Historical Dictionary of United States-Japan ... - Bakumatsu Films

SPANISH–AMERICAN WAR, 1898 • 235
proceeded to Berlin. For someone who prided himself on his sharp
diplomatic mind, this segment of the trip should have revealed to
Matsuoka the bankruptcy of the Tripartite Pact. Adolf Hitler, who
was immersed in plans for an assault on the very nation that Matsuoka
planned to bring into the Axis, refused to be drawn into Matsuoka’s
idea of an expanded pact. Matsuoka, for his part, having been
forbidden by the Imperial Army to make any binding commitments
about Japanese contributions to the German subjugation of Great
Britain, could not give Hitler the much-sought guarantee that Japan
would invade Singapore. Then, in spite of the Germans’ implicit
warnings of pending war with the Soviet Union, Matsuoka proceeded
to Moscow and, on 13 April, signed a neutrality treaty with Stalin.
Rather than creating an overwhelming anti–Anglo–American front,
Matsuoka deepened the fissures that had appeared in Japan’s alliance
with Germany, while in no way lessening Washington’s resolve to
oppose the Axis alliance.
Following Pearl Harbor, the two nations maintained an uneasy
neutrality until April 1945, when the Soviet Union announced that it
would not renew its neutrality treaty with Japan. The Japanese government
chose to ignore the writing on the wall and sought the Soviet
Union’s aid in securing a favorable peace settlement from the Allies.
Why the Soviet Union should turn its back on its alliance relationship
with the United States and Great Britain to instead back the side that
was obviously losing the war is a question that Tokyo never seriously
contemplated. The truth hit home when the Soviet Union in August
1945 mauled Japanese forces in Manchuria, at the same time that the
United States was launching the world’s first atomic bomb attacks
against Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
SPANISH–AMERICAN WAR, 1898. War fought by United States
military forces against Spanish military forces in Cuba and the
Philippines. The outcome of the war marked the end of the Spanish
overseas empire and the emergence of an American overseas empire.
Spain was forced to give Cuba its freedom, while ceding the Philippines,
Guam, and Puerto Rico to the United States. Because of the geographic
proximity of the Philippines to Japan, and with the nearsimultaneous
American annexation of the Hawaiian Islands, political
tensions arose between the United States and Japan. See also
HAWAII; MCKINLEY, WILLIAM, ROOSEVELT, THEODORE.