Their only realistic hope of success would be to have caused sufficient reverses to the Allied forces that it made continuing the war politically impossible.
They never came close. After the defeats of summer 1944, they knew it was not going to happen.
Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the gate:
“To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods,
“And for the tender mother
Who dandled him to rest,
And for the wife who nurses
His baby at her breast,
And for the holy maidens
Who feed the eternal flame,—
To save them from false Sextus
That wrought the deed of shame?
That was never a remotely realistic hope, as anyone with a solid grasp of reality like Yamamoto knew; hence his belief that he could run wild for the first six or twelve months but past that he had no expectation of success, and that the only way the war could be won was by marching into Washington and dictating the terms of peace from the White House. Unfortunately for the Japanese people, those running the country who had a solid grasp on reality were few and far between who insisted that the fighting spirit of the Yamato people was invincible and could make up for any material deficiencies. This was one of the many reasons Japanese logistics was so unbelievably poor; being assigned to the logistical pool was looked down upon, as was being assigned to convoy escort duty or attacking enemy merchant shipping with their own submarines. While Japanese submarines had a few successes against Allied naval vessels such as the sinking of the carrier Wasp, they invariably used their I-boats to try to form a reconnaissance screen ahead of the battle fleet in every major operation. With their impressive range and torpedoes, they would far better served Japan sinking US shipping off the West Coast, but there was no honor to be had sinking merchant vessels.
Those with a realistic appreciation of the situation like Yamamoto knew it was never going to happen on Dec 7th, 1941 but fatalistically went about doing his duty for his country. For most of the military leadership that was running Japan, they never accepted that it was not going to happen; not after the defeats in the summer of 1944, not after the heart of every major Japanese city had been burned to the ground, not after Japan was down to 23% of the merchant tonnage it had started the war with which was barely adequate to begin with and was now facing mass starvation, not after the US was knocking on Japan’s doorstep having taken Okinawa, not when faced with an imminent US invasion of the Japanese Home Islands, and for some not even after two atomic bombs had been dropped. They were prepared to commit national suicide before admitting defeat, and still clung to entirely unrealistic hopes that they could improve Japan’s military situation up until August 1945.
What if the Japanese had taken the Hawaiian islands? Could they have taken them?
Unlikely, I would think. Pearl Harbor got wrecked because of a well timed, well implemented surprise attack. If Japan tried to take Hawaii, which it might of temporarily achieved I admit, but it would begin a tedious ground and air campaign close enough to the American mainland that the Yankees could afford to feed indefinitely, while Japan could not. It would have lost Japan much and gained it nothing to take Hawaii except one good naval yard. As I understand it, a protracted campaign against American ground forces was a thing Japan was eager to avoid just about everywhere they went, including those instances where exactly that happened (and it cost them dearly).
Bear in mind that Horatius survived. He was *willing *to die for his country, but it wasn’t, like, his first option. Lots of people miss that point.
I would think the average Japanese citizen would know when waves of bomber started appearing and dropping tons of bombs, every day.
So, late 44? Early 45? I don’t recall how long it took for the bombing campaign to get ramped up and being a significant factor.
Daily or nearly-daily bombing of London didn’t convince the average British citizen/subject that the jig was up for the Allies.
The bombing of London was just a pinprick compared to what the B29s did to Japan. The bombing of Japan would at least serve notice to the people that the years of stories they’d been fed of unending victories were bullshit.
Smaller countries have won many wars against larger ones. In theory, Japan absolutely could have won a limited victory against the Allies. The problem was they were already beaten before Pearl Harbor.
See, Japan started botching things pretty early on; they were in a quagmire in China BEFORE Pearl Harbor. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese had more ground troops involved in war against China than the Allies would use against Japan during the entire war. You are talking about a country than in December 1941 had millions of troops engaged in an endless, obviously unwinnable war in China, and decided then that it was a great idea to attack the Allies. That decision is roughly analogous to Germany deciding in 1943 to invade South America and then being surprised they can’t quite spare the necessary manpower and materiel to pull it off.
Fantastic typo, coming from a history buff like yourself! 
To explain this point a little further…while Japanese propaganda reported frequent crushing victories over the Americans, the military had significant problems itself in keeping track of enemy forces and assessing damage. All nations had difficulty translating the after-action claims of young pilots (who had fought at high speeds under extreme emotional arousal) into accurate damage and loss estimates. The problem was arguably worse for Japan, for number of reasons. Poor intelligence networks, and later in the war, loss of air superiority making photo reconnaissance missions exceedingly difficult, made Japan unusually dependent on the reports of pilots who had survived battles. Japan’s warrior culture may also have pushed young men to over-report successes, which increased their status, and minimize shameful failures.
As a result, the new/propaganda was increasingly fantasy, but even the military’s own understanding of the damage it had, or had not, inflicted on its enemies became gradually unhunged from reality. Trivia: unreliable damage assessments were a factor in Yamamoto’s death. His pilots in Rabaul had reported inflated sinkings in a major operation, and he flew in to reward them. News of his coming was imprudently circulated in advance, and the American codebreakers picked it up. Long-range P-38 fighters were sent to intercept and shoot down his plane.
Added to all the above, the intense rivalry between the Imperial Navy and Army led to them keeping secrets from each other, especially when those secrets involved admissions of failure or defeat.
All that must have made it extremely difficult for anyone in Japan, military or civilian, to have an accurate sense of how the war was going. I expect that, in many cases, the appearance of enemy forces must have come as a shock.
Barring divine intervention, there is no possible way they could have taken the Hawaiian Islands. The amount of troops Japan had to spare for the opening moves against the Philippines, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, etc. was surprisingly small and supporting these opening moves was severely taxing on the Japanese merchant marine. One thing Japan was desperately short of was tankers. In order to come up with the troops and shipping to even try to invade the Hawaiian Islands would mean no invasion of the Philippines or the Dutch East Indies and severely limited operations against Malaya. A landing attempt by the Japanese on Oahu would look a lot like the first battle of Wake Island where the Japanese landing force was annihilated. The island was heavily garrisoned; the US Army had 40,000 men on the island including two full strength infantry divisions. Finally, and probably most importantly, Oahu was protected by a truly formidable amount of coastal artillery which would have shot any landing attempt to pieces. There’s a map of battery locations here, they consisted of:
4 16" naval rifles
2 14" naval rifles
4 12" naval rifles
20 12" mortars
12 240mm guns
4 8" railway guns
2 8" guns
18 155mm guns GPF
8 6" guns
10 3" guns
20 3" AA guns
12 2.4" guns
What sort of guns would be on a EJ battleship?
The aircraft attack on December 7 did well.
As I said, one of the things the Japanese were horribly short of was tankers; supporting a one day raid by 6 carriers with 2 battleships, 2 heavy and one light cruiser and a dozen destroyers was one thing, supporting an invasion force strong enough to overcome 40,000 defenders and that much coastal artillery was entirely another. Even for that small of a force conducting a one day raid, the IJN had to use 8 tankers. Coastal artillery has a number of advantages over guns on ships, the most obvious of which is they can’t be sunk. Knocking them out requires placing direct hits with large caliber naval rifles on them; while the coastal artillery just has to hit the ship, not make direct hits on the turrets. Fire control is also notably easier for coastal guns, which don’t have to try to compensate for the motion of their own ship coming up with a fire control solution. They also have to be knocked out or they are going to tear the slow moving, unarmored troop ships to shreds when they try to approach the shore. Notably, nobody ever tried to conduct an amphibious landing against anything remotely like that kind of coastal artillery during the entire war, and for good reason. Navies just didn’t do well against coastal guns in that day and age; when the British and French tried to force the Dardanelles in WW1 they failed to silence the Ottoman guns and had 3 battleships sunk and 3 severely damaged for their troubles.
To give an idea of how just much trouble even a single casemated coastal battery could be take out, 2 twin 13.4" turrets taken from the French battleship La Provence were mounted by the Germans at Saint-Mandrier in WW2 from which they controlled access to the harbor at Toulon. One was sabotaged, but the other one, nicknamed “Big Wille” was subjected to 9 days of daily bombing and shelling by the battleships Nevada, Lorraine, H.M.S. Ramilles, the heavy cruisers Augusta and Quincy, the light cruiser Philadelphia and smaller vessels before finally being silenced, with the battleships closing to within 5 miles of the shore. There’s a picture of it and the moonscape surrounding it after it’s capture here.
But for the record the IJN had 2 battleships with 16" guns, and 8 with 14" guns. The Yamato with 18" guns didn’t commission until a week after Pearl Harbor.
See post 18 for the answer. There were earlier bombing runs which were singularly ineffective. The trade winds above Japan were too strong, so when they attempted daytime “precision bombing” at a sufficient altitude, the trade winds would give them either too much speed for the Norden bombsight or put them too slow and make them sitting ducks for the AA.
They developed the M69 napalm bomblets to burn down a bunch of Japanese houses. The housing in the shitamachi inner cities were packed like sardines, sometimes three deep, no yards and narrow streets. After the first devastating raid, they started tearing homes down to make firebreaks, which is why none of the subsequent attacks were as deadly. That, and the largest shitamachi was where the first attack was placed.
As further explanation, the Japanese completely failed to grasp the lessons of either WWI or WWII Battle of the Atlantic. They simply did not take logistics into consideration until it was far too late and too much damage was done.
Incredible, they failed to implement the convoy system for merchant ships until 1943, IIRC, and never had anywhere near sufficient escort ships.
Yamamoto was not immune from the Victory Disease which permeated the IJN in early 1942, but was abruptly excised at 10:22 on June 4 of that year.
There are indications that for a brief few months he may have believed in their magic.
No. This was well after the B-29s had been incinerating their cites at will.
The British didn’t face 400 bombers each carrying 10 tons of bombs and being pretty with impunity. There is a reason it was called the *Battle *of Britain but a corresponding title was never used in Japan.
Army surveyors who went to both Germany and Japan after the war were amazed how much more damage was done to Japan.
That’s funny.
Certainly the effectiveness of suicide missions flown not only against US ships but also against the B-29 were routinely exaggerated. No one wanted to report that their comrades died in vain.
According to combinedfleet.com
This goes back to your earlier statement that only divine intervention would have granted success to the Japanese.
You give too much credit to the Japanese gods. They were never that effective. It’s one thing to brew up a typhoon against 13th century Mongolian invaders, it’s another to turn seawater into oil. Had their divinities been capable of such a feat, they could have avoided war in the first place.
Your point is spot on. They lacked the logistics for an invasion for such a distant country. No one could have done that. It was far too far from any of their bases.
I’ve burned up my research time, but IJN lacked sufficient Landing Craft Depot Ships for an invasion. According to combinedfleet.com, they only had the Shinshumaru in December, 1941. While that would have supported an invasion force of 20,000, it would not have been enough for an operation in Hawaii.
The Japanese floated nearly it whole damn navy on the attempted invasion of Midway, and that was with only 5,000 troops against a tiny atoll without the coastal guns, airpower and manpower of the Hawaiian islands. There simply is no way they could have pulled it off. With or without their gods’ help.
No to what? I know the shore bombardments were very late in the war. I didn’t say they occurred any earlier than the bombings. And since I mentioned them after the bombings … ???
No that the locals expected the IJN to show up. They already saw that their armed forces were unable to defend against the terror from the skies. There is no indication that they expected relief from sea-based attacks.
Nothing I’ve read has supported your argument.
I do think the Japanese forces, if allowed to land on Hawaii, could have worked over the American forces stationed there pretty easily because the Japanese forces had already had the experience of fighting for several years in China while American forces in 1941 were still pretty green. For example the Japanese soldiers could lay on his belly and crawl up to a position pretty quickly while American forces would be standing up.
This is ignorant slander.
“Green” Americans gave the Japanese all they could handle at Wake Island, and, on a much larger scale, the Philippines.
The first Japanese assault on WI was bloodily repulsed and before the campaign was over the Japanese suffered 10 times as many battle casualties as the Americans.
On the PI the inspirational US defense held out for six months, unreinforced and unsupplied. US regular Army forces in Hawaii were larger than those in the PI, and would have been much easier to reinforce and and resupply.
And the bit about American soldiers being unable to entrench or take cover is preposterous.
Yup.
The Japanese were unable to land on their first attempt, managing to sink an IJN destroyer with their six 5" coastal artillery, while the Marine Wildcats took out another.
This was early in the war, and both sides made some really serious mistakes. MacArthur’s inexplicable response, or rather failure to respond to the news of the Pearl Harbor attack was one of the deadliest of the war and completely changed the scenario.
I agree with you. While it’s completely impossible for the Japanese to have brought sufficient troops and supplies to the coastal waters off Oahu, let alone land any troops, even in an alt-history where this reality is waved, they could not have won the Battle of Hawaii.
Imperial forces did extremely well in the early months of the Southeast Asian campaigns by always ensuring air superiority, either by carrier or building air bases. The IJN simply could not have parked their Kodobutai in the waters around the islands for the duration of the fight for all the reasons one can imagine.
Agreed. Absurd. Perhaps he was thinking of WWI and the early days of combat between Germany and France before people learned to duck?