Early Japanese-American war

I think that if the Japanese had been bloodied earlier, they have understood that the way that wars are fought had changed from their last victory against the Russians, in which superior doctrine had largely won the war. Now, superior technology would be necessary. There was a thread not too long ago about this.

So, here's the idea. The Japanese, during World War I, had a pretty easy run of things, just targeting weak German possessions in the Pacific area. However, they tried to gain greater influence in China (the Twenty-One Demands) and in Russia, but backed out in both instances due to Western pressure, particularly American pressure.

The idea would be that the Japanese decide to carve out a large portion of the Russian Far East and Manchuria for themselves. While not the most economically valuable parts of the world, they will be a valve for Japanese population pressures - settlers will be given incentives to populate the new areas. The Siberian Intervention sees White Russian leaders ostensibly ruling 'Free Russia', but, really, it is a puppet regime for a Japanese military occupation. Sakhalin and Kamchatka are under direct Japanese control, while the Free Territory of the Far East rules the Amur region, and is based at Vladivostok.

In the meantime, Manchuria has been invaded, too. This is particularly upsetting to the Occidental powers. Japan is strongly encouraged to leave, especially by the Americans, but until the end of the war in Europe, little action is ready to be taken.

I also kind of like the idea of the Japanese funding Ungern von Sternburg, who, despite being completely insane, could serve as a significant obstacle to eastward Bolshevik expansion - a buffer, if you will. This would be cool, because I want to tie von Sternberg into this timeline, somehow. I think he has a lot of potential for whackiness. :D

I don't know which makes more sense: if Japan stills gets to be one of the five countries on the Treaty of Versailles, or not. In any case, I think that by late 1919, the United States should be getting ready to pursue military action against Japan in order to liberate Manchuria.

I think that Britain, which would still be tied to Japan in the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, could go in of two ways regarding Japan. If they have some foresight about the United States being a potentially powerful rival in the future (by the way, I think an Anglo-American War later on in this timeline could be cool), I can see them supporting Japan and maintaining the alliance. They wouldn't go to war with the United States, but they might be willing to rally support for the end of an Japanese-American war, including the signing of a peace treaty and stuff. Is this TOO unrealistic?

I think the war would start in 1920, and not last TOO long. I have not decided who should win, but I'd like it to be a Pyrrhic victory, either way. Either the United States will achieve a variety of strategic victories, but the British will get the world community into believing that a strong Japanese presence in the region is necessary to contain communism; or the Japanese will stun the world once again with several amazing victories (good luck, incompetent American generals), but find themselves militarily depleted and unable to pursue vengeance.

I'd like some thoughts as to how this war would go. I imagine it would have a lot of focus on southern Japan, Korea, and northeastern China.

I want the end result to be a Japan that has experienced the new kind of war, and that has been sobered by the experience. This should allow it to change its military doctrine to something a little bit more realistic than the banzai tactics of the OTL Pacific War. After this war, Japan should perhaps be a little more satisfied with its world position: the peace treaty will include other countries, and assure that the Open Door Policy is paramount in the rest of China (diplomatic wording ensuring that Manchuria is not really China, per se, but another nation entirely). Looking significantly larger on a map, and with less overpopulation pressure, Japan may avoid the Showa period's rising militarism. Instead of combating the Great Depression with increased military focus, increased focus on settling people on the mainland will take place. Though Japan will still be criticized for the things they do to Siberian natives and to Europeans in the region - I'm imagining deportations, land expropriation, etc. - this will be seen largely as insignificant, and as an internal Japanese problem, like the treatment of Native Americans. I think that the liberal democracy of the Taisho period may last, and the British alliance will certainly keep the Japanese away from the Axis, who may turn to the Republic of China, instead.

Lots of butterflies, in any case, which'll be addressed as we come to them.

So, yeah. A bunch of ideas. They demand intense criticism - however, do see what I am trying to do. I'd like to make a very interesting timeline, and this is a crucial part of it.
 
In OTL, the US had to pressure the Japanese to evacuate Vladivostok, which they had occupied to aid and abet some Cossack warlords who were fighting the Bolsheviks. You might see a series of skirmishes (not sure about a full-blown war) that result from a POD of the Japanese refusal.
 
A Japanese invasion of Manchuria would be seen as a clear violation, though, of the Open Door Policy, which was supposed to respect the territorial integrity of China, and ensure that non-Chinese powers had equal economic rights in the country. The United States, which was obsessed with the "Yellow Peril", had a large and supposedly threatening population of Japanese immigrants, and a lot of economic interests in East Asia (especially China); as well, the China lobby, after the OTL 1931 invasion of Manchuria, was hugely influential in getting the Roosevelt administration to sanction, antagonize, and just provoke the Japanese. There were calls by the China lobby to invade and liberate Manchuria.

Another thing: the entrenched economic powers in the United States understood that war was economically useful after World War I, and they also recognized the great importance of East Asian markets, especially China. I don't think it is too hard for those powers to lead America into war with Japan, especially because the American opinion of the Japanese was not particularly shining, even back then. I see a lot of propaganda a la World War II, but perhaps less invoking imagery of the Japanese as stupid and inferior buffoons, but more like dangerous barbarians that were growing too powerful - a new horde of Mongols ready to conquer the Western world again in the twentieth century! :eek:

I don't think that a Japanese-American war is completely unthinkable, if Japan is militant in its appropriation of Manchuria and eastern Russian areas.
 
If Japan invades Russia before Stalin decapitates the Russian military leadership in the thirties, Russia is going into WWII with a competent, experienced army. On the Rhine by August on 1941?
 
I think that it's possible that this might just butterfly away some things like that in the Soviet Union. Not sure yet, though.
 

Redbeard

Banned
Japanese economy was in shambles from the R-J war and well into the mid/late 30s. You may discuss if it really improved, but anyway a military coup put an end to political chaos, and the dictatorship at least could focus what little there was available.

In that context you will need a lot of comprehensive internal japanese PoDs to have such a war not end in a very quick and ultimate Japanese failure. I'm not sure it would have provided enough extra experience to the Red Army to have it perform better in Europe in 1941. After all the Red Army in OTL 1939 was at war with Japan and performed just fine - relative to the Japanese!

Regards

Steffen Redbeard
 
If Japan invades Russia before Stalin decapitates the Russian military leadership in the thirties, Russia is going into WWII with a competent, experienced army. On the Rhine by August on 1941?

That depends on when the Second Russo-Japanese War/First Russo-American War takes place.

If it's in the 1930s and enables the officers who filled in for purged officers to gain experience or takes place earlier and butterflies away the purges, sure. But Stalin could purge his military after the war anyway--some people theorized he was planning another round of purges in the 1950s.

Furthermore, I don't think the Russians could be on the Rhine in Aug. 1941 (two months after Barbarossa) even if they're competent and experienced. Make that 1942-1944.
 
Japanese economy was in shambles from the R-J war and well into the mid/late 30s. You may discuss if it really improved, but anyway a military coup put an end to political chaos, and the dictatorship at least could focus what little there was available.

???

Japan's economy did fairly well in the period, growing rapidly (albeit in a boom bust boom bust cycle in the 1920s) and continuing to grow in the Depression.
 
For a Japo-American War in Manchuria, the Americans have to get there.
Probably coming north thru China. ?Would the Chinese allow this?
I would think a Japo-American War would more likely be a Naval War fought over the South Sea Islands.
 
At the moment, though, I think we're looking too far ahead... This Japanese-American War is gonna occur in late 1920 at the earliest, early 1922 at the latest, and probably in the summer of 1921, I'd imagine. It's not going to last even two years.

While perhaps a little implausible, I am theorizing that, at least until 1925, the Red Army is going to be unable to take out Roman Ungern von Sternberg, who has control of some of the Transbaikal and eastern Mongolian areas, and who is receiving military aid from the Japanese. The Soviets are going to change their strategy perhaps a bit (maybe seeking to grab a bigger chunk in Turkey and Xinjiang, or something), and when Stalin takes charge, it's possible that "socialism in one country" will be enacted, and some kind of rough peace might be agreed to in the East. Therefore, this Second Russo-Japanese War isn't being discussed here - unless you think that this paragraph was way too unrealistic.

From what I have read, too, the Japanese economy started to explode after the Russo-Japanese War, and during World War I, Japan managed to get an edge over its more distracted European competitors. It is my opinion that the Japanese would be prepared for another short victorious war when the Americans attack - although it would go horribly wrong.

I see Taiwan being invaded and taken away from the Japanese, and later made a neutral independent state after the British-led peace process. Okinawa, too, might taken from Japan, and the Japanese Pacific island territories may go to the Americans. This war may put a hit in the OTL strong 1920s economy, too, and it would advertise, maybe, what the new kind of war was: chemicals, machine guns, and such - a war of technology and attrition.

If Japan can change its military doctrine to a pragmatic and technology-based one, rather than an idyllic doctrine-based one, things will be different. The Japanese economy should recover by the mid-1930s due to good returns from the new mainland Asian settler colonies (Japan's GDP rose by an average of 5% in the 1930s, despite the Great Depression), and I can also see a Japan that is more satisfied with what it has, which has a better idea of what a war costs, and which has a good overpopulation valve as being more stable politically - which should allow Taisho-style democracy to last into the 1940s. It may not last longer than that, though.
 
I think that the American military strategy to liberate Manchuria (and probably Korea, too) would be take the South Pacific Islands, island-hop from Taiwan to Okinawa to Kyushu, and try to neutralize Tokyo - as Commodore Perry had done several decades before. I think that the Americans will mow the Japanese-Taiwanese forces and very easily occupy the Ryukyu Islands, but will begin to meet stiff naval resistance after that. They may land at Kyushu, but that's where things will go horribly wrong for the Americans, and there will be a ceasefire and later peace.

The peace could see, I dunno, the Americans get the islands that Japan had taken from Germany, and Taiwan become an "absolutely neutral" independent state, and the Ryukyus remain Japanese. Neither the Americans nor the Japanese will be very satisfied with this war, however.
 
While this is an interesting idea, I am unclear about why Japan violating the Open Door policy would provoke war with the United States.
 
Thinking about this, and assuming the US decides that fighting for China is actually a good idea, let's say the war begins in 1937. So you have the US fleets rushing out to Japan following War Plan whatever color it was, only to get its first carrier fight. I can see the Japanese winning the first battle just cause of how skilled their pilots are, and advanced their navy is.

FDR gears the economy towards the war after seeing it was not the easy win everyone assumed. By Fall of 38' one can effectivly say the Depression is over. The whole event ends around Spring of 39' with America the dominate naval power, but Japan still having control of its Empire, and the home islands defended. As the sole reason to end the war is to get out of China, the Empire of Japan does so, but keeps its military, and empire.

Now the interesting thing here is that I can actually see the US staying out of Europe with such a war. As the Depression is over, thanks to the demands for war goods, so a large influx of jobs opened, people may vote Republican in 1940. FDR hints at going to war in Europe to stop the Nazi's but after the recent war with Japan people are not interested. The America First Commitee has a stronger plateform given how nothing was seriously accomplished from the Japanese-American war outside of freeing China. FDR looses to a Republican, and for the most part the war in Europe is up in the air. The British aren't giving up, or being invaded, and the Soviets are not gonna loose either, so we may have a good chance for Germany to seek peace terms with th United States overseeing the peace talks.
 
That's actually interesting. I was looking for an earlier war, to be honest, in the early 1920s, but that could be a rather good one, too.

I think, though, that an earlier war is more beneficial for my POD. Corporate interests funded a lot of armed conflict in that period - the Spanish-American War, the whole American involvement in Hawaii, etc. As well, the Eight-Nation Army had crushed the Boxer Rebellion in order to keep the lucrative Chinese market secure.

Although Japan had shown its muscles in the Russo-Japanese War, an overconfident and frankly racist United States could, theoretically, discount that as the Russians being incompetent, to not be able to defeat an Asian country like Japan.

Corporate interests would want a war if Manchuria was invaded. The Japanese, OTL, put huge pressure on the Republic of China with the Twenty-One Demands, which would have seen China become a Japanese protectorate, putting Japanese interests at a higher priority than European ones - contradictory to the Open Door Policy, which ensures that all countries get an equal stake. This is sort of thing WAS the stuff wars were fought over. The industrialized economies of the West and Japan were producing too many goods, and they needed foreigners to buy them at exorbitant prices in order to make absurdly huge profits. A market like China was important - just as it is today.

I think it's also possible that Western corporate interests might feel a bit threatened by Japanese corporate interests, which, if I recall correctly, were not very intertwined with them - not like today, when every corporation is tied together somehow. A war might lead to taking those out. Much more likely is this: the China lobby, which had huge influence in the United States, plays on yellow peril terror and paints the Japanese as a military threat to the United States and the world. As I said before, I imagine the Japanese could be portrayed as modern-day Mongols - as evil, cruel, dangerous barbarians.
 
The problem with an earlier POD though is that increases the chance of a European power going to war with Japan, and America simply taking a side line. Also the way your scenario has the Japanese you really need to have a serious change to their government. The strict military mindset that lead to the overt expansion of the Empire in the 30's was following Democracy failing in the eyes of the Japanese people.

So you'd need the world powers obviously limiting Japan like in the Paris Peace Conference.

Also while the US was racist as a whole, President Teddy Roosevelt had respect for the Japanese as a people. Taft was too concerned domestically to move out outside of America. Wilson might be a good choice to have an earlier war, but such a thing would lead to war with the Allies.
 
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