Terror and Transformation

Source: Quillette
by Imran Said

“The Japanese rampage across Southeast Asia from 1941–42 was a remarkable military feat by any metric, comparable to the early German blitzkrieg campaigns across Western Europe. In four months from the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December, the Japanese had occupied Malaya, Singapore, Borneo, and the Dutch East Indies. The Western colonial powers had been decisively defeated, the humiliation of surrender made all the worse by the ignoble way many of the colonists had fled the advancing Japanese, leaving their Asian subjects to face the invaders’ wrath.” (02/21/26)

https://quillette.com/2026/02/21/terror-and-transformation/