Japan Plays It Smart in 1940

Ian_W

Banned
You are absolutely correct that as the clock starts ticking in 1942, the USA is getting stronger and stronger relative to Japan.
The factor that I am basing the counterfactual on is democracy.

Wrong on two counts. The clock started ticking with the Two Ocean Navy act of 19 July 1940, which authorised 7 battleships, 27 cruisers and 15 000 aircraft, plus some of those new-fangled aircraft carrying ships.

You're basing the counterfactual on Japanese wishful thinking. What actually happens is

1. Japanese attack the British and Dutch.

2. US reinforces Philipines, Guam etc, while going to full war warning.

Then either (a) US stays neutral, or (b) US goes to war.

3a. US reports on all Japanese shipping, including anything trying to invade Malaya or the Dutch East Indies.

3b. US lend-leases aircraft and naval ships to belligerent powers.

3c. US continues to not sell oil to Japan.

3d. Japanese task forces get really upset at being tailed by USN ships.

3e. Japan continues to run out of oil.

Followed by

4a. Someone shoots at someone.

4b. Congress declares war.

4c. Japan runs out of oil.

If Japan has been dumb enough try an invasion of Ceylon, well, then good luck with protecting the Home Islands from the full American fleet. We might even see a Decisive Battle involving battleships the Americans can replace and the Japanese can't.
 
Using what for drilling rigs ? To give you an idea at jut how terribly bad the Japanese were at industry, look at how they exploited the actual oil fields they conquered.

They drilled in the wrong location for the aforementioned oilfields. I believe they missed one of the larger deposits in the region by less than 300 meters...?

And fixing this needs a POD where the Japanese dont go bushido insane, because it's very clearly Merchant behavior.

A need for particular strategic resources drove their plans accordingly. Satisfy that need and it is likely that their plans change, though not necessarily for the better.

And if you dump bushido madness, then they don't get in a war with China and none of the following stupidity happens.

A penchant for conquest is one thing but they were in China for seven or three years already (depending on how you look at it) per the thread title. So the war in China is already underway and plenty of stupidity has already occurred.
 
If the Japanese find the oil they need, and can successfully exploit that, then they can continue the war in China, or not, it depends upon them. Having an independent supply of oil means they don't have to attack anyone else, no PH, no Singapore, none of that. Oil keeps their economy moving, they exploit Manchuria and N. China, and stay out of WWII, there being no rationale for fighting it.
 
Admiral Nagano who had studied in the USA advised strongly against going to war with the Americans. Instead, why not have the Japanese Empire do what it did in WWI?
Simply grab the colonies of the beleaguered European powers.
In mid-1940, Japan takes the Dutch East Indies, Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore. It leaves Eastern New Guinea alone but takes the Bismarck Islands and the Northern Solomons as well as the Gilbert Islands.
Japan proclaims Asia for the Asians and promises to prepare its new possessions for independence within 10 years. It cultivates Sukarno in Indonesia and recruits locals into its army.
It tells Australia that it has no quarrel with them as a sister Asian power and will stop in the mid-Solomons and Western New Guinea.
It then moves on and takes Ceylon and offers India independence within 5 years if the Indians throw off the British yoke.
No attacks are made on Wake, Guam, the Philippines, Pearl Harbor, the Aleutians, etc.
In this counterfactual - all the resources expended against the Americans are now available to push out into the Indian Ocean.
FDR is very very unhappy but - especially in an election year - cannot get a consensus to go to war over the protection of European colonies. Besides, he is mostly concerned with Hitler.
The UK is busy elsewhere and ultimately struggles to protect East Africa and the Persian Gulf. The loss of India may lead to Churchill's fall. The Chinese are starved for supplies because the pipeline from Burma and India is cut off.
Japan does have to station significant forces on Saipan and Truk as well as Formosa and to keep a very careful eye on the Americans. But the Americans are not likely to try to launch a surprise attack without a declaration of war.

Nothing gets around the geography. If the Philippines remain American, Japan is doomed.
 

Ian_W

Banned
A need for particular strategic resources drove their plans accordingly. Satisfy that need and it is likely that their plans change, though not necessarily for the better.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

The need to not get assassinated for showing insufficient regard to the glory of the Emperor drove what passed for their plans.

See also the Marco Polo Bridge incident, and the way it wasnt actually technically well planned by the actual government - just by some glory-hungry junior officers.

This requires the Japanese do not pull out of China, which means they can't buy oil from the Americans, which means everything goes bad, because in 1941 the world's big oil producer is America.
 
Let's look at the polling data...



Emphasis mine. So, at the end of October, 1941, there was already majority (near 2/3 majority) opinion that the US should act against Japan in a decisive manner - and this is before Japanese aggression in Southeast Asia.

The Japanese refusing a DoW initially allows the US to move to war at their own leisure, building up the Philippines and their other Pacific possessions, while continuing to expand their navy - the Lend Lease with the Allied Nations would continue, with US Lend Lease Materials now showing up in the Pacific to fight off the Japanese advance, and with US vessels likely "accidentally" sunk, just as they were in the Atlantic in 1941. It'll end in two ways: either the British are more successful and grind them to a stalemate, the Japanese sink too many "neutral" US vessels, and the US is prodded into war once it is well prepped for it - and they'll be starting from the Philippines, so that precious oil will be immediately interdicted. That, or the Japanese will be too successful, and strike out too far... at which point the US will likely enter into the war to contain them, at a point where their fleets are stretched too far and forced to defend too many points.

Essentially, while the US was opposed to the colonial system, they are even more opposed to the growth of the Japanese empire, especially into what is considered the US sphere of influence. It's an important point of distinction.

I scrolled through the polling data and I find it very persuasive. In 1941, the US public was coming around to the need to intervene in both theaters. I had not realized it. I still feel that Pearl Harbor galvanized the public to a near unanimous consensus in favor of full commitment to the war which might not have otherwise materialized. But I am changing my thinking and coming to the view that we would have gotten involved even without Pearl. On the other hand, I still think that there is an argument that we might have - after some initial battles - agreed to let Japan keep what it had prior to the war rather than seek unconditional surrender.
 
I scrolled through the polling data and I find it very persuasive. In 1941, the US public was coming around to the need to intervene in both theaters. I had not realized it. I still feel that Pearl Harbor galvanized the public to a near unanimous consensus in favor of full commitment to the war which might not have otherwise materialized. But I am changing my thinking and coming to the view that we would have gotten involved even without Pearl. ...

Thats the same path I followed several decades ago. There were other factors than the polls in my understanding. I grew up among the folks represented by those polls. My father & his peers were clear about having accepted the US would be in the war NLT 1942. Many assumed we would be into it in 1940 when they heard that France collapsed. My father who was in the ROTC program in 1940 had serious doubts he would complete his last semester of college in 1941.

I did notice that while my Irish ancestored relatives had a lot of heartburn with fighting on the side of the "English" they had no reservations about killing as many Japanese as possible. Conversely my German ancestored kin had no problem with shooting Germans.
 
As for Wake, the Japanese tried to take the island on the cheap in the first attempt, committing 3 light cruisers, 6 destroyers, 2 patrol boats, and two transports with only 450 men in their actual invasion force, that didn't even land. They came back on the 23rd with 2 carriers, 2 heavy cruisers and two more destroyers and 1,500 Marines. The island was captured and all American personnel surrendered that afternoon.

They actually had six CA's; TONE and CHIKUMA were escorting HIRYU and SORYU with the four AOBA's tasked with fire support (coming from Guam where they were not needed in the slightest...).

The US forces were actually winning and just about drove the Japanese from either Wilks or Peale. But all communications were cut and neither Cunningham nor Deveraux knew this so it was decided to surrender. They wouldn't have won in the end, the Japanese had every intention of running DD's ashore and using their crews as troops, the issue was to be settled this time...
 
On the other hand, I still think that there is an argument that we might have - after some initial battles - agreed to let Japan keep what it had prior to the war rather than seek unconditional surrender.

I don't really understand the argument, particularly. The counterarguments I saw spoken of beforehand, pointing to Vietnam and 1812, don't really make sense to me. The War of 1812 took place over a period of three years between a US with virtually no military against one of the major powers of the Napoleonic Wars - and even then, it still took three years to approach anything approximating status quo ante bellum. Vietnam took place over a decade in a small Asian nation that was not expanding and taking over half of Asia in the process - and it didn't help that it was the first war that really made it into the homes of Americans, which did eventually turn the hearts and minds against it. The three different conflicts aren't in parallel.

The US knew the Japanese were attempting to conquer all of China, and eventually all of Asia. They had committed atrocities upon the Chinese in spades - these were not isolated events. And Japan couldn't stop them, as the militarists were in power. A naked attack on the British, Dutch, and other nations of Southeast Asia is a blatant expansionist attack on two powers the US is aligned with (supplying with Lend-Lease material, for a start), and that's regardless of the propaganda that the Japanese espoused. The Japanese have shown their hands and committed their fleets and armies to the wholesale conquest of the Pacific a region of major US interest (This would be like, say, Germany trying to conquer the Caribbean, roughly). There are no gains to be kept post-war.

It's likely that the US will accelerate rearmament plans. Some of the Independence class conversions are likely to be skipped or pushed back, but the US will have an ever expanding fleet that is being built for the purpose of defeating the Japanese. 32 Essex, and eventually 6 Midway, class carriers are on the way, and they'll start entering the theater by 1943, at which point Japan has quite literally no chance to win. This is a nation that only ranks above Italy in total capacity for warmaking, after all - they don't really stand a chance once the US gets under way.

So, to assume that the Americans will sue for, or accept, status quo ante, when the status quo ante was enough to propel them to the point to construct the fleets and gather the armies in the first place, seems like Japanese wishful thinking (indeed, it was hoped OTL that a few swift defeats would be enough to bring the US to the bargaining table). However, the US has nothing to gain by letting the Japanese run rampant across Asia, and isn't going to declare war on a whim - they'll declare war to drive the Japanese from Southeast Asia, and likely from China, and will accept nothing less than that. The exact definitions might differ, of course (Formosa wasn't claimed by China until late 1945), but the sum total of the conquests will be rolled back in order to have the US withdraw.

One does not pick up the sword unless they are quite willing to see it through to its bloody conclusion, and the Japanese had driven the Americans further and further towards unsheathing it with only the provocations in China and Indochina. Further conquests afield are only going to alarm the US more.
 
I have to agree with Luminous on this. If Hirohito suddenly grew a pair of brass balls, put on his uniform, sword, and picked up his Nambu, and then marched the Imperial Guard Regt. through Tokyo to IJA headquarters, and then gave various officers the choice of Seppuku or a bullet in the back of the head, he'd have enough support from the hot heads and junior officers to pull off just about anything, especially if he actually did cap a few. He didn't, there was no transmorgrification of testes to brass, and history went as it did. THAT is what it would take to change things. Short of that, the militarists will continue to exert their malign influence, and the absolute best that could possibly be hoped for would be a withdrawl from all of China north of the Great Wall, while declaring victory. I doubt even that would be possible. Ergo, the Japanese will stay in China, the US wont like it at all, but can live with it. If however, they make a move on any other European powers colony, that will be seen as a threat to the US, and war will occur. The US isn't going to sit idly by, the DOW vote may not be as lopsided as it was in OTL, but it WILL take place.
 
Thats the same path I followed several decades ago. There were other factors than the polls in my understanding. I grew up among the folks represented by those polls. My father & his peers were clear about having accepted the US would be in the war NLT 1942. Many assumed we would be into it in 1940 when they heard that France collapsed. My father who was in the ROTC program in 1940 had serious doubts he would complete his last semester of college in 1941.

I did notice that while my Irish ancestored relatives had a lot of heartburn with fighting on the side of the "English" they had no reservations about killing as many Japanese as possible. Conversely my German ancestored kin had no problem with shooting Germans.

I am also from a German Irish background. My parents were involved in America First but told me that after Pearl everyone was committed to the war effort. I had always assumed that the country was fairly strongly isolationist up to Pearl. The Gallup polling data really refutes this. We were definitely coming around to the conclusion that we had to do something. I do think that the fact that we were attacked without even a Declaration of War did act to galvanize public opinion in favor of an all out pursuit of victory. I am learning from the comments on this thread and that is one of the good things about these forums.
 
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