Plessy v. Ferguson was important because it essentially established the constitutionality of racial segregation. As a controlling legal precedent, it prevented constitutional challenges to racial segregation for more than half a century until it was finally overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in Brownv.

At about 8 a.m., Japanese planes filled the sky over Pearl Harbor. Bombs and bullets rained onto the vessels moored below. At 8:10, a 1,800-pound bomb smashed through the deck of the battleship USS Arizona and landed in her forward ammunition magazine. The ship exploded and sank with more than 1,000 men trapped inside.

Important Events From This day in History

• 1994 – President of Rwanda Dies.
• 1896 – Greece Modern Olympics Games Reborn.
• 1909 – First men to Reach The North Pole.
• 1917 – America enters World War I.
• 1930 – India Mahatma Gandhi Salt Tax Protest.
• 1931 – U.S.A. Little Orphan Annie.
• 1934 – U.S.A. White Wall Tires.

On the morning of 7 December 1941, at 7.55am local time, 183 aircraft of the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked the United States Naval base at Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. Within two hours, 18 US warships had been sunk or damaged, 188 aircraft destroyed and 2,403 American servicemen and women killed.

The conventional wisdom held that the Japanese would try to seize the resources of Southeast Asia and perhaps attack the Philippines. Other analysts predicted an attack on the South Soviet Union. A Pearl Harbor attack was ruled out because it was believed the Japanese lacked the capacity to mount such an operation.

Today, Pearl Harbor remains an active military base, Headquarters of the Pacific Fleet, and a National Historic Landmark that’s home to four unique attractions: from the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor that started it all, to the surrender of the Japanese on the deck of the mighty Battleship Missouri, these four …

2,403

From the Japanese perspective, the attack on Pearl Harbor was a great success. Eight battleships were sunk and 18 other ships were damaged. The Japanese virtually wiped out the American air capability with the loss of 180 planes and with 128 damaged.

Faced with severe shortages of oil and other natural resources and driven by the ambition to displace the United States as the dominant Pacific power, Japan decided to attack the United States and British forces in Asia and seize the resources of Southeast Asia.

The U.S. entered World War I because Germany embarked on a deadly gamble. Germany sank many American merchant ships around the British Isles which prompted the American entry into the war.

Japan entered the war on the side of the Allies on 23 August 1914, seizing the opportunity of Imperial Germany’s distraction with the European War to expand its sphere of influence in China and the Pacific. There was minimal fighting. It joined the Allies in order to make territorial gains.

China fought Japan with aid from the Soviet Union and the United States. After the Japanese attacks on Malaya and Pearl Harbor in 1941, the war merged with other conflicts which are generally categorized under those conflicts of World War II as a major sector known as the China Burma India Theater.

… World War II the chief Allied powers were Great Britain, France (except during the German occupation, 1940–44), the Soviet Union (after its entry in June 1941), the United States (after its entry on December 8, 1941), and China. More generally, the Allies included all the wartime members of the United…

The First World War thus had a catalytic influence on the Chinese economy. It marked a first step towards ending economic (and political) dependency on Western imperialist powers. But it was also a step towards domination by Japan. For most of China, the economic “golden age” was only to return after 1978.

The sheer incompetence and corruption of the Chinese government added millions of victims to the millions raped and murdered by the Japanese. Without the war, the Chinese Communists would never have defeated the Nationalists. The Sino-Japanese War killed between 14 and 20 million Chinese people.

In truth, China lost the First Sino-Japanese War because of the corrupt and incompetent Qing Dynasty, which brutally exploited the Chinese, especially the Han people. The Qing Dynasty was defeated, but in the end the Japanese invaders also fell.

The countries are geographically separated by the East China Sea. Japan has been strongly influenced throughout history by the East, particularly Eastern China, through the gradual process of Sinicization with its language, architecture, culture, religion, philosophy, and law.

While China never sent troops into battle, its involvement in World War I was influential—and had impacts that stretched far beyond the war, going on to shape the country’s future indelibly. Under the rule of the Qing Dynasty, China was the most powerful nation in the East for nearly three centuries.

Victories over China and Russia expanded the Japanese sphere of influence, notably in Taiwan and Korea, and southern Sakhalin became a colony of Japan as the Karafuto Prefecture in 1905….World War II.

20th CENTURY: Japan in China, 1937-1945 | Central Themes and Key Points | Asia for Educators | Columbia University.

Japanese invasion of Manchuria

1931