I apologize if the question seems rather dumb (it's very rare that I venture in this part of the forums) but I'm curious as to how well integrated the territories were under the Japanese empire by the Second World War, particularly in the South Pacific. Would it be safe to assume that say if the Second World War (and I mean Japan confronting the likes of the United States, Britain, France, etc.) had somehow been avoided, would it had been safe to say that say the locals in the Japanese-administrated South Pacific Mandate would had been completely assimilated or overwhelmed by settlers from the Home Islands?
Japan would almost certainly have to avoid conflict with China, which was inevitable to an extent after the Mukden Incident in 1931.
With the Koreans- yes. The Japanese actively tried to stop Koreans assimilating and tried to keep them seperate.
This is an oversimplification, and most likely wrong as well. We already discussed this in another thread, but I'll reiterate some of the points here.
With the exception of changing personal names, which was only implemented in 1939 and actively enforced in the following year, Japanese policies were geared toward actively implementing assimilation policies. From the beginning of the occupation in 1910, Japan enforced its educational methods, including implementing Shinto ideology, such as loyalty to the emperor. The curriculum also ignored Korean history, and established Japanese as the main language. Although the Korean language was not entirely banned from the curriculum until the 1930s, its use was heavily curtailed and sidelined in favor of Japanese for the duration of the occupation.
In terms of the media, only one Korean newspaper was allowed to circulate until 1920. Although restrictions were relaxed afterward, until 1939, due to the independence movement in 1919, thousands of newspapers were seized due to sensitive political material. These methods suggest that the Japanese heavily monitored the media and attempted to censor certain parts in order to retain control over the population.
Regarding culture, almost all of the palaces were destroyed to the point where they are still being renovated, and replaced with Japanese government buildings. A committee was also set up in 1925 in order to systematically rewrite Korean history, limiting its identity to the peninsula, and stating that Korea had originated as a Chinese colony, then became a colony of Japan. Both claims were untrue, as Gojoseon, Buyeo, Goguryeo, and Balhae had all expanded from Manchuria, and prior Chinese and Korean records stated that the Korean states, starting with Gojoseon, had been politically independent. Not only were hundreds of volumes of fabricated versions of Korean history published, but thousands of historical artifacts were distorted or removed in order to justify the Japanese assumptions.
As a result, although the most radical policies were not implemented until 1937, due to the Second Sino-Japanese War, the ones before suggest that Japan intended to gradually assimilate Korea through cultural means, and eventually absorb it altogether beginning in the late 1930s/early 1940s.
That raises a question: Why treat the Koreans so differently? After all, if any one group was an ethnic relation, it was them.
And, given where we are.... Was this inevitable?
See above. The Japanese policies were mostly due to the fact that Korea as a whole had essentially remained as an independent identity for more than 2000 years, although there were occasional political divisions, and had continuously been a unified political entity for more than a thousand years. Because it would have been chaotic if numerous uprisings occurred due to nationalistic sentiments, the Japanese decided to suppress the population as a whole, both in terms of imprisonment/torture and cultural assimilation.
