Background: One July 7, 1937, an incident at the Marco Polo Bridge near Peiping set the stage for the further invasion of China. The undeclared war, called an “incident”, spread over most of China, cost hundreds of thousands of lives, and was finally terminated by the Japanese surrender in 1945.

Authority: The war medal was created by Imperial Edict No. 496 of July 27, 1939, amended by Edict No. 418 of 1944 and abolished by Government Ordinance No. 177 of 1946. It was not to be awarded to those who received the Great East Asia War Medal, but was given to soldiers departing for China until the summer of 1945 and is very common