What countries held major influence in Asia prior to WW2?

Question: What countries held major influence in Asia prior to WW2!?
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

~Japan was gaining influence at the expense of the Chinese and Korea!. The UK, Germany, France and the Netherlands all had their interests of course!. It was US interference in the region that caused Germany to abandon China in the Second Sino-Japanese War (which would only be recognized as the Asian Theater of WWII after December 7, 1941) and sign a treaty of mutual defense with Japan (The Tripartite Pact) in an effort to stop provocations of the self-proclaimed "neutral" USA in both Asia and Europe!. When FDR began sending aid to our friends and allies in Indochina, it was almost the last straw!. The freedom fighters were armed and financed and supported with unofficial troops and intelligence were called the Viet Minh and were led by Ho Chi Minh!. The USA would stab them in the back and Tehran and Yalta, again in 1945 and yet again in 1946, 1954 and 1956, resulting in the Vietnam War, but FDR used them in 1940-41 to get us officially involved in WWII!. The Hull Note of November 30, 1941 was the match to the fuse the put Operation Z in motion, launched the Kido Butai and resulted in the attack on Pearl Harbor!.

The Japanese did not want war with the US and knew they couldn't win one!. They acknowledge as much even as they approved the attack!. They also felt that they had been backed into such a tight corner by the US that they had no recourse but to attack the Pacific fleet before the fleet was ordered to attack them!. FDR had been violating arms treaties for years, to the extent that Japan renounced the treaties!. He had been beefing up bases at Pearl, Midway, Guam, Wake and in the Philippines!. He created an entire new army, the USAAFE in the Philippines and pulled Douglas MacArthur out of retirement to lead it!. He stationed the largest fleet of US warplanes outside the US in the Philippines!. He moved the Pacific Fleet from the West Coast to Pearl!. All of those bases directly threatened Japan and Japan's vital trade and military routes!.

Japan has never been about to feed herself or support her industries from resources available on the home islands!. Since the occidental powers had already subjugated and colonized most of the Pacific, Japan looked to Manchuria, Korea and China to build her empire!. The West had denied inclusions in the Treaty of Versailles, 1919, provisions that Japan had insisted on and which would have granted recognition to Japan as an equal in the community of nations!. Appropriately angered by the slight, Japan had expanded her industry and engaged in a military build-up that scared hell out of FDR, France and the UK!. Economic sanctions were imposed, as were embargoes on vital resources like steel, rubber and oil!. The West was determined to keep "The Yellow Peril" in its place and to relegate Japan to status as a second rate nation!. FDR led the charge!.

The political and economic treatment of Japan by the US, coupled with the US military build-up in Japan's back yard convinced the Tojo cabinet that a US first strike was coming and could be prevented only by a comprehensive first strike by Japan!. The goal was to force the USA to sue for peace, to lift the embargoes, to stop giving war aid and actively participating surreptitiously in the war in Indochina and China, to reduce its military presence in the region and to actually act like the neutral the US claimed to be!. Neither Yamamoto nor Tojo believed there was much chance of success, but they hoped they might at least buy the six to twelve months they figured needed to secure necessary resources in Malaysia!. Had Genda been allowed to launch the third wave at the sub pens, drydocks and oil storage and maintenance facilities, had the carriers been in port and/or Naguma been allowed to take out Midway on his way home, the plan might have succeeded!. The attack was a 'surprise' only due to the inability of the Japanese embassy to deliver the declaration of war on time!. Washington had been aware that the Japanese had developed and were practicing a plan for an attack on Pearl for almost a year!. The US envoy in Japan had sent a cable to the Department of State advising of same in January, 1941!.

US policy was one of the most influential components of the matrix that culminated in Pearl Harbor!.

Just as an aside!. Today, we are spending billions to make Guam the primary base in the Pacific, and we are loading it for bear!. Both China and North Korea view it as a direct threat to their national security!. They are saying the same kinds of things that the Japanese said in the 1930s about the US provocations, and we continue to build up!. Since the US has already told the world that it is perfectly fine to launch preemptive strikes in spite of the numerous treaties and international law that says otherwise, and the US has done so in Iraq and Afghanistan and threatens to do so in Iran and North Korea, isn't it logical to believe that North Korea and China share the same right!?
Stay tuned!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

USA--Philippines
France--French Indochina that would become Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos!.
Netherlands--Dutch East Indies now Indonesia
United Kingdom--Singapore, Malaysia, Burma, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and India (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh)
Japan--Korea, Taiwan and ManchuriaWww@QuestionHome@Com

England, Holland, Germany and PortugalWww@QuestionHome@Com