Posted on 12/07/2021 9:26:40 AM PST by MAGA2017
What if Japan had not attacked Pearl Harbor eighty years ago today?
The attack is today regarded as an enormous tactical success, but a strategic failure. Several older battleships were damaged or destroyed, but the treachery of the attack spurred the United States to fully mobilize for war and to pursue that war with a vengeful fury. The attack also pushed the United States to adopt innovative tactics that would quickly overturn Japanese advantages in air and naval technology. What other military options did Japan have besides an attack on Pearl Harbor?
It would have been extremely difficult for Japan to avoid attacking the United States in the context of a general offensive into Southeast Asia. While Washington had stopped short of making an ironclad security guarantee to British and Dutch possessions in Asia, it had made clear to Tokyo that it did not welcome further aggression. The US had cut Japan off from steel and oil, putting tremendous economic pressure on the Japanese war machine.
(Excerpt) Read more at 19fortyfive.com ...
Agree with you.
Because they misunderstood the mood among average Americans of the time.
Can you imagine Roosevelt trying to convince them they should send their sons to die protecting British and Dutch colonies?
Hitler could have won the whole bag. Several gigantic strategic errors, like not bypassing Stalingrad, invading Russia too close to winter, not invading England nor wiping out the brits at Dunkirk.
The more I read up on history the more I realize how many blatant strategic mistakes that these geniuses made.
Wow. You’re a real old timer.
My bet is that you grieve for our republic every day.
“In particular, he understood that the Axis had to surrender unconditionally.”
That was a myth. Japan was allowed to keep the ‘emperor’ in power after the ‘unconditional surrender.’
That is not ‘unconditional,’ is it?
Yamamoto knew Japan could not defeat the US. However, he calculated that destroying the American Pacific fleet could give Japan a year or possibly two to complete its conquests and set up a defense perimeter in the Pacific. And maybe, just maybe, the US as an isolationist power might make peace allowing Japan to keep most of its conquests. It was their only shot and they took it.
Asking what if they never attacked is pointless. They had to.
> who would have been president had FDR died of polio when he was young? <
Something to consider is how most wars ended before WW II. Some country lost a province or two, and some other country gained a province or two. That’s how WW I ended, for example.
FDR must be applauded for rejecting that mindset, and insisting on unconditional surrender. Would his replacement have done the same? It’s tempting to say “yes” based on the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. But who knows? Unconditional surrender was a rare thing in international wars before then.
I thought that scene where the kid believed the woman who just died right before the atomic bomb, that he thought it was her spirit — that was a very evocative yet subtle scene.
I also liked the scene where the kid goes up on the roof and waves to the P51 pilot who is strafing the aircraft. “Cadillac of the skies!” The kid was right.
I used to do a lot of business in Japan. One of my Tokyo office colleagues, on a very hot and humid August day, said the worst thing MacArthur did was impose western suits and ties on the Japanese.
I don't think the Japanese ever seriously considered defeating the U.S. What they were trying to accomplish was to buy some time to "liberate" (in their minds) the territories that the U.S. and Britain held in what they considered their sphere of influence (the South Pacific).
Of course, Japan wanted those territories for themselves as they had great need of the raw materials that they contained. They felt it improper that outsiders (U.S. and Britain mainly) had dibs on them.
The Japanese felt that by pre-emptively destroying the U.S. Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, that it would set us back a few years, allowing them to consolidate their newly conquered territories without our interference. They also bargained on the fact that we'd be pre-occupied with what was going on in Europe over the next few years and would not have the appetite to fight them as well.
It's also important to note that Hawaii was not a U.S. state back then, but a territory. The Japanese saw us as encroaching on their turf.
> That was a myth. Japan was allowed to keep the ‘emperor’ in power... <
That’s a fair point, but I still stand by my previous comment. Before the Japanese surrender the emperor had considerable power (more than Hirohito‘s defenders care to admit). But after the surrender the emperor had zero power, none at all.
So technically Japan’s surrender wasn’t truly “unconditional” because Hirohito was allowed to keep his throne. But it’s a distinction without a difference.
He had won everything he wanted and with a bit more patience probably would’ve gotten Danzig too. But he could no longer restrain himself from doing what he really wanted to do all along - kick ass and redeem Germany from what he considered the shame of 1918.
I was amazed to learn war was not a popular idea in Germany even in 1939. One guy, and his handful of sycophants, willed it.
Our subs paid a heavy price for the destruction they wrought.
But the IJN was, indeed, not nearly as good at ASW as the RN, and, later, the USN. That wasn’t where they concentrated their limited resources.
Also, they didn’t manage break our codes...
They wanted the Pacific as a Japanese lake and that included the west coast of the Americas.
A far more interesting question is what would have happened if Germany had not decided to declare war on the US thereby dragging us into the war in Europe.
Which was someplace that we really did not want to go.
Mao had already happened.
So yes.
> They wanted the Pacific as a Japanese lake and that included the west coast of the Americas. <
You are not exaggerating. Tojo wanted a lot. In his proposed peace treaty Japan was to get, among other things, Cuba!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hideki_Tojo#World_War_II
Hello old friend! Hope you and yours are doing well.
Regarding the oil facilities: I thought the primary storage tanks were underground in the hills away from Pearl. But yes, there are lots of storage tanks near Pearl that were not hit. The loss of refueling capacity would have been a further delay for our recovery.
Here is my complaint regarding the removal:
** The motivation for removal is understood, and not really in dispute.
** The assets (homes and land primarily) should have been frozen, and returned to the US citizens who were detained.
** instead, the assets were liquidated for non-payment of taxes. This was wrong. How can you pay taxes when you are held in a camp?
sounds good to me to end that old Marxist.
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