The first-ever attempt to paint a full-scale portrait of the Japanese Occupation of Southeast Asia during the Asia-Pacific War (1942–5). This book draws on the huge body of available narrative—military documents, bureaucratic records and personal accounts of combatants and civilians, including diaries, memoirs and collected correspondence—most of which have previously been either unknown or unavailable to non-Japanese readers. It examines how the Japanese imperial adventure in Southeast Asia sped up the collapse of the Japanese Empire as a whole, not only through its ultimate military defeat in the region, but also due to its failure as an occupier from the very beginning. Nakano explains the significance of the Japanese Occupation of Southeast Asia as a learning experience for the occupiers, whether soldiers on the frontlines or civilians on the home front. He uses a synthesis, overlay and juxtaposition of a selection of these narratives, to reassemble the narrative as a whole. This brings into focus the outlook of those Japanese who set out for Southeast Asia with the purpose to urge the region’s occupied people to collaborate with Japan to transform the region into an integral part of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Many would eventually discover that what required change was Japan and its whole approach to colonial rule, as was realized so quickly in the postwar era. The original Japanese version was published as Tonan Ajia senryo to Nihonjin: Teikoku Nihon no kaitai [The occupation of Southeast Asia and the Japanese: The dismantling of the Japanese Empire]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2012. ISBN: 430922542X.

From December 1941, Japan, as part of its plan to build an East Asian empire and secure oil supplies essential for war in the Pacific, swiftly took control of Southeast Asia. Japanese occupation had a devastating economic impact on the region. Japan imposed country and later regional autarky on Southeast Asia, dictated that the region finance its own occupation, and sent almost no consumer goods. GDP fell by half everywhere in Southeast Asia except Thailand. Famine and forced labour accounted for most of the 4.4 million Southeast Asian civilian deaths under Japanese occupation. In this ground-breaking new study, Gregg Huff provides the first comprehensive account of the economies and societies of Southeast Asia during the 1941-1945 Japanese occupation. Drawing on materials from 25 archives over three continents, his economic, social and historical analysis presents a new understanding of Southeast Asian history and development before, during and after the Pacific War.

Regina and Charles Joshua are a young couple with four little girls who lived in Surabaya, Indonesia. This story is about a tragic period of history from 1942-1945, when Japan occupied Indonesia. Japanese troops came and took away Charles. Regina was terrified, not knowing what they were up too and if Charles be brought back alive. The next day a truck came and took Regina and her children. They were locked up for the next three and half years, moving from camp to camp. This is a story of faith and courage, about a mother who never gave up on hope and one of the most horrific times in history. Seemah Sassoon was born in Surabaya, Indonesia on December 30, 1939. She is the third child in a family of eight, with six girls and two boys. Seemah went to school in Surabaya, and received a Dutch education. After high school, she took courses in business administration. She speaks four languages: Dutch, English, Indonesian, and Arabic. At the age of seventeen, Seemah married Esrak Mayer Sassoon. He was an optometrist and ran his own business in Surabaya. They have three children, George, Aaron, and Deborah. In 1980 the family left Indonesia and moved to Los Angeles, California. Seemah now has six grandchildren, five boys and one girl. They are very special to Seemah and her husband. Seemah's favorite sports are swimming, badminton, and cycling. She also loves the arts, drawing, flower arrangements, and reading about history.

The author was a member of the British Occupation Force in Japan as part of the Allied Occupation following the Asia-Pacific War. During the years he was there, 1946–48, he collected a number of documents which throw light on the attitudes of the Japanese people in the last two critical years of the war and the equally critical first two years of the peace. Following the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, never has a nation been forced to switch so abruptly from the extreme views of resistance in early 1945 to the need for accommodation with the occupying United States armies. These materials, some reproduced in facsimile, which include a miscellaneous assortment of personal documents, propaganda material, military memoranda and teaching aids, cover a wide spectrum of Japanese thinking. Since the writers are generally drawn from the lower rungs of society they provide an insight into the attitudes of citizens who are often neglected in accounts of the Allied Occupation thereby providing scholars, researchers and those with a general interest in Occupation history with a valuable new dimension to our understanding of this period and its impact on the Japanese nation.

Gruhl's narrative makes clear why Japan's World War II aggression still touches deep emotions with East Asians and Western ex-prisoners of war, and why there is justifiable sensitivity to the way modern Japan has dealt with this legacy. Knowledge of the enormity of Japan's total war is also necessary to assess the United States' and her allies' policies toward Japan, and their reactions to its actions, extending from Manchuria in 1931 to Hiroshima in 1945. Gruhl takes the view that World War II started in 1931 when Japan, crowded and poor in raw materials but with a sense of military invincibility, saw empire as her salvation and invaded China. Japan's imperial regime had volatile ambitions but limited resources, thus encouraging them to unleash a particularly brutal offensive against the peoples of Asia and surrounding ocean islands. Their 1931 to 1945 invasions and policies further added to Asia's pre-war woes, particularly in China, by badly disrupting marginal economies, leading to famines and epidemics. Altogether, the victims of Japan's World War Two aggression took many forms and were massive in number. Gruhl offers a survey and synthesis of the historical literature and documentation, statistical data, as well as personal interviews and first-hand accounts to provide a comprehensive overview analysis. The sequence of diplomatic and military events leading to Pearl Harbor, as well as those leading to the U.S. decision to drop the atom bomb, are explored here as well as Japan's war crimes and postwar revisionist/apologist views regarding them. This book will be of intense interest to Asian specialists, and those concerned with human rights issues in a historical context.

A Sudden Rampage describes Japan's occupation of Southeast Asia during World War II in the context of its relationship with the outside world. The first two chapters focus on the period between the Meiji restoration, the end of World War I, the interwar period, and the outbreak of war in the Pacific. Subsequent chapters offer a short narrative of the Pacific conflict and a country by country description of Japan's political activities in the occupied region and economic activities undertaken by the Japanese in wartime Southeast Asia. The concluding chapter assesses the contribution the occupation made to postwar Southeast Asia in the light of the suffering and destruction rendered on the region.