WWII Japan

Things get very ugly over there.

Japan wanted to finally tae over the western pacific continent. China, Kamchatka, all the way through Vietnam, Korea, Laos, Cambodia. If it was on the continent, they wanted it. And as for the storms that caused the word kamikaze to.enter the martial lexicon, they "had proof" that this was the will of yhe gods.

Japan proved that they wanted to industrialize and bring Japanese efficiency to nazi concentration camps snd general brutality. They wanted Indonesia to be nationalized labor farms producing rubber and oil, but to do they they had to get rid of the US carriers then quickly negotiate non-aggression so they could secure the Dutch East Indies. They had one spot of bad luck though, the carriers left hawaii days earlier so in their words they awoke the sleeping giant, in my words they Africanized a polar bear like they did with the bees and woke it up be throwing honeybadgers wearing the logo ofva team you hate at tye bear's genitals.

The desire to cement the Hello Kitty themed "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" (Japanese: 大東亜共栄圏, Dai Tōa Kyōeiken). Now with more mini skirts!

In the words of Tony Stark, not a great plan.

But if you were deciding how to react back then to the eventuality of Mighty Mao bravely killing a hundred million because he didn't like starlings, setting up a race with Lenin then Stalin to see who could kill 25x as many people as Hitler (close race).

In the end we pulled Japan into conflict to protect the islands of the Phillipines and Indonesia and keep Japan on their own island. Then we nuked them on Aug 6 as Russia mobilized East, then nuked them again right on the 9th as Russia declared war against Japan on August 8, 1945 so we could force an immediate surrender than us rather than give Russia time to pivot to take the entire Eastern Seaboard, includinging overrunning enough of China to taste year round unfrozen pacific saltwater taffy for the first time since they sold Juneau and the Aleutian Islands. The choices were an unconditional surrender to the white star as protection against the red hammer and sickle that didn't think German treatment of unpopular people was harsh enough. They saw how we treated POWs, they saw how Russia threated the few POWs they allowed to live and picked a side.

Fun fact. Germany lost the war mainly because Italy tried to attack Greece, forcing Russia to delay his invasion of Russia until winter made it impossible to run supply lines - this is the proximate cause. If Germany never declared war on their Soviet drinking buddies until Western Europe was secured (which required keeping the Swedish iron mines open) then Little Brother Italy would never be able to cry to Big Brother Germany to help them capture resort islands in the Med.