As noted upthread they did not expect to “win” a war against the US - they hoped ( ! ) to knock the US military far enough back to allow them to establish a perimeter behind which they could exploit the resources they had conquered. The calculation being that the US would not be willing to invest the treasue and blood necessary to drive the Japanese out.
It’s an extension of the miscalculation and insular belief system that led them to attack the US in the first place. They still believed that the US would not be willing to make the sacrifices neccessary to invade and conquer the home islands. (To an extend they may of been right - right up until the Trinity test suceeded the US and Brits were willing to make enormous concessions to get Stalin to sign up to provide troops for an invasion of Japan). Also, there was nothing in Japanese culture or history - as understood by the Japanese leadership in the 1940s - to suggest surrender (particularly Unconditional Surrender) was to be preferred to destruction and death.
The Japanese government believed that acceptance of the American demands was the equivalent of national suicide. They didn’t believe that the consequences of losing the war were likely to be much worse than what they were already being told to give up at the bargaining table: the ending of Japan’s status as a Great Power.
They expected that they would sink the Pacific Fleet, and take American possessions in the Eastern Pacific (esp. the Phillipines and Guam) at which point, the US would roll over, say, “You win”, and lift the embargo. They didn’t really expect the US to fight at all.
Another thing. The idea of exterminating the Japanese was not restricted to only the Americans and other Westerners. One woman I’ve met in Saudi was Korean. She is somewhat older than me and claims to have had an uncle who was hung-up and skinned alive during the Japanese occupation. Her viewpoint toward nuking the Japanese was “why did you stop after only dropping two?”
You aren’t getting it. Let me put this in other terms. The Japanese expected to win…if we define ‘win’ in the terms they were using. They didn’t expect to full conquere the US…that wasn’t what ‘win’ meant. What they DID expect was to essentially knock the US out of the war at sea for several years by taking out the Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor. Their intent was to catch both the battle ships AND the carriers in port cause such destruction (there was a third strike ready to go in after the first two…it was never launched because they discovered the carriers weren’t there) to both ground and naval facilities and ships that it would take at least 2 years for the US to even start to challenge Japan at sea again. In the meantime Japan would invade and secure its perimiter, use the raw materials gained in its newly conquered territories to build even more ships and planes, and be in such an overwhelming defensive position that the US would sue for peace on favorible terms to Japan (they had plans to ‘buy us off’ so to speak, i.e. pay reparations for the war so that we would be further moved to accept things and not continue the fight).
Had this happened the way they calculated they would have ‘won’ by their definintion…and in truth had they pulled it off they would have eventually become one of the great empires of the world, spanning in an arc the south pacific from west to east, as far as New Zealand (perhaps parts of Austrailia) to South East Asia, up to China across to the mid-Pacific Islands (perhaps Hawaii) and north to Parts of Alaska (the Allusions certainly). At that point the home islands would have been secured and practically unassailable except with small raids, and anyone trying to fight their way through would have to commit to a war that would be immensely costly. In Japan’s calculation of the US, America wasn’t willing to commit to such a war that would cost us so much in terms of money and lives…we would take Japans’ bribes if they handed us a fait accompli.
Unfortunately all their calculations rested on a mis-understanding of the US (Hitler made the same error btw) and our willingness to do whatever it took to end the war, regardless of cost, as well as an initial battle plan that relied on a certain degree of luck (that the carriers would also be there at Pearl Harbor, or that they could hunt them down later if needs be), an a gross lack of understanding of the US’s industrial capabilities. They also under estimated America’s ability to salvage the destroyed fleet in Pearl Harbor…IIRC only the Arizon was completely lost, all the other major battle ships were eventually refloated and saw service in the war.
So, to answer your second question: No, they didn’t expect us to do much of anything except go on the defensive and rebuild. They then expected us to accept the reality of their unassailable possition and to ‘save face’ by accepting the offers they would have made to pay some reparations in order to have peace.
Certainly…but I think this has been overplayed in Hollywood and such. Yes, he had misgivings and of all the Japanese high command he understood the US better than most, recognizing our industrial capacity would be unbeatable (eventually) once it was ramped fully up. He still mis-calculated the response.
Despite his deeper understanding of the US, he still thought that Japan could ‘win’…and in fact much of the strategy that I was babbling about my last post was his. He felt (early on) that Japan had a good chance to pull off their strategic aims…and he only lived long enough to start to see that defensive strategy begin to unravel.
Was occupation of Hawaii by the Japanese just totally out of the question? I never understood that move. It would have driven the Americans into a beserker rage, but they were driven into a rage by Pearl Harbor anyway. They needed time to drive hard south and get the grand defensive strategy under way. Keeping the US tied up trying to retake Hawaii would buy that time, win or lose.
I guess the logistics didn’t favor the provision and supply of a strong occupation on the islands, but I can’t imagine making the gambit work any other way.
Entirely to your satisfaction, if not mine. Did this process present a practical source for liquid fuel to power an industrial economcy and an industrial war machine? At a time when American planes ruled the Japanese sky? Could it produce fuel of sufficient octane for airplanes? Certainly, the process exists and existed, the Germans used it, all of this is known. But does it present a practical alternative? You seem to have brushed over these issues rather briskly.
No, not at all, I dismiss the “coal thingy” for reasons of practicality, I ignore analogies to Saddam for being just plain silly.
Pure conjecture. Presenting my case in its extremest absurdity is not a fair estimation.
No doubt. What of it?
I don’t recall making any such suggestion that the “damn Japs” were primitive. How then are you so sure about my opinions? And “cargo submarines”? Capable of supply the raw materials for an industrial machine like Japan’s? Really? With all due awe, this point demands a bit more substantiation that you have offered. Quite a bit more, actually.
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Certainly. A box or two here and there, pretty soon, you have as much as a hundred boxes of stuff, enough to power the Japanese war machine for about 17 seconds…
If the troops in China were dependent upon central Japan for supplies of food, ammo, etc. then they were doomed, because the raw materials for such suppies could not reach Japan, much less be manufactured into military material, and even less shipped to China to reach a dependent force. And if the force in China were not dependent upon the central government for supplies, then the central government is irrelevent. And your point evaporates.
If you are more confortable making pronouncement as to the mind set of the American people, please indulge yourself. I’m not questioning whether or not it might have been inevitable, I’m questioning whether the justification of military necessity holds water. In my estimation, it does not.
And you are welcome to it.
Perhaps it does, perhaps it doesn’t. I am not arguing perceptions of reality, but the reality itself. You are free to conduct your own argument, of course, but it has no bearing on mine.
Maybe coulda might have. With a huge helping of maybe. You have evidence to offer that such a plan was in the works?
I have not the slightest idea why you posted this conjecture on the nature of reality, unless it is an attempt to paint yourself as the hard-headed realist attempting to reason with the wooly-thinking and delusional moi. It may surprise you to hear that I regard myself as quite as intelligent and realistic as yourself. I maybe entirely alone in that estimation, but I rather doubt it.
Personally, I find the notion of collective or racial guilt too repugnant for serious discussion. Are we Americans collectively guilty for the massacre at My Lai, or the genocide of the American Indian?
You have to keep a few things in mind. First, Japan didn’t expect to win the war - it expected to be on the winning side in the war. Japan believed (correctly) that Germany would bear the brunt of the Allied war effort so they would be fighting the secondary forces.
Second, Japan never set out to conquer the world. They wanted to establish a regional power base in Eastern Asia and the Western Pacific. Their belief was that if they occupied these regions and then showed they could defend them, the other major powers would accept the situation and negotiate a settlement.
Finally, you have to remember that the Japanese government and the Japanese people are two seperate entities. The Japanese people had no voice in the decision to go to war or end the war. The Japanese government was in complete control of Japan (bearing in mind that the Japanese military was part of the government). And the leaders of the Japanese government knew that it didn’t make any difference to them if Japan surrendered or was conquered - they were going to be held responsible for their actions and their fate was sealed. A surrender in 1944 might have spared the Japanese people a lot of grief but it would have just sent them to the gallows a year earlier. So the leaders told the people to keep fighting on in order to protect themselves as long as possible. I’ve always said it was probably no coincidence that Emperor Hirohito decided that surrender was an acceptable option only after we said we didn’t plan on trying him personally for war crimes.
People should remember that in 1905 the Japanese badly defeated the Russians, who were considered the superior power at the time, and that in 1939-1940 the conquered the supposedly impregnable Singapore, and drove the British Navy from the Pacific. The US had only fought for a bit over a year in the Great War, had been isolationist for years, and could easily be underestimated. US bases in the Pacific were weak, and didn’t last long. The war didn’t turn around until Midway, which was a close thing.
As for why the Japanese didn’t surrender - that would have required the war government to resign in the deepest dishonor. Not going to happen. They were commited to staying the course.
I have read oodles of stuff about the Japanese governments mind set at the war’s close, some of which entirely supports your position, some that does not. I cannot see that issue as remotely settled, in either conclusion. YMMV.
My Lai was a crime. The American government never set out to massacre Vietnamese villages. When it happened, we recognized it as a crime (albeit reluctantly) and punished the people responsible (admittedly there are questions about how high up the responsibility went but the actual perpetrators were punished).
The “genocide” of the American Indians on the other hand was a long and ongoing process. It was not actually a genocide in its purpose but it mostly accomplished the same thing. It was more like a really brutal assault rather than a planned murder. But that doesn’t make what we did any less wrong. And we knew what we were doing and, at the very least, we allowed it to happen. So, yes, I feel that America is collectively guilty in that case.
Unit 731 falls into the same category. It didn’t just happen. The Japanese government (including Hirohito personally) decided to set up the unit and gave it its orders. So they are responsible for what happened there.
And again, the culpability of Hirohito is one of those historical points that attracts wildly different and mutually exclusive interpretations, each entirely irrefutable according to their adherents. Having read at least three of them, I am no longer willing even to hazard a guess.
Two reasons come to my mind. First, such amnesia is actually the norm; it’s the Jewish groups and others that have kept the memory of just how bad the Holocaust was alive. With sixty years to work with the Holocaust deniers would have made much more headway if they lacked dedicated widespread opposition. Also, the party with the most self interest in doing so, Germany, has not tried to cover up or ignore what happened the way Japan has. There hasn’t been an equivalent effort to keep the memory of WWII Japan’s atrocities alive.
Second, given the racism and general bigotry of the time, Westerners simply didn’t expect civilized behavior out of the Japanese. German behavior was shocking because they were white Christians; Japanese behavior wasn’t. Basically, they played to the stereotype of non-whites being savage, less evolved, less human; not intentionally, but they did.
Japan began looking into synthetic fuels using coal (IIRC) sometime in the 20’s. They basically halted development sometime in the 30’s as they began to aquire their overseas resource empire. Their plan was to get raw materials such as oil from some of the south pacific oil fields. In the final years of the war (from memory in 44 or even 45) they began once again to look into producing synthetic fuels, and in fact I believe they were realitively sucessful at it, at least for war production. Its reasonable to extrapolate that to speculation that Japan could have at least had enough capacity to keep their reduced (and defensive) military going.
And yes, this type of synthetic fuel is capable of powering air craft. Also, yes, the Germans knew all about it and used this technology extensively, especially towards the end of the war for them. In fact, I believe the Germans used it more extensively, as the Japanese, before we started putting the squeeze on them had easier access to resources.
I didn’t brush by it quickly…I felt that Cpt Amazings explaination was sufficient. If you were curious you could simply type in ‘synthetic fuel coal Japan Germany’ into Google and get a couple of hundred thousand hits on the subject.
I’d say both are apt. IMHO you simply didn’t take the time to understand the arguments. I think the analogy to Saddam and the sanctions in Iraq were close enough to be meaningful. Dismiss it if you like, but perhaps you should at least try and understand what I was getting at before handwaving it away? Or not. As you like.
Well, it would be if you HAD presented a case…so your assertion I made your presentation an ‘extremest absurdity’ is kind of silly. All I’ve seen is sniping from the shadows thus far. What IS your contention? Whats your estimation for how long a blockade would have to be kept in place? And what do you base it on?
Its sort of like the coal thingy. Don’t worry about it.
Maybe I misunderstood when you said “With what? Bamboo submarines?”…because that SOUNDS like you are calling the Japanese primitives incapable making anything better. In fact the Japanese all the way up until their surrender were innovating some very interesting weapons, being quite ingenious with their limited resources. They had even developed a jet air craft that could be mass produced even with their limited resources, as well as some interesting small naval craft to be used during an invasion.
A few things to note here. Look over all of the types of subs the Japanese had (including an air craft carrier version!). Another thing to note is…none of them are made of bamboo.
This will probably come as a bit of a shock but the Japanese ALREADY had quite large stores of muntions and such for their war machine. Food would have been the main problem…and I suppose rubber and oil as well. They were getting around the rubber problem the same way the Germans did, and they were rebuilding their synthetic oil production capability too…enough to at least have some minimal levels of military capability anyway. They had large quantities of scrap steel, and the industrial capacity to use it. Also, those cargo subs might not have the capacity of a regular ship, but they could carry more than a box or two.
I suppose we’d need to get into some basic assumptions as to how this blockade would work. Would we continue active conventional bombing missions over Japan indefinitely? Or would this be a passive blockade, just a defensive posturing of the fleet?
lol…I don’t even know where to begin with this one. The troops in China were independent of the Japanese main islands when they got cut off. They would have been living off the land, sort of like Mao did…and there were a LOT of them. Sort of like those Japanese who didn’t know the war was over in the PI did for a couple of decades…except instead of a few squads or a company or two it would have been an entire army. Eventually they would mainly have been killed or captured…but it would have been a long drawn out process taking years. They would have conducted this campaign as long as the main island was unbroken, undefeated…on their own. JUST LIKE SOME OF THEM DID ANYWAY DESPITE JAPANS SURRENDER!
So, no…my point doesn’t evaporate. Like with many things you simply don’t understand what I’m saying because you don’t know enough about this subject. Most people aren’t interested in WWII enough to dig deeper into the subject, and though I’ve read a lot about it and DO have an interest in the subject I’m no expert either. You however are less so.
I’ll leave it there and not get into the political realities of the US. You obviously feel that its reasonable to discuss things in a theoretical way, completely divorced from the realities of the political situation in the US at the time. Thats fine as long as you realize its pure fantasy unless you talk about it in the contexts the times.