Japan's mistake

from what i have read it seems that Japan's main hope relied on a hope that if Japan could overrun US possesions in the pacific and destroy her fleet..the US would go to the table. They knew that they could never defeat the US in a prolonged war...and they also knew it was not feasable for them to invade the west coast.
Interestingly enough the top brass in the Japanese military believed their own false propaganda and believed we were a lazy, weak, spoiled people...and once things started going bad the people would go against the war...and BAM the wars over.
Guess they didn't expect our other traits...getting revenge and fighting back!
anybody have anything else to add?

 

Intersting how both major Axis powers believed that:
*Swift, sudden "knock-out blows" were the way to win...
*Democracies were composed of lazy no-goodnik collections of "mongrels" without the will or "stomach" to fight and defeat them...
Maybe you have to believe your own propoganda to convince yourself that you're in the right when you know somehow that its all going to go wrong if the single "masterstroke" goes astray or fails to achieve the stated goal...
It must have appeared to the American public of 1941 that there were monsters loose in the world. Funny how hindsight makes one realise how unprepared the Japanese actually were for what they had started.
Cheesy industrial base and short on the very resources they'd need to fight the Big 'Un, even with what they'd already conquered before Pearl Harbor.
Makes one wonder what would have transpired in the world if they had chosen NOT to attack Pearl, and had thrown these resources at British armed strength in the PTO, or the China-Burma-India Theater...

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Novus Ordo Seclorum

 

I agree, if Japan had focused elsewhere, there was no way the U.S. would have justification for declaring war on Japan if and when it declared war on Germany. Japan would not have done what Hitler did and declare war on the U.S.

You do not attack unless you intend to take over.

Anything is a half-hearted attempt at gaining nothing.

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"They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet or fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason."

 

The belief by the Japanese that the US would fold was not without merit. The plan was to destroy America's carriers at Pearl Harbor. This coupled with an intense evaluation of the US public's opinions from World War I. The American public did not want a long protracted war. The wounds of the first were not yet healed. The loss of the American carriers and the threat of a west coast invasion (though militarly stupid try telling the people on the West Coast that) could have some call for talks.
Apparently the Japanese did miss one thing in the study of America........ how pissed off we get when somebody screws with us. Remeber the Alamo? The Maine? The Lusitania? Pearl Harbor? The Japanese really missed the boat on that point.

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Carthage must be destroyed!

 

The biggest mistake was not to destroy the oil stock at Pearl Harbor. And I don't think that if Japan had attacked non-American belongings they would have declared war on Japan.

 

Japan never had the capability to invade Hawaii let alone the West coast of the USA, they were sadly lacking in merchant shipping to support such an operation.

 

I have not been too interested in the Pacific war but lately I have been reading stuff on it.

Just to bring a couple of questions up and keep discussions alive:

1. Was the Japanese tactics after Pearl Harbor correct? It is claimed that it was more like " we attack everywhere " and all the Japanese forces were too widely separated. Jamamoto´s tactics? Any ideas? Could they have been more victorious with other tactics? More ideas?

Jamamoto´s principles I guess:

-Initiate surprise attack on US PACFLT at Pearl Harbor.
-seize all available natural resources in Pacific;
-retire to defensive perimeter behind island barriers;

-await US to sue for peace


2.Until November 26, 1941, Roosevelt had been negotiating with two Japanese diplomats who had come to Washington to try to resolve a crisis with the United States which began in August 1941. At that time, with no warning, the United States embargoed all shipments of oil to Japan. The Japanese were baffled and infuriated by this decision. For three previous years, the United States had supplied fifty percent of Japan's oil, while her army conquered much of China. Why had Roosevelt chosen this moment to cut off the oil?

Instead Roosevelt let Secretary of State Cordell Hull present the Tokyo diplomats with a ten point ultimatum on November 26, 1941.
Tokyo had set November 29 as a deadline for a settlement. After that the Japanese negotiators were told that war would become inevitable.

Maybe the Japanese had underestimated the US but as well it seems the US underestimated the Japanese...

 

Read this url, and i think the Japanes could have put the USN in the same boat as Germany and Japan faced later on in the war...

A Lack of US Oil Tankers

It is interesting to note that only one ship located on Battleship Row on 7 December received no damage at all. Yet, had the Japanese sank or severely damaged this ship, its effect on the Pacific Fleet would have been almost as great a loss as sinking an aircraft carrier. That ship was the fleet oil tanker, USS Neosho. (93)

The lack of fleet oilers, like Neosho, hung like a large cement albatross around the neck of Navy planners contemplating operations in the Pacific before and after the Pearl Harbor raid. (94) This dearth of oilers was a key vulnerability of the Navy. The Japanese Navy, who had just seen how it would have been impossible to carry out the Pearl Harbor attack without tanker support, should have targeted these ships that were so crucial to the Navy.

In the years from 1925 to 1940, the quantity of most surface combatants in the Navy had doubled in size; the size of the auxiliary force had not. Although there had been an increase in the number of fleet oilers, they were all kept busy ferrying fuel between bases. (95) On 7 December, the Pacific Fleet had two oilers in Pearl Harbor and three at sea and six others in ports on the west coast; only four of these were capable of at-sea refueling. (96) This shortage of tankers effectively limited the radius of the Pacific Fleet. (97) It was also a key reason so many ships were located in Pearl Harbor on 7 December. Kimmel was unable to keep less than half his fleet at sea without starting to deplete the oil reserves at Pearl Harbor; his limited supply of oilers could not keep up with the deficit. (98)
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Because of this lack of oilers, the fleet could not have even exercised its primary war plan (even if most of its battle line was not at the bottom of Pearl Harbor). The total capacity of the Pacific Fleet's oilers was 760,000 barrels of oil. In the first 9 days after Pearl Harbor, the fleet had expended 750,000 barrels of this sum. Thus, the fleet was tied to its oil supply at Pearl Harbor, (99) and if the Japanese had attacked the oil storage and the associated oilers at Pearl Harbor on 7 December, they would have driven the Pacific Fleet back to the west coast. (100)

If the Pacific Fleet had been forced back to the west coast, would it have been effective in opposing the Japanese? The short answer is no, especially if the Japanese began targeting oilers. To give an example, the USS Lexington was dispatched from California to assist in the search for Amelia Earhart in July 1937. First, the Lexington had to top off its bunkers on the west coast. (101) It then proceeded on a high-speed run of about 30 knots to the Hawaiian Islands. Here, it had to refuel again from the fleet oiler USS Ramapo off Lahaina Roads, Maui. The result was that the Lexington did not arrive in the search area off Howland Island until 11 days after its departure from the west coast and could not even have done that without the support of the Ramapo. (102)

Ships sortieing from the west coast would be adding 2,000 nautical miles to their patrols into the Pacific just to get to Hawaii. (103) This number would have to be doubled, obviously, because these same ships would have to get back to the west coast if no oiler support were available and the oil storage at Pearl Harbor no longer existed.
from

bf109 Emil

 

That was a good point on the Navy's oilers. A lack of this type of ship in any nation's navy will surely hamper the range of operations a nation can carry out.

I beg to differ, though on views that the Japanese lacked merchant shipping. What they didn't have was the capacity to replace their losses in merchant shipping.
I agree with Kai Petri's reasoning about Yamamoto's reasoning. Yamamoto knew he can't go toe-to-toe with the US for a long term fight because he already realized that his country can't match the US capacity to replace sunk ships.
If we view the Pacific as one vast desert and the strategic islands as individual oasis and sources of supply, Yamamoto's view on how to conduct the war would become clearer.
Establish small forces on the outer defensive perimeter so that any force approaching it can be interdicted. Once spotted, a larger force can be mobilized to support the small force interdicting it.
If Japan can do this successfully repeatedly, with losses at manageable levels (meaning within their resources and manpower pool to replace), then Japan stands a chance of consolidating its gains. And in the long run, Yamamoto is hoping that such a stance would make the US realize that it was too expensive to continue the war. With enough losses, the US would eventually lose its stomach for the fight.
This, I think is not a far fetched view that the Japanese took, especially when viewed with what is happening in the US today.

What the Japanese failed to properly react to was the ability of the US subs to interdict their interior defensive perimeter. Think of this subs as small ranger units or snipers straddling vital desert roads or routes between oasis or towns. This operation impeded the delivery and movement of supplies, troops, etc., thus hampering Japan's ability to consolidate its gains.

From what I've read, one of the most effective ways to defeat an enemy is to identify his strategic goals and deny or delay him in attaining his goals. In this case, Japan sought time to consolidate his conquests and established an outer defensive perimeter.
What happened was that the US sent subs and other specialized units that effectively denied Japan his first goal.
The second goal, that of an effective defensive perimeter, was denied when the US adopted an island hopping strategy.
Japan met its goal of crippling the US fleet in Hawaii and this allowed Japan to gain its conquests. However, Bataan's stubborn defense wrecked Japan's time table, thus giving the US and its allies time to recover. Had Japan met its time table, there is a possibility that the war could have taken another course. I stress again, it's only a possibility.

That's my two-cents worth. I look forward to learning what you guys think.

 

Hi Ron,

The japanese Navy, specifically Yamamoto, knew the Americans and their capabilities. The Japanese had a curious system in training their commanders. They would assign their officers to embassies of the major powers around the world to observe their militaries as part of their training. They would send their Army officers to countries with a land military tradition, countries like Germany, France and Russia, and they would send their Naval officers to countries with strong naval traditions like Britain and the US. Yamamoto knew the US well and warned the Japanese government that if notivated the US would be a most formidiable foe, but the government at the time was dominated by the Army which held the US in disdain. Consequently Yamamotos warnings went unheeded.

 

Hello Kia.
Ok I will go in order. Yes I believe the Japanese strategy was adequate. They gained everything that was wanted in declaring war very quickly (something like 4 months). What was needed was to consolidate their gains at this point but instead they chose to make more attacks which began the downward spiral of the Japanese Empire, starting with the carrier battle at Coral Sea. Yes, they spread themselves a little thin early on but where more than capable of reinforcing before the US industrial capacity gave the Americans enough power to go on the offensive.

Yamamoto’s tactics are confusing to me. I don’t currently understand them. He was a huge proponent of carriers but searched for the decisive battle between battleships. Coincidently most people know he threatened to resign if he didn’t get his battle plan approved for the Midway operation but not too many know that this was his second threat of the kind. The first was Pearl Harbor. I forget where I had read it but the initial plan was not an air raid but to position the entire (or most) battleship fleet near pearl and fight the battle between these capital ships. Good thing they didn’t.

The embargo placed on Japan was, IIRC a response to the Japanese gaining the air and naval bases they demanded in French Indochina from the Vichy gov. In the months before the Embargo they increasing demanded rights from the DEI as if the land was already theirs. Unrestricted rights to exploit materials, increased oil shipments, etc. The US was the first to place the embargo but the UK, Australia, Netherlands and China all followed within a day or two. (China being in the list confuses me because they where at war and wouldn’t be conducting trade but hey it was called the ABCD encirclement by Japan so I included them)

Yes the US underestimated Japan. We thought any attack would come in the Philippines. Never Hawaii.
Japan overestimated the US as well. They where of the opinion that any attack against the DEI would bring a declaration of war from both GB and the US. I am not sure of GB but I do not think the US would have joined at this point either. The public was still to isolationist at this point.

 

I think the key thing her is the economies of both powers. The US had an economy about 5 times that of Japan, what's more it was self-sufficient in resources, including oil and had almost the manpower of the Soviet Union. Japan had to rely in it's colonies and imports for resources and had nowhere near the manpower of the US. Because of this things such as America's oil tanker shortage or mostly obsolete battleships would only be an issue for about a year and a half.

I think for Japan's plan to have the US sue for peace they would have to take all allied Island bases, Panama canal and the Falklands Island and keep up constant bombing raids on US shipyards on the west coast. This would effectively deny the US any access to the pacific without Japan having to invade the mainland. However this was way beyond Japan's capabilities, particularly with their war on the mainland with China, UK and the threat of Soviet entry into the pacific war.

Another factor was that the US had far more immediate allies in the Pacific that could help fight the Japanese and provide bases. Australia and New Zealand were important in this regard as they had relatively safe ports and airbases in the south pacific. Japan's only allies in the region were Siam and Manchukuo (both effectively puppets), who were only useful for protecting supply lines in china and some front-line service again china, but were effectively useless against the allies AFAIK.

 

Somehow I don't think Ron will be back anytime soon, considering this thread was started Feb 6th 2001, and Ron's last activity was Jul 21st 2006 lol

 

And taking the Falklands in the South Atlantic would accomplish what may I ask? And as you mentioned even IF they were able to do what you have suggested they would have to take into consideration the logistics,shipping and manpower to hold the captured "allied Island bases" that the Japanese didn't have. It just couldn't be done and is in the realm of "What If?". And even then the US wouldn't sue for peace. Pearl Harbor and the Philippines was too much for the American people to take and the rage and determination and desire for revenge that occurred because of them would still exist.

 

Ya noticed that too huh tomcat LOL? Thats usually what happends to some threads. Dang :skull: threads LOL.

 

Basically it could be used as a base for aircraft that could cover the Magellan strait, denying the US all access to the pacific. I know could never happen, I was just saying that's the minimum what Japan would have to achieve in order to have any chance at peace talks with the US (well that and a sustained bombing campaign against the US mainland). Im sure if the American people actually experienced the reality of war in the form of being bombed rather than looking at propaganda, chances are they'd change their tune. I'm not Japan could achieve it, I'm just saying what the absolute minimum would be for Japan to bring the US to consider a peace treaty, by denying them all access to the pacific.

 

I don't think that there is any chance of the japanese getting a peace treaty, not only due to the fact that they were the aggressors in the war, but also the fact that the americans had the atomic bomb. Why would the americans go for a peace treaty when they get an overall victory?

The japanese would have to do more then just bomb the american main land to get there attention, they would have to sustain a very high level o bombing, and not just the west coast, but also invade the mainland whihc would push the americans out of the European war, assuming that they had not yet commited troops to the threatre. However it this is the case, then American not only has the Marine corp to take on the Japanese during a defensive role on the american main land but also all the men that would have been allocated to Europe. The Japanese lost to the marines, how could they hope to engage even more men?

Japan's mistake was pissing of America, plain and simple, they could nver have hoped to win against her, just look at the industrial capacities of each country as well as the technology of the US compared to Japan.

 

Just wanted to mention that the Japanese lost to a combination of the US Marines,US Army,US Navy,USAAF and the other Allied Forces.