Chapter 720: The Japanese Pacific and the Outer Defense Perimeter Problem
The Japanese Tactic and Strategy of the Outer Defense Perimeter surrounding their Home Islands and Core Resources Territories had one fatal flaw; the more the Japanese Empire and the Co-Prosperity Sphere expanded, the more their Core Region and Resource Region did to, meaning that in return their Defense Region had to grow to, until all of the world would one day be part of the Co-Prosperity Sphere if this logic would continue. The situation of the Pacific Islands had greatly changed after the First Great War, when Japanese gained the South Pacific Mandate and followed their own former economic involvement and Japanese traders, plantation workers and settlers, supported by the Nan'yō Kōhatsu kabushiki gaisha (南洋興発株式会社, abbreviated to Nankō or NKKK), also known the South Seas Development Company and the Japanese Mail Steamship Company (Nippon Yusen Kaisha). Japanese population grew from under 4,000 in 1920, to 70,000 in 1930 and then 80,000 in 1933. By 1935 the Japanese population had grown to 50,000 on Saipan alone almost 90 percent of the population on Saipan was Japanese (42,547 out of 46,748). In the census of December 1939, the total population was 129,104, of which 68,257 were Japanese the rest indigenous islanders and 124 foreigners. The rights and status of the indigenous Micronesian population differed from those of Japanese imperial subjects. Employment prospects for Micronesians were more restricted, with unequal labor conditions and pay Japanese Government of the Mandate built and maintained hospitals, schools and Shinto shrines, gave free education was for Micronesian children aged 8–15 and provided basic medical aid and support. Japanese language, Japanese culture, Buddhism and the state Shinto religion were massively promoted by these state run Japanese institutions and even before the Second Great War Christian mission schools were prohibited from taking Micronesian pupils when Japanese government schools existed, to decrease American-European and overall non-Asian, non-Japanese influence. The overall plan was to Japanize the locals, or replace them by Japanese directly, turning these Pacific Islands into a part of the Home Islands.
This was even increased during the Second Great War, more exactly during the Pacific War, when those locals unwilling to be integrated and assimilated into Japanese culture, language and religion were forcefully resettled into the Empire of Manchuria, as well as these parts of Siberia and the Far East conquered by the Manchurian and Japanese. The Imperial Japanese Army and the Imperial Japanese Navy believed that their Japanese soldiers would fight more fanatically, radical and hard if they protected parts of the Japanese Home Islands instead of just some colonial island in the middle of the Pacific. This exchange of population, culture and infrastructure massively changed many pacific islands during the Second Great War, as logistic requirements of the Allies and the Japanese. Those islands had experienced around 200 years of colonialism from Europe and America by them and some were planned to be fully annexed, while others were promised future independence. For the Japanese many indigenous people were not only Japanized or resettled, but used for labor and sometimes even forces prostitution, family separation, incarceration, execution, concentration camps, but also provided advanced education and medical support and infrastructure. During the Second Great War many Pacific Islands would experience military action, massive troop movements, and resource extraction alongside building projects as the Allies and the Japanese pushed against one another over control of the region. Many of the local, indigenous Pacific Islanders gained a new understanding about their understanding of their own relationship with the colonial powers. Many of these island communities had very little to none contact with European, American, Japanese or any outside forces and powers at all. The sudden arrival and rapid departure of so many men and machines led to the so-called cargo cults in parts of the Pacific Islands, were American and Japanese, pilots, sailors and crewman were worshiped alongside their planes and ships, sometimes even fallen ones were prayed to as deities and powerful gods. The Japanese later incorporated these local native "Samurai-Warrior-Cults" as they called them into their local network of State Shinto temples and shrines.