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To: Hojczyk

If Japan had either listened to Yamamoto’s advice not to attack the U.S., or had carried out his actual plan in its entirety, world history would have been very different:

Yamamoto proposed not merely destroying the U.S. fleet, but landing Japanese marines in Hawaii in sufficient force to seize control. The U.S. would have been left with San Francisco as its nearest deep water port to the Japanese home islands, and Japan would have had a forward position in which to base aircraft to harass the U.S. fleet. Fortunately, Yamamoto was not regarded as sufficiently “bushido” and his plan was watered down by folks more in the favor of Tojo and the Emperor.


15 posted on 12/07/2011 7:34:41 PM PST by The_Reader_David (And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know. . .)
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To: The_Reader_David
Yamamoto proposed not merely destroying the U.S. fleet, but landing Japanese marines in Hawaii in sufficient force to seize control.

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.

32 posted on 12/07/2011 8:10:34 PM PST by Tallguy (It's all 'Fun and Games' until somebody loses an eye!)
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To: The_Reader_David
Yamamoto proposed not merely destroying the U.S. fleet, but landing Japanese marines in Hawaii in sufficient force to seize control.

The idea of occupying the Hawaiian Islands was a non-starter. Japanese shipping was not sufficient for a amphibious assault on Hawaii at the same time as the Japanese were occupying the Philippines, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies, and the last three had priority, since the Japanese were running out of petroleum and its products thanks to the American-British-Dutch embargo.

Yamamoto may have proposed the Hawaii invasion as a deal-breaker to make Tojo and company realize the enormity of the war they were entering upon and the impossibility of ultimate success. If so, it was ignored.

45 posted on 12/07/2011 11:27:27 PM PST by Cheburashka (If life hands you lemons, government regulations will prevent you from making lemonade.)
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