Hey, you do know that Japan was violently and brutally invading China at the time, right? And the U.S. was levying sanctions, etc. etc.. "Unprovoked" just means "we didn't attack you first", not "everything was lovely".

I mean, historical fiction is a genre and all, but if you're going to write real history, you should set the context and provide original sources and quotes or at LEAST the Wikipedia articles!

"Fiercely debated by historical scholars" has always been right-wing code-speak for "this is utter garbage but a few crackpots believe this utter garbage and I like how it sounds". If you're not using it in that sense, you need to show your work.