Japan at war with allies sans the US?

Is there any way to have Japan go to war with the Allies and not bring in the USA? Is it possible that without a surprise attack, the US might not have gone to war? Would the US public have supported a war with Japan without Pearl Harbor?
 
The U.S. had possessions near the Japanese home islands, so it was only a matter of time before the U.S. intervened to protect its territory from possible Japanese aggresion.
 
No way at all. Not without making some large changes to the events in OTL. Sooner or later the Japanese would run into the US interests in the area, most likely sooner given the presence on the Philippine Islands.

The Japanese could not risk leaving the bases alone as they would pose a serious potential threat to their homeland.

The only way a war could be avoided would be for the USA to adopt a much more isolationist policy and withdrew its forces from the area completely and then chose to ignore the monumental crimes against the chinese people that Japan committed.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
FDR was engaged in a undeclared war with Germany in the Western Atlantic. He had supplied weapons to Britain in direct violation of the law. (He declared them surplus scrap metal and sold them to a company who sold them to Britain.) It is as certain as any WI ever is that FDR would have intervene one way or another. For example, he simply might have attacked any Japanese ships he found between the PI and China, much like he did the Germans west of Iceland. We also had American built planes flow by American pilots paid for by American $$$. So we were fighting the Japanese already, but in a limited way. For a reverse scenario, imagined if the Japanese who invade the Philippines had simplely change their uniforms to the Chinese insignia and painted Chinese logos on their planes. FDR wanted Japan to back down and leave China, and he was willing to fight a war for the goal, but he might have wanted to waited a year or two until more ships were ready.

As to the US public. Papers were condemning Japan in 1920. There were huge complaints about Japan in the Russian Far East and the Japanese getting Yap Island. A popular vote in California banned Japanese from owning real property. This ban Japanese was important to the Japanese nation. There is a book written in 1920 where a exiled Russian officer discusses how a war between Japan and the USA is inevitable. And when i say 1920, i mean 1920 not the 1920's. As soon as the German possessions stopped containing the Japanese in the Pacific, the friction heated up.

In 1920, the Pacific war was probably more likely than another French/German War. This is also true in 1933 and 1935. Only after Hitler takes the remainder of Czech Republic is war between France and German clearly more likely a Pacific War. When two nations have vital territorial interests and both nations believe the can win, war is largely inevitable in the pre-nuclear age. To avoid a war in Europe, either France had to accept Germany reacquiring its 1914 borders in the east and the German Speaking areas of A-H before the Nazi rose to power or the German people had to accept losing all these German speaking areas permanently. In Asia, either the USA had to abandon China and the Philippines to Japan or Japan had to accept second tier status.

There were deep routed cause that lead to WW2, or what should be really know as the Great War Resumed. The same way the French revolution started a process that took a couple of decades to finish, so did August 1914 start a process that took 31 years of hostility to settle.
 
Impossible, Churchill and Roosevelt had assured each other that a Japanese attack on the posessions of either country would result in a DOW on Japan by the other nation. The Japanese couldn't have attacked S.E. Asia without hitting The Phillippines as they would have been baring their throats to the Americans, they had to take out everything in the way.
 
Japan and Germany attacked Russia? The oil and steel intended for the navy was placed in the hands of the army and airforce. Then on december 1 usa's combined fleet attacked japan's naval yard sinking most of japan's moored warship.

Though I doubt Japan had enough troops to occupy siberia and east asian russian. That would atleast divert enough troops away from the front against germany.
 
Japan and Germany attacked Russia? The oil and steel intended for the navy was placed in the hands of the army and airforce.

POD well beyond 1920 required for this, probably before 21 Demands when Japan decided she had to dominate China. Also a very different Japan because OTL Japan realized that as an island country she needed the fleet. Besides there is virtually nothing in Siberia worth taking.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
POD well beyond 1920 required for this, probably before 21 Demands when Japan decided she had to dominate China. Also a very different Japan because OTL Japan realized that as an island country she needed the fleet. Besides there is virtually nothing in Siberia worth taking.

About the latest POD i can see is 1920/21. The Japanese are a bit better diplomatically and the Whites do better in the RCW. The Russian Far East is detached from Soviet Russia, and becomes a client state of the Japanese. The Japanese Army combined with the retreating Whites might just be enough to convince Lenin/Stalin that the very eastern coast line was not worth fighting for at this time.

I was reading through the New York Times, and it is clear that Wilson and America was very upset at the Japanese being in Russia, even in 1919, when we also had a regiment there. It was not clear to me why the USA was upset, but it was upset. From the Hindsight perspective, Japan holding the Soviet Far East is no worse than Stalin holding it. All Japan would get from the Far East is a lot of costly garrisons, some lumber, and maybe a few gold mines. Also, a continuing friction point between the Japan and the Soviets would simply consume resources on both sides, weakening countries the USA is not friendly with.
 
The problem I see with this is that Japan went to war because it was running out of the resources it needed to continue its war against China. The US Embargo of Oil, following other materials, led Japan to make the decision to seize oil as it could on it own.


If the Allies sell these resources to Japan, there's no reason for them to fight a war.


If they place the OTL embargo on Japan, they includes the United States. Either the United States will have shown in the lead-up to the outbreak of hostilities that it doesn't intend to stand with the UK or that it will. Scenarios where the US doesn't support the UK (President Robert Taft, perhaps), just leads to no embargo and no war at all.


Not declaring war on the United States isn't going to keep the United States out of a war with Japan.
 
So the USA has its oil emargo. You attack British and Dutch possesions only to get at some Oil. You then rely on U.S. not going to war to just restore colonial possesions to the British and Dutch. Its a big assumption but not crazier than the original assumption that they could take on the U.S.A and fight to a stalemate.

My guess
The US will heavily reinforce all its Pacific possesions. It will help occupy all Free French Islands in ther pacific too. Lend-Lease is now just Give/Borrow and U.S force "train" on the island of Australia. Aid to China increases. Once the Essex class carriers are ready the U.S.A decalres war and its short, over by late 1944.
 
Is there any way to have Japan go to war with the Allies and not bring in the USA? Is it possible that without a surprise attack, the US might not have gone to war? Would the US public have supported a war with Japan without Pearl Harbor?

Japan cannot attack the British and Dutch possessions in South East Asia in late 1941 and expect that the USA remains neutral.

Avoiding attacking American territory was suggested by at least two IJN admirals (In “The Japanese Navy in World War II”, ed. David C. Evans, page 6, Fukudome Shigeru stated that Adm. Shimada did not want to attack America. “The Origins of the Pacific War,” by Scott D. Sagan, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 18, No. 4., Spring 1988, pp. 893-922 which attributes the idea of avoiding attack on American territory to Kondō Nobutake on page 913). However, this idea was rejected. The Army also wanted to go South only via Malaya but finally accepted the Navy's wish to invade the Philippines in September 1941 (for example in "Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941" by Michael A. Barnhart on page 243 but referenced to Bōeichō, Daihon'ei rikugunbu 2, 416). However, there were still admirals who wanted to avoid the attack on Pearl Harbor because of its effect on American opinion. For example, Onishi Takijiro argued “...we should avoid anything like the Hawaiian operation that would put America's back up too badly” (“The Reluctant Admiral: Yamamoto and the Imperial Navy” by Agawa Hiroyuki, page 229).

The American position is discussed in “Going to war with Japan, 1937-1941” by Jonathan G. Utley and “To Have and Have Not: Southeast Asian Raw Materials and the Origins of the Pacific War” by Jonathan Marshall. Marshall page 162 notes that Roosevelt polled his cabinet members on whether they believed that “the American people would back up the administration if it chose to fight for the Western position in Asia” and all members agreed that they would (referenced to Simpson's Diary for 7th November 1941). We can see this in the contemporary Gallup polls where the answer to “Should the United States take steps now to prevent Japan from becoming more powerful, even if this means risking a war with Japan?” was “Yes (64%), No (25%) and No opinion (11%) in a poll taken from 10th to 29th October 1941. However, Hopkins recalled Roosevelt’s subsequent “relief” that the Japanese had attacked U.S. territory. “In spite of the disaster at Pearl Harbor and the blitzwarfare with the Japanese during the first few weeks, it completely solidified the American people and made the war upon Japan inevitable” (Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, pp.335-6). It also seems that Roosevelt planned to have an incident to sway American opinion and sent the small ships Isobel and Lanikai as bait (Marshall, page 170 and "The Strange Assignment of USS Lanikai" by Rear-Admiral Kemp Tolley, page 122-125 in "Air Raid, Pearl Harbor" by Paul Stillwell, http://books.google.co.uk/books/abo..._USS_Lanikai.html?id=DTFbYgEACAAJ&redir_esc=y).

So naturally we turn to the question of whether Japan could have struck South in 1940 without provoking an immediate American response. This is a very difficult question. On the one hand, American leaders were conscious of the importance of the region for the American economy and Roosevelt was committed to helping Britain and may have warned Japan that America would oppose a move South as early as August 1940 (“The Origin of FDR's Promise to Support Britain Militarily in the Far East” by FW Marks, http://www.jstor.org/pss/3639415). On the other hand, America was much more isolationist in 1940, which was an election year. The American Government began a programme of stockpiling raw materials such as rubber and tin from June 1940 and Marshall argues that there was a campaign to persuade the public of the importance of South East Asia from about the same time. There are some magazine articles from that period such as Time Magazine for 20th May 1940
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,849271,00.html and http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...wBDgK#v=onepage&q=nitrile rubber 1941&f=false which certainly informed the American public and may also have persuaded them. There were no Gallup polls asking about war with Japan in 1940 but a Gallup poll taken from 16th to 21st February 1941 asked “Do you think the United States should risk war with Japan, if necessary, in order to keep Japan from taking the Dutch East Indies and Singapore?” and the replies were Yes (39%), No (46%) and No opinion (15%). Thus Roosevelt would have had to work much harder to bring America into a war in 1940 and early 1941 than later. He would almost certainly have tried to engineer an incident using small USN ships as discussed above but it is not clear if the IJN would have bitten on the bait.

Some relatively junior planners in the IJA did propose moving South in 1940 and Lieutenant-Colonel Nishiura Susumu, by an order of Colonel Iwakuro drafted a plan called “Guidance Plan for War in the South” (“The Japanese Road to Singapore: Japanese Perceptions of the Singapore Naval Base, 1921-41” by Yamamoto Fumihito, chapter 4 http://scholarbank.nus.edu.sg/bitstream/handle/10635/17361/07Yamamoto.pdf?sequence=7 and also Barnhart pages 158-9). Meanwhile the IJN concluded that an attack on the Dutch East Indies would involve war with America. I am not sure how that conclusion was reached. In "From Mahan to Pearl Harbor" by Sadao Asada (page 279), there is a brief mention of a war game on 26th-28th November 1940 presided over by Yamamoto with "leading members of the Naval General Staff". Marder's "Old Friends, New Enemies" attributes this to Rear-Adm. Maeda Minoru's view that the Dutch and Americans were the same race (interview on 19 June 1962 in Boeicho Senshibu Archives). However, it seems possible that the importance of American public opinion was not appreciated by the IJN. If there was interest in striking South at that time amongst the leaders of the IJA, they seem to have decided not to push the issue in the face of IJN opposition.

Finally, we might ask what would have happened had Japan struck South not one year early but two years early at the end of 1939. Naturally that was quite impossible because going to war on Germany's behalf was rather unpopular in Japan in 1939 after Germany had signed the Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact at the height of the Battle of Khalkhin Gol or Nomonhan.

However, we can suggest PODs to avoid the Khalkhin Gol or Nomonhan Incident. For example, there was a clash between Lieutenant-Generals Tada Hayao, Vice Chief of the General Staff, and Tojo Hideki, Vice Minister of War, in late 1938. Tada certainly believed that the USSR was Japan's main enemy. Tojo apparently believed that Japan should have been quicker to commit larger forces to China (Butow, Tojo and the coming of War, page 105). A more extreme opponent of reinforcement to China, Ishiwara Kanji, had already been sidelined after 1937. Might Tada's death or serious injury in an accident or by removal by illness have caused Tojo's (and perhaps Doihara's?) view to have been accepted that China had to take precedence over Manchuria. Was that Tojo's real view? His speech in November 1938 stated that Japan must arm for war against both China and the USSR. However, he seems to have regarded China as the more urgent issue (Butow, page 121).

It is still rather a stretch to imagine orders being given and obeyed that great restrain be shown to avoid border incidents against the Soviet Union (as were given OTL after September 1939) and that diplomatic efforts be made to improve relations with the USSR. However, had such policies been adopted to allow a focus on China, it seems possible that the combination of the Tientsin Incident http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tientsin_Incident and the outbreak of the war in Europe would have made an advance South in 1939 attractive.

It seems very likely that surprise Japanese landings in Malaya and Indochina in December 1939 would not have provoked an immediate American response, especially as American access to raw materials from the Netherlands East Indies would not have been threatened initially. As France and Britain were allies and Italy was neutral, it is possible that Japan would have faced more naval opposition than OTL two years later. However, a surprise attack might have succeeded. On May 10th 1940 (assuming no butterflies), we might assume that Japan, warned by Germany of its operations, would invade the NEI. However, America might be taken by surprise and not immediately react.

Now if we believe Marshall, American leaders decided in May-June 1940 OTL to prepare for war in defence of South East Asian raw materials. However, it might be much harder to argue for a war to regain those materials as, if they really were essential, would it not be easier simply to buy them from Japan? We might imagine that American politics have by now diverged from OTL. One less obvious reason is that there would probably not have been a German Invasion of Scandinavia because the British Fleet would have been sent East and Goering's OTL argument that the forces were needed for the campaign in the West would have triumphed. Thus American opinion might be a little more isolationist especially in the Mid West where voters of Scandinavian descent were concentrated. Thus it is just possible that we would have a Roosevelt – Taft or Roosevelt – Dewey election in 1940 fought upon the issue of whether to trade with Japan or to oppose Japan and suffer a severe recession due to a shortage of rubber and tin.
 
Last edited:
No Spanish-American War, no American interests near Japan? The butterflies, the butterflies, everyone will scream, 50 years of naval development between Japan and America will be completely different, thus upsetting everything else. But anyway, if World War II happens in that scenario, is that a solution?
 
Very few people realise that in April 1939 there was a conference in Wellington, New Zealand where the British conceded that in the event of an outbreak of war in Asia and Europe that Australia and New Zealand would be left to their own devices. The Americans and the British agreed that if such an eventuality arose in the Asia-Pacific region the Americans would take over the responsibility of defending Australia and New Zealand.

Despite popular belief the Japanese war plans never included an invasion of New Zealand or Australia so if Japanese forces had not attacked Pearl Harbour or the Philippines and stuck to their military objective of seizing control of south east Asia and the South Pacific islands there would've been no American intervention.

The reason for this is simple: the American people and the majority of Congress and Senate members would've opposed going to war against Japan unless the Japanese attacked American territory. However, this doesn't mean the Americans would not have allowed volunteers to fight the Japanese: Americans were fighting in both the Britain and China prior to Pearl Harbour.

It's also important to point out the Japanese occupation of French Indo-China meant they didn't need to go through the Philippines to invade south-east Asia. Indeed, much of the invasion force of Southeast Asia was launched from French Indo-China and China itself.

Whether or not the United States would've stayed out of the war would've depended upon what the Japanese did after they had over-run the British and French colonies. The Japanese are most likely to have concentrated on trying to win the war in China rather than take on the United States.
 
I also seriously doubt that the Japanese would have landed in Darwin and tried to push all the way down to the bottom. Why wouldn't they try landing again somewhere on the east coast and bypass the Brisbane Line?

Assuming America is not somehow ruining this entire thing.
 
If there is a rift between the Americans and the British, then possibly. Wendell Wilkie, for instance, thought that allying to country 'dedicated' to freedom, while possessing colonies and running them dictatorially, was a folly.
 
Top