I’ve read that the US forces in Philippines needed to be neutralized in order for Japan to go after SE Asia’s oil and rubber. Shortly after Pearl (like a few hours), they attacked US bases in the Philippines.
But suppose they didn’t go all the way to Hawaii, and picked the Philippines first. Would the attacks on Clark Field and Cavite lead to a day of infamy and galvanize the nation? They were a US territory just like Hawaii.
Or would the Asian remoteness and “foreignness” of the Philippines work against public perception? Most of the soldiers were brown Filipinos (about 80% of the forces at Bataan), so would the American public not think of it as an attack on the USA, unlike the Navy’s battleships at Pearl?
Naturally, the war would’ve changed, we would send our intact Pacific fleet steaming to the Philippines. But that’s not my question. We’d still have to declare war first, would it have been a harder sell for FDR?
I think we’d still have declared war, but the outrage in the States wouldn’t be quite as great. The gentlewoman from Montana probally wouldn’t have the only member of Congress to vote against it and the America First Committee wouldn’t have been disbanded (at least not so quickly). Hitler would probally still declare war on the US, which means Churchill still would’ve declared war on Japan.
It absolutely would cause a war between the US and Japan. The Philippines was a US protectorate at the time, slated to be given independence in 1949. The US was responsible for its defense; US ground and air forces were based there and the USN Asiatic Fleet was based at Manila. A modern analogy would be asking if an invasion of Puerto Rico would result in war with the US.
US plans for a war with Japan dating back to the 1920s, War Plan Orange, assumed a war with Japan would begin with a Japanese invasion of the Philippines. The US plan was to hold out in the Philippines in a delaying action while the US Pacific Fleet sailed for the Philippines bringing along ground reinforcements for both there and Guam and seeking decisive battle with the Japanese battle line.
The U.S. would have entered the war since the Philippines was a property of the U.S. at the time. It’s highly unlikely that the public support for the war would have even been a small fraction of what it had been like if the PI got attacked instead of Pearl Harbor. Americans have a well-established history of not caring for filipino loss of life.
The War Cabinet of the British Empire declared war on Japan on December 8th, following the previous day’s Japanese attacks on Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong. The non-attack of Pearl Harbor would have made no difference there.
The Philippines were the crown jewel in the US overseas territory. And there were over 16,000 US troops (plus the Philippine troops) on the islands. I don’t think the reaction would have been any less than it was for Pearl.
First, remember that the Japanese did attack the Phillippines and it was a PR nightmare for them. They brutally conquered the island and then followed with a cruel occupation and the Bataan Death March. While that event was not fully explained to the public until 1944, there’s more reason to expect the government to use it as propoganda earlier in this series of events.
It’s not like the U.S. ever had very much overseas territory compared to Europe, and in fact the Philippines was as much a prestige piece for the U.S. as it was militarily useful.
Resource wise the Philippines has historically been a dissapointment for it’s many colonizers. It is a great naval location in Asia, though.
Douglas MacArthur was in charge of the US defense of the Philippines. There is no way that he surrenders an army to the Japanese and we do NOT end up declaring war on Japan.
MacArthur’s continued presence in the PI would probably not have prolonged
the resistance by one day, and he was certainly more useful to the American
war effort as a field commander than he would have been as a POW.
my disappointment is macarthur didn’t bulk up his USAFE enough not just to hold out until reinforments arrived but to repel an invasion. think of it: 15,000 americans plus a total of 100,000 philippine scouts either active or reserve. don’you think with enough mechanized and armored units and artillery he could have defeated a 20,000-man invasion force?
how expensive would it have been to station one armored division and maybe two infantry with lots of artillery and ammo stores? remember, the 80,000-man force was able to halt homma’s intial attack at bataan.
Sure, it could have been done. But the U .S. fundemantally just didn’t believe Japan would attack us precisely because it was an incredibly stupid move, and therefore saw no need.
…?
War plan Orange explicitly assumed that Japan would invade the Philippines. All of the war warnings explicitly mentioned the Philippines as a potential target. The US was reinforcing the Philippine garrison as quickly as they could. The only mistake is they started too late and assumed they would have till around June '42 when they started the buildup. When they were attacked in December '41, they simply hadn’t been reinforced enough yet.
A serious question - did the United States have an Armored Division fit to deploy overseas in 1941? IIRC the 1st and 2nd Armored Division were formed in 1940 but were they ready to deploy?