Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II

by John W. Dower

The war brought imperial Japan its first colony, the island of Formosa. Triumph over czarist Russia ten years later, after costly battles on land and a sensational victory at sea, gave the nation an internationally recognized foothold in Manchuria and paved the way for taking Korea as a second colony. Loans raised in New York and London helped to finance this war, and the Western powers turned a deaf ear to the appeals of Korean patriots. In World War I, Japan joined the hostilities on the Allied side, moving against German holdings in China, and was rewarded by being seated as one of the “Big Five” nations at the Versailles peace conference, where the victors met to punish Germany and rearrange the world. No other nonwhite, non-Christian people at that time could have imagined playing the great game of global power and influence at this level;