Aww, c’mon. Everyone ‘knows’ the Japanese were natively better at jungle combat than the Americans, what with all of those jungles in Japan.
That is of course why for another example at the Battle of the Tenaru where the green 1st Marine Regiment seeing its first combat action of the war, didn’t bother to perform even the most basic reconnaissance and was taken by surprise by the crack Japanese troops of the Ichiki Detachment which with all of the combat experience they and Ichiki had gleaned from their experiences in China had his troops crawl on their bellies until they were right on top of the US Marines, who were all standing up and not even taking cover.
Hmm, wait, that isn’t what happened at all. The Marines, alerted to the presence of the Ichiki Detachment, dug in on Alligator Creek. When Ichiki blundered into this prepared defensive position during a night march when he hadn’t expected to run into American positions this far forward from Lunga point he ordered immediate, repeated frontal assaults which were annihilated almost to a man. By the early afternoon after the Marine counterattack 777 Japanese soldiers were dead, 15 prisoners, and only 30 survived to make it back to the rear echelon.
You know who was assigned to lead the landing force that was going to try to take Midway, right? Kiyonao Ichiki.
Of course they didn’t know that the war was lost until the announcement. It wasn’t lost until they surrendered.
However, the vast majority of the civilians had given up. The very fabric of society was unraveling quickly and (unfounded) fears of people turning against the Emperor were contributing reasons for the Emperor’s decision to throw the military under the bus, surrender the country and save himself.
The US was getting weary of the war, which had only lasted 3 1/2 years for them with comparatively fewer sacrifices than what the Japanese had to deal with. For that country, the war had been dragging on since 1937 and had been enduring increasing severe food shortages to the brink of mass starvation.
The Japanese propaganda machine backfired. The war against the US was not wildly popular. Unlike the Nazis, the Japanese never needed to gain the support of the masses for elections or support. They were simply roped into the deal. When the military did unexpectedly well in 1941 and '42, the propaganda made too much of it, producing a popular euphoria which proved unsustainable. Although early losses were kept from the news, it because impossible to conceal the losses.
The tipping point was the loss of Saipan, an island which was considered part of Japan with a large Japanese civilian population. It was on the perimeter of the last line of defense of the homeland. When it fell in July of 1944, the Tojo cabinet resigned and Koiso was made PM. Tojo’s resignation of course, was big news. It also marked the point where bad news was allowed to be reported in the press since it could not be hidden any further.
The subsequent string of losses, including the Philippines and then Okinawa were where a significant share of the population started to doubt the final outcome and lost faith in their military.
While the B-29 “precision” bombing campaign started in '44, it wasn’t until the firebombing of March, '45 which further destroyed the morale of the nation. Not only did a half a million people lose their lives, somewhere between 8.5 to 10 million citizens, some 20 to 25% of the urban population, were forced to evacuate to rural areas. A full two-thirds of the people were directly affected by air raids and one third had bombs land close, with 20% of the people losing their housing.
All of the hyped up propaganda which claimed invincibility of the military came back to bite them in their asses. They had made much about the fact that the US had not been able to repeat the Doolittle raid. They had promised that the Philippines wouldn’t fall.
Much of the population was simply exhausted from overwork and lack of food. Any spare time was spent stealing food from their neighbors, if they were poor, or buying it in the black market if they were rich.
The military had been preparing people for the invasion of Japan. Surely, this is a well-known fact which should have made it obvious that the “locals” would not have expected the IJN to be able to defend her shores.
The morale of Japanese was carefully watched by the officials before the end and then surveyed by the occupiers afterward in order to prepare for future wars. The strategic bombing was clearly shown to be the largest concern of the civilians, followed closely by the lack of food.
The naval bombardment did not occur until July, weeks before the end. There were only the Pollyannas (an incredibly high 28% of the population) which still believed they had a shot at it, although half of those were personally through with the war effort. Most people felt that they had to continue to sacrifice to the bitter end, although that wouldn’t have actually entailed charging tanks with bamboo spears.
Post surrender USAAF surveys showed that most people anticipated an invasion. One of the shocks of the surrender was that it ended so soon and without further battles. However, there was almost a universal relief that it was through.
The reason which people did not understand the Emperor’s announcement was that he addressed the nation in a formal court language which the average people would never have heard before. Also, he didn’t say that they were surrendering. Instead, he said they were going to accept the Allies’ “provisions of their Joint Declaration.”
This is actually one reason that combat experience in China failed to help prepare for war with the US. What worked against poorly armed, poorly led and unmotivated peasants didn’t do so well against better led, better armed and more motivated troops who knew how to dig in.
One should remember that in WW2 even the American press was forbidden to report any major American losses so few knew how for instance, German uboats were having a field day sinking American ships right offshore.
26 ON TANKER LOST AS U-BOAT STRIKES; 12 ADRIFT 36 HOURS; The India Arrow Sinks in an Inferno of Blazing Oil, the Twelfth in U.S. Waters SHIPS IGNORE SURVIVORS Wary of Attack, They Refuse to Answer Signal – London Views Situation Gravely 26 ON TANKER LOST AS U-BOAT STRIKES MEN WHO SURVIVED AND SHIP LOST IN TORPEDOING- February 7, 1942
TWO TANKERS LOST; U.S., Norwegian Ships New U-Boat Victims Off Atlantic Coast TWENTY DIE IN BLAZING SEA 18 Survivors Rescued From Inferno Are Landed in Jacksonville, Fla. TWO TANKERS LOST IN U-BOAT ATTACKS-February 22, 1942
U-BOATS GET SHIP CARRYING BAUXITE; Yugoslav Freighter Sunk Off Coast – Nazis Take Pictures of Men in Water FOUR OF CREW ARE DEAD Navy Discloses Details of the Sinking of. U.S., Norwegian Vessels in Atlantic-March 20, 1942
AXIS GETS 15 SHIPS; 231 DEAD, MISSING; Army Men Among 86 Feared Lost on One – U-Boat Named in Argentine Vessel Attack AXIS SINKS 14 SHIPS; 223 DEAD, MISSING-June 24, 1942
I’m surprised that even with coastal artillery to deal with, the Japanese didnt bring their battleships close in to Pearl Harbor and try to finish off the fleet.
For that matter, why wasn’t there a return flight?
Out of Av gas? With that size fleet, there had to be more munitions.
Oilers probably couldn’t be used for av gas due to contamination with ship oil (bunker oil - barely flammable compared to Av gas), even if they didn’t have a shortage of oilers.
None of the Pacific Fleet carriers were in port (though better weather on the 6th would have put the Enterprise there), and that fact must have been on the minds of Nagumo and company. I believe there was a third strike planned to hit the oil storage facilities, but after the second the decision was made to quit while they were ahead and skedaddle.
There was a lot of coastal artillery, Pearl Harbor is shaped in such a way that enemy battleships would have trouble getting in there, and the Japanese had only brought two battleships.
So odd that the defeated British leader, Percival, placed very “highly” in the SDMB’s “Worst Military Leader” elimination thread. I think we have to see Singapore as an outlier that says little about how any putative invasion of Hawaii would have unfolded.
Do you seriously need an explanation on the differences between taking Singapore and taking Hawaii? For starters Singapore didn’t have about that in guns. It also didn’t have five divisions, it had two organized divisions, the 18th British and 8th Australian, and a third division formed from the remnants of the 9th Indian which had been amalgamated with the 11th Indian, both of which had nearly been annihilated by the Japanese during the retreat down the Malay peninsula. That ought to bring up the most pertinent fact for you: the Japanese didn’t conduct an amphibious landing at Singapore into the teeth of its coastal guns, they landed 300 miles north of Singapore and marched south, here’s a map of the campaign for you. They also had certain nice advantages like a short supply line, a direct land connection through Thailand, and overwhelming air superiority to name a few. It’s rather impossible to land 300 miles north of Oahu and then march south to it, what with all of that water in the way. It is also impossible to land anywhere on Oahu without being exposed to its coastal guns, if you’d noticed on the map provided the island is both bristling with batteries and isn’t that wide of an island. The divisional guns of the 24th and 25th Infantry Divisions, not included in the list of coastal artillery guns, could fire and hit any point on the entire island from their base at Schofield Barracks.
As I said, nobody ever attempted an amphibious landing against anything remotely like that kind of coastal artillery. This wasn’t by accident; nobody was stupid enough to do something that suicidal.
If by battleships you mean their main battle line rather than just the two assigned to escort the carriers, Japan didn’t have the tankers to support deploying them there even if they weren’t already tied up protecting landings throughout Malaya, the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies. As Captain Amazing said, Pearl Harbor is shaped in such a way that enemy battleships would have trouble getting in there. If you’ll take a look again at this map of coastal artillery battery locations, that inlet in the south center of the island is Pearl Harbor. You’ll also notice that it’s the part of the island that has the largest concentration of gun batteries controlling any approach to it.
The US government didn’t allow photos of dead GIs to run until September 1943, when it began letting some run out of concerns of the public becoming complacent about the war; the graphicness and frequency of death being depicted became more intense as the next two years wore on. One poster placed at war industry plants by the end of 1944 or so was a picture of slumped over dead American soldier, his helmet askew with the simple caption something along the lines of: “This happens every X minutes. Stay on the job and get it done.” The Censored War covers this topic very well but is definitely not for the faint of heart; it contains very graphic images of death, the cover photo should give some idea.
Interestingly enough, the atomic bombing actually both forced the discussion for surrender and also lead one of the key players into a harder line.
The key decision-making body at the end of the war was the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War which consisted of the following individuals.
Prime Minister: Admiral Kantarō Suzuki
Minister of Foreign Affairs: Shigenori Tōgō
Minister of War (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
The most powerful man was Gen. Anami, who, along with his counterpart in the Navy, nominally reported directly to the Emperor, and not to the cabinet. Admiral Suzuki had been brought in to end the war; the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the only civilian in this inner cabinet, was part of the “peace faction” along with Admiral Yonai.
The Chief of Staff Admiral Toyoda became even more entrenched after the atomic bombing.
This Council wound up split 3-3 and was unable to make the final decision, at which point Hirohito stepped in.
I’ve posted extensively on the Council and the final days before, so I’ll skip it on this thread.
And, of course you very well know this, the Japanese attacked overland, an option not available for an attack on Oahu.
The Japanese had carefully planned their attack, they were able to flank the defenders on the Malay Peninsula through the “impassible” jungle, they had air support from land bases, they didn’t have to land all of their troops at one time, they didn’t face effective coastal defense where they did land, and Singapore’s defense was particularly weak to the north.
Singapore’s coastal artillery was naturally based on the war planning for a sea invasion, and the batteries did not have sufficient HE shells. Plenty of AP shells, which sunk into the mud when fired against enemy troops.
With Britain’s front line fighters urgently needed for the defense of the homeland, Singapore did not have any effective air defenses.
Besides their incompetent leaders the troops defending Malay and Singapore had large components of poorer trained local troops and an acute lack of supplies.
All of this would have been completely different in Oahu.
It look until 1944 for the US to be able to plan extensive amphibious landings. No military forces in 1941 could have pulled it off.
There is no way that Japan could have maintained air superiority over Hawaii for a minimum of four week. You can’t park your carriers off the enemy sub base for that long, as well as having to contend with all the other problems. The mind boggles.
The idea of a successful invasion of Hawaii is simply nonsense.
More nonsense. That’s a damn good way to get your fleet sunk. Did you read Dissonance’s post? Reread it.
They didn’t have enough oil, for one thing. They were on the very outer edge of reserves, which was one factor for not making a third
The Kidobutai was able to make the attack they did because of the superior distance of the Zero fighter. The bombers had a longer range of course, so the limitation was the escort fighters. They were able to launch the attack from long distance and then get the hell out of Dodge. They launched from 230 nm out.
They only had a limited number of escort destroyers. Are you going to leave your carriers under-guarded while you spend a day bringing your battleships in, bombard the place and head back out? Or bring them along into land-based aircraft range? Either way, completely unacceptable.
The two IJN battleships, the Hiei and Kirishima both had top speeds of 30 knots. This would be 15 hours(!) round trip. Well, more, of course, because they have to go around the island.
More silliness.
As noted above, lack of oil for the destroyers, plus the increased risk of hanging around had the rather conservative Nagumo deciding to quit while he was way ahead.
They didn’t have enough munitions to take out the sub base or the dry docks. Carrier based bombers just can’t carry enough bombs for these types of missions, to begin with, you need land based larger bombers.
I read an analysis of how many bombs the fleet could have carried, and it would not have been sufficient.
There was never a plan to hit the oil storage facilities and they lacked sufficient bombs. IJN was not using AP bullets, so the oil storage tanks would have had to be bombs and not simply strafed.
Although the leader of the attack, Fukuda, wanted to make the third wave, Nagumo was not interested.
One IJN officer made the point after the war that they had not been considering attacking logistics in PH, because they weren’t thinking of their own logistics.
Looking at maps of the two places shows how much more impossible an invasion of Hawaii would be. Oahu is only 600 sq mi, with major mountain ranges though it. There were 50,000 US troops which could have great defense in depth, short supply lines and lots of replacement planes coming over.
There would have been zero chance of the IJN to be able to maintain air superiority for the minimum of four weeks, and most likely longer.
They could not have done the same degree of extensive reconnaissance which they had done in Malay, Singapore, Hong Kong and the PI.
Appreciate the correction. I was probably conflating the third strike with the Monday-morning quarterbacking that leaving the oil storage tanks (and submarine base) intact were significant failures.
In any case, the primary objective had been achieved. With the US battle line out of commission, the Mahan-esque Decisive Naval Battle™ (which seemed to be a core component of both IJN and USN strategy at the time) would be delayed until the Japanese defense perimeter was complete. Then when the US fleet did sortie, it would be harassed and weakened on its way to the point where the Japanese fleet could annihilate it somewhere around the Philippines.
