Early 20th Century
During the First World War the German colonies in the Pacific were taken over by Allied powers.
In 1940 the administration of French Polynesia recognised the Free French Forces and many Polynesians served in World War II. Unknown at the time to French and Polynesians, the Konoe Cabinet in Imperial Japan on 16 September 1940 included French Polynesia among the many territories which were to become Japanese possessions in the post-war world – though in the course of the war in the Pacific the Japanese were not able to launch an actual invasion of the French islands.
In the Second World War the Japanese invaded New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and other Pacific islands. They were turned back at the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Kokoda Track campaign before they were finally defeated in 1945.
Read more about this topic: History Of Oceania
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or century:
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“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line—the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. It was a phase of this problem that caused the Civil War.”
—W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt)