How Poorly Could Japan Do?

On these forums and elsewhere, Japan doing better is a very common discussion, in this recent thread.

Rarely is it mentioned that Japan had plenty of luck and favorable circumstances early in the Pacific War that the Japanese had little to no control over.

That said, just how utterly horribly could Japan's war go wrong? I say "war" in the singular, but it's far enough to consider the war in China from 1937-41 the prequel of a series... so consider it as you will.

The Pacific War with the Allies has enough to consider in terms of Japanese misfortune. It's been mentioned before that it could or should have been much more difficult for the IJA an IJN to reduce the Philippines and particularly to seize Singapore. Regarding the former, I don't think anyone would have predicted ex ante that American air power would be destroyed on the ground in the opening stages of the war, and a TL here that contained such a thing would need justification. Then of course there are other situations, like Wake Island, where American forces might well have held out for reinforcements after fighting off the first unsuccessful attack.

In a war where everything (plausibly) goes wrong for Japan, what does it look like? Just how bad is it compared to OTL?
 
Pearl Harbor is an utter failure, the Pacific Fleet is unscathed and proceedes to completely destroy the Japanese Navy. The Americans battle their way across the Pacific and the Japanese proceed to fight to the death as per OTL. They don't take the hint, don't surrender and the Americans proceed to steam roll up the Home Islands, utterly destroying Japan's ability to do pretty much anything by the end of the war.
 
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the USA doesn't get the bomb and blockades Japan for the next 40 years killing off most of the population and driving the rest into the middle ages. :eek:
 
Frankly, the Japanese can get very close to getting wiped out.

If the coup against Hirohito had succeeded, Japan would dozens of nuclear strikes. The first attempt at Downfall is going to run into a Hurricane--and that's going to be a massive disaster for the United States. The USA might opt to continue the invasion; it might opt instead to continue to use nuclear weapons against the Japanese.

Instead of two nuclear weapons--Japan could face several dozens of them by 1948. The Japanese Army is likely to continue the fight even if all that remains of Japan is a burnt out shell of a country.

With Hirohito captured and unable to stop the war, the war doesn't end until the US Army finally marches into the Japanese Islands--but tens of millions have died by this point. The Soviets drive into the Region to set up their own zone of occupation--but the damage is catastrophic by this point...
 
Combine Calbear's Pacific War Redux with condor's Operation Compass and the Japanese are well and truly defeated within the first six months.
 
If the coup against Hirohito had succeeded, Japan would dozens of nuclear strikes. The first attempt at Downfall is going to run into a Hurricane--and that's going to be a massive disaster for the United States.
This is the definate PoD for Japan to end up in major trouble; if the coup government is still in power when the hurricane hits the US invasion force its all but certain they'll make massive domestic propaganda gains; paralells to the Divine Wind that took out the Mongol invasion in the 1200s will almost certainly be played up, and likely accepted by a frightened and desperate domestic populace. Considering how all that fits in with Japanese folklore, it could easily result in the Japanese adopting a fight to the death mentality when/if the US invades.

Another possibility to consider for a US invasion is what happened on Okinawa where the a large chunk of the population committed suicide when the US invasion force arrived. IIRC, between the suicides and the fighting about a third of the civilian population of Okinawa died during the US invasion; now consider the fact US military intelligence expected the invasion of Okinawa to give an indication of what invading Japan proper would be like. Simply extrapolating the Okinawa figures to Japan leads to horrifying results, and between conventional and nuclear bombing, defoliant strikes on the rice crops, an extended blockade prior to invasion, infrastructure destruction, and a likely even more fanatical populace the US invasion of Japan has a lot of capacity to be worse than Okinawa.
 
Another possibility to consider for a US invasion is what happened on Okinawa where the a large chunk of the population committed suicide when the US invasion force arrived. IIRC, between the suicides and the fighting about a third of the civilian population of Okinawa died during the US invasion; now consider the fact US military intelligence expected the invasion of Okinawa to give an indication of what invading Japan proper would be like. Simply extrapolating the Okinawa figures to Japan leads to horrifying results, and between conventional and nuclear bombing, defoliant strikes on the rice crops, an extended blockade prior to invasion, infrastructure destruction, and a likely even more fanatical populace the US invasion of Japan has a lot of capacity to be worse than Okinawa.

That is, if the Japanese people will be willing to swallow that. IIRC Japan in 1945 was close to mass starvation, with the government publishing texts with titles like 'How to eat grasshoppers' and such. There's the possibility of a revolt, or mass starvation, or both.
 
That is, if the Japanese people will be willing to swallow that. IIRC Japan in 1945 was close to mass starvation, with the government publishing texts with titles like 'How to eat grasshoppers' and such. There's the possibility of a revolt, or mass starvation, or both.
True, the only thing that might make the populace willing to accept it is if the coup government holds out until the big hurricane hits the island where the US invasion force was supposed to be gathering; that might let the coup government play up the folklore/mysticism angle enough to whip the population into a frenzy.

You've got a fair point about food though; even if the coup government can buy time with good propaganda and exploiting some good luck eventually they'll have to deal with the fact that people need food. Unfortunately, by the time the populace turns to rebellion it will probably be too late to stop a famine.
 
You've got a fair point about food though; even if the coup government can buy time with good propaganda and exploiting some good luck eventually they'll have to deal with the fact that people need food. Unfortunately, by the time the populace turns to rebellion it will probably be too late to stop a famine.

IMO the coup will happen after the famine, but it really depends. Probably, the coup is after the initial US invasion and the famine (with the US forces offering food to those who surrender).
 

CalBear

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Combine Calbear's Pacific War Redux with condor's Operation Compass and the Japanese are well and truly defeated within the first six months.

That combo WOULD be sub-optimal.:D

The Japanese were so lucky IOTL that having them do worse is easy. The fighters get scrambled at 07:30 at Pearl and are altitude when the Japanese arrive, The B-17s are allowed to hit Formosa from the Philippines, PoW & Repulse and their escort continue to the north and run into the Malaya landing force before the JNAF can deal with them, MacArthur pulls his supplies back to the Bataan Peninsula instead of burning them, the Wake relief force gets there one day earlier and flies off its fighters (this works REALLY well if combined with the fighters being up at Pearl), etc.
 
In a war where everything (plausibly) goes wrong for Japan, what does it look like? Just how bad is it compared to OTL?


Let's see...

Nobody's mentioned the Soviet's yet. If you really want a Murphy scenario...

ETO war ends in early Spring 1945 - March?
August Storm kicks off in June/July

As mentioned before, US atomic bombings don't stop at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hirohito gets couped, as mentioned before, after he wants to surrender.

Japanese uses it's own atomic device (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/156924815X/qid=955896032/sr=1-2/103-5235281-2523002)

Bye-bye Japan...
 

That's a joke, right?

Japan won't be exploding it's own atomic device during the '40s or even maybe '50s.

The book you linked had one review which I found very fitting:
...
Unfortunately, Wilcox has done a very poor job of researching and telling that story.
Wilcox' understanding of science appears to be badly deficient...
Curiously, if you have some understanding of science and history, you can unscramble Wilcox's writing without much difficulty and see the real story behind it, which is that the Japanese worked with considerable ingenuity but pitiful resources and technical depth to create a nuclear weapon, and failed miserably.
 

King Thomas

Banned
The attack on Pearl Harbour goes badly. Not only does Japan get occupied by the Americans and nuked but the Soviet Union enters the war earlier and the northern third of Japan is occupied by the USSR and ends up like North Korea.
 
Originally Posted by Alratan
Combine Calbear's Pacific War Redux with condor's Operation Compass and the Japanese are well and truly defeated within the first six months.
That combo WOULD be sub-optimal.:D

The Japanese were so lucky IOTL that having them do worse is easy. The fighters get scrambled at 07:30 at Pearl and are altitude when the Japanese arrive, The B-17s are allowed to hit Formosa from the Philippines, PoW & Repulse and their escort continue to the north and run into the Malaya landing force before the JNAF can deal with them, MacArthur pulls his supplies back to the Bataan Peninsula instead of burning them, the Wake relief force gets there one day earlier and flies off its fighters (this works REALLY well if combined with the fighters being up at Pearl), etc.

After a thorough beating like all that, what does the situation in the Pacific look like after Altratan's six months? Presumably the Japanese still hold Indochina, some of the Philippines at least, generally whatever parts aren't held by guerrillas or the remaining organized resistance on Luzon and some of the southern islands.

I suppose with such disastrous defeats early on, there aren't any attempts, or only feeble ones, to press out to Rabul, New Guinea, and the Gilberts or Solomons. Would the Japanese hold any of northern Borneo? If Singapore and Malaya are still in Allied hands, Java and Sumatra would seem a bit out of reach, especially in the face of the Allied navies that haven't been entirely wiped out, and the availability of the Australians to reinforce the Malay barrier in general.

The IJN is probably out of oil when their stockpiles run out, but that's no problem when most of your ships are artificial reefs. Wouldn't this horrific level of attrition shock (and humiliate) the military leadership into a different course? Given that they don't look to have any good options after a year, maybe a removal of the taboo on peace talk?

In the longer term, this does quite a lot to change Post-War nationalism and decolonization in Asia. The Dutch don't look like they'll lose much of Indonesia to the Japanese at all, and the British Empire (especially with a successful Compass) looks strong as ever. India doesn't suffer a famine during the war either, if Burma and Bengal's food production remains undisturbed.

Chiang Kai-Shek, how does he do in all this? The IJA is going to be forced to scale down a bit as in CalBear's TL in order to try (and fail) to staunch the bleeding in the Philippines and other southern misadventures, and the Burma road never gets closed.

Oh, and internal Japanese politics would be interesting. Is there a shakeup that dislodges Tojo after a rather inauspicious beginning to the war? A number of military leaders are going to somewhat humiliated, but that doesn't mean powerless or quickly discredited.

At what point does Japan accept surrender to the Allies?
 
How about in 1937, after the Panay incident the US puts a total Embargo on selling to Japan.
Japanese steel quality and production crash, effecting the number of Ships & Tanks, she can build.

1940
Japan joins the pact of Steel, in return Britain and the DEI embargo Oil and Rubber.

1941
US starts Lead Lease to China.

1943
Japanese troops retreat to Manchuria

1945
China invades Korea

1946
China occupies Japan.:eek:
 
1941
US starts Lead Lease to China.

1943
Japanese troops retreat to Manchuria

Is that part because of the Lend-Lease given to China? IOTL both the US and the USSR gave significant Lend-Lease to China, and this did nothing, even after the opening of the Burma Road.
 
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