Inspired by this thread, what did the Japanese think would happen after Pearl Harbor? Yamamato feared “they had awoken a sleeping giant”. While I know the quote isn’t real, it implies most other Japanese leaders did not fear a sleeping giant would awake.
So, why did they think a larger industrialized country with enormous resources would not be filled with terrible resolve? That the Japanese would raid Pearl Harbor and the American go “You got us, we’ll stop bothering you”. Even if it was a pre-emptive strike to prevent interference to the Philippines and Southeast Asia, did they really think the US military would say “They took out our Pacific Fleet, may as well leave them alone, no need to rebuild or challenge them”.
Hindsight is 20/20, Pearl Harbor was a mistake, and we did rebuild a gigantic navy and basically destroyed their country. Why did the Japanese think anything else would happen after attacking a naval installation and declaring war? Maybe not why (they are fanatics, etc), but what else did they think would after December 7?
Japan had won a war against Russia,fought with the Allies in WWI, and had a modern, British-inspired fleet. They were very confident. But there was a worldwide depression. Japan sought to expand its empire into China and Southeast Asia to secure resources for itself and solve its economic problems. But the United States was standing in the way. The U.S. embargoed many materials that Japan needed. So Japan had to move south for such things as rubber. Japan saw a war with the U.S. as inevitable. But Japan couldn’t reasonably take on the U.S. unless they evened the odds. A devastating surprise attack, it was thought, would keep the U.S. out of a war until Japan could secure its position and the foreign resources.
The idea was sound. Destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet and bottle up our strategic base at Pearl Harbor. It almost worked, too. They hit all eight battleships were damaged, and four were sunk. At the time, battleships were the capital vessels. Maybe the Japanese didn’t understand how personally we would take an attack, because three of the sunken BBs were raised and all of the battlewagons were repaired (and upgraded). The Japanese also failed to destroy the U.S. fuel reserves in Hawaii. Had they destroyed the fuel, and had they sunk the U.S. carriers too, their plan of keeping the U.S. out of the war might have worked.
Because one of the things the Axis nations had in common was a belief at the top that fascist or dictatorial nations (themselves) had a strong national spirit, led by a strong central will, that would get them past all sorts of hardships while democracies like the U.S., U.K., and France* would, when faced with all but the slightest resistance or hardship, either (a) collapse into an ungovernable scrum of factions that would be easily defeated or (b) coalesce into well-run dictatorships like themselves. They couldn’t fathom that a democracy with its peacetime factions could coalesce into something like a single will when threatened and yet not become a permanent dictatorship.
*Yes, I know none of them were wholly democratic by 21st Century standards. They were still a helluvalot closer to democracy than Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, or hypernationalist Imperial Japan.
Every nation ever has assumed that its resolve would be strengthened by an attack, but that every other nation’s resolve would be weakened. If that weren’t true, we’d probably have a lot fewer wars.
From my reading, Japan’s military leaders thought that a decisive blow would destroy the US will to fight. That might have been related to the sense of cultural/racial supremacy that (in my understanding) was pervasive among the Japanese military leadership at the time. Even had they totally destroyed every ship at Pearl Harbor, IMO that would have just delayed their defeat – the US industrial might, and will to fight, would eventually overwhelm them under pretty much any circumstance barring the Japanese acquiring the bomb before we did.
In the Army’s and especially Togo’s mind they were going to cripple the US and the citizens of the US were weak and would cave in early. Don’t forget that stupid Bushido tradition they had been indoctrinating their boys with for 60 years or so informed them they would crush us soft westerners.
They also thought (I think rightly) that war with the US was the inevitable result of their imperial ambitions.
Hence it was better to bring them into the war at huge disadvantage (which would certainly have been at if the US carriers had been caught at Pearl Harbor ), rather have the come in later having had time to prepare.
AIUI, many Japanese leaders felt that war with America was inevitable and unavoidable, and since it was unavoidable, Japan might as well try to knock out American forces at Pearl Harbor to try to gain an edge, even if only temporary, over U.S forces.
We can see, in retrospect, that American economic strength would be converted over to military production and how quickly this would occur. But that wasn’t obvious at the time. The United States was a negligible military power in 1941.
Most countries spent years building up their military forces; Japan and Germany had. So they assumed that it would take the United States a similar amount of time. They didn’t expect that America could achieve military parity with them, much less military superiority, until some time around 1950.
So from the Japanese point of view, the American navy was the only threat America had in existence in 1941; its army and air forces were still on the drawing board. Cripple the navy and America would be helpless for several years. Japan could secure an impregnable position and dictate terms.
Agree with Little Nemo and most of what else has been written; If Japan was going to continue it’s “Southeast Asia Co=Prosperity Sphere” ambitions, it had to do something to break the US embargo on rubber/steel.etc., even if it risked war.
The hope with Pearl Harbor (and later Midway) was also a logistical one; if the US saw it would have to fight it’s way across thousands of miles of ocean against heavily armed and protected islands, the US (being still a semi-isolationist nation) would decide to make peace instead of undertaking the great costs of waging such a war.
The Japanese didn’t really understand just what the USA was capable of when it put it’s mind to it. And the Pearl Harbor attack did make that concentration possible.
And yet; if Nagumo had found and sunk our carries and gone on to take Midway, if might have set back our efforts by over a year, in which the Japanese might have completed gobbling up New Guinea, moved through Burma to British India (possibly leading to a revolt against British rule), and probably attacked Australia, denying the US bases where we could mount attacks from.
To me (YMMV), Midway was the most crucial battle; not Pearl Harbor. It allowed us to start hitting back even before the full industrial might of the US was let loose.
…and cause the US to sue for peace. Game over, at least for a while.
What we have here is a failure to communicate, i.e., a serious clash of cultures. Deal a near-death blow to the enemy, and expect him to meekly surrender? The exact opposite of what happened. How they could be so wrong is explainable only by the differing mind-set.
The big thing about Midway was that it as a significant defeat for the Japanese navy. America has the resources to suffer a significant defeat, replace its losses, and get back into the war. Japan did not; once it fell behind, it stayed behind.
I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I was watching an old documentary a couple/few decades ago. A U.S. sailor said that a Japanese aircraft mechanic told him that he knew the war was lost when they shot down American planes, and each one was better than the last.
Would destroying the fuel reserves have mattered that much? Certainly it would have slowed things down but replacing the fuel would not have been all that hard…especially since they had time because the gas guzzling battleships were out of action (although not sure what those BBs ran on…I assume bunker oil).
It was my understanding it was leaving the dry docks unscathed that was the mistake. That and missing the carriers although the carriers was just bad luck (for the Japanese…good luck for us).
Supposedly Admiral Yamamoto counseled against the war because he was very familiar with the US (went to school in the US) and knew the US industrial might would out produce the Japanese by a lot. Changing theaters but supposedly Hitler finally groked the trouble he was in when he learned how fast the US was producing Liberty Ships. Truly the pace of US war production was astounding.
As mentioned above the Japanese felt they had no choice. Well, they had a choice which was stop their expansion and get out of China but there was no way the military controlled country was going to do that.
Frankly Pearl Harbor was not a bad idea if you are dedicated to controlling SE Asia and the US was standing in their way. It was their best shot and they pulled it off but they did miss some important things (dry docks, oil storage, carriers) that allowed the US back in faster than they would have liked.
Given those missed items at Pearl Harbor and the US amazing luck at Midway almost makes you think there was a little divine intervention (remember Midway went terribly for the US until a stroke of luck/chance killed three of the Japanese carriers with a fourth going down not long after the first three).
As an aside I wonder what would have happened if the Japanese fleet kept pushing to invade Midway. Sure they were out of carriers but the US carriers must have been low on planes, personnel and ammo after all that. Could the US have really stopped the rest of the Japanese fleet after their initial engagements?
I’m way out of my depth in this discussion, but I occasionally pause to marvel at the industrial output the US unleashed in WWII. The US: fought a two-front war, each front of which was across a goddamn ocean; provided Allied nations with almost 700 billion dollars (in today’s money) of food and weapons through Lend-Lease; and, as a little side project, developed the motherfucking atomic bomb. And this was all starting from the position of a country possessing a minor military and mired in a depression. It’s kind of mind boggling.
Not to divert from the OP, but if the US had lost Enterprise, Yorktown and Hornet, along with the loss of Lexington at Coral Sea, the U.S. would have had two carriers (Wasp and Saratoga to face the Japanese Navy’s (assuming no carrier losses by the Japanese at Midway) ten (IIRC). With the Essex and Independence class carriers not available in numbers until mid-1943, the ability of the US Fleet to launch any type of forward attack (i.e., Guadalcanal) would have been almost impossible. This would have allowed the Japanese Fleet to fully support the New Guinea and (potential) Australia campaigns.
Remember, the biggest challenge was moving the logistics of the battle across the ocean. If we had had to start in Hawaii as our sole outpost, it would have been a much greater challenge; not impossible, but longer and much more costly in both lives and dollars.
That’s what the Japanese were betting on at Pearl Harbor; they didn’t get it, so they had to try and bring the US Carriers to a decisive action to get the objective they wanted; they chose…poorly.