Admirals Isoroku Yamamoto and Matome Ugaki at the time of the Battle of Midway, June 1942


Admirals Yamamoto 

Victorious soldiers of the IJA 11th Army in occupied Ichang at the Battle of Zaoyang-Yichang, China 1940

The Imperial Army in China 1940

Japanese Foreign Minister Matsuoka signing the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact. Later, in 1941, Japan, as a signatory of the Tripartite Pact, considered denouncing the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact, especially after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa), but made the crucial decision to keep it and to expand southwards invading the European colonies in Southeast Asia instead. Historians after the war found evidence that had Stalingrad fallen, Japan would have invaded Siberia.
