Big hand/little map summary:
- war in the Pacific started with Japan attacking China. You can mark this in 1931 with the occupation of Manchura, or 1937 with the Marco Polo Bridge incident. Japan subsequently occupies much of coastal China.
- after the fall of France, Japan occupies (Vichy) French Indochina (Vietnam-Laos-Cambodia). This leads, in the summer of 1941, to an oil embrago on Japan by the U.S.. American oil is critical to Japan's war effort, since they have almost none of their own.
- Japan determines to seize an alternate source of oil, the Dutch East Indies. But the shipping lanes from Borneo to Japan can be interdicted from the U.S. territory of the Philippines. So Japan decides to invade the Philippines, after first neutralizing the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. You know what happened after that.
In order to further secure what they called the Southern Resource Area, Japan attacks the British in Malaya and Singapore, and then drives the British out of Burma and sits at the doorstep of India. (This also cut the Burma Road by which aid was provided to China). They also drive further south to New Guinea and the Solomons.
The threat to Australia leads to the recall of Australian troops fighting as part of the British army in Egypt. This is probably the most significant assistance Japan gave to Germany and Italy.
Most Aussie and New Zealand forces in the Pacific fought in the Solomons, New Guinea, and Borneo areas, in conjuction with U.S. efforts in those areas.
After the fall of the Dutch East Indies, the Dutch had little or no role.
China was incapable of doing much, other than tying down Japanese troops on occupation duty.
The British fought major campaigns against the Japanese army from India, mostly with Indian troops. In late 1944 and then 1945, they drove the Japanese out of Burma, and were preparing to invade Malaya in the fall of 1945. The British army in India was commanded by General William Slim, who was probably England's best general of the war.
The Russians invaded Manchuria on Aug 9, 1945, hours before the second A-bomb dropped on Nagasaki.
The reason none of the other allies receive much attention, especially in American historical literature, is that, even as large as Slim's battles in India and Burma were, they played very little role in deciding the outcome of the war. The only Allied effort that had any real impact on pushing Japan to surrender was the Russians.
