The book is called the Pacific War because the author (who is Japanese) sees the war in Asia/Pacific as being quite distinct, and an extension of the Sino-Japanese hostility that came to a head with the Manchurian Incident in 1931, the occupation of Manchira by the Japanese Army, and creation of the puppet state of Manchuko. Although not dealth with extensively, you can also think of this as simply one more event in the jostling for power in the region that had been going on between Russia, Japan, and western powers (with Korea and China often being caught in the middle) for several decades. But the US was not really a major factor here… the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in response to our oil embargos but that was 5 years after formal war with China had started, and 11 years after the Manchurian Incident.
I found this on the Web…
http://www.biography.ms/Imperialism_in_Asia.html Japan
Japan started developing imperial ambitions in the late 19th century, ambitions that would one day culminate in the cataclysm of World War II. Initially, Japan was fortunate to escape the fate of other Asian nations, having been forced by Commodore Perry in 1853 to open its doors to trade. Similar arrangements followed with all of the European powers.
The Meiji Restoration of 1868 led to administrative modernization and subsequent rapid economic development. Japan had little natural resources of her own and needed both overseas markets and sources of raw materials, fuelling a drive for imperial conquest which began with her defeat of China in 1895. Taiwan, ceded by the Qing Empire, became the first Japanese colony.
In 1899 Japan won the great powers’ abandonment of extra-territoriality, and an alliance with Britain established it in 1902 as an international power. Its spectacular defeat of Russia in 1905 gave it the southern portion of the island of Sakhalin, the former Russian lease of the Liaodong Peninsula with Port Arthur (now Lüshunkou), and extensive rights in Manchuria. In 1910, Korea was annexed to the Japanese empire.
Japan was now one of the most powerful forces in the Far East, and in 1914 it entered World War I on the side of Britain, seizing German-occupied Kiaochow and subsequently demanding Chinese acceptance of Japanese political influence and territorial acquisitions (Twenty-one Demands, 1915). Mass protests in Peking in 1919 coupled with Allied (and particularly U.S.) opinion led to Japan’s abandonment of most of the demands and Kiaochow’s return (1922) to China.
Japan’s rebuff was perceived in Tokyo as only temporary, and in 1931 Japanese army units based in Manchuria seized control of the province; full-scale war with China followed in 1937, drawing Japan toward an overambitious bid for Pacific hegemony which ultimately led to defeat and the loss of all its overseas territories after World War II (See Japanese expansionism).
Actually, this page is better - read this:
http://pacific-war.biography.ms/
