Nov. 11 marks the 90th anniversary of the end of World War I. Sparked by the assassination of Austria's Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip on June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo, and due to a complex series of interlocking treaties between the Great Powers, this isolated event sparked a war that all involved thought would be over by Christmas.
Four and a half years later, 9 million people were dead, slaughtered in the trenches of northern France and Belgium, on the shores of Gallipoli, or drowned in the North Sea and the Mediterranean. By the time of the Armistice on Nov. 11, 1918, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had collapsed, Russia had overthrown centuries of Czarist rule with the Bolshevik revolution, a bitter Germany lay in defeat, and the United States — a latecomer to the conflict, in 1917 — was on the rise as a global power, as was Japan.
Yet while solemn ceremonies take place, especially in Europe, on Armistice Day, as Nov. 11 is known, Japan's role in the so-called Great War has been all but forgotten. As history recorded, though, the seeds for another conflict two decades later were sown at that time not only in Europe but also in the Pacific theater.