Collaboration with Imperial Japan

Before and during World War II, the Empire of Japan created a number of puppet states that played a noticeable role in the war by collaborating with Imperial Japan. With promises of "Asia for the Asiatics" cooperating in a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Japan also sponsored or collaborated with parts of nationalist movements in several Asian countries colonised by European empires, the Soviet Union, and the United States.^[1] The Japanese recruited volunteers from several occupied regions and also from among Allied prisoners-of-war.^[2]

Some of the leaders in various Asian and Pacific territories cooperated with Japan as they wanted to gain independence from the European colonial overlords, as seen in Burma and Indonesia. Some other collaborators were already in power of various independent or semi-independent entities, such as Plaek Phibunsongkram's regime in Thailand, which desired to become a major player in Asian politics but were restrained by geopolitics, and the Japanese maximised it to some extent. Others believed Japan would prevail, and either wanted to be on the winning side, or feared being on the losing one.

Like their German and Italian counterparts, the Japanese recruited many volunteers, sometimes at gunpoint, more often with promises that they later broke, or from among POWs trying to escape appalling and frequently lethal conditions in their detention camps. Other volunteers willingly enlisted because they shared fascist or pan-Asianist ideologies.