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 ...
perhaps more precisely
we cut off their imperialist occupationist expansionist wartime economy
PH was just the cover for entering the war.
The Japanese leadership also had to deal with the real threat of assassination if they were perceived has being not warlike enough. Then there was the insane animosity between the Imperial Army and Navy. It’s amazing that they achieved as much as they did.
What if Napolean had B-52 at the battle of Waterloo?
“The Japanese persevered after the war despite horrible food shortages.”
I think we had something to do with their comeback.
The one thing MacArthur did right was run Japan after the war.
Japan had about a year's worth of oil in reserve. Breaking this embargo was the principal reason Japan attacked the United States.
Good flick.
To ask what if Japan did not hit Pearl Harbor is to ask if Japan would have taken the Philippines if it did not hit Pearl Harbor, and if Japan did not take the Philippines would it have/could it have continued its occupation of other parts of the Pacific. The answer to the latter two questions is, I believe, no. Japan had to take the Philippines (the American “aircraft carrier” in the Pacific) if it wanted to continue to occupy other parts of the Pacific islands and taking out Pearl Harbor was viewed as essential to occupying the Philippines.
Pearl Harbor was on December 7th and the Japanese invasion of the Philippines began on December 8th. The Philippines was the target and Pearl Harbor was the prelude.
In this Wiki link, look at the list of U.S. Generals who surrendered to the Japanese in the Philippines:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippines_campaign_(1941%E2%80%931942)
The timeline leading up to Pearl:
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=1930
In 1939 the United States terminated the 1911 commercial treaty with Japan. “On July 2, 1940, Roosevelt signed the Export Control Act, authorizing the President to license or prohibit the export of essential defense materials.” Under this authority, “[o]n July 31, exports of aviation motor fuels and lubricants and No. 1 heavy melting iron and steel scrap were restricted.” Next, in a move aimed at Japan, Roosevelt slapped an embargo, effective October 16, “on all exports of scrap iron and steel to destinations other than Britain and the nations of the Western Hemisphere.” Finally, on July 26, 1941, Roosevelt “froze Japanese assets in the United States, thus bringing commercial relations between the nations to an effective end. One week later Roosevelt embargoed the export of such grades of oil as still were in commercial flow to Japan.”[2] The British and the Dutch followed suit, embargoing exports to Japan from their colonies in southeast Asia.
An Untenable Position
Roosevelt and his subordinates knew they were putting Japan in an untenable position and that the Japanese government might well try to escape the stranglehold by going to war. Having broken the Japanese diplomatic code, the Americans knew, among many other things, what Foreign Minister Teijiro Toyoda had communicated to Ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura on July 31: “Commercial and economic relations between Japan and third countries, led by England and the United States, are gradually becoming so horribly strained that we cannot endure it much longer. Consequently, our Empire, to save its very life, must take measures to secure the raw materials of the South Seas.”[3]
Because American cryptographers had also broken the Japanese naval code, the leaders in Washington knew as well that Japan’s “measures” would include an attack on Pearl Harbor.[4] Yet they withheld this critical information from the commanders in Hawaii, who might have headed off the attack or prepared themselves to defend against it. That Roosevelt and his chieftains did not ring the tocsin makes perfect sense: after all, the impending attack constituted precisely what they had been seeking for a long time. As Stimson confided to his diary after a meeting of the war cabinet on November 25, “The question was how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.”[5] After the attack, Stimson confessed that “my first feeling was of relief ... that a crisis had come in a way which would unite all our people.[6]
Yes, they were extremely divided and the Bushido culture is something that is very difficult for us to understand even today with the benefit of hindsight. It was a very foreign way of thinking.
The Japanese Navy also had their share of conflict within the command staff with some believing as the Army did and others having a much more sober and objective view of events.
Early success in war can breed fatal decisions later and this is one of the main takeaways from WWII. VDH’s book on the Second World War is a very good read that approaches the topic in a very sober and realistic fashion dealing more with economic capability and logistics. When Germany failed to achieve their goals via Blitzkrieg on the Eastern Front and they left England alive the power of economy and resources was most important.
Japan also went for broke when a rational argument could be made that they could have achieved half their goals without provoking a larger conflict.
Impatience doomed the Axis powers to failure.
The Japanese wanted the raw materials in the Dutch East Indies and French Indochina. Look at where those places are and where Japan is. And look what’s between those places and Japan—the U.S. Philippines. Japan attacked both Pearl Harbor and the Philippines the same day, December 7/8 (depending on which side of the date line the attacks occurred.)
Had Teddy Roosevelt not ordered Dewey to attack the Spanish fleet at Manila in 1898, Japan would have no real reason to attack us 43 years later. Besides the telephone tax, the Spanish American War had a lot of unforeseen consequences.
Should have sided with Hitler and let him take out the communist and let him have Europe.
What if Napolean had B-52 at the battle of Waterloo?
~~~
What if a wizard came on eagles and picked up the hobbits who were trapped by lava after they blew up mount doom?
Oh wait
Eventually, yes.
But there were horrible food shortages before that happened. The Japanese rice crop failed in 1945. Between 1945 and 1946 Urban Japanese were trying to survive on 800 calories a day. Japanese in the countryside did only a little better.
Not likely, as those Japanese resources were already planned for the Philippines the day after Pearl Harbor. The Japanese purpose in hitting Pearl was to blunt any quick U.S. air or Naval response to aid MacArthur in the Philippines beginning the day after Pearl Harbor was hit.
Strange how Napoleon wasn’t a Frenchman, Hitler wasn’t a German, Stalin wasn’t a Russian, and Che Guevara wasn’t a Cuban.
Good point. We did not fully comprehend the threat that our oil embargo represented. However, it is not cut and dried and there were potential alternatives for Japan that would have spent less fuel than all-out war did.
The Japanese were wedded to Bushido and it made diplomacy very unlikely.
“Splash the Zeros”
I would like to see a high dollar remake of that one.
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