Abstract
It is the same every year. When I teach my Asia-Pacific War course and my students hear for the first time about the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, first proclaimed by Japanese Foreign Minister Matsuoka Yōsuke in August 1940, they react in disbelief and ask: did anyone actually believe it? Their incredulity is well founded, as they had learned weeks earlier about Japan's colonial takeover of Taiwan and Korea, its invasion of Manchuria, and its aggressive actions leading to the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Rape of Nanjing.
They learned how the Japanese created ethno-racial hierarchies in areas they had taken over to rule, in which the local populations were deemed inferior to the Japanese and subsequently treated so. These racial prejudices permeated the battlefield and were seen in their treatment of Chinese prisoners of war and comfort women, who primarily came from Korea. While Japan initially used the Greater...