Japan Nearly Provoked U.S. to War in 1937

While America and Europe struggled through economic depression and nervously watched the spread of fascism in the second half of the 1930s, the situation was far more ominous in the Far East.

Expansionist Japan had sown the seeds of war in China early in the decade, and hostilities broke out in July 1937. By that autumn, Japanese troops were advancing. Drunken and undisciplined soldiers pillaged and burned towns and villages; civilians were captured and shot, and females of all ages were raped, murdered, and mutilated.

There were no limits to Japanese brutality; piles of Chinese bodies were even used for grenade-throwing practice. A Japanese general apologized to a Westerner by saying, “You must realize that most of these young soldiers are just wild beasts from the mountains.”