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Seventy years ago, on Aug 15, 1945, the Japanese surrender brought to an end one of the darkest periods in human history, World War II. The immediate cause of the surrender was the dropping of two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Though it is to be hoped that those remain the only occasions on which nuclear weapons are used in war, it is generally agreed that their use was necessary on this occasion, to ensure a quick end to the horrors of war and Japanese occupation. Otherwise the struggle might have continued for at least a further year.

Most Western Europeans think of the war as having begun in 1939, Americans and Russians in 1941. However, the real war began much earlier, with the Japanese aggression against China starting in 1931. From then on the pattern of alliances gradually became clear; Japan made efforts to befriend the US and other Western powers, but it was always made clear that any alliance would require the renunciation of Japanese conquests in China. This the Japanese were not prepared to do, so there was no choice for them but to line up with the other aggressor states, Germany and Italy.

The Japanese invasion was devastating for China, but its effect was ultimately to unite a divided and chaotic country in resistance. The experience of Japanese occupation was so universally horrible that internal dissensions between Communists and Nationalists obviously needed to be laid aside in order to fight this brutal common enemy; this was made clear in the "Xi'an Incident" of December 1936, where Marshal Zhang Xueliang arrested Kuomintang (KMT) leader Chiang Kai-shek and compelled him to make common cause with the Communists against the invaders.

Hong Kong, under British control, was initially spared the terrible experience of invasion. But its geographical situation made it difficult to defend, and the territory was always under serious threat, especially once the Japanese had occupied Guangzhou in 1938. Britain, fighting for her life on the other side of the world, was able to do little to defend her colonial possessions in East Asia, although 1,500 Allied soldiers died in the defence of Hong Kong after open war broke out in December 1941. In the ensuing three years and eight months, Hong Kong's people shared the miserable fate of their mainland compatriots under Japanese occupation; but they also played their part in the anti-Japanese resistance, through the East River Column and other resistance networks.

But after their initial triumphs it became clear that the Germans and Japanese had overreached themselves, especially when they brought the US into the war. From then onward the aggressors were fighting on too many fronts. Just as the steadfast Soviet resistance wore the Germans down and gradually turned the tide of the war in Europe, so the Chinese resistance kept the Japanese occupied while the tide turned in Asia. This resistance, made necessary and indeed inevitable by the appalling behavior of the occupying forces, helped to create a common Chinese experience and sense of nationhood in the face of adversity. After the chaos of the first part of the 20th century, the war years ultimately resulted in the rebuilding of a nation determined to survive, prosper and defend itself against any future aggression.

Every nation involved in World War II has developed its own historical perspective, inevitably focusing largely on its own national experience. Thus it is that many Europeans, while well-informed about the fight against Nazi Germany, are lacking in knowledge of the war in Asia and the Pacific. And what they do know of it is strongly influenced by the American depiction of the Allied victory, in countless films, as largely or even exclusively an American achievement. But the real story of the war is incomplete without reference to the heroic resistance of the occupied nations, under terrible conditions which got worse and worse as the war dragged on - and by 1945 China had been suffering for 14 years.

After 70 years, there are not many people left alive who remember the dreadful days of World War II. But it is vital that those experiences are not forgotten, and that they are kept alive in the popular consciousness through the responsible teaching of history. It is intolerable that history should be perverted for reasons of unreconstructed nationalism and racism, as with the attempts to deny the Holocaust of the European Jews or the war crimes of the Japanese occupiers of East Asia. Germany has shown a responsible and constructive attitude to these historical issues, and it is essential that Japan should do the same. The US philosopher George Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it", and World War II is something that no sane person would wish to repeat.

The author is a former UK diplomat specializing in China. He spent nine years as an analyst in Beijing. He now works as a freelance writer and commentator.

(HK Edition 08/18/2015 page9)