After Japan’s attack on the United States, Britain, and the Netherlands in December 1941, the war in China merged into World War II. Japan officially named this new conflict the “Greater East Asian War.” The adoption of this term reflected Japan’s official interpretation of this conflict as the final stage in the long drawn-out struggle to expel the Western colonial powers from Asia. By adopting this name and by resorting to pan-Asian rhetoric as part of its strategy to legitimize the war, Japan attempted to garner support from other Asian nations for the war against the West. The creation of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere (II:24 and II:27) was a direct outcome of these attempts and the clearest expression so far of pan-Asian policies formulated by the Japanese government.
However, it soon became obvious to most Asian peoples in territories occupied by Japan that the Japanese representation of the conflict as a war of “Asian liberation” was no more than propaganda. In China, a brutal war of wanton destruction continued unabated until 1945. Southeast Asia was exploited as ruthlessly under Japanese governance as under Western colonial rule. Mobilized to assist Japan’s war effort, many “Asian brothers” lost their lives through fatigue, disease, and starvation as food supplies were commandeered by the Japanese authorities for their military needs. Even at the height of the war, the Japanese continued their appeals to pan-Asian solidarity; however, the gap between the lofty pan-Asian ideals professed and the brutal reality of Japanese rule became unbridgeable. Although pan-Asian publications proliferated once again during the wartime years, they were largely dominated by hollow phrases.
But even in those desperate years and notwithstanding the harsh treatment meted out by the Japanese occupation authorities, some Asians still clung to the hope that Japan would liberate Asia from Western colonial rule. Such hopes found expression in articles in newspapers and journals published throughout East and Southeast Asia. Although some of these publications were unquestionably produced by local propagandists in the pay of the Japanese (or by Japanese propagandists themselves), there is no doubt that many others were genuine and spontaneous expressions of pan-Asian ideals. But no amount of such material could prevent the collapse of Japan’s war machine and Japan’s unconditional surrender on 2 September 1945.