Why did Japan not dare to invade Macao during World War II?

19411On February 8, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and then attacked Hong Kong and Singapore on a large scale, but it did not hurt Macau, which was close at hand. On the surface, the reason is that Japan has not declared war on Portugal and there is no state of war, which shows that Japan has "observed" public international law. Of course, this is all a set of nonsense. In fact, if the Japanese want to occupy Macao, it can be said that it is a breeze, and it will be solved without a shot. So there are strategic reasons for not doing so.

Macao is very small, less than 20 square kilometers at that time. Although there are coasts on three sides, it is blocked by the sediment washed down from the Pearl River Estuary, and even a thousand-ton ship can't dock. Since the Opium War, Hong Kong has taken advantage of shipping, and Macao's economy and trade have already plummeted. Macao, a tiny place, has neither a good deep-water port nor an airport, and it has no strategic significance. What's the use of Japanese? Japan's war with Portugal for this useless place is not cost-effective.

Hong Kong was originally the largest international intelligence market in the East. The Japanese estimate that after the fall of Hong Kong, many intelligence spies will gather in the Macao Peninsula to form a new intelligence center, which is one of the reasons why Japan does not occupy Macao. But later, because the land and sea traffic in Macao was cut off, the spies could not move, and the Japanese's wishes were not realized. Lisbon, the capital of Portugal in Europe, is a veritable international intelligence center. Hitler deliberately kept it and let the "fifth column" run wild. Japanese spies are also very active, where they got a lot of information about the Soviet Union, Britain and the United States. If a small and useless Macao in the East is occupied, Japanese intelligence personnel will be expelled from Lisbon. Naturally, the Japanese will not do such a loss-making business.

There is another important reason why the Japanese dare not occupy Macao. Since15th century, Portugal has a large number of colonies in Africa and South America, and Brazil is one of them. Brazil is vast and sparsely populated. Portugal initially asked the Qing government to approve immigrants to fill the sea, but it was rejected. After turning to Japan, Japan and Portugal reached an agreement and a large number of Japanese moved to Brazil. By 1945, the number of Japanese overseas Chinese in Brazil has reached one million. Since the Meiji Restoration, Japan has systematically immigrated to foreign countries in batches. However, the Japanese military is ambitious, and has arranged long-term hidden spies among immigrants, passing on stories of father's death and son's death, collecting intelligence and being loyal to the emperor. During the Pearl Harbor incident, Japanese overseas Chinese in Hawaii played this role. After the outbreak of the Pacific War, it is said that the Portuguese government informed Japan that if the Japanese invaded Macao, all Japanese overseas Chinese in Brazil would be put into concentration camps. In this way, Japan will lose huge intelligence sources in the United States and South America. The Japanese are not fools, and naturally they will not occupy Macao.

For these reasons, Japan did not occupy Macao in World War II. However, although not occupied, Macao has been under the tight control of the Japanese.