I think Japan would have fared better by invading non-U.S. territories in the south Pacific without attacking us directly. We’d most likely have condemned them but probably not outright declared war. And even if we did, we wouldn’t have been fired up for vengeance.
Here is an analysis of IJN vs. USN production. Most of the 13 minutes is simply watching the blue bars creep across while the red ones scarcely move but at the 12:30 mark, a quote is made to effect that in 1944 alone, the US produced enough ships to equal the entire IJN fleet at the start of WWII and furthermore, had Japan sunk every single major unit in the Pacific and been able to complete its construction program without interruption, in mid-1944 it would not be able to prevail against what the US had built in the intervening 30 months.
I can’t remember the source but I’ve read that in the analysis done in planning the Pearl Harbor attack, Yamamoto estimated that in a prolonged war, the IJN could prevail six months, perhaps a year, but no more. Midway proved him right.
Re: Japan’s sneak attack being due to the delayed decryption of the diplomatic note.
Even if the note had been decrypted and translated in time for the original meeting with Hull, it would have been only an hour or two before the attack at Pearl Harbor. With that short a warning, I’m sure most diplomats, never mind people, would still consider it a sneak attack.
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That’s a bullshit debating tactic.
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Yes ‘they’ felt they did. Not least because of the point TokyoBayer made and has made about nobody exactly being in full charge in Japan at that time, IOW who was ‘they’, but the questionable (personal physical) survivability of senior leaders who acted to humiliate Japan in the view of the military below them. This was a serious risk factor in August 1945 when it have been proven beyond any doubt that Japan could not win, let alone the period leading up to the war. And it didn’t occur in a historical vacuum but after the history of Japanese back downs to Western pressure in the wake of militarily successful wars v the Chinese and Russians in 1894-5 and 1904-5, in the predominant Japanese view.
Among the many ‘know your enemy’ shortcomings in the Allied position prior to the war at every level this was perhaps the most fundamental one on a strategic level.
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I think you do. The basic problem of the Far East Air Force was top to bottom lack of readiness and effectiveness, including almost complete lack of knowledge of its main initial opponent the JNAF. Half, not all the B-17’s and less than half the fighters were destroyed in the December 8 raid on Clark when the a/c had taken off in anticipation of Japanese attack, but later landed and were caught by the JNAF force which had been delayed by fog at it bases in Taiwan.
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It is relevant because even if the relative fluke of the first day’s action hadn’t occurred, the FEAF simply could not contend with the JNAF on equal terms at that time. That was shown in the next few days’ missions where the FEAF fighter force was attrited to relative insignificance, though the remaining half of the B-17 force was mainly operating from a base on Mindanao out of range of Japanese a/c and that the Japanese didn’t even know about at the time. The subsequent performance of the fighter force wasn’t due to being tactically surprised, it was various aspects of unreadiness a lot deeper than just getting an alert to take off, again including a basic lack of knowledge of their opponents.
Note that the USMC air contingent on Wake was also caught on the ground hours after Pearl Harbor with 8 of 12 F4F’s knocked out. Part of this is just prevailing cultural views of WWII in the US. There’s a strong current of criticizing MacArthur (which he often deserved and the buck did stop with him to some degree, along with those above him, for the many aspects of military ineffectiveness of the Fil-US force ground and air, though again that was much more extensive and complicated than a warning about one air raid). Whereas, it’s customary even since that time to highly praises the Marine defense of Wake where the surviving few Marine a/c, along with coastal guns, did disproportionate damage to subsequent Japanese bombing raid and the first invasion attempt compared to initial Japanese losses elsewhere, even though less than was claimed at the time. But the Marines were also caught with their planes on the ground in the open hours after PH, which is rarely criticized.
But it’s true. Japanese apologists have been using that “Well, the USA forced us into war by the embargo” for a couple of decades now, and also right before the war. It was false then, and it’s just as false now. The Japanese were 100% responsible for their invasion of China, and thus the Embargo, and of course their sneak attack upon the USA.
My Dad was aircrew on one of those B17s.
See, you are not understanding my argument. Yes, sure, the Far East Air Force was gonna be destroyed anyway. The Philippines were going to get invaded anyway. You are arguing a point that I am not arguing.
But *there was no excuse at all for Dug-out Doug to get caught with his pants down on Dec 8th.
*
No amount of reading a book about how the Philippines would have been lost anyway will change that point.
But even Barsch agrees, according to this review: *The story of how General Douglas MacArthur could have been caught with nearly all of his bombers and fighters on the ground is a part of this illuminating volume. MacArthur had, of course, been informed of the Pearl Harbor attack and warned of the possibility of a Japanese strike on his military bases…Nine Pearl Harbor hearings or investigations were ultimately convened but not a single one on the attack on the Philippines. Unlike Pearl Harbor, no official investigation was convened to determine the causes and allocate responsibility for the Japanese attacks on Clark and Iba Fields. Bartsch concludes that by 1945 as Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers in Japan, it was “politically impossible” to hold MacArthur accountable. John Dower provides a valuable assessment of this period.[12] Bartsch lays some blame for the fiasco in the Philippines on Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson (who had served as Governor-General of the Philippines from 1927 to 1929), Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall, and Army Air Force Major General Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, among others. Primary blame is attributed to Major Orrin Grover (24th Group Operations). Even after the war, MacArthur continued to shift blame for the delay in authorizing an air strike against Japanese air field on Formosa to General Brereton.
Nonetheless, Douglas MacArthur (January 26, 1880 - April 5, 1964), the favored son of a general, and who graduated at the top of his West Point class in 1904, was arrogant, vain, devious, brash, and supremely confident of his own powers. He survived the December 8, 1941 debacle very likely because America needed a hero after Pearl Harbor, and due to the Republic Party’s esteem for MacArthur as a viable candidate for the presidency versus FDR*
and here:
https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=11094
Although the attack and aftermath at Iba (Zambales) and Clark Fields
on Luzon are well documented in Bartsch’s narrative,
he also recounts what took place at Del Carmen, Rosales, Nichols, Nielson, and Murphy airfields (all on Luzon), Del Monte Field on Mindanao, and at Fort McKinley
near Manila. Critical to the events were “Hap” Arnold’s
warning message to MacArthur that went unanswered
for two days, a delay in authorizing a B-17 strike against
Japanese airbases in Formosa, MacArthur’s lack of consultation with his air chief (General Lewis H. Brereton),
and the non-receipt of teletype messages. The result was
the destruction of or severe damage to 15 of 19 B-17s and
34 of the P-40E fighters, plus 55 military personnel killed
and 110 wounded at Clark. Most of the aircraft at Iba (24
P-40E, 4 P-35A, and 1 A-27) were rendered inoperable and
21 military personnel were killed and 38 wounded. The
numbers of casualties and aircraft losses are not well documented in the original sources.
Here is the message he got:
https://www.marshallfoundation.org/library/digital-archive/to-lieutenant-general-douglas-macarthur-radio-no-736/
*To Lieutenant General Douglas MacArthur
December 7, 1941 Radio No. 736. Washington, D.C.
Secret
Hostilities between Japan and the United States, British Commonwealth and Dutch have commenced. Japanese made air raid on Pearl Harbor this morning December 7th. Carry out tasks assigned in Rainbow 5 so far as they pertain to Japan.2 In addition cooperate with the British and Dutch to the utmost without jeopardizing the accomplishment of your primary mission of defense of the Philippines. You are authorized to dispatch air units to operate temporarily from suitable bases in cooperation with the British or Dutch. Report daily major dispositions and all operations. You have the complete confidence of the War Department and we assure you of every possible assistance and support within our power.*
But Dug-out Doug was still caught with his pants down. Bartsch agrees. Everyone agrees.
That was a shameful act of incompetence.
Now sure, like I said- in the end, the Philippines still would have been captured. But that has nothing whatsoever to do with my argument that Gen. MacArthur shouldn’t have been caught be surprise.
I suspect that the Germans were definitely shocked by Stalingrad, but I think that the Battle of Kursk and its aftermath were when they really realized that they were well and truly fucked. Not only did the Russians essentially stop their strategic offensive cold, they counterattacked on a massive scale immediately afterward and set Army Group South on the run, more or less. Combine that with the fact that at about the same time, the Western Allies had invaded Sicily and the Allied strategic air war was ramping up dramatically, and I’m sure the non-idiot German generals knew they had to somehow sue for peace, or get overwhelmed.
In the Pacific, I think the Japanese didn’t realize it until a little later- probably around the time of the Battle of Leyte Gulf and the Invasion of the Phillipines. That’s when the Japanese got their naval power conclusively broken by the US Navy, and at about the same time, the USAAF started bombing the Japanese Home Islands from islands like Tinian, Guam, etc…
Now the Germans probably figured out that they were absolutely screwed with no hope of negotiation in about July of 1944- that’s the point at which the Allies broke out in Normandy, encircled and destroyed the entire German field army in the West, and the Russians did something similar in the east, only on a larger scale, in Operation Bagration. From then on, it really was a mad scramble to try and delay the Allies- they had local successes like the Huertgen Forest and Market Garden, but overall the pattern was that the Allies would crush the German forces opposing them, pursue until they outran their supplies, and then rest/refit, and repeat.
I have to figure that the Japanese really didn’t expect a lot of negotiation once the US had shown that it was willing to rearm and press the war after Pearl Harbor, so once they knew they were screwed, they KNEW it was all over but the crying.
I agree. I think Japan and Germany underestimated how strong isolationism still was in America in 1941. I think they felt that Roosevelt would be able to override political opposition whenever he wished to do so, the way it would be overridden in Germany or Japan.
::Shrug:: Is this GQ material? I thought GQ was not for unrealistic speculations.
No. That’s a poor analogy because of the vastly different tactics used between the two. Had the North Vietnamese attempted the fight a conventional war, they would have been crushed as badly as the Japanese. The US lost the will to fight because of the pointlessness of it. Were they fighting across battle line moving closer and closer to Hanoi, it would have been different.
War generates it’s own fervor and momentum. Regardless of the cause, there would have US casualties and people would have gotten angry about it.
If you could factually prove your own position, you might have a point. Otherwise, not. 
You miss the point entirely. The US lost the will to fight because Vietnam made it too costly for them. The US decided that Vietnam’s strategic value wasn’t worth the cost. And that cost in casualties was much less than the US losses in the Pacific. The only reason the US went on as long as it did was to avoid losing face.
Of course they would have been angry about it. But they also might have been angry at the US throwing away lives pointlessly in a war to save the colonial possessions of European powers.
With Japan, its hard to say when there was a single point where they knew they weren’t going to win (and remember, a lot of Japanese had no clue what was happening overall, I recall the IJN not telling the government or IJA what actually happened at Midway until many months later).
But you can see what they were thinking once the defense of the islands went from ‘keep them off the island and push whatever lands off ASAP!’ to ‘Cause as many casualties as possible with every island so an exahusted US will come to the negotiation table with terms favorable to us’.
Did someone really just use the embargo as an excuse for starting war with the US? Really?!
The embargo was a reason for starting a war with the US. I don’t think anyone is claiming it was an excuse, or a justification for PH.
Not for the last time. His performance in the Korean War was just as mixed. Brilliant success at Inchon, disastrous defeat when the Chinese entered the war. His mixture of overconfidence and complacency verged on the pathological. Another Custer, really.
Yes, Hubris.
A bit off-topic, but as I’ve said before, it’s fortunate that MacArthur was in the Pacific instead of in Europe with Montgomery and Patton. Otherwise the concentration of ego would have created a singularity that would have sucked the planet into oblivion.
(MacArthur is also said to have complained that General Alexander Vandergrift, who commanded the Marines at Guadalcanal, was a glory hound. He oughtta know.)
Ouch. Cruel but true. All brave men, but with hubris.
Harry Turtledove had a lot of fun with the Old Custer-Young MacArthur interactions in his alternative history series.
- I guess this kind of silliness comes from the US mentality since the Vietnam War of obsession with who was the ‘good guy’ and ‘bad guy’ in each war. Before that in the US it tended not to be thought about much, or just understood that the US (or Union in the ACW) was the good guy and other side the bad guy, since they were fighting the US.
But it’s actually not all that relevant from a military POV, and the politics directly related to civilian command of the military in US case who is the good guy. From a military POV the point is that the embargo resulted in Japan attacking the US. That was clearly the cause for Japan’s decision to attack. Who was right and wrong is not the question there. And that’s directly related to simplistic focus of blame on individuals like MacArthur or Kimmel for the disasters at the opening of the war. It distracts from the bigger issue of the mismatch between an economic warfare policy v Japan so aggressive that US leadership should have better realized it would start a shooting war, v. the inadequate readiness of US forces to fight that war that soon. Again, way beyond just a matter of a warning being given to take off.
Nor does Japan’s particular tactic of starting the war before a formal declaration stand out even morally by today’s standards. It’s over-legalism to say it’s different when the US launches surprise strikes in undeclared wars. The basic military reason is the same: to avoid needless own side casualties by warning enemies. In understanding history we have to realize that the US public thought it was a big deal that Japan struck first then declared rather than the other way around. But to pretend it’s big moral deal now is hypocritical anachronism IMO.
Japan’s atrocities in China from the 1930’s were, are and will always be a big deal morally IMO, but that doesn’t mean the oil embargo didn’t cause Japan to attack the US, again it clearly did. Nor is that directly related to the moral equation of ‘sneak attack’. Japanese atrocities against Allied POW’s once the war started are also a real moral issue not directly related to ‘sneak attack’.
2/3. The point is considering all the reasons why the Far East AF would have made no difference in the outcome of the first Philippines campaign. One reason was its relatively small size. But it had about as many modern fighters as the JNAF had Zeroes on Formosa able to reach the PI (not counting older JNAF Type 96’s which couldn’t, or theoretically obsolescent Army Type 97 which soon advanced to bases on Luzon and gave a reasonable account of themselves v the by then remaining handful of P-35/40’s). And its bombers while much less numerous than JNAF groups on Formosa were individually more powerful. But the more relevant reason in terms of ‘blame’ is the demonstrable general unreadiness and lower effectiveness of the FEAF units v JNAF. Not just a matter of unluckily scrambling early in the morning of Dec 8 then being back on the ground when the fog delayed JNAF strikes arrived. But also air warning and fighter ground control system which was not really functional (the hardware existed in terms of radars, but radio problems, and almost complete lack of practice). Mechanical bugs in the new P-40E’s. No airfield protection measures like revetments and decoys (continual Japanese raids in later days especially by JAAF bombers destroyed none of the remaining US fighters, too well camouflaged and protected by then, as they could have been Dec 8 even on the ground). No realistic air combat training, no real knowledge of their fighter opponents, not even knowing the enemy fighters could get to the US airfields from Formosa. And on and on.
The bumper sticker slogan ‘caught with pants down’ is a serious oversimplification if taken to imply one person could simply have hiked up the pants. Although again MacArthur was the overall US (and Philippine Commonwealth) military commander, so of course he couldn’t say the deeper lack of readiness and effectiveness of his forces had nothing to do with him. And he should have factored a realistic assessment of the weaknesses in his forces into his approach, which is somewhat similar BTW to his ignoring his own forces’ weaknesses and being ignorant of his opponent’s capabilities in Nov 1950 in Korea.
- I know, nowadays we don’t have to read books about stuff, we can just google up a synopsis.
I still recommend reading the book, old style. His ‘Doomed at the Start’ which focuses on the FEAF fighter units throughout the first PI campaign also highly recommended.
In his final years Hitler famously told someone that in his nightmares, he saw the map positions at Stalingrad just before von Paulus surrendered. So Stalingrad might be the point at which Hitler himself knew the jig was up.
Goering supposedly said he knew the war was lost when he saw P-51 Mustangs over Berlin.
It’s worth noting that at the moment of the Pearl Harbor attack, only the IJN believed wholeheartedly in the offensive potential of aircraft carriers. They would indeed be the decisive naval weapon, but, despite a cadre of naval aviators in America making that argument, neither the US Navy nor the US government had any confidence in carrier warfare except as scouting and support for the battle fleet.
His success at Inchon was more a matter of good luck. The reason the North Koreans didn’t have a significant garrison there was because they knew it was a terrible place to try to land troops. And the Navy told MacArthur this. But MacArthur overrode their objections and insisted Inchon was the place.
And then he (and the Marines) got very lucky. The wind and water at Inchon happened to be uncharacteristically calm on the pre-scheduled date of the landing.
Isn’t it that Inchon has some of the most extreme tides in the world? The wiki for the battle agrees. Perhaps the North felt no one would be crazy enough to land there and the US had some of the best hydrographic survey personnel to account for the issue.
Which puts it out of the realm of primarily luck, and more towards savvy.
If MacArthur had consulted the experts and listened to what they were saying, it would have been savvy. But he consulted the experts, they told him it was a bad idea, and he went ahead and did it anyway. Which puts his success back into the realm of luck.