Japan Infects California with the Plague

Japan had a plan to use kamikaze pilots to infest California with the plague with things they used in Unit 731. The city targeted was San Diego.

Say they decide to actually attempt this and they succeed. How does America respond?
 
I would consider that it would, at most, just be portions of San Diego that were affected and any major outbreak fairly limited. This is not going to win the Japanese the war and only make things much more worse for them.

The timing still needs to be known, but its highly unlikely that any aircraft would be carrier launched.
 
If I remember correctly, the Japanese were planning on using planes launched from their I-400 submarines to distribute said toxins during the dying days of the war.

Assuming they do, and that the effects are quite bad (large scale infestation) I'd wager similiar attacks against Japan being launched (gas etc.) in retaliation in addition to nukes, with perhaps harsher terms for Japan.
 
I'm not sure this is even remotely feasible. IIRC the Japanese used fleas as their vector. I'm not sure whether they'd bomb California with human fleas or rodent fleas, but neither sounds terribly promising as an approach. Does the West Coast even have significant migratory rodent populations? Sure, port rats, but you can't bomb urban areas with these, it'd be noticed immediately. Human fleas are going to be pretty pointless in the age of DDT.

I suspect that perversely, the best success would come from failure. If the attack was detected immediately and interpreted correctly, public health authorities up and down the coast would go absolutely ape. In wartime, they can wield powers to do very unpleasant things - slum clearances, condemning buildings, population transfers, mandatory delousing. The temptation to relocate a few unhygienic pigmented populations for postwar development of their land might become too great in the process, but even if not, you could see the stories spreading of how the police came to burn down uncle Rodriguez' shack, and when the neighbourhood fought back, the army came and machinegunned the damn greasers, served 'em right. So much for Double Victory. Then there would be navy units drawn away from other theatres to patrol the West Coast for more Japanese submarine carriers. Even if they don't score a few US subs by accident, they'll be pretty useless.

The actual plague outbreak would be a small problem by comparison. Modern health measures can contain bubonmic plague quite effectively if the resources are in place.
 
If I remember correctly, the Japanese were planning on using planes launched from their I-400 submarines to distribute said toxins during the dying days of the war.
The idea was to hit San Diego to disrupt the troops massing for the invasion of Japan. The I-400 submarine mission was supposed to be just days/weeks away when Japan surrendered.
 
The idea was to hit San Diego to disrupt the troops massing for the invasion of Japan. The I-400 submarine mission was supposed to be just days/weeks away when Japan surrendered.

Wouldn't that kind of mission have used more immediately effective weapons? Plague sounds like a very poor weapon to attack military installations with.
 

wormyguy

Banned
Wouldn't that kind of mission have used more immediately effective weapons? Plague sounds like a very poor weapon to attack military installations with.
I believe the Japanese were stockpiling their poison gas for repelling the actual invasion. This mission would have to use the next best thing.
 

CalBear

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Plague is endemic to California. Has been for centuries.

Japan "infecting" the state with it is a bit of a stretch. The flea bit was always a huge stretch. It just doesn't work that well. A place has to be literally lousy for the vector method to work. The strain also has to be of above average lethality to start a useful epidemic.

Like most of Japan's WW II plans, this one is hare brained.
 
Still, but WI they succeed and somehow infect a few thousand people with some disease? Does the USA use chemical weapons to retaliate?
Will the USA even know that it was caused by the Japanese, rather than an unrelated outbreak?

Even if they do, I doubt it. The use of chemical weapons would require a presidential order, from a president who knows that they're going to nuke Japan in a few months anyway...
 
This is one way to get the United States to launch chemical weapons against Japan, and its a real loser way to do it, since they didn't achieve very much with this at all.
 

CalBear

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Still, but WI they succeed and somehow infect a few thousand people with some disease? Does the USA use chemical weapons to retaliate?

Assuming the U.S. connects the disease with the Japanese attack?

REALLY bad juju for Japan. Probably either the invasion takes place because the U.S. won't give an inch on the Emperor's status, and/or the first A-bomb lands on Hirohito's porch. The U.S. winds up with an additional 10 million or so dead Japanese civilians, maybe more, depending on how long it takes what's left of Japan's NCA to get the Americans to stop shooting.

After the surrender, everyone even remotely connected to Unit 731 is ferreted out, tried and hanged until dead, dead, dead. Depending on exactly how far the fear of the disease (not the actual infection, but the terror) got, the Japanese could wind up like the Cherokee or the Apache, pushed into what are close to concentration camps and treated as a half step ahead of animals. Americans are REALLY bad people when we want to be.

There was, at one point, a plan to destroy Japan as an industrial power, permanently, and turn the country into a bunch of farmers under American occupation indefinitely. This plan was WITHOUT some sort of unthinkable bio-war scenario.
 
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