The thing I remember about Yamamoto Isoroku is that he’s apparantly the only high member of the Japanese military who could accurately predict the course of the war: “In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success.”
I’m pretty sure the US doesn’t want that. Although it would undoubtedly save a lot of money, the bases in Japan allow the US a great deal of force projection into East Asia. Without that, America loses much of it’s ability to keep an eye on what China and North Korea are doing. It could also be argued that the bases aren’t just protecting Japan from it’s neighbors, but are also protecting the neighbors from Japan. Worries about Japan going on the attack again are very real in China and Korea. Having a large US presence in Japan seems to have made the J-military more passive and less prone to sabre-rattling, which in turn makes the neighbors a lot less jumpy than they otherwise might be.
As for the Japanese, there are a fair number of civilians who’d like the US bases out. Some (Okinawans, mainly) are just tired of being swamped with foreign military personnel, some want Japan to renounce everything military, and some see the bases as a sign of subservience and view getting the US out as the first step to rebuilding Japan as a dominant military power. The politicians who talk about getting rid of the bases seem to mostly be in the third camp.
I have to admit were I Japanese I’d very likely be in that third camp, myself - not so much from a desire to return to an attempt at military domination of the neighboring countries, but simply a recognition that without any ability to use military force Japan is hindered on international negotiations. :dubious:
As an American, I don’t think that renouncing our bases there is a good idea. And I do see real benefits to both nations from those bases.
But that doesn’t change that, once again, Japan has been put into a unique category vis-a-vis the rest of her co-belligerents.
Yep, we had people shooting up lifeboats on our side, too. Won’t deny it. However, on our side it was against official policy, unlike the Japanese.
There’s no denying that we treated our prisoners a hell of a lot better than they did.
Nonetheless, shooting sailors in the water at Pearl was only another strike against the Japanese in the minds of the Americans of the time, and had a lot to do with some of their sailors being shot instead of rescued later on.
I concede many of your points but this one I question. I wasn’t aware a lot of supplies were being shipped from China (and other Japanese strongholds) during the war. If that was the case Japan really wasn’t under a proper blockade and as you said, Japan may not have even cared all that much about American support. The Pearl Habour attack may have been an attempt to keep Americans out of the war (well, this really does make lots of sense. Attacking the US isn’t exactly going to get US suppliers to help Japan).
But in this day and age, if Japan went aggressive against someone and the US was against it, Japan would lose almost all support. The second Japan took another country by force most countries (China, the US, most of the Asian countries) would back away and cut ties. Japan really has no sustainable war ability unless it was “allowed” to take a resource rich country first then allowed to harvest those resources. Unless Japan finds some way of sustaining it’s industry, it cannot truly engage is a serious war.
That’s not to say Japan couldn’t strike someplace and make a dent, but actually landing troops is way past what America would allow. Even if a 9/11 style attack happened in Japan, they don’t have the ability to take a place like Afghanistan without significant American support (I doubt the Chinese or Korean governments would rush to support a Japanese war).
I shall defiantly get Tora Tora Tora though. I also heard that “Bridge over the River Kai” (or something like that) was pretty good as well.
I don’t remember the exact date, but after Admiral Perry sailed into Tokyo there was a trade agreement between Japan and the US. Again, I don’t remember exactly when, but that agreement was allowed to lapse in the 1930’s, after which the US by and large stopped trading with Japan. It wasn’t as much a “proper blockade” so much as we just stopped doing business with them.
There weren’t a lot of supplies being shipped from China and Korea - the Japanese troops weren’t landed with supplies and stripped the countryside to feed themselves. Let’s be frank - when the food ran out they started eating people.
Which round about was the point I really wanted to make - even with Japan’s extremely limited resources and minimal supplies from anywhere else they still held out 45 months against the US. Of course, the Japanese didn’t have to cross thousands of miles to get to the battlefield but in the end that didn’t stop the US.
No, attacking Pearl Harbor was stupid if you understand the US “psyche”. Attacking us is the one way to guarantee we’ll join a fight. In 1941 the US was highly isolationist and the vast majority were strongly resistant to getting involved in any war. There was the concept “fortress America”, the idea we could just cut ties, close our borders, and keep to ourselves. Until Hawaii was attacked.
Mind you - Hawaii wasn’t even a state at that point - it was a distant territory, much like, say, Guam. And look at how we reacted.
Not that the Japanese were either the first or last to make that mistake, but it remains that if you attack the US the US will ALWAYS retaliate. ALWAYS.
I dunno - the Japanese can be pretty serious. They can and have made personal survival subordinate to another goal. That was part of the problem - by, say, February or March of 1945 Japan had lost - they were starving, their cities were being bombed, they were losing territory… and they wouldn’t give up. When a Japanese soldier declared he would die before surrendering he wasn’t kidding and he wasn’t engaged in hyperbole - he meant it. And he meant to take some of the enemy down with him.
It’s highly unlikely that Japan would attack anyone these days… but if someone attacked them first the whole island would erupt regardless of what anyone else thought of the matter. A foolish move - part of the deal we cut with Japan after WWII was that if they were attacked the US would go to war on their behalf. That has a lot to do with why the USSR and China have largely left Japan alone. They’re a small island with fierce people and a very belligerent ally.
If Japan suffered a 9/11 style attack I doubt the Americans would be able to stop them. And frankly, I’m not sure we’d have a desire to do so. In the event of another 9/11 style attack I would expect that pretty much everyone else would just step out of the way.
The first Mitsubishi zero had to be transported to the airfield for it’s maiden flight by oxcart - there was no other transportation available. Most of their pilots had never driven a car, never operated machinery before… but Japan is not the technological backwater it once was. Their technology is every bit as sophisticated as anyone else’s these days, in some areas better. They have modern airplanes and modern armaments. These days, they could reach Europe or Africa for a bombing run if they felt a need to do so. They may not come back - but the Japanese have never hesistated to die for their country in the past, I don’t why they would get cold feet at this point, if they had been attacked first.
Not to be agrumentative, but I feel compeled to ask for a cite on that.
This isn’t exactly authoritative, but Shohei Ooka, in his book Fires on the Plains (a semi-fictionalized account of his experiences fighting in the Philippines), writes about many soldiers (himself included) doing it.
Thanks.
As I understand it, the Japanese foreign ministry was supposed to have issued the declaration of war before midnight Dec 6, but because of long hours, the ministry personnel went home before translating the key code group. The plan, per the high command, was to declare war, then attack. It is worth noting that part of the US response to the attack was the idea of being attacked during a time of peace - not simply being attacked.
But Pearl Harbor is one example of how the Japanese high command (aside from Yamamoto) had miscalculated. The attack at Pearl Harbor succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of the planners - for minimal loss of life and materiel they destroyed the US Pacific Fleet. But, because they were besotted with the samurai warrior tradition they didn’t understand the effect a secure industrial base would have on modern warfare.
Within 6 months the US managed to defeat the Japanese fleet at Midway - from that point on, the Japanese fleet was on the defensive, in part because they’d lost the cream of their trained pilot corps. From Midway on, the Japanese fleet lost ground steadily to the US fleet, not so much because the US forces were better lead, or higher quality, or even luckier. In many individual cases one or more of these were true, but those were all secondary to the primary advantage the Allies had. Simply put, like the Battle of the Atlantic, the US simply out built the Japanese. For anyone interested in the nuts and bolts of the matter Nihon Kaigun is an excellent, well-researched site that presents a great deal of detailed information on the Pacific War.
All over World War II, the industrial power of the US shows through - the Battle of the Atlantic was won, in part because the US could build more shipping during 1943 than the Kriegsmarine could sink, even at it’s most effective. The Germans had better tanks than the US or Brits, with heavier armor and guns - but the Sherman tank was produced in such numbers that it left the Wehrmacht overmatched.
One example really makes things stand out - by 1945 things were so bleak for the Japanese they sent their most powerful, most modern battleship, IJN Yamato, on a sortie with the express purpose of grounding it to make it a fortified bunker for island defense.
There were a few other problems as well. Basically, that part of it was a screw-up. Of course, after news of the attack reached DC no one was going to stop and consider the possibility that someone made a mistake. The delay was seen as delibrate at the time, a crowning slap-in-the-face.
Correct - if we had received a declaration of war prior to the attack there would have been considerably less outrage. We still would have gone to war, we still would have fought, but we wouldn’t have seen things like the Doolittle Raiders going on a one-way mission to bomb Tokyo so soon after the start of the war.
Except they didn’t get our aircraft carriers - and Yamamoto had stated that they HAD to get the carriers in the initial attack or they would lose the war. At the time it was yet another of his views that was denigrated but he was right.
Huh. True, but I think you’re discounting the factor that US troops were much better fed and supplied. Starving men, or men suffering from malnutrition, simply are not as effective as fighters as they would be when healthy.
The Japanese made major mistakes in the prosecution of the war…for instance, despite the fact that they had excellent submarines, they never learned to use them effectively. Also, the US Navy submarines went wild sinking japanese merchant shipping,by 1943, food rationing was in effect in Japan. Also, the Imperial Army had a screw loose…instead of attacking Siberia and putting Russia out of the war, they decided to invade the island of New Guinea-and half their troops there starved to death or died of malaria. Indeed, the difficulties of supplying their troops on these distant islands was so great, that they were reduced to using submarines as supply vessels,
Admiral Yamamoto was right-Japan had no resources to fight an extended war!