The United States has had difficulty forming a Pacific alliance of containment against a bellicose China. Australia, the Philippines and Southeast Asian nations fear Chinese aggression. But they also share bitter memories of merciless Japanese imperialism that killed as many as 15 million Chinese — the vast majority of them civilians."Throughout the region" is accurate, many occupied Asian nations experienced Japanese terror. Similarly, North Americans remember Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March and other mass cruelties delivered courtesy of Japan. A Japan rearming itself 70 years later can still cause unease.
In their minds, our allies know China is the chief threat. But in their hearts, even now they can’t quite forget how their ally Japan once committed genocide throughout the region.
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As we've noted before, most recently in January, 2018, Japan left almost no friends behind in the territories they conquered prior to 1945. Bitter memories of brutal treatment have not been forgiven or forgotten.
The one minor exception, and this only among some of its residents, is Taiwan. The Japanese for their own selfish reasons encouraged Taiwanese to think of their island as a nation, not as an appendage of China.
