I understand many of you saying that period of history was too recent to have been part of our education in the 50's and 60's, but my experience doesn't bear this out. I studied 20th Century history for my O Level.
I have never forgotten going to school on Monday 26th January 1965 and the class being told to go back to the page in our notebooks where we'd written, as a header, "Sir Winston Churchill, 1874 - " and filling in the gap, '1965'. The mood was so sombre and there was a dawning sense among us all that we were all 'living history'
I don't recall being taught anything about the Sino Japanese war, however - the syllabus, as far as I remember, was confined to British and European history.