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

262 • WORLD WAR II
“creditors of the world,” and they were in a position to “determine to
a large extent who is to be financed and who is not to be financed.”
This delicate diplomatic strategy of courting Japanese friendship
while concurrently seeking to contain Japan was brought into full relief
by the Siberian Intervention. Following the Bolshevik Revolution,
Wilson agreed to participate in a joint American–Japanese occupation
of Siberia, ever mindful that an American presence in the
region could serve to limit the extent of Japanese influence.
In the end result, Wilson’s inability to disentangle his Japan policy
from the reality of power politics contributed to his downfall. At the
Paris Peace Conference, his approval of the transfer of Chinese territory
(previously held by the Germans) to Japan seemed an abandonment
of the idealistic war aims that he had so eloquently and so
frequently proclaimed. Certainly, the U.S. Senate saw it this way, and
refused to ratify the treaty. The American people evidently agreed.
Although Wilson did not run for reelection in 1920, his successor,
James M. Cox, was soundly defeated by the Republican candidate,
Warren G. Harding.
WORLD WAR II (1939–1945). German troops on 1 September 1939
invaded Poland. Two days later, Great Britain and France—albeit reluctantly—declared
war on Germany. World War II had begun.
For its part, Japan was embroiled in war with China. It was, moreover,
allied to Germany by means of the Anti-Comintern Pact. It
nonetheless viewed the opening of World War II with circumspection.
Nonplussed by Germany’s recent actions in concluding a nonaggression
treaty with the Soviet Union—the very nation that the Anti-
Comintern Pact targeted—Tokyo chose to remain aloof from the
fighting in Europe.
All that changed following the success with which the German
blitzkrieg met in the spring of 1940. Tokyo began to conceive of an alliance
relationship with Germany as the means by which it might expand
into the resource-rich regions of Southeast Asia, which had been
rendered defenseless by Germany’s war against their colonial masters.
At this time, Foreign Minister Matsuoka Yōsuke publicly announced
Japan’s intention to establish the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity
Sphere, which he indicated would incorporate both French Indochina
and the Dutch East Indies. The Japanese–German–Italian Tripartite