Beyond Hiroshima and Nagasaki: War, Memory, and the Struggle for Independence in Asia

A War That Started in Asia 

While the global war formally began in Europe in 1939, the Second World War in Asia had already started earlier, with Japan’s full-scale invasion of China in July 1937, a conflict known as the Second Sino-Japanese War. Following a skirmish near Beijing on July 7, hostilities escalated rapidly. Japan sought to dominate East Asia, seizing major cities such as Shanghai and Nanjing, where its forces committed horrific atrocities against civilians. 

Though China initially stood alone, it continued to resist, sustained in part by limited support from the Soviet Union, Britain, and the United States. As Japan expanded across the region, Western powers began to take notice. Following the freezing of Japanese assets on July 26, the United States imposed an oil embargo on August 1, 1941, and in December, Japan struck back with a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. That event drew the US fully into the war and ignited a fierce and complex conflict across the Pacific. 

In the first months of 1942, Japan captured territory after territory - from Hong Kong to the Philippines to the Dutch East Indies - gaining access to vital resources. But by mid-1942, the tide began to shift. At the Battle of Midway, American forces dealt a major blow to Japan’s naval power. From that moment on, the Allies began their long and bloody reconquest, island by island, across the Pacific. 

Hiroshima and Nagasaki 

By the beginning of 1945, Japan’s position had become increasingly challenging. US forces had reached the Japanese mainland, and American bombers inflicted heavy civilian losses. In March, the firebombing of Tokyo killed at least 80,000, and possibly up to 10,000 people, in a single night. 

In August, the war reached its violent end. On August 6, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima; on August 9, another fell on Nagasaki. The destruction was immediate and total. Tens of thousands perished instantly, and many more died later from injuries and radiation exposure. These bombings remain among the most debated military decisions in history, viewed by some as a necessary step to force surrender, and by others as an unprecedented use of mass terror. 

The very day Nagasaki was bombed, the Soviet Union launched a large-scale invasion of Manchuria, a development that stunned Japan’s leadership and accelerated its path to surrender. 

Japan declared its intention to capitulate on August 15, with the official signing occurring on September 2, marking the end of the Second World War. Yet in many parts of Asia, true peace was still far from reach. 

The War’s end and the rise of independence Movements 

The end of the war in Asia marked the fall of the Japanese empire, but it did not immediately bring self-determination to the region. Unlike Western Europe, where liberation often meant the restoration of national sovereignty and democracy, in Asia, the term took on a more complex meaning. “Liberation” meant the defeat of Japan, but for many, it also raised hopes of being freed from centuries of Western domination. 

Before the war, most of Asia was under some form of foreign control: India and Malaya by the British, Indochina by the French, Indonesia by the Netherlands, and the Philippines by the Americans. Japanese occupation, although brutal and exploitative, disrupted these colonial structures and, in some cases, inspired visions of a different future. As the war ended, those hopes sharpened into demands. 

For many independence activists, such as Aung San in Burma and Sukarno in Indonesia, the conflict provided a chance to assert their aspirations for sovereignty. They believed that with Japan’s defeat, new Asian nations could emerge in the vacuum left behind. 

However, the return of the colonial powers complicated this vision. Western governments moved swiftly to reassert control: the British reclaimed Malaya and Hong Kong; the French returned to Indochina. These efforts to restore prewar authority triggered further unrest and violence. In many regions, independence was won only after long and brutal wars, some stretching into the 1950s and beyond. 

A New Balance of Power 

Alongside the decolonial ferment, a new global order began to take shape. In 1943, Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek joined Roosevelt and Churchill at the Cairo Conference, a moment that symbolised, for the first time, the recognition of a non-Western leader as a full partner in Allied strategy. 

But this recognition was quickly complicated. US relations with China deteriorated during the war, and by 1949, the Chinese Communist Party had taken control of the mainland, altering the political balance in Asia. Meanwhile, Japan, occupied from 1945 to 1952, underwent a profound transformation. Its imperial structures were dismantled, and the country was reshaped into a parliamentary democracy. 

Still, the enduring legacy of the Pacific War was not just in reshaped institutions or new alliances. It lay in the irreversible collapse of the old imperial order. The war had shattered the illusion of Western invincibility and unleashed movements that would redraw the political map of Asia. 

Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki

As the world marks the anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we are reminded not only of the terrifying power of the atomic bomb, but of the fragility of peace, and the deep scars left by decades of war and colonisation. 

For many in Asia, the end of World War II did not mean liberation in the Western-European sense, but a turning point that intensified the struggle to shape a future no longer defined by foreign domination.