Posted on 12/07/2011 6:21:38 PM PST by Hojczyk
By a peculiar twist of fate, the Japanese admiral who masterminded the attack had persistently warned his government not to fight the United States. Had his countrymen listened, the history of the 20th century might have turned out much differently.
Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto foresaw that the struggle would become a prolonged war of attrition that Japan could not hope to win. For a year or so, he said, Japan might overrun locally weak Allied forces — but after that, its war economy would stagger and its densely built wood-and-paper cities would suffer ruinous air raids. Against such odds, Yamamoto could “see little hope of success in any ordinary strategy.” His Pearl Harbor operation, he confessed, was “conceived in desperation.” It would be an all-or-nothing gambit, a throw of the dice: “We should do our best to decide the fate of the war on the very first day.”
During the Second World War and for years afterward, Americans despised Yamamoto as an archvillain, the perpetrator of an ignoble sneak attack, a personification of “Oriental treachery.” Time magazine published his cartoon likeness on its Dec. 22, 1941, cover — sinister, glowering, dusky yellow complexion — with the headline “Japan’s Aggressor.” He was said to have boasted that he would “dictate terms of peace in the White House.”
Yamamoto made no such boast — the quote was taken out of context from a private letter in which he had made precisely the opposite point. He could not imagine an end to the war short of his dictating terms in the White House, he wrote — and since Japan could not hope to conquer the United States, that outcome was inconceivable.
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(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The Japs make the Muslim’s look like boy scouts
I sure hope you’re right about that.
What Yamamoto meant by the WH comment was actually super humble:
He meant that if Japan fought the USA at all, the notion that the USA would fight until some brokered political settlement was fanciful.
He was saying that Japan would have to win so utterly in order for the USA to stop fighting that Japan would have had to take CONTINENTAL US territory —his meaning was the exact opposite of what people made it out to be.
He studied at Harvard, and had driven his American convertible all over the USA, admiring the oil industry here.
THAT is why he was fixated on the question of oil & energy —as a navy man he knew the stuff was the lifeblood of combat ops.
In fact he was quite an AmericanoPhile.
I'm not sure the Pacific War was really a "war of attrition," at least on the American side.
That usually implies a conflict in which both sides are up against their manpower and resource limitations and victory goes to whoever can hold out the longest anyway.
In actual fact, of course, American strength did not degrade during the course of the war but instead increased steadily throughout. The Japanese were remarkably ineffective at even inflicting heavy casualties on US forces, after their initial six months of running wild.
Japan lost 3.5% to 4.5% of its population during the war, the US only .32%, and it was also fighting in Europe.
Just read a book, “Midway” Here’s a number for you... The japs were producing 160 planes a month at in Dec 41, after years of gearing up for war. In 1943 we produced 10,000 planes!!!!.... EVERY MONTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
see post 24...
Yup. The Japs also did an atrocious job of training replacement pilots for their carriers. They had a superbly trained and experienced group when they attacked Pearl, but it was disippated over the course of the next year or so, and they never worked out a way to provide replacements.
And they couldn’t train pilots fast enough either. That is the reason the carrier Zuikaku wasn’t available for Midway - they had the planes to re-constitute her air group (heavy losses at the Battle of the Coral Sea and during South Pacific raids)but didn’t have the bodies to put in the planes.
A couple things:
1. The Japanese Navy had a deep schizm; On the one hand there were the older admirals who loved battleships and saw aircraft carriers are uppity contraptions not to be trusted.
On the other hand were folks like Yamamoto —the CARRIER was the new center of navy power.
PH was an air operation, and Yamamoto was in ultimate charge. However Yamamoto was not actually ON SCENE —the person on-scene was a Battleship guy (Nagumo) who still didn’t fully accept the crazy idea of airplanes landing on ships —after the 2nd wave got back safe and sound, he ordered the fleet to withdraw.
In fact all the aircraft carrier people violently urged a 3rd (and even more) waves —they were amazed with their level of success and saw the inertia still in their hands. They wanted to exploit it even further —how about the dry docks? How about the oil facilities? These were left untouched.
If they didn’t have the crusty battleship admirals along, what would have happened?
My view is in fact the US got off MUCH easier than could have been the case.
2. Almost ALL Japanese Navy admirals expected that after the PH attack the fleet would engage in ship-to-ship combat with the US navy immediately off of Hawaii and they FULLY EXPECTED to lose 50% OF THEIR ATTACKING FLEET..!!!
Their level of air success was amazing, but what amazed them even more was that there was NO navy engagement —they got away scott-free.
Not necessarily.
Having studied works on the Pacific War from both sides over the past twenty-odd years, I can say with some authority that the NY Times is once again failing to look at the bigger picture while making sweeping statements.
By the fall of 1941, Japan had already aroused the ire of the United States with the empire's invasion of French Indochina. And there is no doubt in my mind that even if Japan had not attacked us, her destruction of the British navy and subsequent conquests of Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Dutch East Indies would have inevitably pulled us into war under the premise of defending our greatest allies. Pearl Harbor or not, America would have still become the only free nation in the world capable of stopping Japan.
The Empire, driven by the dream of Hakko Ichiu (bringing the eight corners of the world under one imperial roof) would not have simply stopped when they reached the resource rich regions of the Pacific. America, therefore, would eventually have no choice but to confront the Japanese- not only to aid her allies in Australia, New Zealand, and Great Britain, but also to protect our own interests. And we as a nation would have felt morally obligated to do so, in spite of the strident pleas of the staunchest isolationists.
The ultimate end would be the same. America would still have fought against Japan- but certainly not with the sense of righteous, ferocious, seething rage and thirst for swift and all-destructive vengeance that drove us to all but wipe Japan from the map only 44 months after the Kido Butai's masts broke the horizon north of Hawaii.
I don’t disagree with what you wrote at all. I may not have been clear enough with my previous post but taking Hawaii and delaying the seemingly inevitable American victory gave Japan the best chance to keep some of their gains through a brokered peace. We will never know how it would have worked out but there is always the chance that the costs would have been too high or America would have grown tired of war. Japan could have offered to return Hawaii in a brokered peace allowing them to keep other gains.
We will never know if they could have sued for peace prior to the bomb but there is little doubt that we would have been very crippled without Hawaii and the fleet they left.
I don’t disagree with what you wrote at all. I may not have been clear enough with my previous post but taking Hawaii and delaying the seemingly inevitable American victory gave Japan the best chance to keep some of their gains through a brokered peace. We will never know how it would have worked out but there is always the chance that the costs would have been too high or America would have grown tired of war. Japan could have offered to return Hawaii in a brokered peace allowing them to keep other gains.
We will never know if they could have sued for peace prior to the bomb but there is little doubt that we would have been very crippled without Hawaii and the fleet they left.
Do you have a citation for that? Never heard that claim made before. Oahu was a fair sized island. It took a division of US Marines to seize a toehold on Guadalcanal. I imagine it would have taken a multi-division force to take Oahu. Slow transports would have made the surprise carrier strike far more difficult as they would have cruised separately.
Some more weird facts:
1. HAWAIIAN *LAND* FIREFIGHT..?! — there was a very small gun-battle on the ground on a small isolated island —a Japanese flier crashed there. News wasn’t quite then what it is now, and the people there (I think the island was Nihau, or something) weren’t yet aware of the Oahu attack. The flier used his gun and amity with some Japanese Americans on the island to try to take it over.
All Japanese fliers had been given a map to this small island, telling them that this might be a good divert if they had been 2 badly shot-up to return to the carriers.
The plan was that a sub would later pick them up, there.
2. ESCAPED MINI SUB? They found one of the mini subs substantially intact, and some speculate that the “suicide submariners” may have beached, escaped and blended in with the very large Japanese populace on Oahu. No one really knows how it ended for those guys.
An interesting analysis on American vs Japanese warmaking abilities can be found here...
http://www.combinedfleet.com/economic.htm
On a related note some years ago there was an article in Wings/Airpower regards aircraft production. Grumman aircraft all by itself almost outproduced the entire Japanese airecraft industry.
The Comined fleet website is pretty interesting if you are not familiar with it.
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
I’m well familiar with combinedfleet.com.
Of particular interest is his take on the potential for a Japanese invasion of Hawaii. (In short, almost impossible to pull off, and even if they could have done it, it simply wasn’t worth the effort, be it for strategic or resource reasons.)
The ambush of Yamamoto’s aircraft was, according to what I have read, was attributable to SIGINT, which had recovered his itinerary. U S Army Air Corps assets knew where and when he would be and they were there to take him out of the game. I got to the Philippines in 1961 and there was still a lot if ill will toward Jap. Then I got assigned to Japan in 1965 and I must say that they’d done a magnificent job of rebuilding in the two decades since the surrender.
“I fear we have merely awoken a sleeping giant and filled him with great resolve.”
He feared correctly!
Thank you, I shall mark that site for further reading.
Due to another discussion, this morning, I was reminded of the great story of the USS Houston “The Galloping Ghost of the Java Coast”. If you have a chance, be sure to check out “Ship of Ghosts” by James D. Hornfischer (who wrote the wonderful: Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailor).
-regards
I think I still have my copy of “Tin Can Sailors”
FWIW my interest in the Battle of Samar goes back to 5th grade when I read about it in an SBS novel, of all thinks :-)
I will have to check the local Library for the Houston book.
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
In 1938-39, Japan in Manchuria decided to play a game of tag with the Russians, all they got out of it both times was a very bloody nose. The Russian general they were up against was one Georgy Zhukov and he knew how to play hardball
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