AHC: Make Japan win the Pacific War.

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The embargo wasn't triggered (not fully) by China. To avoid the total embargo, they need to not invade French Indochina. That was the trigger for the total embargo.

And Chiang Kai-shek has no reason to negotiate with Japan. They've broken every single treaty they ever signed with China. He knows this. If he negotiates, he might as well put his gun to his head and pull the trigger. Because at that point, he's a walking deadman. He's probably assassinated before he even finishes the negotiation.

Pretty much. Might as well hope the Japanese run out of manpower before you do, which is truth be told, a fairly reasonable bet.
 
An early POD where Japan, knowing a war with the U.S. may come at some point, invests resources into intelligence and subversion operations within the United States and Philippines. Links with more extreme members of certain ethnic minorities are established, and chiefly- the Japanese community in America is to a degree included in the war plans. Thus, when the time for conflict comes, Japan has a strong fifth column in America proper, and a friendly resistance movement in the Philippines ready to strike. American industrial potential cannot fully materialize, as strikes, sabotages and revolts corrode the country from within.

Because the US government was incompetent from top to bottom.:rolleyes: OTL the "Fifth Column" was little more than the Allied version of Germany's "Stab in the back." There was no Fifth Column to speak of.
 
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Japanese Americans, Nisei and otherwise, didn't really care much for Japan (a lot of them couldn't even speak Japanese).
 
The point of the invasion was to end the war. Kamikaze attacks mostly ceased after the main defenses had been overcome on Okinawa, as the Japanese were husbanding their surviving fighters to defend Kyushu when the invasion came.

Besides the oil supply was dwindling by the day. The US simply has to do air raids virtually every day and the Kamikaze problem ends via lack of gas.
 

trurle

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Besides the oil supply was dwindling by the day. The US simply has to do air raids virtually every day and the Kamikaze problem ends via lack of gas.
Not exactly. Japan had a synthetic fuel production facilities (Kitakyushu etc.) plus at least 3 oil wells on Honshu island. Because most of kamikaze aircraft were converted trainers, with low fuel amount and quality requirements, the kamikaze attacks could be sustained indefinitely. The fuel-guzzling naval vessels were more problematic though. Single destroyer use fuel at rate 100 times the kamikaze aircraft, and for much longer - days and weeks instead of hours.
 
Not exactly. Japan had a synthetic fuel production facilities (Kitakyushu etc.) plus at least 3 oil wells on Honshu island. Because most of kamikaze aircraft were converted trainers, with low fuel amount and quality requirements, the kamikaze attacks could be sustained indefinitely. The fuel-guzzling naval vessels were more problematic though. Single destroyer use fuel at rate 100 times the kamikaze aircraft, and for much longer - days and weeks instead of hours.

And the rest of Japan's oil requirements? Japan needs oil for more than Kamikazes!
 

trurle

Banned
And the rest of Japan's oil requirements? Japan needs oil for more than Kamikazes!
Fuel situation was pretty tight. In particular, in 1945 a number of railways, especially on Hokkaido, was scavenged for steel and wooden sleepers. Unusable trucks were scavenged for steel too. The situation was nowhere as desperate as in Germany of 1945 though - horses were still common for road transport, and rail was operating scheduled trains, even after atomic bombings.
 

CalBear

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Besides the oil supply was dwindling by the day. The US simply has to do air raids virtually every day and the Kamikaze problem ends via lack of gas.
Not really. The Japanese had already decided to keep everything cocked and locked for the Invasion. That was why the shore bombardment of Honshu and Hokkaido in mid July was effectively unopposed. The U.S. put its heavies in close as bait, and the Japanese didn't take it.
 
Not really. The Japanese had already decided to keep everything cocked and locked for the Invasion. That was why the shore bombardment of Honshu and Hokkaido in mid July was effectively unopposed. The U.S. put its heavies in close as bait, and the Japanese didn't take it.

The US must have been targeting refineries and and fuel dumps I would have to imagine. It was no great secret that Japan had few fuel resources.
 

CalBear

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The US must have been targeting refineries and and fuel dumps I would have to imagine. It was no great secret that Japan had few fuel resources.
They were. The Japanese had squirreled fuel away in caves and other hiding spots (along with about 4,000 aircraft the U.S. found AFTER the surrender).
 
Going to detour this into something similar, since the original thread died down -

What's the latest possible PoD for the Japanese to avoid war with the US? Coming to terms with Chiang Kai-shek at some point, to avoid the embargo? Presumably the IJA regards this more as an opportunity to resupply and prepare for Round Two, but if Germany has rolled over France by then, Britain might be willing to throw China under the bus if it meant avoiding a Pacific theater, and so no embargo when Japan attacks China again.
I'm not going to guess on the chances, but IMO you could do it into 1941. The Anti-Comintern Pact being broken by the Molotov-Ribbentrop deal, if played on a bit better by U.S. diplomats, might have kept Japan from thinking she was on the right side. Not demanding "surrender" of Chinese territory, or more clearly saying the U.S. was willing to agree to Japanese control of Manchuria, would be another place (& IMO Chiang would go along with that--if not in the long term...)

You do need to address the "government by assassination", & the cowboy Colonels in the Kwantung Army. (A few public executions of troublemakers?) How likely that is, IDK; it doesn't seem like the odds are good.

If Japan doesn't see herself so closely aligned with Germany, occupying all of IndoChina doesn't happen, & doesn't provoke the U.S. embargo(es).

Come to that, just not slapping on a total oil embargo, & just one on avgas & such (to put a crimp in war fighting), like FDR wanted, might do it.

Would these (all? any?) absolutely prevent war? Maybe not. They'd mostly stall it, & then all bets are off.;)
 

trurle

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They were. The Japanese had squirreled fuel away in caves and other hiding spots (along with about 4,000 aircraft the U.S. found AFTER the surrender).
Plus add up to 6,000 combat aircraft US did never found except for documentation. I suspect some Japanese aircraft leaving documentation trail back in 1945 were physically not existing (or been in non-flyable condition), being purely means to get additional fuel and spare parts quotas for the struggling airfield operators though.
 
We did, it just would have extended the war into 1947/48 depending on who would eventually surrender. Which is why it got rolled into the Invasion
No matter what they planned to do, the blockade was going to happen because it was something they were done ng already anyways. Between the effective destruction of the IJN and the Japanese Merchant Marine, Japan was effectively blockaded to begin with.
 
The embargo wasn't triggered (not fully) by China. To avoid the total embargo, they need to not invade French Indochina. That was the trigger for the total embargo.

And Chiang Kai-shek has no reason to negotiate with Japan. They've broken every single treaty they ever signed with China. He knows this. If he negotiates, he might as well put his gun to his head and pull the trigger. Because at that point, he's a walking deadman. He's probably assassinated before he even finishes the negotiation.

French Indochina triggered the full embargo, but the Japanese invaded because of the existing American embargo, which started because of China. Bring the fighting with China to a (temporary, assuredly) halt before the embargo hits, and there's no resource shortage leading to invading European colonies.
 
French Indochina triggered the full embargo, but the Japanese invaded because of the existing American embargo, which started because of China. Bring the fighting with China to a (temporary, assuredly) halt before the embargo hits, and there's no resource shortage leading to invading European colonies.

Except you are not going to get that unless you stop JIA officers starting wars on their lonesome.
 
I don't see that stopping an invasion in any case.
I don't feature invasion ever being actually required. The slaughter of shipping meant even moving rice offshore was getting impossible by 1945. It would not have taken much to sever the essential rail/road connections with pinpoint bombing (by VB-6 or Bat?), effectively turning Japan into a patchwork of isolated zones, unable to share food &/or fuel, & so susceptible to surrender appeals. And famine was looming... How long would it be before the IJA fanatics got a taste of their own assassination medicine?
 
Because the US government was incompetent from top to bottom.:rolleyes: OTL the "Fifth Column" was little more than the Allied version of Germany's "Stab in the back." There was no Fifth Column to speak of.
This isn't about competence, but about internal opposition to the state that enemies can use against you. It took even the USSR's feared state apparatus ages to kill the resistance in Ukraine that popped up in WW2.
 
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