Keep in mind the war with Japan and the war with Germany were essentially two separate wars that we happened to end up fighting simultaneously.
Roosevelt saw (correctly in my opinion) that Germany was the main threat. He was trying to avoid a war with Japan in order to focus American resources against Germany. So while he might have tried to provoke an attack in the Atlantic, he would have avoided doing so in the Pacific.
It’s almost always easier to look back after several decades have passed, and see with 20-20 hindsight that some action was a huge mistake.
Pearl Harbor is an exception to that rule. It was obvious at the time that it was a huge mistake, no matter how well it succeeded in the short term. Winston Churchill’s immediate reaction upon hearing of the attack was (reportedly), “We have won the war.”
If one imagines an alternate reality in which Japan avoids war with the US, it would have to be a more self-consistent reality than one in which Japan simply refrains from attacking Pearl Harbor. In particular, they would have to have been more willing to compromise and negotiate joint interests in the Pacific instead of the increasingly belligerent and intransigent positions that they took, and the US would have needed to be more accommodating as well.
What Japan had in its favor if it had played its cards right was that Roosevelt and the American public felt – correctly – that Hitler and the Nazis were an overwhelmingly greater threat. Japan had imperial ambitions in its own area and among its own neighbors, but the Third Reich was an immediate threat to the entire western world and beyond, and hence a direct threat to US security at home. This sentiment remained true even after Pearl Harbor, but that event obviously cemented US resolve against Japan and precipitated war in two theaters.
I think this gets into hindsight territory. Did they have a better option? Of course they did…they COULD have agreed to the terms the US was asking them to and had embargoed them over and gotten out of China. That would have pretty much taken the economic pressure off of them the US and others were imposing. They didn’t NEED a vast pacific rim empire, didn’t need to fight the US or the old European colonial powers, didn’t really need China as an extension of that empire. Even with those concessions, they would still have had Korea and Manchuria, which they probably could have negotiated to keep by ending hostilities with what remained of China.
However, much of that is hindsight. Japan, like Germany, thought the US was weak and had no stomach for a real fight. They didn’t understand the dynamics of how the US political process or the mindset of the American people are. That said, even Americans don’t always get it either, and it’s hard to say what is going to drive public opinion or public outrage, or what direction that will take the country. With what the Japanese knew and thought they knew at the time it was probably the ‘wisest course of action’ based on their motives, goals and their own political realities (not even sure if the Japanese government of the time could have backed down to the US or could have withdrawn from China and stayed in power). In hindsight, of course, it was a terrible decision and basically destroyed their government and their country, costing millions of lives and taking decades to get over.
No, I doubt all of this. I think that, had they continued in China that there would have eventually been a clash with the US…and without the surprise attack it might not have been on as favorable opening terms. I suppose you could game this so that they wait until the US is fully engaged with Germany (who we’d already been in a semi-covert war with in the North Atlantic prior to the US actually going to war with Germany and Japan), which I think was inevitable as well, then declared war on the US and maybe mouse trapped the fleet somewhere in deep water where, once it was sunk it stayed sunk, etc etc, but this was their best shot at taking the US out early and, in theory putting us enough behind that we’d sue for peace (probably was never going to happen, even if they got the carriers). There just wasn’t any way to involve America in a war and not rile up the populace, even without the sneak attack. The Germans, after all, hadn’t done anything like that and we went after them with the majority of our power first and simply because that’s what our allies wanted.
Didn’t the US have but a single carrier at some point, and Fletcher decided that one carrier was better than no carriers?
I’ve been Googling without luck for that and how quickly the US added more carriers after that.
With all due respect, that’s a very unsatisfying answer. Admiral Nimitz said after the war “Had the Japanese destroyed the oil, it would have prolonged the war another two years.” Most of the damaged ships were repaired and put back into service which wouldn’t have been able to happen with more Japanese follow through. Without a little explaining, I have trouble thinking “meh, 6 more months” is reasonable.
The major fleet carriers in the Pacific fleet (that were stationed at Pearl Harbor), IIRC were Enterprise, Lexington and Saratoga. There were several other carriers, but were deployed elsewhere (west coast of the US, or in the Atlantic fleet).
Thanks. I must be thinking of Fletcher wanting more than one carrier in a task force.
Japan absolutely made a blunder by attacking the US; while it may not have prevented all-out war, it gave the US much more impetus to go to war and may have also prevented Japan from getting an armistice as opposed to unconditional surrender at war’s end.
The best thing for Japan to do would have been to consolidate its territorial holdings and stop conquering, just consolidate, especially in the oil-rich Southeast Asia territories.
And if Japan had to strike Pearl Harbor, it goofed by not launching that 3rd wave and hitting the oil facilities, and also by failure to get the carriers.
Total? No. Operative in the theater? Yes. During the Guadalcanal campaign, first the Hornet and later the Enterprise had the distinction of being the only operative carrier in the US Pacific Fleet.
Thanks.
The idea that Germany threatened US security at home wasn’t even remotely a credible immediate threat.
Ah, I misread what was being asked…I thought he was asking at the time of Pearl Harbor. Yes, there were a few times we were down to 1 major fleet carrier in theater. My bad.
Well this rather assumes that they *could *do that. But the fact was that would involve more sorties from the carriers, and the element of surprise was gone by that point. Air defenses were in place, ships had been moved, etc.
Mining the harbor was not a technology Japan could do by plane.
For the record: Many folks comment that if Japan had made another sortie and attacked the Fuel-Oil facilities they could have really hamstrung the US Navy. But this assumes that the attack force could actually destroy those facilities. They couldn’t. Not with the planes they brought and the weaons they had.
There was pretty minimal Japanese losses in the initial sorties, so I don’t see why additional sorties would have been a problem, unless they had barely enough fuel or ordinance to do what they did. Istm, they should have crushed the base, not just hit the ships. Obviously, they would have to have made it part of the plan to mine the harbour and have the appropriate equipment trailing to do so.
Well, they didn’t need it any more than the Dutch needed Indonesia, the Brits India & Burma and so on. It’s easy to be for World Peace and a keeping to the status quo when you’re got a firm grip on the status quo’s testicles.
From Japan’s point of view, they were the uppity underdog finally getting their chance to get a spot in the sun, proving Asians had what it took to compete at all. Had Japan not tried to expand, for one thing they would likely have remained a third world country for ever, getting pushed around by the Powers as every other Asian country had been for the past 150 years or so ; for another thing European colonies in India & Asia might have still been a Thing going into the 70s, possibly even later. That’s the one upside of the Pacific War happening : it boosted and sped up the various independence movements a hell of a lot.
Even if this were all true (and personally I don’t think it’s nearly as cut and dried as you are making it out to be wrt Japan having to have an empire or being the world’s whipping boy, etc etc), it still beats getting the shit kicked out of them in WWII. That’s hindsight talking, as I said, but there was no need for Japan to confront militarily either the old colonial European powers in the region or the US in order to break out of the grip of colonial power…they had already pretty much done that, if nothing else when they defeated the Russian Navy in 1905. Japan simply wanted to BE a great (European) colonial empire of their own.
As for the Pacific War breaking the rest of Asia out of that mold, perhaps. The biggest thing I can think of, however, was that the war enabled the CCP to gain a stranglehold on China and cost untold millions of deaths that wouldn’t have happened if Japan simply had caved into US demands to back out of China. I’m pretty sure that the US et al would have been ok with Japan holding onto their previously gained possessions in Korea and (maybe) Manchuria in exchange for a peace treaty with China and them backing out of China. Maybe the French would have let them stay in Vietnam as well, though no idea there.
My statement was “Roosevelt and the American public felt – correctly – that Hitler and the Nazis were an overwhelmingly greater threat. Japan had imperial ambitions in its own area and among its own neighbors, but the Third Reich was an immediate threat to the entire western world and beyond, and hence a direct threat to US security at home.”
Germany most certainly threatened US security at home and was an immediate threat to much of the western world and a direct threat to the US …
As the United States celebrated today the signing of the World War armistice, President Roosevelt declared in his address that this country may be forced by Germany into another war. Other speakers emphasized the same theme of the Nazi peril … “We know,” he went on, “that these men [in the First World War] died to save their country from a terrible danger of the day. We know, because we face that danger once again on this day."
– New York Times, Nov 11, 1941
And then, after Pearl Harbor:
One answer to the question of what the American Navy is doing in this war was given yesterday by Secretary Knox* in a speech prepared for delivery at the annual Conference of Mayors in Washington … Mr. Knox warned his audience not to expect “full-scale naval engagements in the Pacific in the near future.” He asked for popular understanding and approval of the strategy that keeps so large a part of the Navy occupied in the Atlantic: “We know who our great enemy is – the enemy who, before all others, must be defeated first. It is not Japan; it is not Italy; it is Hitler and Hitler’s Nazis, Hitler’s Germany.”
Fortunately Mr. Knox does not need to argue his point. The country accepted it from the moment we went to war. It is proof of the level-headedness of the American people that even in the first days after the infuriating attack at Pearl Harbor – in the days before Mr. Churchill came to this country and before the importance of the front against Hitler was emphasized by the organization of the grand alliance of twenty-six United Nations – the American public never lost sight of the real objective. On this point the evidence of the Gallup survey is convincing. During the period of Dec. 11-19, a period beginning immediately after Pearl Harbor, Dr. Gallup’s organization found that more than four times as many Americans regard Germany as a greater threat than Japan … The average American knows that a victory over Japan would bring us no security whatever so long as Hitler remained unconquered, whereas the defeat of Hitler would enormously hasten, if it did not almost automatically accomplish, the defeat of his Eastern ally.
– New York Times, January 13th, 1942
Refers to William F. “Frank” Knox, Secretary of the Navy under FDR. According to Wikipedia, “Knox was mentioned by name in Adolf Hitler’s speech of December 11, 1941, in which Hitler asked for a German declaration of war against the United States.”
How about you explain why that feeling was “correct” rather than the fact that Roosevelt pushed that feeling? Germany could not possibly threaten the U.S. mainland. The idea is preposterous.
It was our allies who convinced Roosevelt et al to fight the German war first, because the biggest threat to the alliance as a whole was from Germany. Neither Germany nor Japan were existential (short or medium term anyway) threats to the US, but Japan was the bigger threat to our trade and probably our economy.
Doesn’t really matter though, since the US might have focused more on Germany, but we still fought the Japanese in the Pacific, and even without a focus on Japan we (the US and our allies) managed to stop the Japanese advance and then push them back, eventually crushing their fleet in a series of battles and taking enough islands to finally bring Japan itself into range of our bombers and hit the main islands. That was always going to be the eventual outcome, especially in hindsight, but I think the Japanese planners didn’t see it that way, and had the war in the Pacific gone as they planned then, perhaps, it would have turned out to be a good move to attack and destroy the US fleet. If you take hindsight away and just go based on what Japan knew at the time, well, it was a risk but not the inevitable loss we, with the benefit of that hindsight can clearly see was the only real outcome, whether it took 5 years or 10. Unless the US gave up, Japan was going to go down one way or another.