r/todayilearned • u/leafpool2014 • 1d ago

TIL that in WW2, Poland declared war on Japan. Japan rejected there declaration of war. Quote: “We do not accept Poland’s challenge. The Poles, fighting for their freedom, only declared war on us under pressure from the United Kingdom.”A curious case: Poland only declared war on one country in WWII;

https://www.outono.net/elentir/2021/03/21/a-curious-case-poland-only-declared-war-on-one-country-in-wwii-peace-did-not-come-until-1957/
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u/firelock_ny 1d ago

Didn't Poland declaring war on Japan give legal protections to members of Free Polish military units?

Not that WW2 Japan paid much attention to laws of war...

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u/Dreferex 1d ago

To be completely fair, they would have probably been the most acceptable choice to be captured for the members of Polish forces. Which is a really weird statement to proclaim about Japan in WWII but fuck it.

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u/firelock_ny 1d ago

I'd think the Italians would be better captors, going by the example of how the Japanese treated Dutch, French and other European prisoners of war.

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u/OwlMuted885 1d ago

Maybe, but Japan and Poland had very good relations before the war.

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u/k-tax 1d ago

Did they? Honest question, I have no idea and I find it doubtful, to say the least, as Poland had only 20 years of sovereignty before WWII. On the other hand, probably both Poland and Japan had to deal with having Russia as their neighbour, so a common enemy could unite those two countries.

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u/Nowa_Korbeja 1d ago

They did. The most important man in inter-war Poland, Józef Piłsudski, was financed by Japan in years 1904-1905 (Piłsudski's political party was fighting to overthrow Tzarist Russia).
Piłsudski has been to Japan and ate sushi (or sth like that) ;)

Independent Poland had good relations with Japan as both countries were afraid of Russia/USSR.

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u/b17b20 22h ago

His brother moved to Hokaido, married Ainu woman and wrote very important researchers about culture.

Polish spies worked in japanese embassy in Berlin through whole war protected by their very legit japanese passports

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u/toresman 1d ago

And both shared intelligence on their respective jurisdiction of the Ussr

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u/rawbamatic 1d ago

Many countries fighting each other in that war did.

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u/Dreferex 1d ago

Oh, yes, but they would have to admitt to being at war to treat them as POWs, and I doubt that they would want to endanger their inteligence cooperation.Then again, what would the Poles be doing in pacific is anyones guess.

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u/Rauliki0 1d ago

There was one polish pilot Witold Urbanowicz that fought in China with Japanese pilots. Hw wvwn acore two kills (or more, but 2 are confirmed).

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u/Agreeable-Weather-89 1h ago

Did Japan treat ANY PoW well?

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u/brionneverysexy 1d ago

I've read it was mostly just a symbolic gesture of solidarity

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u/MandolinMagi 23h ago

Did Polish troops ever fight in the Pacific? I can't remember hearing of any.

Not that Japan respected the rules of war or POW treatment.

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u/Tortoveno 15h ago

If in the Pacific you mean 1905 Tsushima battle (on the Russian side), then yes, they did.

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u/Wloak 15h ago

They did. The Allies operated much more like NATO with people supporting both efforts in the best way they could.

Before entering the war the US let fighter pilots resign on condition of joining the RAF, by the end everyone in Europe was taking orders from an American general, the Polish fought under the command of many different units on both the East and West front. In the Pacific from what I recall they sent troops through Canada and the US, but also ships to support the British Navy, the challenge was it took a long time to get ships into the Pacific.

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u/CoffeeFox 1d ago

Japan didn't even necessarily want a war. They were used to the stupid fucking cat and mouse game they had been playing with China and Korea for centuries. They thought they could do a little war crime and be gifted some territory to stop it and go away. It was a deeply outdated and ignorant way of thinking. Their leadership started a war they didn't want and then had to save face by pretending they were serious when things did not go their way.

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u/mnstorm 1d ago

This is not what had happened.

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u/CoffeeFox 1d ago

My Japanese friends would disagree, but they also aren't historians.

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u/mnstorm 1d ago

I honestly was suspecting a background to your knowledge similar to this. Talking to a Japanese person about Japanese history between Matthew Perry's arrival and the Potstam Declaration is likely to get you more mis/disinformation than actual facts.

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u/Lake_Placid2319 1d ago

their culture seems quirky and silly until you remember a few generations ago they were trying to takeover the world and cleanse it of non japanese

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u/Seienchin88 1d ago

WTF?

Japan committed some of the worst atrocities ever but your claim they wanted to take over the world and purge it of non Japanese is utterly absurd…

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u/Yodude1 1d ago

I think what your Japanese friends could be referencing is that the Minseito were unable to reign in the military leadership, who became increasingly jingoistic after the Great Depression led to a brief collapse of the international order.

In that sense, yes, civilian government was against the invasion of Manchuria but was powerless to do anything about it, in part because Emperor Hirohito was in tacit support of the military. However, at no point was it about saving face. Following the assassination of the prime minister by right-wing extremists, the civilian-elected political parties bowed to demands for a military-led government, who would then fully direct Japan's resources towards imperial expansion.

What your friends could also be referencing is Japan's offer in 1941 to withdraw from most, but not all, of China and Indochina after the Americans started their oil embargo. These negotiations ultimately failed, but again, I'm not convinced that saving face is why Japan escalated the conflict by attacking Pearl Harbor later that year. A vast majority of Japan's imperial conquests were about obtaining resources like rubber, grain, and oil such that Japan would no longer be dependent on foreign powers to supply them with war materiel. Allowing a world power like the US to maintain its naval presence in the Pacific would be an existential threat to a military whose maintenance was already unsustainable to begin with.

With this in mind, I find it difficult to classify their additional expansion into Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, and a bunch of Pacific islands including Guam, as simply "doing a little war" when there were clear material and ideological objectives that relied upon direct control of all of these territories.

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u/YourFavoriteDeity 1d ago

Japan literally bombed Hawaii.

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u/azaza34 1d ago

No what happened (in broad, probably inaccurate strokes) is that the army and the navy pulled away from not only civilian leadership, but military leadership as well. Disobedience could be answered with “I did it for the honor of the Emperor” and that would be a legitimate answer. (My understanding is that this was because that was the justification to ignore civilian leadership.) since the emperor wasn’t going to speak, relatively junior officers could make decisions that dragged the whole apparatus into war.

I’m actually realizing that I’m going to do this a huge disservice, please go research on askhistorians or something if you’re interested.

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u/lonnorcake 1d ago

They wanted an Empire to get one you need war.