With the understanding that this is a zombie thread, it needs to be pointed out that the OP is factually incorrect as well as logically flawed.
First, factually incorrect part. As is well known, Japan surprised the Allies not only with the daring strike at Pearl Harbor but also against a wide range of targets, invading country after territory after country.
During the interwar years, the US military understood its inherent weakness and developed various plans to deal with Japan, code named “Orange.” Fully anticipating the attack on the Philippines, the US planned to retreat to Bataan and hold out while the US build up its fleet and prepared for war, which was anticipated to take six or more months. Due to some strategic blunders in war planning and actual fighting by MacArthur and Washington as well as Japan’s war execution, the Philippines (and other strategic islands) were lost.
The OP is factually incorrect. The disagreement between MacArthur and Nimitz strategies was not as the war was winding down, but rather in the early part of the war. MacArthur wanted to advance up New Guinea, the Philippines and Formosa (Taiwan) while Nimitz wanted to island hop up through Okinawa. The decision was made to do both, dividing the Pacific theater into separate areas of command.
The question concerning invading the Philippines versus Formosa was actually discussed in 1943. At the time, it was believed that Formosa would need to be invaded and some within the Navy, including Admiral King, CNO wanted to bypass the Philippines while Nimitz was united with MacArthur in believing that at least part of the PI needed to be invaded.
By the end of the war, circumstances had changed sufficiently that it was concluded there was no need to invade Formosa, so that decision was made for strategic reasons.
Logically, the OP fails for a fallacy which I’m not sure the name. Even had the OP been factually correct, the OP is nonsensical because it supposes that a comparison of ideas can be judged by character of the architect rather than the merits of the plans themselves.
Now onto the discussing other points raised in the thread.
Actually, no. Cruise missile give navies fits to this very day. We tried everything. Most notably sailing warships to bombard shore targets just daring the Japanese to attack.
But the Japanese did not fall for that. They were getting quite good at their tactics. They would not rise to the bait.
Throughout the war, there were about 3,000 suicide attacks and (using round numbers) 400 hits, so about one hit for seven attacks. By November 1945, the Japanese hand 10,000 aircraft available. Presume 5,000 launches. That gets you about 650 hits. Presume away half of those as not disabling, or hitting empty transports. That gives you 325 meaningful hits.
That is a rather lot.
In fact it is close to a third of the fleet. I maintain that losses of this magnitude over a few days would disorder the invasion so badly that it would fail. At Okinawa we lost 5,000 dead at sea. Olympic was three times the size (so 15,000) against more and more-effective kamikazes. What do you think, 25,000 dead at sea?
Sure we would still land. (Safer to land than to be in a transport) but organization, command and control would go all to heck. So we lost about 12,000 dead in ground fighting at Okinawa. Times three gives you 36,000. All told the butcher’s bill would be about 60,000 dead.
So I look at these numbers and I see failure. What does that look like? Probably it looks a lot like a very big, very bloody, Anzio.
Of course something would have to give eventually. The Idea of the Americans giving up seems impossible. So does the idea of the Japanese surrendering. More likely they would starve.
Marshall opined that the main effect of the atomic attacks was psychological. It gave the Japanese leadership an excuse to surrender. The could claim the Americans cheated.
And we had invented tactics: wiki: n early 1945, U.S. Navy aviator Commander John Thach, already famous for developing effective aerial tactics against the Japanese such as the Thach Weave, developed a defensive strategy against kamikazes called the “big blue blanket” to establish Allied air supremacy well away from the carrier force. This recommended combat air patrols (CAP) that were larger and operated further from the carriers than before, a line of picket destroyers and destroyer escorts at least 80 km (50 mi) from the main body of the fleet to provide earlier radar interception and improved coordination between fighter direction officers on carriers. This plan also called for around-the-clock fighter patrols over Allied fleets, though the U.S. Navy had cut back training of fighter pilots so there were not enough Navy pilots available to counter the kamikaze threat. A final element included intensive fighter sweeps over Japanese airfields, and bombing of Japanese runways, using delayed-action bombs to make repairs more difficult.[32]
However your numbers are somewhat high: By the time the war ended, the Japanese actually possessed some 12,700 aircraft in the Home Islands, roughly half kamikazes.[67]
I think one would also have to take into account that the quality of the pilots would decrease over time and thus the performance of the kamikaze attacks.
And that the US, both the (army) Air Force & Naval carrier-based aircraft, would likely have extensive combat air patrols over the entire country during the invasion.
And that the Japanese were short of fuel for training pilots, their planes were poorly maintained, and many of the planes were not normally front-line types.
One need not sink a ship to cause trouble. It is (as the told me at Ranger School) sometimes better to wound an enemy so as to impose and expensive burden on the other team. In the same way, a damaged ship full of injured Marines would be more useful to the Japanese than a ship sunk full of dead Maines.
A damaged ship requires tugs, shipyard space and diverts industrial capacity from new builds.
Isn’t it nice that all of this horror was avoided?
The USN of 1945 was way larger than it needed to be, and was still growing fast. Even if a Kamikaze managed to sink something as large as a Cleveland class cruiser (which never happened), or even 5 of them, the USN had dozens more.
With all due respect to you as a poster, this is one of the worse characterizations of the war I’ve ever seen argued.
No. Absolutely not! This is just completely wrong at all levels. It completely misstates the nature of Japan in the war, it gets the relationship between the IJA and IJN wrong and it grossly mischaracterizes the type of war between the two countries.
First, there is always a question of when you need to generalize and when you need to look at organizations separately. The use of “the Japanese” here is a mistake and is as inaccurate as if someone were to say “Americans feel (this way) about Trump.” It can’t be done.
Unique among the major combatants, Japan lacked a strong central government to control the military, where the US, the USSR, the UK and Germany had strong governments and / or dictators which were above the military, the Japanese ruling structure was a complete mess with no single effective organization or person who could effectively oversea the Imperial military. They did have coordinating groups, but those did not have veto powers.
The civilian government was limited in the amount of power they could exercise over the military. The ministers of war (army) and navy could resign and bring down the government. They had to be active duty officers and branches could refuse to provide flag officers to those posts, making it impossible to form a new government. This has a huge role in the events surrounding the decisions leading to the surrender.
The general staffs of the two branches were out of the chain of civilian command and separate from the ministries of war and navy. The US Navy tried to have a separate commander in Chief, COMINCH and Chief of Naval Operations, CNO in the early days of the war and discovered that didn’t work so they gave both responsibilities to Admiral King. The Japanese never changed that.
The Emperor had limited powers of oversight. Technically, he was the “accept the advice” of his advisors. In the crisis around the surrender, he finally took extraconstitutional steps, but these were as irregular as say having Pence refuse to certify the election.
The “Japanese” certainly DID NOT simply want a land war with the US. The IJN had a Mahanian Decisive Battle Doctrine (艦隊決戦, Kantai Kessen , “naval fleet decisive battle”) and formed their entire navy around the belief they could defeat the US in a decisive battle somewhere in the Pacific.
The war was not simply the US Navy against the IJA. That ignores the struggles the Allied navies had gaining the upper hand over the IJN.
This is again a complete mischaracterization of the war. As I posted earlier, it was recognized by the Joint Chiefs of Staff that it would take defeating Japan, in Japan. There was never a belief that Japan could be defeated by naval power alone, although Curtis LeMay mistakenly believed that air power alone would bring Japan to her knees.
Taiwan was not Mac’s idea.
This is completely wrong. Nimitz did not believe that.
I think Paul in Saudi’s characterization is correct if we only look at the final phase of the war: the Operation Downfall part. Sure, earlier on in the war, the Japanese may have lusted after a big decisive naval battle that would win the war for them the same way Tsushima won it for Japan against the Russians half a century earlier. But by 1945, it was in Japan’s best interests for America to launch a massed amphibious invasion of Japan proper - basically, an invasion similar to Okinawa or Iwo Jima, on a scale 100x bigger. That played to Japan’s “strength” - what was left of it.
With a never-ending American naval blockade, on the other hand, coupled with nonstop American bombing raids, there would be nary a thing Japan could do about it.
FWIW, incidentally, in the modern day, this is Taiwan’s best approach if China attacks, too. A Chinese invasion of Taiwan would offer Taiwan a golden opportunity to smash the PLA en masse on the beaches, whereas a Chinese blockade of Taiwan would be well-nigh impossible for Taiwan to break. Islands are always best at defending against invasions, not blockades.
This is not accurate. Taking part of the Philippines was an essential war aim and was believed to be absolutely necessary to defeat Japan. What was a distraction was taking all of the PI and not just the essential parts.
There is little appreciation among casual readers of the war to the complete evolution of carrier power during the war. Before the outbreak of the war, it was believed that land-based aircraft would always defeat carrier based planes and that was not far from the truth in the early days. It wasn’t until the end where US carriers had the upper hand.
Most of Japanese advances were done within the radii of land-based aircraft. They would take position, capture airfields or build new ones and then jump to the next island or position.
By the middle of 1944, the US had an insane number of carriers and could defeat an entire island’s worth of planes and at the same time, the quality of Japanese pilots had deteriorated to the point of ridiculousness, leading to such victories as the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot where 900 US carrier planes went up against 750 Japanese land- and carrier-based planes, destroying 550 to 645 of them.
The US could bring over 1,000 carrier based planes into a single battle and could neutralize strongholds such as PI and Taiwan, without invading the latter. That was not anticipated in '42 when the plans were being initialized.
Taiwan was thought to be necessary because it was believed that based in eastern China would be necessary for the bombing of Japan. That was proved otherwise and the bases fell to Japanese forces anyway, eliminating the need to take Taiwan. It was recognized that northern Taiwan would be a bloody fight and basing US bombers in the south didn’t provide any advantages over the Mariannas.
As (mostly) Americans and Westerners, we tend to view the war as seen by our society. Taking a wider view, WWII can be seen as taking place in the region from Berlin to Tokyo. It was not mostly a Western European and Pacific event.
Most of the killing happened in the Soviet Union and China.
The main army of Japan’s war was its army, not its navy. The entire object of the American war plan in the Pacific was to come to grapple with the Japanese Army in Japan, as no defeat of the Japanese Army elsewhere, or any defeat of the Japanese Navy would bring about victory.
This completely misses the point. By mid '45, the IJN had been completely annihilated as a fighting force.
Again, outside of a few in the USAAF, there really wasn’t anyone who believed that bombing along (with the blockage) would defeat the Japanese so it’s a silly argument.
The IJA believed that they could inflict enough pain on the US that they could negotiate better terms of surrender but the US would not have accepted that. They were in denial and were beyond rational thinking.
I’ve written extensively about the surrender of Japan in previous threads, but most of the arguments here are wrong. This is the best summarization on the thread.
The decision making process leading to the surrender is absolutely fascinating and @Little_Nemo is way out in left field with a nonsensical theory. We understand the arguments which were being make and not a single one of the main players ever considered that.
The decision to surrender was made by the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War, (Supreme Council). Within the council were the decision makers, the Big Six. The Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister were the only civilians. Each of the branches were represented by the respective cabinet minister and the chief of staff.
Prime Minister: Admiral Kantarō Suzuki
Minister of Foreign Affairs: Shigenori Tōgō
Minister of the Army: General Korechika Anami
Minister of the Navy: Admiral Mitsumasa Yonai
Chief of the Army General Staff: General Yoshijirō Umezu
Chief of the Navy General Staff: Admiral Soemu Toyoda
Foreign Minister Togo was the only one really pushing for the end of the war; PM Suzuki was in favor of it; but not in a hurry and Navy Minister Yanai recognized the inevitable. Interestingly, Adm. Toyoda was leaning towards surrender until the atomic bomb was dropped then his resistance hardened.
After Hiroshima, the Big Six met and discussed the situation with a three-three tie which never changed despite the two atomic bombs and the entry of the Soviet Union into the war. Famously Hirohito intervened and broke the tie.
It’s simply impossible to give a definitive answer two which was more important. Reading the arguments by scholars on both sides demonstrates that it’s impossible to separate the events as they happened within this 72-hour period.
That’s an interesting point. To Americans and Canadians, but a lesser extent the British, the war with Japan was the Pacific War. Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal, Coral Sea, Leyte Gulf, Midway, Okinawa, Iwo Jima.
But the size and scope of the war on land - in China, Indochina, etc. - was gigantic. Japan’s war in China lasted over a decade and was immense in scope and cost; by itself it was one of the bloodiest wars ever fought. The fight between Slim’s 14th Army and the Japanese in the Burma Campaign was a theatre of war that killed a quarter of a million solders fought voer an area the size of Texas.
It’s often said in WWII discussions how Germany truly bled out in Russia, but it’s always forgotten that Japan truly bled out in China and Burma.
Altho TokyoBayer and myself have sometimes disagreed on some of the finer points of the War in the pacific (with either TokyoBayer ending up with him being right and me being wrong or simply a matter of opinion on “what ifs”), he is likely the pre-eminent expert here on the SDMB on the IJN and the Pacific front.
I had meant that you are correct, in contrast to most of the arguments by other people. Sorry for the poor wording. Unfortunately, many of the posters who really knew WWII aren’t posting anymore.
I really like this statement:
The story EVERYONE knows is that the Japanese were ready to die for their country, the two atomics bombs were dropped, Hirohito intervened and the war ended.
However, the real story is much more nuanced and much more interesting.
As far as I understand it, then you got it right. Most Japanese leaders, including Hirohito knew they were losing, but some were hoping against hope for some sort of miracle and others were simply pretending that the situation wasn’t as bad as it was.
I don’t know how many people here have every been a truly desperate situation where their lives were on the line or they were on the brink of financial ruin, or were so depressed they saw suicide as a viable option, but that’s the situation which Japan found itself on August 6th through the 9th. Some members of the Big Six reacted the same as other desperate people do, including going into complete denial.
The leadership had seen the war situation getting progressively worse and worse, yet they could not see how to end it.
As the situation got worse, you have to look not only at consequences to Japan but also the the individual decision makers. Hirohito get a lot of credit for pushing the surrender through, but this comes after the Allies had agreed to allow the institution of the emperor to continue. He wasn’t nearly as insistence when the hundreds of thousands of men, women, children, babies, grandmas and grandpa were getting burned to death as cities all over Japan were in flames.
The food situation had been bad then as Okinawa fell and the shipping situation had deteriorated to point where the food available was not longer sufficient to keep the population healthy and able to work. Unique among the major combatants, Japanese depended on ocean transport for basic food. It well know Japan lacked rice but also most of Japan’s sugar was grown in Formosa (Taiwan) and Okinawa and with the latter gone and the former completely cut off, the number of calories available for the population was now headed toward starvation diets.
Still, Hirohito had not pushed for surrender. He had appointed Suzuki prime minister after the fall of Okinawa but no one seemed to be in a hurry.
In contrast, the top military leaders were going to be completely fucked over very soon (and deservedly so, many of them were war criminals). The Allies had rejected allowing Japanese to try their own war criminals as a condition of surrender. They also were well aware that the Japanese way of live would be completely changed. In their opinion, it would be the end of Japan.
The one person I wished I could learn more about is Gen. Anami, the Minister of War (Army). Anticipating the invasion of the Kanto plains, the plans was that the leadership would retreat to the mountains in Nagano, and he was the most natural choice for the leader as martial law would be imposed. Certainly many of his subordinated wanted him to bring down the government and lead a coup.
As I said earlier, the resignation of either him or the Minister of Navy would cause Suzuki’s cabinet to fall, leading to direct military law. It would be his “right” to be the leader in charge.
It’s not known why he didn’t act. He knew about the coup and didn’t stop it, but also didn’t support it. There’s a great untold story there. In all of the negotiations, meetings and debates, all he would have had to do is to step outside the room for a piss and keep walking to his car. Then he would be the new leader of Japan. Why didn’t he do that? From Wiki
The military had been dragging their heels forever. Togo had been trying to push things, but the military keep trying to find excuse after excuse after excuse. They had been dodging the question by insisting that they needed to wait for an answer from the Soviets to see if Stalin would help them negotiate a surrender on better terms. Their entry to the war blew that up. It’s not so much that now they had another country to fight, it’s not that they would soon lose a huge territory to the Soviets, it took away the last excuse the military had.
That wasnt actually offered. It was unspoken. Mind you, Hirohito could assume that, but the deal was Unconditional Surrender. “We hereby proclaim the unconditional surrender to the Allied Powers of the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters and of all Japanese armed forces and all armed forces under the Japanese control wherever situated.” Now there was a line “The authority of the Emperor and the Japanese Government to rule the state shall be subject to the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers who will take such steps as he deems proper to effectuate these terms of surrender.” So that it did seem like the authority of the Emperor wasnt automatically going to be tossed out, but the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers could have just said “Ok, No More Emperor.”