Thanks for that contribution.
I’m just working from memory here, but I know that the US Navy staff was drafting the first of many editions of War Plan Orange during the early 1920s.
Are you familiar with British journalist Hector Bywater? He wrote a rather prophetic book titled “The Great Pacific War” that predicted a US-Japan confrontation at sea during the early 1930s.
I don’t have my copy in front of me, but if memory serves, the Japanese fired the first shots in a surface attack on the US Asiatic fleet — not unlike the way the Japanese touched off their war with Czarist Russia with a destroyer torpedo raid on the fleet at Port Arthur.
Bywater’s book remains a good read. He was only partially successful in forecasting the impact of air power. His Pacific War was essentially a battleship confrontation in the Alfred Thayer Mahan tradition. The climax of his book came in a bloody Jutland-style gunfight, with the US winning.
One rather odd side note — Bywater’s Japanese enemy treated their American prisoners like fellow samurai. Of course, we know things turned out in 1941-45. But Bywater only had the past as his guide, and the Japanese treated their German prisoners from the 1914 siege of the concession port of Tsingtao quite well. I believe their conduct during the war with Russia was much the same.
What a godawful war we had to fight in reality. And the supreme irony may have been how quickly MacArthur — love him or hate him — managed to get things straightened out during the occupation. From the standpoint of 75 years, it’s easy to ask “how could people as civilized as the Japanese have gone so wrong?” I have only tentative answers.
They would have been idiots if they *hadn’t* been working on war plans against all plausible comers.
You’re largely correct on Bywater, and he did predict the Japanese predilection for one great decisive battle - as they had learned worked well at Tsushima - correctly. The US Navy had read his book and the intel reports coming out of Japan, not to mention learning from exchange officers, and the intelligent COs of the day made sure to avoid giving the Japanese the decisive battle they wanted.
The reason why the good treatment of POWs did not continue through WW2 was because Japan was extremely offended by the various naval treaties and being thrown under the bus by their idol, the British. They regarded themselves as a Great Power, like Britain or other European powers, and being treated like they were some second rate slobs incensed them. They decided that if they were not recognized as a Great Power, they were going to drop the unnecessary societal trappings of European Great Powers that they’d adopted and return to traditional ways. In feudal Japan, war captives were abused, starved and worked to death; thus WW2 captives were treated traditionally.
Admiral King is known to have remarked to British officers more than once during WW2 that if Britain hadn’t thrown the Japanese under the bus at every naval treaty, the Pacific war might not have actually happened. He hated the British, but he had a point.
As for the last point, different civilizations have different standards. And life has always been cheap in Asia.
It’s also worth noting that among the other reasons MacArthur was able to sort out Japan so quickly is because of their utter demoralization. We literally brought the hammer of an angry god down on two of their cities and when they surrendered rather than lose another, we promptly killed *their* god by revealing that their emperor was but a man and forcing him to admit thus to his followers.
Most people don’t adapt well to a single, huge sudden change. Getting hit with “they’re erasing our cities” then “We somehow lost the war despite the Mandate of Heaven” followed by “Everything you believed for your entire life is a lie” in very quick succession absolutely broke many Japanese.