What if they got the bomb first, which was possible, though apparently not likely?
What if, feeling that victory was possible, they turned the biological weapons they were developing in China on us?
And, yes, there is that question of bomber range:
Japs take Hawaii (after heck of a fight), and cripple themselves doing it. It goes down in history as "an island too far". USN builds carriers and Montana class BBs ... Manhattan project carried out more or less on schedule ... Japan gets nuked more than twice in 1948 ...
IMO
At best (from their POV) we would've temporarily moved command & control fm HI to the west coast, delaying the inevitable US offensive for 6 months or so.
Good speculations - though the Navy would've first finished building all planned Iowa - class ships, rather than the curtailed list. Part of me really wishes that the Montana class had been built.
I'd add that some of those nukes would've possibly been carried by B-36s, rather than B-29s. If we'd lost Hawaii, the longer-range, higher-altitude bomber (already in the development "pipeline") would have come into play.
“... Japan gets nuked more than twice in 1948 ... “
.
And where would those bombers have taken off from?
You are assuming that we would have gone island hopping like we did in the early forties so as to make a slow approach to the Japanese islands in order to secure Pacific bases.
And what about Europe? No way that we could’ve maintained the lend-lease program, all of Europe would have fallen to the nazis, no shipping to Murmansk to help the Russkies, nazis riding roughshod all the way to the Urals and beyond, Britain defeated, mid-east oil in nazi hands, etc. etc., no D-Day.
In His mercy the Good Lord gave us Admiral Fletcher (The American Lord Nelson) and good and lucky decision making at Midway.
US submarines and land based aircraft could have probably isolated and starved a garrison on Midway.
What if they got the bomb first, which was possible, though apparently not likely?
What if, feeling that victory was possible, they turned the biological weapons they were developing in China on us?
And, yes, there is that question of bomber range: