Everything I have indicates that he did say this. (In Japanese of course)
I continue to use “We have awakened the sleeping giant” quote. I just preface it with he probably did not say but probably thought it.
flurb, I don’t know whether they tried negotiating or not before 1944-45. I do know that very early on in the conflict the decision in the US was to insist upon unconditional surrenders for all the Axis powers. IIRC that general plan for how to end the war was agreed upon in principal at the Atlanic Conference in August, 1941. The demand for unconditional surrender wasn’t formalized until the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, but I do believe that both Roosevelt and Churchill were working towards that goal long before that.
After Pearl Harbor, and the perception of a treacherous attack there, the US public was in no mood for any kind of negotiated peace with Japan.
I’m not sure I understand. I can see that the men and materiel required might have meant that other actions might have been delayed, but would that delay have actually overly mattered?
Hmm… hit Post too soon.
Even if the occupation of Hawaii had caused a month’s delay, would that really have mattered? The war against China was already ongoing, and Britain could not have reinforced its colonies in time.
Remember, things still took a little time back then. The Japanese had failed to neutralise the USN Pacific Fleet becasue the carriers were still afloat. The campaigns in SE Asia/Pacific took some time to complete too. So, they had no position as yet to negotiate from, esp since they were wanting an advantaged position.
Soon afterwards (in WWII timeline) came the Battle of the Coral Sea ( “Scratch one flat top!” ) which showed Japanese high command how costly it had been to miss the USN carriers in the Pearl attack. So, the dual operation of the Aleutians and Midway landings were planned. This was supposed to draw the US carriers out to meet a superior carrier force AND the extra base of Midway (which was supposed to be a surprise of its own - code breakers fixed that!). Of course, as we all know, the plan backfired and brought us one of the most dramatic and easily determined turning point of any war (when limitimg discussion to the PTO).
So, Japan never had the chance to bargain with the US from an advantaged position because the tide of war turned on them.
Doolittle’s Raid also had a bearing in the Japanese high command wishes to kill off the carriers once and for all.
The Lexington, Yorktown, Wasp, and Enterprise were a bane to Admiral Yamamoto. He needed them gone. Japan’s militaristic government needed them gone. Pearl was supposed to do that. Partial failure. Midway was supposed to remedy the partial failure. Complete disaster. Things were never again in Japan’s favour after this, though it still took a long time to complete the war.
I think, No Clue Boy, you’re over estimating the importance of the Battle of Midway.
Before you start to react emotionally, I’m not saying it wasn’t the end of the Japanese era of domination of Naval aviation. I’m not saying it wasn’t the turning point you’re calling it. I’m saying that even if the US had completely lost at Midway - the island occupied, all the US Flattops sunk or disabled, and the IJN still having it’s four best carriers in service as a worked up unit - they still would have lost the war.
First point, the battle itself was a near run thing. There are three ‘horseshoe nails’ that won the battle for the US: the delay in getting the spotting report of the US carriers back to the fleet; the decision by Nagumo to change the strike loading of the already prepped air wing when he did get the spotting report; and the timing and manner of the US air strike.
That last factor is, itself, so full of luck that it deserves a bit more information. First off the US strike came upon the Japanese carriers just as the air wings were at their most vulnerable: Two sets of ordinance on the deck, and neither completely loaded or unloaded from the planes. It was impossible to send the air wing to meet the incoming US air strike, and the flight decks were a disaster waiting to happen when US ordinance struck. Secondly there is a lot of kvetching for the way the US air strike came in - the seperate elements of the air strike got lost from each other, and instead of coming in as a single, coordinated attack, they came in, in waves, with the most vulnerable component making the first attack. Most historians claim that the attack by the TBDs was an error, and accomplished nothing.
Certainly the attack by the TBDs did nothing, directly, to the Japanese ships or aircraft. Of the 15 planes and 45 men who went in, one man survived. And none of their ordinance hit anything. So, why do I consider that attack to be key for the success of the air strike against the Japanese carriers?
Becuase they pulled the Japanese combat air patrol down to sea level. The TBDs were torpedo bombers, and their attack profile meant they had to fly straight at their targets within about 50 feet of the ocean to be able to make their attack runs. The Japanese CAP was well aware of how vulnerable the carriers and the air wings were, when the US planes showed up, they all dove to the deck to annihilate the TBDs before they could do anything to the cream of the IJN’s fighting strength. And so, when the dive bombers came out of the clouds, none of the CAP was in a position to even threaten the dive bombers.
Luck.
So, what would have happened if the Japanese had won at Midway?
Well, the reasoning and evidence here goes into more detail than I can. But the short of it is that the US could out build the Japanese. During the war the Japanese commissioned less than 10 carriers, total. And only one of those was a Fleet Carrier, IIRC. The US built something like 60 Essex class fleet carriers. Plus Jeep carriers and, and, and… Midway certainly shortened the war, but it is over stating the case to say that Midway is where the war was won.
I know the history very well, thanks. 
And we’ve had a very good discussion of this point before. Notice I did not Midway WON THE WAR. I say it is the TURNING POINT.
So, yes, I agree with almost everything you posted here. And I see Midway as a definite turning point. The causes of the turning point are complex, but a point there was.
If the Japanese had won at Midway? Speculation: I think the Japanese would’ve tried to sue for peace. And failed there, too. America was virtually destined to win that conflict, for the reasons you just put forth, among others. We also need to look at the determination to ‘make them pay’ in the heart of Floyd R Turbo, American. And the feeling that ‘we need to make the world safe for democracy.’ There would’ve been a less distinct turning point perhaps, harder to pinpoint, like what happened in the ETO.
Sorry, I’ll admit I just enjoy discussing it, and it gets old talking back to the History channel.
Not a problem, Otak. I actually had to scale back my tone as I’m a little peeved about something else right now and saw your post (at first) in that light. So, my apologies to you…
You are one of my favorite Dopers (and Unaboarders) for providing well thought out and detailed posts about historical subjects.
Since we are indeed mostly agreeing here and not debating, what do you think would’ve happened without the code breaking victory and the ‘guts’ of the carrier bosses at Midway? I’m curious about both the short and long term.
WWII virtually guaranteed Hawaii the statehood that followed. I only mentioned this because we just celebrated/commemorated our Admission’s Day.
Thanks. I’ll gladly return the compliment. And don’t worry - I only interpreted your post to be a bit of exasperation with someone who likes a chance to lecture.
To answer your questions, I think, oddly enough, the breaking of the Japanese codes was a tactical victory - not a strategic one. Which is totally against the usual thinking about about the utility of breaking an enemy’s code.
When I think about the strategic decisions of the Pacific theatre that won it, it comes to two things to my mind: the use of unrestricted submarine warfare; and the decision to island hop. Neither of those strategies were affected, in broad terms, by the intelligence gathered through the code-breaking.
Thinking about it, I can think of only two ‘victories’ that were directly related to the success of the code-breakers. The first, of course, is Midway, and the second is the assassination of Yamamoto - which was a morale and political attack, not a military one. Militarily, Yamamoto just wasn’t that important. I admire, respect and think I’d have enjoyed meeting the man, but by the time of his death there was very little he could do to stem the tide coming against his nation.
Considering Midway - it’s almost scary how the victory of the code breakers could have made for a complete Japanese victory, by bringing the entirity of the US’s carrier fleet in harm’s way. I don’t mean that as a criticism of the code breakers. But, if the code breakers hadn’t caught onto the intent there, capturing Midway, by itself, wouldn’t have been very important, I don’t think. IIRC the reason that the Japanese high command choose to go after Midway in the wake of the Doolittle raid was because they believed that was where the bombers had been sortied from, not from carriers.
I may be wrong about the effect of the code breaking - it’s never been a great personal interest, just something that I looked at as it related to things that did interest me. But that’s my impression. I don’t want to give the impression that I’m belittling the efforts or successes of the code breakers. Just trying to explain why I think that their effect was far more limited in the Pacific than it had been in Europe.
As for keeping the heart of the Japanese Carrier forces. I think that, even if they had survived intact the Japanese high command wouldn’t have had the mental flexibility to see their best use for them after securing Midway. In my opinion the greatest weakness of the Japanese high command was their willingness to hone ‘perfect’ weapons.
What I mean by that is that the air groups and carriers committed to Midway were Naval aviation’s version of a samurai katana: A beautiful, and nearly perfect thing of deadly beauty. It was a superbly trained force that could be used for attack or defense at a moment’s notice. The institutional memory, training and sense of unit that existed in that force made it something unparalleled then, or since.
And making that perfect weapon cost the Japanese dearly, in terms of failing to spread that competence around to the rest of their carrier forces.
The best use for the carriers and strike groups that were committed to Midway, if they’d survived intact, in my opinion, would have been to break them up throughout the rest of the Japanese carrier fleet - spread that institutional competence through the whole of their naval aviation community. It would have cost the high command their katana. Spreading out that level of quality would have made it impossible for them to keep the same standards of excellence throughout the fleet.
However, what they’d have would have still been a damned effective broadsword.
After Midway, the Japanese never really had the chance to restore their Naval aviation to the same level of excellence, and one of the (many) reasons that kamikazes seemed to be militarily effective use of men and material was because they didn’t have the means or institutional excellence that their Naval aviators had started the war with.
Anyways - enough of what the Japanese wouldn’t do that they should have…
I think that, had they won Midway with their carrier forces intact they’d have kept shuttling those carriers and their strike groups from campaign to campaign, continuing trying to press for an offensive victory. My training scenario would have been the first step, in my mind, towards a defensive stance - another reason that the Japanese high command wouldn’t have considered it. Eventually, I believe they’d have kept trying to pull another victory from their skill and audacity - and it wouldn’t have worked. It might not have been quite the disaster that Midway was, but it would have been enough to rock them back - and then the Allied industry would begin to bury them.
What are your views?
I’m not sure, here, Quartz, but I think you’re seriously underestimating the delay that a Japanese invasion of Hawaii would have entailed.
One of the lesser known developments of WWII was the process of underway replenishment: That is the ability to refuel a ship at sea, without having to heave to. There were methods to do it prior to that, but IIRC my Bluejacket’s it wasn’t until WWII that the techniques we use now were tested and found good. I can’t recall whether the Japanese even had that capability - if they didn’t that meant that for cross-Pacific journeys they either had to find ports to enter to allow for safe transfer of fuel during the journey, or they had to go at the most fuel efficient speed for their ships, which would make transit times several weeks for crossing the Pacific. So, your month delay is met, just there, with transporting men and material from the Home islands to Hawaii. Then there are the logistics of how large an invasion force do the Japanese take from their more important conquests to take Hawaii? A large force would mean a shorter campaign - but might have brought all other campaigns to a halt, until they were finished. A smaller force would cause less problems in other theatres, but would mean that the logistical commitment would be more ongoing - supporting a fighting force takes more material than supporting an occupation force does.
My guess would be that a more realistic time frame for the delay imposed by invading Hawaii would be on the order of six months - which would have been time enough for England to reinfoce Singapore rather heavily.
IMHO: Midway was the turning point in the Pacific War but as you say it sped things up more than being absolutely necessary.
The USA ability to produce huge tonnage of warships just had to have time to come into play. At the time it was such a huge moral boost and it really hasten the end. The Pacific war probably would’ve dragged on an extra year with corresponding casualties.
Midway was one of the luckiest and spunkiest victories in our history. We had a flagstaff willing to throw anything they could muster into the defense of the island and the battle.
In the long run likely not; however, it certainly matted at the time to the JAPANESE, which is why they did not invade Hawaii.
It’s also quite unlikely the Japanese could have anticipated the ineptitude in much of the defense of their soon-to-be possessions, especially Singapore, so you can’t blame them for turning down Hawaii to ensure they had the stuff to get the main job done.
I’m pulling these from memory, but I recall a couple of other tactical-bordering-on-strategic failures regarding Pearl Harbor.
The first was not destroying the oil storage facilities (IIRC, the destroyers escorting the Enterprise were nearly dry when they pulled into Pearl a couple of days later for resupply). Granted that the US Navy was pretty good at resupply underway, and getting better; still, having the nearest tank farm thousands of miles away would have seriously hampered operations for some time to come.
The second was leaving the submarine base intact. I’m aware that the record of the “silent service” (I understand that they cordially hated the term) was less than stellar for the first year or so after Pearl Harbor, largely due to poor tactics and wretched torpedoes—but if the Japanese had known what havoc it would wreak in the end, I rather imagine they would have preferred to smother it in its cradle.
Odd tho it may sound to some, I think a huge part of what happened in the PTO of WWII came down to one man. Yamamoto.
The IJN was somewhat different as a military entity than the rest of the Imperial Japanese forces. While the army was their crushing foot, the IJN was a piercing sword. Or could have been if Yamamoto had clear and independent control over it. Not that he would have been allowed to abandon support of invasions or anything, but if he had been able to implement surgical strikes against US military targets, he might have harrassed even a numerically superior force of later additions to the USN and rendering them, well, not ineffective, but sorely put upon.
Of course, what we saw in history was a warlord mentality exercising control over forces they ididn’t completely understand. Yamamoto (imho) understood what the future of a carrier navy could do. And several plans of his were implemented, even if modified. The other Admirals were also very much aware of the unique capabilities of each type of warship, which showed in the victories they consistantly scored outside of naval air battles. However, even Yamamoto suffered from the mistaken view of the continuing importance of battleships. It took the island hopping campaign and the introduction of the fast carrier task force to show the world once and for all what the new navy had to be.
Strangely enough, I think they also missed the boat with their submarine forces, never utilising those to the full.
With the US emphasis, through earlier pre 1941 agreements, with Brittain on ending the NAZI threat, Japan might have been a back burner issue.
All the above, though, hinges on their having been no sneak attack on Pearl Harbour. The attack coming before a declared state of war, whether intentional or not, sealed the ultimate fate of Japan as an enemy combatant of the United States. With the rage induced by that piece of the puzzle, there could be no backing down from finishing the fight on US terms. So, from a Japanese perspective, Pearl Harbour was a ghastly mistake form the get go. And obviously the missing of the carriers (and what Ottodafe pointed out) was very significant. Both in the immediate short run, and in the long run because of the outcome of the short run events.
Still, even with that having happened, the US’ first priority was NAZI Germany. I’ve read that FDR even slipped up later in his “Day of Infamy” speech, referring to the German planes over US territory, instead of Japanese. Never found a confirmed cite for that…
So, my rambling dialogue leads back to the Midway question. The victory had almost equal chances of going to either side. Sheer luck of timing led to the decisive victory for the US instead of a slugfest stand off or a US defeat. The Battle of Coral Sea would still have shown that the IJN was stoppable, and the USN would have eventually overwhelmed the Japanese with shear numbers even with a Midway loss. Would have taken much longer though.
I agree that the island hopping strategy was an incredible leap of military thinking. Funny that Yamamoto apparantly predicted that a Pacific wide war would have to be fought that way. And I still find myself surprised at the scope of the US submarine campaign as I find new accounts to read. Offensive submarine warfare was VERY important in the PTO.
Which brings me back to Yamamoto. His Pearl Harbour plan was dependent on the element of surprise. He was right tactically, but wrong strategically. I feel that even he had got the carriers on Dec 7th, that the US would still not have agreed to a truce because of the treachery, whether real or perceived, in that attack. So Yamamoto’s brilliance was limited by his not truly understanding America and Americans. He thought he understood because of his years of experience with the USA. Obviously, he was wrong, as history shows us.
If he had clear and independent control, tho, he could have prolonged the Pacific War to an extremely costly degree. Hard to imagine it being worse than it was, isn’t it? But it could’ve been. Instead, Yamamoto was limited in how he could use the IJN. (Really, this is perhaps the most far fetched part of any of my alternate PTO ideas.) Then, he was removed from the equation altogether by the broken code and an attack of assasin P-38s. In addition, the US strategy for the PTO ended up being superbly effective.
I’m not really very good at formulating an alternate history, and some of my ideas are no doubt implausible or based on not entirely accurate information. Still, here it is. If any corrections of wrong assumptions or improbable scenarios need to be made, go for it. Though I eat up the history of WWII, I am by no means an expert. Just an enthusiastic amateur.
If the Japanese had managed to win at Midway, I don’t see the war lasting that much longer - the US would still get the bomb by mid-1945, and the Germans would be beaten in the ETO, giving the Soviets time to get their armies to Siberia, to threaten Japan’s Army on the Asian mainland. The main limiting factor seems to be how fast the US could produce atomic weapons, and securing an airbase close enough to drop them on the Home islands from.
Well, securing that airbase would happen somewhat later with the early loss of Enterprise, Yorktown, and Hornet. You could get carriers on the scene quickly by diverting whatever was left in the Atlantic, but that would hinder anti-sub operations against the Germans, as well as possible affecting operations in North Africa and Sicily/Italy.
The loss off all or most of the Pacific Fleet’s carriers would almost certainly result in a diversion of naval resources of some kind from the Atlantic, and possibly a diversion of resources overall as the public would no doubt be screaming for the US to secure the situation in the Pacific before going on any adventures in Europe.
There’s a number of interesting points made herein, and I’d like to comment on a few of them. First, because that’s the OP, why didn’t the Japanese invade Hawaii in 1941? The answer has been given above to a large extend, but there’s a point to be made in saying it again: the Japanese just couldn’t, though by all accounts, they would have positively loved to have Hawaii.
The reasons why they wanted Hawaii were manifold: Hawaii’s large Japanese population; the strategic position of the islands; the loss that their capture would entail for the United States; lastly, the benefit that the Japanese believed would accrue to them from the capture of the islands. From Hawaii and its excellent natural harbors and anchorages, the Imperial Navy could blockade the West Coast, attack the Panama Canal, and generally carry the war to the United States proper.
Now, why didn’t they take the islands in 1941? Not manpower problems: the Japanese, if they had desired to, could always have diverted ground forces from China, as they occasionally but rarely did during the war. The problem was shipping. All of Japan’s shipping was tied up in the southern invasions, or in delivering crucial raw materials to Japan. This shortage of shipping was the most serious problem the Japanese labored under in the course of the invasion months and later, and a primary reason why the clock-work precise combinations of naval & ground movements in the East Indies campaign had to work out. Convoys would depart, land forces, move on to a different port to re-embark other forces, and place those elsewhere yet – a highly difficult and necessary scheduling. In other words, it’s not just a matter of substituting one invasion for another – including later resupply efforts, the need to either take or suppress Midway indefinitely, and the need to defend the long sea lane to Hawaii. With so many infinitely more important targets to seize in the south, targets for whom the Japanese had gone to war in the first place, taking Hawaii was out of the question then.
Hawaii returned to the invasion schedules in early 1942 as part of the follow-ups to the Midway operation, but everyone knows how that ended up.
Secondly, I’m no great fan of the “turning point” trope. Midway certainly was a critical victory for goings-on of the next year, seeing as it (on paper) brought America carrier superiority at least in large carriers, but unless someone will claim that a Japanese victory at Midway would have resulted in a Japanese victory in the war (or even a draw), I cannot see how anything was turned. Midway was a whopping strategic and tactical defeat for Japan, strategically self-inflicted to a large extent and tactically lucky for the U.S. (1942 carrier battles were all largely luck, and Midway was entirely within the expected scope of outcomes if the U.S. struck first, as they did), but the tables were not turned on Japan until Guadalcanal.
The withdrawal of Ranger and Wasp from the Atlantic, to add to Saratoga, would have given the U.S. the same carrier strength vis a vis the Japanese as they had in December 1941 in the Pacific, albeit with worse carriers than back then. Still plenty to protect Hawaii and the West Coast.
Finally, Yamamoto. I cannot but think that anything more than “capable, but overrated” can be said about him. He’s a little like General Lee in that regard – put on a pedestal by interested parties, people are apt to overlook his overall dismal strategic performance. His plan for Pearl Harbor showed strategic and tactical ingenuity, but it was technically worked out by subordinates and Yamamoto did not even see fit to properly select the targets to make sure that whatever happened (and I mean whatever), the facilities at Pearl were destroyed. Coral Sea was an unmitigated disaster for the Imperial Navy, brought about by Yamamoto’s insistence on the Midway operation – he could have had two American carriers in the Coral Sea, plus Port Moresby, if he had committed his fleet more fully, instead granting the Americans carrier parity down there and losing the services of his two best carriers for Midway. And Midway itself, of course, was a hideous plan, nigh unworkable in its sheer complexity, using a target that the Americans could easily have left to the Japanese, and picked up (or left alone) at leisure later – a target with no strategic benefit for the Japanese. Finally, his commitment of the Imperial Navy around Guadalcanal was piecemeal some of the time, elaborately complicated and inefficient some of the other, and general did not at any time make full use of the potential of the Imperial Navy. Capable, as I said; but no strategic genius at all.