Looking back, I’m realizing that my school’s history program sucked. Of course, I can research this myself…and I will…but maybe you can get me started.
Why did WWII spread to the Pacific? (Hitler certainly didn’t get much beyond Russia’s borders.)
What was Japan’s plan and what other countries was it allied with?
I’m particularly interested because my grandfather was a Marine (gunnery seargent?) who fought, and somehow survived, on the beachheads of the Pacific.
If you want to get technical, WW2 didn’t spread to the Pacific, it spread FROM the Pacific.
You see, Japan had been at war with China well before Hitler rolled his tanks in to Poland. Seeing as Japan and Germany knew they were soon about to have common enemies, they allied with each other. Itlay was also on their bandwagon at the start of the war too, but jumped off it a bit later.
Eventually Japan broke through China and headed south, with eventual plans to rule the Pacific by themselves. In a flash of what Japan thought would be brilliance, they decided to send up some bombers and bomb an American military base at Pearl Harbour, because they needed that if they wanted to rule the Pacific.
This bombing didn’t sit very well with White House big wigs and the USA promptly declared war on Japan. Seeing as Germany was allies with Japan, they too declared war on the USA. So the USA entered the war in both Europe and the Pacific.
Hope this helps.
I’ll just add, Britain also played a heavy role in the Pacific because Japan was invading some colonies of theirs. So Britain too had troops in Europe as well as Asian countries like Burma.
I don’t know why Japan, after centuries of self imposed isolation, decided to expand. They probably felt threatened by the US moving into the far east. Basically Japan wanted natural resources and decided to take over some countries that had them while they could.
The British, French and Dutch all had colonial empires in the Pacific, so things were pretty interconnected between Europe and the Pacific.
As I understand it, the U.S. refused to sell goods such as petroleum to Japan because of Japan’s belligerence in China. Japan thought that by delivering a crippling blow to the U.S., they could force us to do business with them. Either that, or they thought that by controling the western Pacific Rim thry could get petroleum and other goods. (Still typing on a caffeine deficit here.)
What the Army didn’t understand was that attacking the U.S. would make the U.S. angry. Admiral Yamamoto purportedly said that by attacking Pearl Harbor, Japan would have free reign in the Pacific for six months. After that, he couldn’t guaranty victory. Although the fighting was fierce and the U.S. suffered severe losses, the six month timeframe was essentially correct.
Japan made a couple of strategic errors in their attack on Pearl Harbor. They did not get the U.S. aircraft carriers, which were essential to winning the war in the Pacific. (IIRC, there were no battles between U.S. and Japanese battleships in the Pacific.) They also failed to attack the fuel storage areas in Hawaii. According to one Japanese officer I saw interviewed in a documentary, the Japanese were under the impression that the U.S. had so much petroleum that any reserves destroyed would be quickly replenished. What would be the use? They seemed not to understand that the supplies in Hawaii were basically all we had. Any more would have had to have been convoyed over from the mainland. Had they gotten the carriers and the oil reserves, the U.S. would have had a much harder time of it.
Europe had been at war since 1939. Japan had its own agenda that caused the U.S. to declare war on Japan on December 8th, 1941 (the day after the U.S. was attacked). Because of the Tri-Partite Pact, Germany declared was on the U.S., as Doc Moss said.
It should be noted that the U.S. was unprepared for war in 1941. There were not enough bombers or ships, and the ground forces were not in fighting shape either. It had been 20 years since an American had seen battle. Although the U.S. was weak militarily, Japan and Germany seemed to underestimate the resolve of the American people, and the capacity of America’s industry. They also seemed to have forgotten that the U.S. had a huge buffer zone (the Atlantic and Pacific oceans) that would insulate the U.S. from invasion. Even if they had invaded the U.S., many Americans were armed. They’d have to take over the country by fighting every schoolboy with a .22 rifle. The Alaskan Inuits did engage the Japanese when the Japanese landed in the Aleutians. And they depended on guns for their hunting. Given relatively modern equipment supplied by the U.S., and with their hunting and survival skills, the Inuit proved deadly.
But of course!
Thanks everyone. How about the Philippines…more protections/attacks on colonies?
Just to add a few thoughts …
Japan’s military (primarily its army) was the driving force behind its expansion. Army leaders felt that Japan was ready to take its place among the elite world powers, and either convinced or strongarmed others into following their agenda. Their expansion was designed to secure the raw materials necessary to run their industry – primarily oil, along with minerals and land.
The U.S. began curtailing trade with Japan, which forced the Japanese to speed up their aggressive expansion. As trade negotiations broke down, the Japanese realized that by crippling the U.S. Pacific Fleet, they would be able to establish a sphere of influence over the entire Pacific Ocean, making them almost impregnable to attack. The attack on Pearl Harbor was designed to remove America’s ability to successfully wage war in the Pacific, and force the U.S. to sue for peace on Japan’s terms.
As noted earlier, Admiral Yamamoto, Japan’s ranking naval officer, told the Emperor that if Japan declared war on the U.S. he would “run wild” for six months. However, he warned that if the U.S. had not been defeated in that timeframe, the country’s industrial capability would overwhelm that of Japan and cause a war of attrition, which Japan would lose. He had spent time in America, and opposed any war based on his knowledge of the country.
It was pure happenstance that the U.S. carriers were at sea when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor; had they been in port, the U.S. would never have won the Pacific war. Interestingly, most American commanders didn’t realize the striking power of the aircraft carrier, and saw it mainly as a support ship for battleships. The Battle of Midway helped demonstrate the power of aircraft carriers (I believe it was the first sea battle in history where the ships involved were never within sight of each other) and helped create a philosophical shift in the U.S. Navy.
An understatement, Doc Moss, but absolutely correct. It wasn’t that Japan had anything against the US so much as it wanted to set up what it called the (IIRC) “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.” This would supposedly be an Asia-Pacific trade bloc, but was actually a land grab by the Japanese. They already had taken Manchuria; now they intended to continue throughout the Asia-Pacific region.
Before the US ever got involved in WWII, the Japanese had taken Hong Kong (British), Singapore (British), and were busy moving through the various other colonies belonging to the Dutch, the Portuguese, the French, and so on. Problem was that most of those nations fell to the Germans before they could successfully defend their Asian colonies.
But the British, aided by Commonwealth forces (Canada, Australia, and others), did what they could in the area. That wasn’t so effective, as the fall of Singapore and Hong Kong showed. And with that knowledge, the Australians were quite worried–especially since they’d rather be defending their homeland than heading to Europe to help the British defend the UK, after the fall of the Pacific colonies.
Then came Pearl Harbor, and the US got involved.
Not just the US, but all the European powers that had colonies: the Dutch were in what is Indonesia today, the Portuguese had a few places scattered about (for example, Macao), and the French were in Indochina (Vietnam, for example).
But I don’t think they were threatened so much as they were just anxious to expand their empire. (Similar to Hitler’s “Lebensraum” policy.) Using a combination of xenophobic propaganda (“The Europeans and Americans are your enemy, but we’re Asian so you can trust us” kind of approach) and just plain taking what they wanted, the Japanese did just that–expanded their empire.
But they bit off a bit too much when they attacked Pearl Harbor. While the British and Commonwealth were tired (they had already been fighting for two years), the Americans were fresh. The battleships at Pearl Harbor were destroyed, but most of the carriers were safe at sea, so the Americans still had fighting capability. The US was capable of fighting in both Europe and the Pacific, and did so. Phobos, this is where your grandfather came in.
Hope this helps. It is somewhat sketchy, but is a quick-'n-dirty overview of the important details of Japan’s plans and of the war in the Pacific before the US came in.
Goes back to the “sphere of influence” idea for Japan. The Philippines were a U.S. base, relatively close to Japan’s home islands. By neutralizing it and Wake Island, Japan basically owned all of the Pacific Ocean from Australia to the North Pole, westward to Hawaii. That is a HUGE chunk of the earth, and created a tremendous buffer for Japan. By fortifying islands throughout the Pacific, Japan guaranteed that any attempt to attack their home islands would be a long, drawn-out process. They were banking on a short war (or even no war) with the U.S. in the Pacific. Neutralizing the Philippines and Wake meant that the U.S. would have to sail thousands of miles through ocean controlled by hostile naval and air forces to attack Japan, rather than launch attacks on the home islands (or disrupt shipping lanes) from the closer bases on the Philippines and Wake.
Still boggles the mind that MacArthur didn’t have the Philippines more prepared for an attack by Japanese forces, particularly since Pearl Harbor had already been bombed when the Philippines were attacked (IIRC). A major blunder in what was otherwise a stellar military career. The Philippines probably would have been lost anyway, but it could have made things more difficult for Japan to establish themselves so totally in the Pacific.
Good reference that come to mind…
Japan in China see the book ‘the rape of nanking’
Japan in SE asia see the movie ‘the bridge over the river kwai’ (sp)
Japan is basically a rock in the ocean. They have to have imports especially oil. In order to get stuff you can establish a trading relationship (like today) or go and take it by force (like then). Once we cut off their oil They chose to fight.
Now I have a question. Did the Japanise take over SE asia because of the rubber, the oil, or both? Were there developed oil fields in SE Asia in the 1940s?
I’m going by memory here, but I seem to recall in some of my reading on the subject that Japan was after oil, rubber, tin, manganese, and a host of other natural goods in the areas they targeted. Not to mention the land itself; when you’re an island-nation, you want elbow room.
Almost, Sauron. The Battle of the Coral Sea, fought a month before Midway, was the first naval battle where surface combatants were never within sight of one another.
And, IIRC, there were no sea battles pitting battleships from the American and Japanese navies against each other, but there were spirited actions involving heavy cruisers in several battles, especially around the Solomons and Phillipines islands.
God Bless the History Channel.
You know, I was thinking about the Battle of the Coral Sea, but for some reason I thought American cruisers and/or destroyers engaged Japanese ships during that. Dunno why.
You’re quite right about the cruisers. And, of course, U.S. battleships were used to pound Japanese-held islands during the war. Did Japan even have that many battleships? I don’t recall the number they had in service when war began. I know they commissioned the Yamato (a monster of a battleship at the time) near the end of the war, but it was sunk by a U.S. submarine on builder’s trials, or something like that.
I’ve been going on memory too, Sauron. According to my memory, you’re correct: the Japanese wanted access to those resources. (This is the pseudo-trade bloc I was referring to earlier.) Once they got the governing powers out of the way, the resources were theirs not for the buying, but for the taking.
And the buffer zone you were referring to earlier meant that it wasn’t likely that the former governing powers would be able to mount an attack to retrieve their colonies. Good point there; I guess my memory suffered a small lapse. 
James Dunnigan wrote that big wars are usually just a number of small wars that have run together. World War II is one of the premier examples of this.
As Doc Moss mentioned, Japan had been at war with China since 1937. Japan had suffered acutely from the Great Depression. Its hold on democracy had never been secure, and the economic chaos discredited the Diet (the Japanese legislature) and the political moderates who ran the country. Militarist assassins murdered any Japanese politician who clung to a democratic position, and power informally passed to the hands of the Army.
The Army decided that the only way to prevent a disaster like the Depression from recurring was to make Japan economically self-sufficient. A Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere would be created out of China, Indochina, and the East Indies, which would supply all of Japan’s needs; within this expanded territory, Japan would never again need to trade with the outside world and could return to the isolationist policy of the Tokugawa Shogunate.
China, being weak, divided and friendless, would fall first. Japan invaded China from its puppet state of Manchuria, defeating Chinese forces everywhere they could bring them to battle, seizing control of China’s entire coastline and much of its interior. But Britain and America both had economic interests in China they did not wish to lose, and supplied the Chinese resistance through via the Burma Road, Burma then being a British colony, while Japanese forces bogged down at the end of their long supply lines. America also embargoed steel exports to Japan.
Germany’s victories in Europe offered Japan its great opportunity. Two of the chief defenders of Indochina and the Indies, France and Britain, were going to be tied up in Europe for the foreseeable future. If Japan wanted its Co-Prosperity Sphere, now was the time to grab it. In 1940, Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy, pledging all three countries to declare war on any power that should attack them. With Great Britain already at war with Germany, and Soviet Russia having non-aggression pacts with both Germany and Japan, the obvious intention of the Pact was to deter the United States from intervening in the war.
In 1941 Japan seized Indochina, a possession of the mauled and defeated French. America instantly retaliated with a total oil embargo. The oil embargo was a first-magnitude emergency for Japan, which has no petroleum reserves of its own. Japan had only an 18-month supply of oil left, after which its ships would be confined to port and its air power idled for lack of fuel. The undefended Dutch East Indies and British Burmese territories had the oil Japan needed. But Japan’s top military brass was convinced that a play for Burma and the Indies would provoke the United States to war. An American fleet based at Manila Bay, whose defenses at Corregidor were called the Gibraltar of Asia, could raid the shipping lanes between the Indies, Burma and Japan at will. Germany, eager that Japan should distract the United States from the European theater, secretly promised that any Japanese attack on the U.S. would be supported by a prompt German declaration of war. So Admiral Yamamoto prevailed on Imperial General Headquarters to approve his plan for a massive surprise attack on the American fleet at Pearl Harbor at the outset of the war; with the American fleet removed from the equation, Japan could invade the U.S. Philippines unmolested and thus secure its Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.
And so on December 7, 1941, in the midst of peace negotiations, the Japanese Combined Fleet steamed into the waters north of Hawaii and gave the American Pacific Fleet the worst thrashing in the history of the U.S. Navy. Three days later, Germany declared war on the United States as promised - a geopolitical blunder of the first order. America immediately threw the greater weight of its armed forces against Germany, leaving MacArthur and the Pacific theater forces to muddle along as best they could while the Japanese rampaged through Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.
Japan’s action in deciding to fight China, America, Great Britain, and Australia simultaneously seems unbelievably stupid only because it was. The remarkable thing is not that Japan was defeated, but how long it held the Allies off. No doubt Japanese racism was a major contributor to the blunder; the typical Japanese military view of the American was that he was a weak, effeminate coward, who would quickly beg for peace after having his nose bloodied at Pearl Harbor and the Philippines. American and British racism also played a role, as few believed that the “inferior” Asians would dare face soldiers of the noble Anglo-Saxon race, much less surprise and defeat them. Both sides would learn, on Luzon, New Guinea, Guadalcanal, and Tarawa, how badly they had misjudged the other.
The second world war in SE Asia led directly to independence movements in the colonialized world.
After years of looking to their colonial masters for all, when push came to shove those same masters acted very badly indeed.
When the Japanese invaded Malaysia, the Brits fled on the last train to Singapore. When the Japs reached Singapore, the Brits blew up the only source of fresh water, anything that the Japs might be able to use, and jumped on the last boat out of port with their families. Leaving the Asians to die in droves.
Other colonial powers in the region may have had the excuse that they had already surrendered to Germany. But the Brits hadn’t.
Independence movements flourished as a result.
The toll in human life in Europe and America has been carefully noted. But noone really knows how many Asians died at the hands of the Japanese. And while the world was disputing the counts after the war it became clear to colonialized nations that they would never count.
Death is death, I know and a tragedy always. But still these peoples looked to their leaders, and those leaders served them up like lunch.
The Japanese weren’t so much mistaken as unlucky. They had intended to target the carriers, but all three were out of port convoying planes or doing exercises.
I believe that’s quite right.
Also correct. IIRC, Fuchida Mitsuo, the senior bombing leader, tried desperately to convince Admiral Nagumo to launch a second strike against the oil supplies. But Nagumo, stunned that he had lost no ships (Japanese war games had predicted a loss of three or four carriers), could not resist the chance to get his entire force out of range before American air power could strike back. There was no American air power left capable of facing Japanese combat air patrol, but Nagumo didn’t know that, especially without intel about the location of our carriers.
Actually the Tripartite Pact itself did not oblige Germany to declare war. That would have been required only if the United States had struck the first blow. Ribbentrop’s promise to declare war on the U.S. if the Japanese should strike first was made in secret, well after the Pact was signed.
I’m seeming to recall that there was an engagement between a Japanese battleship (the Kirishima?) and a couple of American battleships (Washington and South Dakota, I think) during one of the many naval battles in the Solomons.
Slight chronology mixup here; Japan made no aggressive move against Britain until after Pearl Harbor. Percival surrendered Singapore to Yamshita on 2/15/42. See http://lynx.dac.neu.edu/s/sabbas/ . Sumatra, Borneo, and other Dutch East Indies possessions were likewise not attacked until after Pearl Harbor. That was the entire point of Pearl Harbor, to remove the U.S. fleet from the board while Japan took the Dutch and British colonies.
You are right about the French, however; French Indochina was taken before U.S. involvement. It was the seizure of French Indochina that provoked the U.S. oil embargo.