As World War II progresses, Japan is able to take more and more territory, French Indochina, British Burma, the Dutch Indies, Indonesia, Philippines. And this empire only comes to an end when Japan has to surrender at the end of World War II in 1945. So go back to the previous question. What type of colonial power was Japan? It definitely wanted the natural resources. In fact, especially when it was at war, it needed access to oil, which Indonesia had. It needed access to natural resources that all of these areas had.