What if we could go back intime and kill FDR when he was a baby?
They could have obtained a much stronger hegemony in the regions, with access to oil and strategic materials, if they had left American soil & territories alone. America was isolationist at the time.
What if Japan had followed up Pearl Harbor with an amphibious assault?
I disagree that it was an enormous tactical success for Japan. They missed the ships that they were specifically trying to hit, the carriers. In reality it was a tactical failure, a strategic failure, a moral and political failure.
Admiral Yamamoto told the Emperor they would have to march into Washington D.C. to defeat America, but no one believed him.
“What If?” is for children and Old People.....................
Japan also attacked Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong; Philippines, Guam and Wake Island, all within the same seven hours. It is historically weak to just focus on a speculation about Pearl Harbor in isolation..
If you want to change the story and ask what if they didn’t attack any of those possessions, then we might not have had the War in the Pacific. But they did, and we did.
I like to know what would America had done if the Big Island had flip over during the attack?
Without the Pearl Harbor attack the American public would have never stood still for declaring war on Japan if Japan had invaded Britain’s and Holland’s holdings in the far east. The Japanese were incredibly short-sighted in carrying out a sneak attack. They stood no chance in fighting the USA. None. And they managed to do the one thing that would galvanize the American public for war. Idiots.
I just posted the same thing on the other thread.
Japan miscalculated the American response and in hindsight, had Japan continued their conquests in a piecemeal fashion they would have achieved most of their goals without provoking such a total response.
The Brits were in no position to defend their colonies in the Pacific with the situation at home.
Fascinating question. In December of 1941, Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa had German troops on the verge of taking Moscow and Stalingrad. With the Japanese attack, and their preoccupation with America, the Soviet Union was free to move troops from the East, where they were protecting against Japan, to Moscow & Stalingrad. These Cossacks were not only fierce fighters, but also skilled winter soldiers. Hitler was furious as they turned the tide in favor of the Russians.
“Splash the Zeros”
What if they weren’t “coaxed” in to it?
Japan was our ally in WWI, and though we stiffed them in the Treaty of Versailles, the Showa Emperor (Hirohito) could have chosen to side with the allies all the way up until 1937, and he would have had the Kuriles, Korea, Taiwan, and Manchuria, along with access to all the supplies from the East Indies, the Philippines, and the US.
An alliance of Britain, the US, Nationalist China, and Japan would have ruled the seven seas and controlled most of Asia, the Western Hemisphere, Africa, and Western Europe, leaving Hitler and Stalin to fight over the land and resources between their countries—no WWII.
Once Japan invaded China in 1937, however, all that went out the window: China was our friend, and Japan became increasingly gruesome in its quest to conquer the Nationalists, leaving the door open to Mao and the Communists to reap whatever spoils were left over. Japan’s alliance with Nazi Germany became its only option, as did the only way Japan could enter WWII, by a surprise attack that hopefully (to them) would cripple America’s defenses before the war began. When that didn’t happen, their defeat became inevitable.
PH was just the cover for entering the war.
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]
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.