Eighty Years Ago: Asia Pacific, July 25 – 31, 1940

July 25, 1940: Japanese troop movements observed near China’s border with French Indochina

July 26, 1940: US President Franklin D. Roosevelt halts the export to Japan, without license, of aviation gasoline and certain classes of iron and steel scrap

July 27, 1940: Japanese forces make landing in south China near Hong Kong

July 28, 1940: American military experts say Japan will not send its navy across the Pacific to attack the United States while it still has unfinished business in China

July 29, 1940: British journalist Melville James Cox, suspected of espionage, apparently commits suicide while being interrogated by Japanese secret police Kempeitai

July 30, 1940: As Japan steps up pressure on French Indochina, resistance is urged by General Jules-Antoine Bührer, chief of the Colonial General Staff at German-supported Vichy regime

July 31, 1940: British Premier Winston Churchill sends urgent request to US President Franklin D. Roosevelt for loan of destroyers, saying the Royal Navy is stretched so thinly in the Atlantic and Pacific that the issue could determine the war

Categories: War

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