. Within a matter of months, Japanese troops occupied the entire region, giving their empire free reign to implement their vision of a region fully within Japan’s sphere of influence.

As Nicholas Tarling notes, this incursion was revolutionary in its impact, both for Japan and the region itself. Yet as he details in his survey of the Japanese occupation, it was one that had roots reaching back centuries. Among the many strengths of his account is his situating of the occupation within both the history of Japan’s empire and the larger context of Japan’s engagement with the world. This was one that predated the Sakoku policy of the Tokugawa period, and which had created small communities of Japanese throughout the area. While Japan’s embrace of isolationism during the Tokugawa led them to abandon these communities, their reengagement with the world during the Meiji era soon led the Japanese to resume its trade with the region.

Japan’s renewed interest was greeted apprehensively by the imperial powers in the region, who were conscious of Japan’s proximity to their possessions and their own straitened ability to defend them. While Japan’s interests in Northeastern Asia absorbed its expansionist energies for much of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the government fostered business investments and developed contacts with nationalist groups over the course of the 1920s and 1930s. It was the combination of their bogged-down ambitions in China and the outbreak of war in Europe that shifted that energy southward. The desire to cut off China’s access to munitions imported from the south led Japan to pressure France into accepting a military presence in Indochina in 1940, while the British agreed to a temporary closure of the recently-built Burma Road soon thereafter. Tarling cites a mix of fear and optimism as the key factors in Japan’s decision to assert control more directly, precipitating a military campaign in December 1941 that won the entire region for Japan after just four months of fighting.

The second half of Tarling’s book focuses on the occupation itself. He gives equal attention to both the development of Japanese policy and its administration of the conquered territories. This is no easy task, as each colony was approached differently and policy was shaped according to circumstances. While Japan freely dispensed rhetoric about independence and worked in collaboration with cooperative locals, much of this was tempered by Japan’s economic interests and wartime requirements. Colonial economies were reoriented towards those needs, while labor increasingly was conscripted to support Japan’s ongoing offensives against the British in India. These wartime conditions ultimately proved more important in shaping the occupation than the idealistic vision of the East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, with the legacy they left behind one that would disrupt Western hopes of a smooth return to the prewar status quo.

Tarling touches upon this legacy only briefly at the end of his book. This reflects the limits which he has set for himself with this work, which seeks not to break new ground about his subject, but to distill over a half century of English-language scholarship about Japan’s occupation of Southeast Asia into a digestible overview. Tarling's comparative examination of Japanese policy in the different colonies is especially valuable, as he identifies both the common premises Japan brought to their wartime conquests and how the war and differences between the territories often thwarted adherence to a coherent vision. While somewhat dated, it nevertheless remains an excellent book for anyone seeking to learn more about the empire that Japan sought to build in the region, and how their efforts fared amidst the demands of a global war.